Wars and Battles

Battle of Na'Shok

The battle during which the Centauri lost the 'Eye', an important historical artifact that originally belonged to the first Centauri Emperor.

Battle of Salos

The battle that marked the final victory of Earth and the League of Non-Aligned Worlds over the Dilgar in the Dilgar War.

Battle of the Line

By mid 2248 the Earth-Minbari War had reached a point where the Minbari fleet, led by the celebrated war leader Branmer, began their final assault. They ignored the few remaining human colonies, including Mars, and headed straight towards Earth itself to end the war once and for all. In a final desperate act for survival all available Earth ships were then called back to form a shield, a last line of defense, between the planet and the approaching fleet. Their only hope was to hold the attack fleet back as for long as they could so that as many civilians as possible would have time to leave Earth.

The humans were no match to the Minbari and many ships were destroyed already during the first few seconds of the fight when the Minbari opened jump points straight into the defense line. Among those killed was Jeff Sinclair's entire squadron. His own starfury was also severely damaged, and seeing that there was nothing else he could do, he decided to ram the closest Minbari ship in order to at least take some of the enemy with him.

Unbeknownst to him on that very same ship Satai Delenn and the rest of the Grey Council were watching the battle. Delenn, who had already once tried to end the war peacefully, decided to bring in one of the human soldiers to learn more about Earth's defences. The soldier she chose was Sinclair.

During the next hours Sinclair was examined and interrogated and during these interrogations a startling discovery was made - humans had Minbari souls and the soul Sinclair had was none other than the soul of Valen himself. Since Minbari law forbid Minbari to kill other Minbari, the fighting had to be stopped immediately. The Grey Council ordered the fleet to cease fire and the Minbari surrendered at the brink of victory.

Earth was saved, but at great cost. Twenty thousand human soldiers took part to the battle of the Line. Only two hundred came back alive.

Centauri War

The Interstellar Alliance had barely left its crib when the Drakh (whose masters, the Shadows, had been defeated in the Shadow War) infiltrated the Centauri government and began attacking ships on the Alliance shipping lines using Centauri ships and Shadow technology to avoid capture. The strikes were precise and special care was taken that no eyewitnesses were left alive. The Drakh also planted false evidence - pieces of scrap metal from ships of various races - on the attack sites in order to make the Alliance worlds suspicious of each other. For a while President Sheridan managed to keep the members of the Alliance off each other's throats, but when Ranger Lennier discovered proof that Centauri ships had been involved in the attacks, he too had to accept that the enemy was within the Alliance.

A trial was held and as a result the outraged Centauri, unaware that they were being framed by the Drakh, left the Interstellar Alliance. When the Centauri refused to admit their guilt the Alliance then imposed an embargo against them. The Centauri replied by threatening to open fire on any ships that tried to stop one of theirs.

In order to prevent any further bloodshed President Sheridan decided to use the whitestar fleet as a buffer zone between the Centauri and the other races. Unfortunately a break in communications caused the fleet to be elsewhere when the fuse finally went off. The situation snowballed and when Sheridan refused to sanction bombings on civilian targets, the Drazi and the Narn decided to begin the attacks with or without his consent. After hearing about the upcoming attack on Centauri Prime Sheridan tried to prevent it, but when he finally reached the planet, it was already too late and the capital city had already been bombed to the ground.

At the same time on the planet surface the Drakh made a deal with Prime Minister Londo Mollari. They had been using the Centauri Regent as their mouthpiece, but now, in return for ending the war, they enslaved Mollari, made him the Emperor, and then allowed him to surrender. Mollari contacted Sheridan and blamed the attacks that had started the war on the now dead Regent.

The war was over, but the Centauri remained under the rule of the Drakh (and, ironically, were forced to pay reparations to the Interstellar Alliance). Only the powerless Emperor Mollari knew of their invisible masters and it took almost twenty years until the Drakh were driven off the planet.

