Galactic Civil War

The Galactic Civil War, also known as the Imperial–Alliance War and later the First Galactic Civil War was a major galactic conflict fought primarily between the Galactic Empire and the Alliance to Restore the Republic. The Alliance was a rebel faction dedicated to the restoration of the Galactic Republic, the government that the Empire had supplanted at the culmination of the Clone Wars

The origins of the conflict could be traced to the Galactic Senate during the final days of the Old Republic, sometime after the end of the Clone Wars, where dissenting and prominent Senators, such as Bail Organa and Mon Mothma, secretly opposed the powers and authority that Supreme Chancellor Palpatine continued to accumulate under the guise of security and war-time measures.

The war did not begin in its real sense, that of an Alliance against the Empire with its goals and ideals laid out for the galaxy, until nearly two decades after the rise of the Empire, when various Rebel leaders signed the Corellian Treaty and issued the Declaration of Rebellion. Likewise, several Imperial citizens, despite the Empire's atrocities, ended up siding with the Empire as they were reluctant to join a group similar to the Separatists from the Clone Wars. Initially, the Empire, especially Palpatine, did not consider the Alliance a significant threat, but rather as a political tool to further consolidate power that would eventually lead to the dissolution of the Imperial Senate and a massive, unprecedented military build-up. Resistance was galvanized after the Empire obliterated the planet Alderaan for Rebel sympathies, and after Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the fateful Battle of Yavin. Thereafter that the threat posed by the Alliance became real to the Empire and more serious measures were drafted to restore Imperial control over the galaxy.

The decisive moment came at the Battle of Endor, when the Alliance, against overwhelming odds, defeated the Imperial Military and destroyed the second Death Star, killing Emperor Palpatine, Darth Vader and some of the best minds in the Imperial High Command. From there, the Empire began to gradually decay and fragment, and despite resurgences under Ysanne Isard, Grand Admiral Thrawn, the clone of Emperor Palpatine, and Admiral Daala, over a period of fifteen years it was reduced to a mere remnant of its former-self, while the Alliance evolved and grew into the New Republic. Peace between the two warring factions was realized with the signing of the Bastion Accords between Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon and Chief of State Ponc Gavrisom, ending over two decades of constant struggle. The Empire continued to exist as an autonomous entity in the years succeeding the war's end, and would eventually enter into an alliance with its former enemy during the Yuuzhan Vong War, and emerge as the galaxy's leading government over one hundred years later, seemingly bringing history back full-circle; however, the exploits of the Alliance and the New Republic were not forgotten, and the galaxy was still very different from what it had been during the Empire's reign

The Origins of the Galactic Civil War
The emergence of the Galactic Empire was brought about by decades of engineering, manipulation, and deceit, masterminded by the cunning and elusive Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Sidious, and carried out by his various apprentices and willing (and not-so-willing) agents and puppets. Under the guise of the charismatic Senator Palpatine of Naboo, Sidious took full-advantage of the corruption and inefficiencies in the Republic bureaucracy to have himself elected Supreme Chancellor. Once in office, Palpatine proceeded to engineer the galaxywide Clone Wars, secretly controlling both the Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems, as a means to further draw powers to his office. Citing special emergency war-time powers and mandates required to maintain security against the Separatist threat, Palpatine accrued autocratic power over the Republic. At the war's end, Palpatine did not relinquish his powers, instead instigating the Great Jedi Purge by fabricating evidence that the Jedi Council had attempted to assassinate him. Palpatine declared a New Order and announced the creation of the Galactic Empire to much applause from the Senate, the culmination of the Order of the Sith Lords' thousand-year Grand Plan to seize control of the galaxy.

Taking the title of Galactic Emperor, Palpatine set out to establish his authoritarian regime and end his Order's millennia-old feud with the Jedi Order with the total annihilation of the Jedi. Palpatine used the "Jedi Rebellion" as his means of turning public opinion against the Jedi, thus allowing him to enact Order 66, a secret contingency order that had clone troopers turn their weapons on their Jedi commanders. Of the several thousand Jedi in the galaxy, very few survived the execution of Order 66 and the subsequent Great Jedi Purge, most notably Jedi Masters Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda who would end up being vital in the war.

With the Empire firmly established, Imperialization began throughout the galaxy. The Senate was reorganized into the Imperial Senate, its powers and influence reduced as to become nothing more than a rubber-stamp assembly. Many Senators were all too willing to allow the Empire to come to pass, as many were under Palpatine's influence or saw it as necessary to secure galactic peace after the events of the Clone Wars. Much of the Galactic populace even saw the early Galactic Empire as an improvement on the Old Republic, particularly following the celebrated Reconquest of the Rim, which in years to come many Imperial Loyalists would remember fondly as the final removal of Separatists and criminals and the long-overdue restoration of the rule of law in the Outer Rim Territories.

The War
As the Empire tightened its grip on the galaxy through oppressive and repressive meansand aggressively expanded across the galaxy through military conquests, a number of resistance movements and insurgencies rose up to challenge the Empire across the galaxy as part of an early rebellion against the Galactic Empire. At first, these rebel movements were strictly local, emerging on individual planets, star systems, or sectors and fighting for their own freedom or independence. The Empire's intelligence agents and military forces moved in ruthlessly to deal with any rebellious worlds that showed signs of large-scale resistance to Imperial rule. However, the Empire was unable to stem the coming together of rebel groups across the galaxy, many of which were brought together as rebel cells under a clandestine network organized by figures such as Senators Bail Organa and Mon Mothma and their allies. Once, a coordinated attack by multiple rebel cells was considered unprecedented,and some Imperial officials doubted any evidence of a larger-scale, galaxy-wide rebel operation. However, the Empire would eventually have to contend with the reality of a growing rebellion against its rule.

Despite their attempts to suppress rebel activity, the Empire's greatest fear was secretly growing larger as various rebel groups began to unite against them. The first true rebel excursion against the Empire occurred in after Kanan Jarrus, a member of a rebel crew known as the Spectres, was captured while his team was hijacking an Imperial communication tower on Lothal to beam out a transmission to nearby systems in the Outer Rim. Taken to the Mustafar for interrogation, Jarrus was freed by his team while he was in transit aboard Governor Tarkin's flagship, the Sovereign. The escape attempt saw the death of the Empire's Grand Inquisitor as well as the destruction of the Sovereign. But it was as the Spectres made their escape that the truth of the rebellion's scale emerged: a fleet of corvettes jumped out of hyperspace, neutralizing the approaching TIE fighters, and allowing the Spectres to escape.