Subjugation of South Schenkau

In year 1433 of the Christian Era, a hurricane swept three merchant ships off-course. The three ships, manned by men from the illustrious Da-Han empire, carried silks, spices, and gunpowder. If they had sunk, that would have been the end of the story. But as the Han crews' luck would have it, the three ships survived the storm and landed in an unknown continent on the edge of the world. To the men of Da-Han, hailing from the pinnacle of civilization, the virgin land would have seemed a wonder. One could see forests and woodlands all the way to the horizon -- no cities existed. The illiterate locals wore hardly any clothing and lived in small villages. Later visitors would name the land Kannex, after a local tribe.

A dozen indigenous tribes populated the area, splitting the area of modern-day Kannex among them. The largest was the Kingdom of Schenkau (?? schen2kau3), spilling out south from the modern-day Kannexan border provinces of Wallei and Marieheim. The Schenkau were a fierce people, named after the widest river that flowed through their lands. The hills of Wallei served as the protective northern boundary of the Schenkau realm; this would serve them well.

From 1618 onward, foreigners from across the seas began arriving by the thousands. Han and Teutonic settlers felled and burned the trees that served as the natives' livelihood. Over the course of a century, the northern natives found themselves driven out of their ancestral lands. Disease, famine, and war uprooted ancient kingdoms and peoples within the span of two generations. Entire villages vanished. The foreigners and their "fire-medicine" conquered and slaughtered all. By 1730, the settlers had established powerful, secure states on the western seaboard and the indigenous kingdoms were rotting away.

In 1776, Han and Teutonic states joined into the Empire of Kannex. Only two native kingdoms remained: the Sonach people to the East, which would be conquered in the next three decades by Kannexan Emperor Julius's armies, and the Schenkau Kingdom in the South.

-to be continued-

In 1812, the Schenkau Kingdom was the last surviving native kingdom in the Kannexan region. It bordered the Kannexan provinces of Wallei and Marieheim to the north, which included territory that the Kannexan settlers had taken from them. By now, the Schenkau people had gathered in significant cities along the Schenkau River Valley. They adopted farming, muskets, and wooden ships in harbors. Teutonic-style buildings sprung up in Schenkau settlements, including forts and city walls, in an attempt to defend against prospective Kannexan invasions. King Josef, the leader of the Schenkau people, went a step further -- he converted to Christianity.

The cultural shift angered Schenkau conservatives -- the Schenkau people were forgetting their roots, blindly imitating the ways of the foreign devils. Now even the king was worshiping the god of the foreign devils! But King Josef believed he had no choice. The foreign-style cities must spring up. The Schenkau must renounce the hunter life and adopt the sedentary ways of the foreigner, or risk perishing as the other native tribes had.

Through the 1830s, the Schenkau Kingdom gave up their old ways. The Schenkau people adopted the foreign dress, the men with their strange hats and coats and the women with impractically long skirts that made them trip. The Schenkau Kingdom took up a Kannexan-style constitution, with a similarly-structured Congress holding the legislative power behind the King. The Schenkau began attending Christian sermons and sending their sons to learn German and be educated as young Kannexan gentlemen.

Most importantly, the Schenkau adopted the foreigners' weaponry, and bought as many muskets and cannons as they could. Soon the Schenkau Kingdom sported a small but formidable army that made the Kannexans in the north hesitate to invade.

But that did not stop white Kannexan settlers from crossing the border and buying large plots of land. In the process of wanting to appear "civilized" to foreigners, the Kingdom of Schenkau had invited Kannexan advisors, missionaries, and landowners to pour into Schenkau. The foreigners, with their claims of "civilization" and advanced technology, dazzled the Schenkau royal court, and soon half the ministers of the Schenkau King were Kannexan.

In 1861, Empress Marianne of Kannex recognized the Kingdom of Schenkau as an independent, fellow Christian nation. The Schenkau royal court were overjoyed -- some because they genuinely believed they had escaped "barbarity"; others because they knew the chance of invasion was now less.