Dilgar Invasion/War

The first interplanetary conflict Earth took part in. The Dilgar were invading neighbouring planets, enslaving weaker races and using them as guinea pigs for their experiments, and even though the Dilgar weren't threatening Earth or other human-inhabited planets, Earth Alliance took a stand and joined the war against them. Together with the League of Non-Aligned Worlds they were then able to drive the Dilgar back and eventually defeated them at the Battle of Salos.

Earth Civil War

Just a few minutes into the year 2259 Earth Alliance President Luis Santiago was killed when his ship, EarthForce One, exploded near the transfer point in Io. In what at that time seemed like a stroke of luck, Vice President Clark had left the ship less than twenty-four hours earlier due to sudden illness. Clark survived and was soon sworn in as the new president of the Earth Alliance. Still, although official reports claimed that the destruction of EF1 had been nothing more than an accident, there were people who believed that the whole thing had been just a well-disguised coup.

For over a year the people opposing Clark acted in secret and when they finally came into the open - in April 2260 after Captain Sheridan and his allies had discovered solid evidence of Santiago's murder - it was already too late. Clark had not been idle and had spent his year in office putting his people in key places. He answered the accusations by declaring Martial Law and by disbanding the Senate before it had time to oppose. When Mars refused to accept Martial Law he had is cities bombed. Earth was now a totalitarian state.

As a protest to Clark's actions Babylon 5 and a few other Earth outposts declared independence, but there was not much else they could do. Clark was beyond their reach on Earth, but then again, so were they beyond his reach.

Babylon 5 soon became a center for the resistance movement and its commander, Captain Sheridan, took onto himself the responsibility of leading the rather scattered resistance groups. After fighting Clark's embargo and propaganda war for a year Babylon 5 finally took the offensive against the president after he had two refugee ships destroyed, killing thousands of civilians. To win the war Sheridan needed all the contacts and resources he had gained during the Shadow War and in mid-2261 he mobilized his forces and used his influence over the alien governments to break off all treaties Earth had with other races.

The Resistance began liberating Earth colonies and outposts one by one with Sheridan's fleet of whitestars and defected Earth ships. Not even the capture of Sheridan could slow down the resistance anymore when they finally arrived to Earth and, with the support of the alien governments, liberated Earth from under Clark's rule.

President Clark could not be put on trial because he took his own life to avoid the capture.

Earth - Minbari War

In 2245 the humans were already (thanks to the Dilgar War) among the more powerful races, but they were yet to make contact with the Minbari, the most elusive of the younger races. Over-confident because of their victory in the aforementioned war they then decided to make the contact even when the Centauri advised against it. A small fleet of ships was sent to explore the edges of Minbari space and all went well until they actually made contact with the Minbari. The ship they encountered was nothing less than the ship carrying the members of the Minbari ruling body, the Grey Council. Unbeknownst to the humans the Minbari had also been contemplating a first contact and as a sign of respect they approached with their gun ports open. Captain Jankowski of the lead ship Prometheus misinterpreted the gesture as a threat and ordered the ships to open fire. The attack took the Minbari by surprise and so the Prometheus and its entourage were able to damage the Minbari ship considerably, killing many members of the Grey Council - including their revered leader Dukhat - before fleeing.

After the Earth ships had left, the remainder of the Grey Council voted for what should be done next. The Council was divided on whether or not they should revenge the death of Dukhat immediately and the deciding vote fell to Dukhat's protegée Delenn. She ordered the Warrior Caste to kill every single human being.

The Minbari followed Prometheus to its base and destroyed it, but that was not enough. It was now a holy war and many Minbari believed that the destruction of humanity would, indeed, be the only suitable punishment for the death of Dukhat. The humans - thousands of years less advanced that their enemy - didn't have even the slightest change. Without any effort the Minbari advanced through Earth space towards Earth itself, destroying everything on their way.

Because the Minbari tactics was to destroy military targets first and leave the civilians alone (until they would reach Earth, that is) the human casualties were not as big as they could have been, only about a quarter of a million during the entire war. Still, it was quite a large part of Earth's armed forces and when the Minbari finally reached Earth, the only hope left for humans was scrambling all the ships they still had left to protect Earth and to pray that as much of the planet's population as possible would have time to flee to neutral space. The history books later called this the Battle of the Line. The fate of the human race was beginning to look rather bleak when suddenly, without any obvious reason, the Minbari surrendered and the war was over.

