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	By the beginning of the [[FedCom Civil War]] Giausar was one of the three main gateways for trade between the Lyran Alliance and the Free Worlds League. Initially, Giausar was kept largely free of conflict, as [[Leutnant-General]] [[Andrew Giggins]], the Commanding Officer of the [[Fourth Crucis Lancers]] [[RCT]], taking a neutral line, arguing that the defense of an important border world was more important than the argument between [[Katherine Steiner-Davion]] and [[Victor Steiner-Davion]]. The Fourth was a multicultural unit, recruited from both Lyran and [[Federated Suns]] personnel, and had no desire to be drawn into the conflict.<ref name="FCCWp101">''FedCom Civil War'', p. 101-102, "Giausar"</ref>		By the beginning of the [[FedCom Civil War]] Giausar was one of the three main gateways for trade between the Lyran Alliance and the Free Worlds League. Initially, Giausar was kept largely free of conflict, as [[Leutnant-General]] [[Andrew Giggins]], the Commanding Officer of the [[Fourth Crucis Lancers]] [[RCT]], taking a neutral line, arguing that the defense of an important border world was more important than the argument between [[Katherine Steiner-Davion]] and [[Victor Steiner-Davion]]. The Fourth was a multicultural unit, recruited from both Lyran and [[Federated Suns]] personnel, and had no desire to be drawn into the conflict.<ref name="FCCWp101">''FedCom Civil War'', p. 101-102, "Giausar"</ref>
−	Maintaining the Fourth's neutrality required Giggins to balance demands from the planetary governor, [[Duke]] [[William Freiburg]], against those of [[Richard Steiner (31st c.)|Richard Steiner]], commander of the [[Cavanaugh Theater]]. Despite the challenges this entailed, Giggins kept the Fourth neutral until March [[3064]], at which point he surprised observers by declaring the Fourth's support for Victor. The reasons for Giggins' declaration were unclear; some believed that with Victor at large in the [[Bolan Province]], Higgins was attempting to curry favor, while others argued that Giggins was responding to the risk of the Fourth being attacked by Loyalist units following Katherine's order to remove the security threat posed by neutral units.<ref name="FCCWp101"/>	+	Maintaining the Fourth's neutrality required Giggins to balance demands from the planetary governor, [[Duke]] [[William Freiburg]], against those of [[Richard Steiner]], commander of the [[Cavanaugh Theater]]. Despite the challenges this entailed, Giggins kept the Fourth neutral until March [[3064]], at which point he surprised observers by declaring the Fourth's support for Victor. The reasons for Giggins' declaration were unclear; some believed that with Victor at large in the [[Bolan Province]], Higgins was attempting to curry favor, while others argued that Giggins was responding to the risk of the Fourth being attacked by Loyalist units following Katherine's order to remove the security threat posed by neutral units.<ref name="FCCWp101"/>
	A week after Giggins declared the Fourth's support for Victor, the Loyalist [[Second Donegal Guards]] arrived in-system, under the command of [[Delmar Voss]], and declared that under Richard Steiner's authority the Guards were going to dislodge the Fourth from Giausar, describing the Fourth as "mutineers". The Guards were a heavier command than the Fourth, and Giggins had seen the Guards in action around New Munich in [[3063]], fighting against the [[FWLM]]; as a result, he knew that his command couldn't defeat the Guards in open combat. Instead, Giggins withdrew his forces from New Munich and moved across Adelaide, relocating the Lancers to the foothills of the Cooper Range, with his headquarters based in Hunter's Folly, a mining town.<ref name="FCCWp101"/>		A week after Giggins declared the Fourth's support for Victor, the Loyalist [[Second Donegal Guards]] arrived in-system, under the command of [[Delmar Voss]], and declared that under Richard Steiner's authority the Guards were going to dislodge the Fourth from Giausar, describing the Fourth as "mutineers". The Guards were a heavier command than the Fourth, and Giggins had seen the Guards in action around New Munich in [[3063]], fighting against the [[FWLM]]; as a result, he knew that his command couldn't defeat the Guards in open combat. Instead, Giggins withdrew his forces from New Munich and moved across Adelaide, relocating the Lancers to the foothills of the Cooper Range, with his headquarters based in Hunter's Folly, a mining town.<ref name="FCCWp101"/>

