CHRISTOTÉ


The Yaleth Massacre

An episode from the Twin Strike liberation war which tends to be missed out of stirring accounts of the heroics of Tars Tukas and the Christotan rebels.  The Erish Empire famously collapsed 955-8 with comparatively little bloodshed.  Tukas' troops met little resistance as they swept up from Zabrial; the demoralised Erish forces scarcely bothered to check the uprisings of the subjugated lands.  Most of the liberation campaign was simply a matter of the Empire scrambling in retreat.  The one large-scale encounter came when it made a final and generally illogical last stand at Aldanse in 958.  Aside from that battle (which was a resounding Christotan victory) the only large-scale loss of life came in Yaleth.  Dorlaf's old capital had offered amongst the fiercest resistance to the Erish advance in the mid 800's, housing Barbo Macharan's rebel government after King Falcan had prematurely flown the white flag.  It was only captured after a grim, brutal siege which left much of the city in ruins.  Thousands of people, soldiers and citizens, were killed both in the fighting and in a week-long orgy of destruction the Erish permitted its soldiers afterwards.  Yaleth continued to be punished under the Empire.  The capital of Dorlaf was transferred to Jolton; none of its defences and few of its buildings were allowed to be rebuilt.  (The old royal palace lay in ruins much of the time, though it was partially restored in the 920's.)  Citizens were highly taxed and severely policed, in contrast to the civilising policies practised throughout much of the Empire.  There was little outward resistance, in contrast to Dorlaf's coastal rim, but it was generally held to be a resentful and lawless town. 

All of which partially explains what happened after the Twin Strike.  The relative peacefulness of the Erish retreat was due to complicity on both sides.  The Erish wanted to retreat alive from countries they could no longer hold onto; the rebels were interested less in revenge and more in simple liberation.  That arrangement was absent in festering Yaleth.  The heavy garrison suppressed an uprising in 955 and showed every sign of clinging onto the town even as the country around it was falling.  The populace continued to bide their time and in 957 Tukas sent a large force to capture Yaleth.  The result was the heaviest fighting seen in Dorlaf during the Twin Strike.  A large swathe of the city was again destroyed, chiefly by a fire which each side accused the other of starting.  Eventually, surrounded and outnumbered, the Erish surrendered.  Their commander and a small personal guard was allowed to leave.  The rest were disarmed and shepherded into a large forum called Bhundu Hall, which used to stand on Kings Road.  Included in their number were a number of Erish civilians who had settled in Empire times and hadn't dared flee after the Twin Strike; and some Yalethites suspected of conspiring with the Erish.  Orchestrating the process were Yaleth's leaders, who had conspired with the Erish (hence their position of leadership) and were now playing the zealot card to disguise the fact.  Heavily armed Dorlafan troops then entered Bhundu Hall and methodically hacked all the prisoners to death.  The estimates of the numbers slain vary between five hundred and five thousand.  The bodies were buried in a large pit outside the city walls.  Tars Tukas is said to have known about the massacre beforehand and at least condoned it.

A spirited attempt was made to forget about the massacre for many years.  Some residue of shame still lingered; Bhundu Hall lay empty even amidst the flurry of activity which surrounded the building of the Cities and was finally demolished in 1063.  A few grim songs and tales crept into local culture but the truth of the event was officially denied.  The truth only became widely known in the late 1100's, initially through Kelpan's authoritative, revisionist account of the Twin Strike.