Update 67a - the Three Glorious Campaigns I
Update 67a – The Kanatian Revolution: the Three Glorious Campaigns (part I)
an excerpt from The History of Old Kanata 1500-1700 by Georges Hantero (Turtle)
Triumphalist Kanatian historiography of the Kanatian Revolution describes the climax of the Revolution as the ‘Three Glorious Campaigns’. Each of the years 1673, 1674, and 1675 saw great victories by Ehundayga’s Trader revolutionaries over Tawinday’s Arkevujay Warriors, and the actions of each year are often described as three campaigns – one per year. The cold, snowy Kanatian winters caused natural breaks in the fighting, ensuring that by the time spring came, strategic objectives had changed so that the new year’s fighting would be seen as a new campaign. However, upon closer scrutiny, the strategic objectives achieved by each of the ‘Three Glorious Campaigns’ were only clear in hindsight. The generals of the time would have had various objectives in mind each year, of which only one or two were actually achieved. Rather than a string of victories for the revolutionary armies, the ‘Three Glorious Campaigns’ saw a number of defeats that were largely ignored by the historians of the Kanatian Republic. Nevertheless, the victories that were won were strategically important enough to secure the overthrow of the Arkevujay regime.
1673: The Atirhagenrat Campaign
Fort Kaenota [OTL *Toronto], on the shores of Lake Untareo, guarded the entrance to the portage that would lead to Lake Ouentironk [OTL Lake *Simcoe] and the Wendat lands beyond. Until 1673, it was held by an Arkevujay Warrior garrison loyal to Konta Tawinday in Hochelaga. However, the Kaenota District, surrounding Fort Kaenota, was a flashpoint in the ongoing Amekwista Revolts, and much of the garrison was occupied putting down rebellious Clan Mothers and their followers.
In February of 1673, a young Warrior at Fort Kaenota snuck his mistress into the barracks for a warm night together (against Arkevujay regulations). While he slept, the young woman, who sympathized with the revolting Clan Mothers, snuck into the fort’s magazine and set fire to the gunpowder stores. The resulting explosion killed the young girl and a number of Warriors, and blew a gaping hole in the fort’s walls. While the cause of the explosion was kept secret by the Arkvujay, the fact that the fort was missing a wall was visible to all, and news of the new vulnerability spread as soon as the snows melted in the spring.
By early April, the Atirhagenrat [1] to the South had heard of the explosion. There were already plans to gather a large army together to attack Wendat lands, and news of the explosion inspired the Atirhagenrat War Chiefs to accelerate their timetable, departing in May as soon as Spring planting was completed. Konta Tawinday in Hochelaga had also heard of the explosion by this point, but the reinforcements he had dispatched to Fort Kaenota were still in their boats on Lake Untareo when the Atirhagenrat army arrived at the walls of the fort.
While the garrison of Fort Kaenota had made some attempts to repair the damaged wall of the fort, the breach was still enough of a weak point that the Atirhagenrat army could overrun the fort easily. The First Battle of Fort Kaenota, which lead to the death or capture of much of the population of the surrounding town, has often been twisted into a revolutionary victory by triumphalist Kanatian Republic historians. While it was a defeat for the Arkevujay regime, and thus was of benefit to the revolution in the long run, it was certainly a disaster for any of the Kanatians who lived in the vicinity.
In fact, only a week after the fall of Fort Kaenota, the Arkevujay army intended to reinforce the fort arrived at the scene of the destruction. The Atirhagenrat army had already moved northward, and the detachment left to defend Fort Kaenota would have been no match for the arriving Warriors. However, the commander of the reinforcing force decided to retreat to Fort Untareo rather than attempt to retake Fort Kaenota. This decision has often been described by Kanatian Republic historians as being motivated by disdain for the rebellious populace who had caused the explosion in the first place. However, the quote attributed to this commander - “If Fort Kaenota does not want our protection, we will not give it” – is widely believed to be apocryphal. His decision was more likely due to pure cowardice and unwillingness to make himself and his troops vulnerable to Atirhagenrat counterattack.
