Tudella Dupont

Tudella Dupont
Character Profile
Affiliation Terran Alliance
Position President of Freedom

Tudella Dupont was the President of Freedom.

History[edit]

During the Outer Reaches Rebellion he led his planet's resistance to the 2nd Interstellar Strategic Combined Assault Force, that contained at least the 4th Para-Cavalry Division and the 23rd Alliance Striker Regiment.

That taskforce was dispatched to suppress the rebellions on Freedom, Ryde and Sevren.

When the Second arrived in the Freedom system, they discovered that the rebel forces had placed armed merchant ships at the main jump points in the system. None of those involved in planning the campaign had anticipated that the rebels would contest control of the jump points, and while the merchant ships were more lightly armed than the alliance's armed cruisers, they were also more maneuverable. The rebel ships avoided a slugging match with the more powerful Alliance ships, but many of rebel ships launched ramming attacks against the various Alliance transports and supply ships, hoping that their suicide tactics would take as many of the Terran marines with them as possible. More than ten percent of Major General Gunther Stein's ground forces had been lost before his troops managed to make groundfall on Freedom.[1]

The rebels on Freedom, the city fathers, anticipating the worst, had spent months preparing a vast array of fortifications around Jefferson City before the first Alliance landings in June 2236. Having constructed fortifications capable of withstanding anything short of orbital bombardment, President Tudella Dupont was determined to resist the Terran Alliance, despite having just fifteen hundred men available to defend the entire planet. Vowing to burn the city down before letting it be captured, Dupont responded to the first attack from Stein's forces - an assault against the weak southern gate of the fortifications conducted by the six-thousand-strong Fourth Para-Cavalry Division, led by General Desmond - by leading a sortie out against the attackers. Dupont had predicted the attack against the southern gate and planned accordingly, and his sortie captured several mobile artillery batteries that he quickly pressed into service against the Alliance, forcing Desmond to put a siege in place and call for reinforcements.[1]

According to accounts from individuals on Freedom after the end of the conflict, during the siege the Alliance forces killed anyone found outside the city walls after dark, regardless of age or gender, and Desmond ordered the bodies of the dead - many of which had been horribly mutilated - dropped over the city. In retaliation, insurgents frequently slipped into the Alliance camps after dark to kill Terran soldiers and steal weapons.[2] Alliance reinforcements finally arrived on the 25th of August, in the form of General Seth Van Dome and the Twenty-third Alliance Striker Regiment. Van Dome and the Twenty-third had spent four months engaged in a battle to recapture Summit that was described as a holocaust that killed more than ten thousand civilians, and his freshly blooded forces - equipped with heavy laser cannon - were enough to turn the battle for Freedom in favor of the Alliance.[1]

The Twenty-third bombarded Jefferson City for hours; when three-quarters of the city was on fire, Desmond ordered his assault. The result was a twelve-hour marathon that saw Dupont and the people of Jefferson City fight a brutal, desperate defensive action. Men, women and children all fought against the Alliance forces, making Desmond's troops fight for every meter they took. Dupont finally fled the city with just seventy surviving supporters, taking shelter in the hills to the north of the city. Desmond was left with a city in ashes and combat losses totaling more than two thousand Alliance personnel.[1]

In the autumn of 2237, short on supplies and manpower and subject to growing criticism on Terra, the Terran Alliance withdrew the bulk of its forces from Freedom and the other worlds involved in the Outer Reaches Rebellion; while the Alliance never officially declared the conflict over, the Alliance military effectively gave up and went home, effectively ending the Outer Reaches Rebellion.[1] A sea-change in Alliance politics saw the Expansionist Party ousted from power in the Alliance Parliament in 2242, ending more than a century of rule by the Expansionists; that same year, the Liberal Party issued the Demarcation Declaration, removing Alliance control and authority from worlds more than thirty light years from Terra, and leaving worlds like Freedom truly independent.[3]

Freedom was finally free.

References[edit]

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 The Periphery, First Edition, pp. 13–14: "Outer Reaches Rebellion"
  2. The Periphery, First Edition, p. 14: "Siege to the Death"
  3. The Periphery, First Edition, p. 14: "Beyond the Farthest Star"

Bibliography[edit]