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{{InfoBoxConflict | conflict = The Battle of Monte Diablo | partof = The [[FedCom Civil War|Civil War Era]] | image = | caption = | date = 17 August [[3065]] | enddate = 17 August 3065 | place = Monte Diablo | planet = [[Giausar]] | territory = | faction1 = Loyalist to [[Victor Steiner-Davion]] | faction2 = Loyalist to [[Katherine Steiner-Davion]] | commander1 = [[Leutnant-General]] [[Andrew Giggins]] | commander2 = Leutnant-General [[Delmar Voss]]<br>Leutnant-General [[Daniel Voss-Steiner]] | forces1= [[Fourth Crucis Lancers]]<br>[[167th Division (ComStar)|167th Division from ComStar]] | forces2= [[Second Donegal Guards]]<br>[[Seventh Donegal Guards]] | result = Loyalist to Victor Steiner-Davion victory | environment = Hill | conditions = }} The '''Battle of Monte Diablo''' was a minor battle during the FedCom Civil War. The Battle of Monte Diablo event was run on the 2nd of March 2002 as the inaugural [[FanPro Commandos]] [[Worldwide Event]]; see [[The Battle of Monte Diablo (World Wide Event)]]. ==Prelude== By the beginning of the [[FedCom Civil War]] Giausar was one of the three main gateways for trade between the Lyran Alliance and the Free Worlds League. Initially, Giausar was kept largely free of conflict, as [[Leutnant-General]] [[Andrew Giggins]], the Commanding Officer of the [[Fourth Crucis Lancers]] [[RCT]], taking a neutral line, arguing that the defense of an important border world was more important than the argument between [[Katherine Steiner-Davion]] and [[Victor Steiner-Davion]]. The Fourth was a multicultural unit, recruited from both Lyran and [[Federated Suns]] personnel, and had no desire to be drawn into the conflict.<ref name="FCCWp101">''FedCom Civil War'', p. 101-102, "Giausar"</ref> Maintaining the Fourth's neutrality required Giggins to balance demands from the planetary governor, [[Duke]] [[William Freiburg]], against those of [[Richard Steiner]], commander of the [[Cavanaugh Theater]]. Despite the challenges this entailed, Giggins kept the Fourth neutral until March [[3064]], at which point he surprised observers by declaring the Fourth's support for Victor. The reasons for Giggins' declaration were unclear; some believed that with Victor at large in the [[Bolan Province]], Higgins was attempting to curry favor, while others argued that Giggins was responding to the risk of the Fourth being attacked by Loyalist units following Katherine's order to remove the security threat posed by neutral units.<ref name="FCCWp101"/> A week after Giggins declared the Fourth's support for Victor, the Loyalist [[Second Donegal Guards]] arrived in-system, under the command of [[Delmar Voss]], and declared that under Richard Steiner's authority the Guards were going to dislodge the Fourth from Giausar, describing the Fourth as "mutineers". The Guards were a heavier command than the Fourth, and Giggins had seen the Guards in action around New Munich in [[3063]], fighting against the [[FWLM]]; as a result, he knew that his command couldn't defeat the Guards in open combat. Instead, Giggins withdrew his forces from New Munich and moved across Adelaide, relocating the Lancers to the foothills of the Cooper Range, with his headquarters based in Hunter's Folly, a mining town.<ref name="FCCWp101"/> When the Guards landed, the Lancers began a maneuver war, using the reconnaissance capabilities of the [[Fifth Baxley Aerial Recon]] [[wing (military unit)|wing]] to avoid attacks from the Guards and strike back where the Guards appeared weakest, with Lancer subunits emerging from the dense Adelaide forests to stage fake retreats in an effort to lure Guards subunits out of position. Voss and the Guards rarely fell for these ploys and launched numerous strikes and ambushes of their own, but the conflict was relatively low-intensity, and a lull in the fighting occurred around the time of the planetary Oktoberfest several months after the Guards made planetfall. Both commands had effectively achieved what they wanted; Voss commanded a key trade hub and the associated merchant traffic, while Giggins' troops were keeping the Guards pinned down while maintaining a strong defensive presence, leading Giggins to hope that Giausar could be spared the horrific damage being inflicted on other worlds by the War.<ref name="FCCWp101"/> On the 11th of February [[3065]] the [[Seventh Donegal Guards]] landed on Giausar to reinforce the Second Donegal Guards. The Seventh's Commanding Officer, General Voss-Steiner, was a distant relative of Delmar Voss and the Steiner-Davion family, and the arrival of the Seventh caused a considerable amount of tension between the two commands. Delmar Voss considered the arrival of the Seventh as a sign that the largely undamaged Second were judged to be not up to the job of defeating the Fourth, and resented the Seventh's arrival. Voss-Steiner had been concentrating on defending the border between the Commonwealth and League, but news of the damage being inflicted on Alliance worlds convinced him of the need to take a more active stance on Allied units fighting against the Loyalists, and the deployment to Giausar gave the Seventh an opportunity to take a more active role without compromising Voss-Steiner's principles regarding the importance of defending the border. Rather than placing one of the Guards RCTs in overall command, Richard Steiner maintained control of operations from Cavanaugh, and this, combined with the antipathy between the two Loyalist Commanding Officers, complicated operations and hampered the effectiveness of both units.