Word of all the events at Fort Kaenota had reached Chief Tonsahoten of the Wendat Nation. The Atirhagenrat army was making its way deeper and deeper into Wendake while it had become clear that no Arkevujay reinforcements could be expected in the near future. Tonsahoten began recruiting young men of his own nation to fight the Atirhagenrat, and secured the help of the Warriors stationed in his capital to help train them. However, as the Wendat warriors had not fought an offensive campaign of their own in generations, they required extensive training. [2] It soon became clear that the Wendat would be unable to fight anything more than a delaying action until the end of the summer.
At the same time, Tonsahoten opened negotiations with Ehundayga and the Traders loyal to him stationed at Fort Ouentironk. While Tonsahoten was unwilling to openly fight alongside the rebel Traders as he still feared the wrath of Tawinday, he was willing to trade give the Traders food and other supplies in exchange for arms and ammunition from the armory of Fort Ouentironk. At the same time, he made it clear that, if the Traders could repulse the Atirhagenrat army before reinforcements from Hochelaga arrived, his Wendat warriors would be willing to fight alongside them.
The Traders at Fort Ouentironk didn’t have the numbers to defeat the Atirhagenrat army on their own. However, what they did have was mobility. The lakeboats [3] used by the Traders as transportation between the trade posts on the Upper Great Lakes were usually used as cargo vessels with a small crew, but could also be outfitted with a larger crew of paddlers to enable them to become fast-moving war boats. While they weren’t as fast as the slimmer, lighter canoes used by the Atirhagenrat and other Great Lakes nations, they were more stable, and thus could be used as platforms for the firing of Atsiju [*Muskets]. Lakeboats had been used as gun platforms in the 1650s against the Meskwaki along the shores of Lake Michégami, and had proved effective at demoralizing a larger army with no canoes of their own.
However, while the Trader lakeboats were based out of various forts on the Upper Great Lakes, the Atirhagenrat they wished to strike against were located along the shores of Lake Atirhagenrat and Lake Untareo. The most direct route to the Atirhagenrat would have been the portage from Lake Ouentironk to Fort Kaenota, but that route lay directly on the path of the Atirhagenrat army, and the Traders would be vulnerable while portaging their lakeboats.
Thus, instead, the Traders decided to travel the long route to Lake Untareo, following the lakes from Lake Wendake through Lake Atirhagenrat to Lake Untareo. The rapids between Lake Wendake and Lake Atirhagenrat were known to be navigable if appropriate safety precautions were taken, but between Lake Atirhagenrat and Lake Untareo lay the great falls of the Onyakara [*Niagara Falls], along whose banks lay the Wenro people, allied to the Atirhagenrat and enemies of the Kanatians. Upon their departure the Traders were unsure of whether they would be able to portage their lakeboats around the falls, but decided that they were willing to abandon the boats and continue on foot if necessary.
300 Traders, led by a young commander named Luk Hujaka, departed in mid-June in a fleet of 10 boats. The voyage from Fort Ouentironk to the rapids leading to Lake Atirhagenrat went smoothly. The Mescoutens, allies of the Atirhagenrat who lived in the vicinity of the rapids let the Traders pass undisturbed. They had no firearms of their own, and knew they were no match for the lakeboats.
By July, the boats had made their way to the Northeast shores of Lake Atirhagenrat. From here, the Traders would undertake a number of raids against nearby Atirhagenrat villages. The goal was twofold: firstly, to replenish the food supplies in the boats, which were starting to run low, and second, to incite fear in the Atirhagenrat populace in order to provoke the withdrawal of their army from Wendake. The Traders confiscated or destroyed any canoes they found in order to prevent the Atirhagenrat from pursuing them out onto the lake. However, despite these precautions, the Traders lost one boat to gunfire and two more to boarding parties. Many of the men were now forced to travel in captured canoes.