The Kannexan Civil War would change that, however.

The Kannexan Civil War split the Kannexan Reich into three. The West Coast and the East remained loyal to Empress Marianne and her government; the Central Provinces pledged themselves to rebellion. Rebel forces overwhelmed the defenses of the imperial capital and forced Empress Marianne and her court to flee to the West. The heartland of Kannex fell quickly to rebel control.

The Schenkau Congress, dominated by landowners sympathetic to the pro-slavery cause of the rebels, recognized the rebel Confederation as the legitimate government of Kannex. King David expected the Kannexan Civil War to be over within a matter of months; the rebels were pushing hard at the imperials and were expected to reach the coast at any moment.

But something inexplicable happened. The loyalist general Dieter Dschu halted the rebel advance in Osthell Province, destroying the confederate bridgeheads and driving back the enemy in one of the largest battles in Kannexan history. Canons and rifles blazed, bodies strewn on the floor, as the advancing rebels broke flank. The rebel momentum grounded to a halt as the imperials struck back with full force, renewed with fury as the Empress Marianne commanded a crusade, a war of unification, against the rebel aristocrats.

The Civil War would last for another seven years. Imperial armies took the last rebel strongholds in 1872. Kannex, now reunited, glanced over to the south.

Officially, Empress Marianne forgave the Schenkau government for supporting the rebels, but the Kannexan government did not forget.

Rebel soldiers and aristocrats escaped across the southern border to the Kingdom of Schenkau. They launched guerrilla attacks on Wallei and Marieheim farms, burning and looting. In turn, the Kannexan government at Niemzburg demanded more policing powers south of the border, including authorization for the Kannexan Army to chase after bandits and rebels. The Schenkau Congress refused.

In 1881, a shepherd claiming to be the brother of Jesus Christ and the son of the Great Lord raised an army and then a rebellion. As the holy man walked barefoot on his pilgrimage to purify Schenkau, the flock around him grew. Poor indigenous farmers who had lost their lands to wealthy Kannexan landowners and tribal warriors who feared the domestication of their lives gathered around the holy man, wielding rifles and swords. Some warriors, clad in the traditional rainbow robes, rode on horseback and formed a cavalcade as the Prophet continued forth.

The rebellion threw the Kingdom of Schenkau into chaos. King David and his ministers fled the citadel of New Hope, the capital of the Schenkau Kingdom, and fled north to the Kannexan border. The farmers and city folk of Schenkau tore off their petticoats and burned them as works of the foreign devil. With the fall of New Hope, landowners and businessmen and missionaries of Kannexan descent followed King David and fled north to Kannex.

Kannexan Chancellor Tschiang Löw, with authorization from Congress, formed an expeditionary force consisting of Civil War veterans and mercenaries to pacify the Kannexo-Schenkau border. Along with wealthy refugees came bandits as well as regular poor folk streaming across the border to escape the violence. "We cannot stand by as religious radicals attack the principles upon which our civilization stands!" proclaimed Chancellor Löw.

Fifty thousand Kannexan troops crossed the border from Wallei Province into the Kingdom of Schenkau in the summer of 1883. Grimy-faced soldiers, squinting in the sun, wore wide-brimmed helmets and wore brown cavalry vests as they rode all the way into the Schenkau Kingdom, kicking up dust as they went. New Hope fell by the next spring. The Kannexans, well-organized and well-armed, defeated the Prophet's armies. The Prophet's body was found pierced by a dozen bullets and the rebellion ended.

The landowners and the noblemen returned to Schenkau. Kannexan forces remained in the kingdom, keeping the peace. At the next gathering of the Schenkau Congress, King David was conspicuously absent, while the rifle-carrying, white-clad soldiers of Empress Marianne stood guard on either side of the parliamentary chamber. As expected, the gentry of the Kingdom of Schenkau voted to dissolve themselves into the Kannexan Empire.

The subjugation of Schenkau was complete.