<ref name="FCCWp130">''FedCom Civil War'', p. 130, "Giausar"</ref> Giggins was left with no option other than to step up the Lancers' hit and run attacks, trading space for time as he tired to avoid the Lancers being crushed by one or other Loyalist command. Giggins raided the Loyalist supply caches, forcing them to devote resources to protecting their rear echelons, while the Lancers' outnumbered reconnaissance forces worked hard to help the Lancers dodge the heavy strikes launched by the Guards. Thanks in part to a number of lucky escapes, the Lancers managed to avoid taking heavy casualties, but a year of constant warfare was taking a toll on the Lancers, with much of their equipment damaged or prone to mechanical failure.<ref name="FCCWp130"/> In July the [[Com Guards|Com Guard]] [[167th Division (ComStar)|167th Division]] arrived on Giausar, having declared their support for Victor in June, prompted in large part by the Loyalist attacks on other neutral commands. The 167th - nicknamed the Green Mountain Boys - had trouble landing because of a combination of communications problems and the rapidly-moving combat zones, and ended up landing under fire from the Seventh Donegal Guards. The Guards inflicted a punishing amount of damage on the 167th, particularly on the Com Guards' command structure, with multiple casualties being taken including [[Precentor]] [[Slurpea Kuzi]], the Division's Commanding Officer, who fell buying time for his troops to escape the landing zone. When the Division managed to extract itself and link up with the Lancers, it was already down to half-strength. Giggins took the decision to merge the Lancers and the 167th, to simplify the chain of command.<ref name="FCCWp145">''FedCom Civil War'', p. 145-146, "Giausar"</ref> ==Battle== Giggins' combined forces continue to harass the Loyalist forces until mid-August, when Giggins decided to stand the unit down for a few days, as fatigue and damage were becoming serious problems. Unfortunately for the Allied forces, a [[Boomerang]] spotter plane identified both the Lancer's camp at the base of Monte Diablo and the position of the HQ company, and General Voss-Steiner launched a swift attack against the Allied camp. The attack surprised the Allied forces, and the senior Guards officer leading the attack, [[Hauptmann]] [[Susan Reeves]], was able to focus her forces on downing Giggins' ''[[Sagittaire]]'' before attempting to kill him as he retreated on foot. The Guards' focus on Giggins allowed the Allied forces to launch a savage counterattack, and [[Demi-Precentor]] [[Demetria Loris]] deliberately put her [['Mech]] between Reeves' massive ''[[Fafnir]]'' and Giggins, decapitating the larger 'Mech with a [[PPC]] strike and buying time for Giggins to be rescued and evacuated from the battlefield.<ref name="FCCWp145"/> There was at least one [[Second Star League]] [[Fury Team]] present for this battle, but their actions remain unknown.<ref>''A Guide to Covert Ops'', p. 44</ref> ==Consequences== Buoyed by the victory at Monte Diablo, the Allied forces went on the offensive, scoring a number of victories against the Loyalists, culminating on an attack on the HQ Company of the Second Donegal Guards, which a scout company stumbled across on the 9th of September. The scouts attacked the HQ forces, destroying various support trucks and the mobile HQ from which Delmar Voss was operating. Although Voss wasn't killed, he was badly injured, and had to be medevaced to New Munich, unable to continue to take a part in the campaign. As bitter as the loss of their CO was, the Guards were enraged further by the accidental destruction of a Donegal MASH unit, caused by a downed [[aerospace fighter]] crashing into the complex, prompting a bitter, furious campaign against the Allied forces.<ref name="FCCWp145"/> Although Voss was a drunk, he was also a tactical genius; with him out of the picture, command disputes within the Second Donegal Guards hampered Loyalist operations, culminating in the Second withdrawing to New Munich in November, leaving the Seventh to fight alone. The increasingly vicious battle had marked Giausar permanently, but with the Seventh no longer on the field, the tempo of the campaign dropped back to a pattern of raids and counterraids that finally came to a conclusion on the 11th of December with the arrival of [[General]] [[Caesar Steiner]]. Caesar was both the former commanding officer of the Second Donegal Guards and the liaison between the [[LAAF]] and the [[SLDF]]. Caesar called for a ceasefire, and all of the commands on Giausar complied - much to Caesar's surprise. He openly acknowledged the bravery of the units, and announced his intention to take command of the Second Donegal to fight against the [[Free Skye]] rebellion currently in full flow, while the Seventh Donegal Guards would limp back to [[Launam]], and would leave Giausar in the hands of the Lancers. [[Precentor Martial of ComStar|Precentor Martial]] [[Gavin Dow]] disowned the surviving elements of the 167th, leaving them to be incorporated permanently into the Lancers.<ref name="FCCWp145"/> ==References== <references /> ==Bibliography== * ''[[FedCom Civil War]]'' * ''[[Field Manual: Updates]]'' [[Category: Civil War Era Military Operations|Monte Diablo (3065)]]

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