However, by early August, the Traders had made it to the Falls of the Onyakara. A prisoner they had taken from the Atirhagenrat had told them of a portage route around the falls. Immediately before the Onyakara River went over the falls, there was a smaller side river on the Western bank [the OTL *Welland River] which could be followed upstream. A portage would then lead down a slope to a smaller creek [the OTL *Twelve Mile Creek] and from there to Lake Untareo.
It was during this portage that the Traders came under attack from a group of Wenro and Atirhagenrat warriors. It was luckily only a war party of 500 (the main Atirhagenrat army operating in Wendake contained about 2000 warriors) with fewer than 100 firearms, and the Traders were able to fashion a makeshift breastwork out of three upturned lakeboats. This defensive position eventually allowed the Traders to repel their attackers, although not before many men had died and the three boats had sustained enough damage that they were no longer seaworthy. Thus, upon reaching Lake Untareo, the Traders only had four remaining boats, a collection of captured canoes, and only 200 men.
Now on Lake Untareo, Commander Hujaka faced his ultimate objective: Fort Kaenota. Having been cut off from Wendat messengers for over a month, Hujaka had no idea whether the fort was adequately defended or even whether it had been recaptured by the Arkevujay. However, he hoped that his raids on the Atirhagenrat homeland would have caused the withdrawal of enough warriors that his 200 men would be sufficient to take the fort. He also knew that there was no opportunity to put ashore and enquire as to the status of the fort, as doing so would lose them the advantage of surprise.
The four boats remaining to Hujaka were not enough to hold all of his men, and keeping the rest of his men afloat in canoes would give them nothing to do in battle. So, before dawn, Hujaka led half his men ashore just out of sight of the fort. He would make his way to the opposite side of the fort from the shore, and would send some scouts to determine who was currently occupying the fort. If the fort had already been captured by Tonsahoten and his Wendat warriors, the scout was instructed to turn himself in and instruct Tonsahoten to signal to the boats offshore not to attack. However, as expected, the fort was still under Atirhagenrat occupation. The attack would begin.
Just after dawn, the boats would move to within range of the fort and would begin firing into the breach in the walls (which had still not been repaired). This woke the garrison, who took cover, but not before a number of them had been wounded or killed. However, the main objective of this attack was not to do real damage to the fort or garrison, but to distract the defenders from Hujaka’s land-bound force.
The wall of the fort opposite the breach was exposed to attack from the lakeward side through the breach. [3] Thus, this portion of the wall had to be abandoned by the defenders. Hujaka and his men soon began scaling that wall of the fort. Once they reached the top, they waved a signal flag, letting the men on the boats know it was time for the final assault. Soon, the boats were ashore, and the defenders were caught between the fire from the boats and the blades of Hujaka’s men on their own battlements. While Hujaka lost almost half his remaining force in the resulting melee, the fort was his.
The capture of Fort Kaenota turned out to be the last straw for the Atirhagenrat army. They were being harassed by Chief Tonsahoten’s warriors, had heard tales of raids on their home villages, and were finding fewer and fewer targets for their raids. The loss of the fort guarding their supply and communications route back home broke the last bit of morale they had. They army returned home in small groups on trails through the woods with the captives and loot they had secured. Stragglers were caught and taken captive
by Tonsahoten’s warriors, but Tonsahoten’s men were themselves still too green to chase the fleeing Atirhagenrat back to their home villages.
The Siege of Fort Matawang
During the whole length of the Atirhagenrat campaign, Tawinday’s Arkevujay Warriors were conspicuously absent. This is not because Tawinday was ignorant of what was going on in Wendake, nor was it because he didn’t care what happened to the Wendat people. It was simply because the vast majority of his troops were tied up elsewhere.