Great Burn, The

Even though Earth was among the first governments to join Interstellar Alliance in 2262, there was always some resistance against allying with the aliens.

The culmination of this divide came four hundred years after the founding of the Alliance, when Earth was divided into two factions: those who supported the Alliance and those who saw it as nothing more than a hindrance to Earth's expansionist politics. Both sides were heavily armed. Following generations called the war that resulted "The Great Burn" as it sent human civilization and technology back into the Middle Ages, cutting Earth completely off space and other races, and it took hundreds of years until the human civilization was restored to its former glory.

Liberation of Earth

The battle that ended the Earth Civil War.

A few months after the small skirmishes between President Clark's forces and the B5-rebels had transformed into a full blown war, Sheridan's forces turned to their allies on Mars and other planets to gather enough military strength to end the war once and for all. Their fleet that consisted of Sheridan's whitestars, alien ships and Earth Force defectors then headed for Earth's solar system where it joined forces with the Mars Resistance. They started their attack by immobilizing Earth ships guarding the Red Planet (by using shadow-enhanced telepaths to disrupt the ships' computers) and taking over military bases on the planet itself.

After making sure that their back was secured they then advanced to Earth space. At this point President Clark realised his defeat and made one last attempt to keep Earth from falling into alien hands. He turned the planetary defense systems against Earth itself and then shot himself in the head with a PPG. It was only the co-operation of Clark's and Sheridan's forces and the alien governments that saved Earth from total annihilation

Mars Rebellion

A violent uprising of Martians against the Earth administration in 2258. It ended only after President Santiago authorized the military to use force against the rebels.

Narn-Centauri War

The animosity between the Narn and the Centauri went back as far as to their first contact when the advanced Centauri enslaved the younger and more primitive Narns. When the Narn were freed from under Centauri rule they were then not in the least bit shy to strike back at their former masters. By 2250's the Centauri, now mere shadows of their former glory, no longer had the resources to fight back and were forced to turn over colonies and outposts to the Narns.

The tide turned in 2258 when began to receive secret aid from the Shadows. After the destruction of a Narn base in Quadrant 14 - which the Shadows made to look like a Centauri hit - the Narns declared a war on their old enemies unaware that the Centauri had allies far more powerful than they could have imagined. It didn't take long for the Narns to realise what a mistake they had made - not only were the Centauri receiving military aid from the Shadows, but they were also more used to direct warfare than the Narn whose only experience of war had come from their war of attribution with the Centauri.

As the war progressed the Centauri began to target civilian targets as well as military targets and accused the Narn for using their own people as shields against the attacks. The Narns also resorted to propaganda, refusing to admit the fact that they were in serious danger to lose the war.

Finally the Narns decided to make their last attempt for victory and attacked Garesh 7 with all their might in order to cut off the Centauri forces from their supplies. Unfortunately the Shadows were already waiting for them nearthe planet and destroyed the entire army while at the same time the centauri hemselves attacked the Narn homeworld with mass drivers. The narns were forced to surrender to the Centauri and the Narn homeworld became once again just one of the many Centauri outposts.

Telepath Crisis

Ever since the discovery of certifiable telepaths in the 22nd century, there was a schism between them and non-telepaths. The founding of Psi Corps only brought another faction into the battle - Psi Corps wanted to control all telepaths, some telepaths didn't want to join the Corps and non-telepaths feared all telepaths. When Byron, leader of non-Corps telepaths, was killed in a confrontation with Psi Cops, his followers began acts of terrorism against the Corps. Within a few years small skirmishes escalated into a full scale war that touched even the lives of non-telepaths.

The war ended only after John Sheridan, the president of the Interstellar Alliance, intervened and Psi Corps was dismanteled.

War of the Shining Star

An Earth conflict. Three days after the peace treaty was finalized, president Kyoshi of the Eastern Block was murdered by a soldier who had fought in the opposing side.

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