Tawinday had begun the campaign season with a desire to end the Amekwista Revolts and Ehundayga’s rebellion in one fell swoop. Ehundayga’s headquarters were in Fort Matawang, just upriver from the settled part of the Amekwista Valley, and Tawinday dispatched an army of 2000 to the Amekwista Valley in an attempt to both put down the revolt and capture Fort Matawang. This army was not quite as large as that used in the against the English three years earlier, but the Arkeuvjay had suffered many losses due to the measles epidemic, and their fighting strength was also down due to defections to Ehundayga’s faction.
Tawinday’s army would proceed to advance up the Amekwista Valley, visiting each village in turn, and offering each an ultimatum. The Clan Mothers in charge of each village were given the choice of either accepting an Arkevujay garrison and willingly accepting Arkevujay fur tokens in exchange for food from their granaries or to have the same supplies be taken by force. With Ehundayga’s faction cutting off the fur supplies, the Arkevujay was denied their main source of income, and was forced to mint more fur tokens in order to pay for any expenses. This practice would be the main cause of the inflationary crisis of the mid-1670s. [4]
The purpose of establishing the garrisons in the Amekwista towns was twofold. Firstly, the hope was that the presence of Arkevujay troops would deter any future revolts by the local Clan Mothers. Secondly, the granaries of these villages would serve as sources of supplies for the army venturing father upriver, and the garrisons would ensure that the villagers would continue to accept the Arkevujay tokens as payment. However, these garrisons proved less effective than expected, and many of them would be expelled from their villages by the time the main army departed.
While no villages were able to stand up to the army, their resistance to the establishment of garrisons slowed down the army’s advance. By the time the army arrived at Fort Matawang, the forts defences had been reinforced, destroying any possibility of a quick assault. Ehundayga himself had been evacuated before the siege began, and Fort Matawang’s stores had been filled to the brim by foodstuffs purchased from the Inoka and Wendat (Ehundayga’s Traders, unlike Tawinday’s Warriors, were able to pay for their supplies in furs). The Arkevujay army set up siege camps in the hopes of waiting it out until either the defenders starved or Tawinday could send reinforcements.
The Siege of Fort Matawang is notable as the first time that a Native army besieged a Native fort north of the Cheraw Empire. Neither the defenders nor attackers had much experience in siege warfare, although the attackers had at least the brief experience of the struggle with England over Fort Henry and Fort Josev. In the end it would be the attackers who prevailed, as they were eventually able to wear down the defenders enough to force a surrender.
However, the surrender of Fort Matawang resulted in nothing more than a Pyrrhic victory for Tawinday. Ehundayga himself was long gone, and the fur trade routes to the interior were still protected by Fort Odawa on the other end of the portage from Fort Matawang. Fort Odawa was not quite as well-defended as Fort Matawang, but it had the advantage of being able to be resupplied by lakeboat from the West, so taking it in a siege would require a larger force than was logistically feasible. The Arkevujay advance would stop at Fort Matawang and would never get any farther.
Footnotes to Part a:
[1] A quick refresher: the Atirhagenrat are the people known OTL as the Neutral Nation. They live in what is OTL Southwestern Ontario. In OTL they were defeated by the Haudenosaunee. In TTL they are allies of the Haudenosaunee and are the Kantians most formidable Native enemy.
[2] The tributary relationship between the Wendat and the Arkevujay requires the Arkevujay to defend Wendake from attack in exchange for tribute payments. Since the establishment of the Arkevujay Empire two generations ago, the Wendat have not had to recruit their own armies for their defense. While Wendat warriors have been recruited by Arkevujay commanders to fight alongside the Arkevujay, they have served mostly as skirmishers, raiders, and logistical support with the Arkevujay forming the centre of the line in any pitched battles.
[3] At this point in history, the walls of Arkevujay forts are made from two layers of brick with Earth in between. Stone is used at corners of walls and in other key locations, but the quarrying of stone is still too expensive to built a fully stone fort. Any interior structure of the fort is made from wood, which can be penetrated by Atsiju balls. Thus any breach in the outside wall means that the defenders inside have little protection.
[4] The Kanatian economy is only really experimenting with money right now, and the inflation that is about to take place will slow down the transition from a gift/barter economy to a money economy by generations. More on the inflationary crisis and its results in an upcoming update.
an excerpt from The History of Old Kanata 1500-1700 by Georges Hantero (Turtle)
Triumphalist Kanatian historiography of the Kanatian Revolution describes the climax of the Revolution as the ‘Three Glorious Campaigns’. Each of the years 1673, 1674, and 1675 saw great victories by Ehundayga’s Trader revolutionaries over Tawinday’s Arkevujay Warriors, and the actions of each year are often described as three campaigns – one per year. The cold, snowy Kanatian winters caused natural breaks in the fighting, ensuring that by the time spring came, strategic objectives had changed so that the new year’s fighting would be seen as a new campaign. However, upon closer scrutiny, the strategic objectives achieved by each of the ‘Three Glorious Campaigns’ were only clear in hindsight. The generals of the time would have had various objectives in mind each year, of which only one or two were actually achieved. Rather than a string of victories for the revolutionary armies, the ‘Three Glorious Campaigns’ saw a number of defeats that were largely ignored by the historians of the Kanatian Republic. Nevertheless, the victories that were won were strategically important enough to secure the overthrow of the Arkevujay regime.
1673: The Atirhagenrat Campaign
Fort Kaenota [OTL *Toronto], on the shores of Lake Untareo, guarded the entrance to the portage that would lead to Lake Ouentironk [OTL Lake *Simcoe] and the Wendat lands beyond. Until 1673, it was held by an Arkevujay Warrior garrison loyal to Konta Tawinday in Hochelaga. However, the Kaenota District, surrounding Fort Kaenota, was a flashpoint in the ongoing Amekwista Revolts, and much of the garrison was occupied putting down rebellious Clan Mothers and their followers.
In February of 1673, a young Warrior at Fort Kaenota snuck his mistress into the barracks for a warm night together (against Arkevujay regulations). While he slept, the young woman, who sympathized with the revolting Clan Mothers, snuck into the fort’s magazine and set fire to the gunpowder stores. The resulting explosion killed the young girl and a number of Warriors, and blew a gaping hole in the fort’s walls. While the cause of the explosion was kept secret by the Arkvujay, the fact that the fort was missing a wall was visible to all, and news of the new vulnerability spread as soon as the snows melted in the spring.
By early April, the Atirhagenrat [1] to the South had heard of the explosion. There were already plans to gather a large army together to attack Wendat lands, and news of the explosion inspired the Atirhagenrat War Chiefs to accelerate their timetable, departing in May as soon as Spring planting was completed. Konta Tawinday in Hochelaga had also heard of the explosion by this point, but the reinforcements he had dispatched to Fort Kaenota were still in their boats on Lake Untareo when the Atirhagenrat army arrived at the walls of the fort.
While the garrison of Fort Kaenota had made some attempts to repair the damaged wall of the fort, the breach was still enough of a weak point that the Atirhagenrat army could overrun the fort easily. The First Battle of Fort Kaenota, which lead to the death or capture of much of the population of the surrounding town, has often been twisted into a revolutionary victory by triumphalist Kanatian Republic historians. While it was a defeat for the Arkevujay regime, and thus was of benefit to the revolution in the long run, it was certainly a disaster for any of the Kanatians who lived in the vicinity.
In fact, only a week after the fall of Fort Kaenota, the Arkevujay army intended to reinforce the fort arrived at the scene of the destruction. The Atirhagenrat army had already moved northward, and the detachment left to defend Fort Kaenota would have been no match for the arriving Warriors. However, the commander of the reinforcing force decided to retreat to Fort Untareo rather than attempt to retake Fort Kaenota. This decision has often been described by Kanatian Republic historians as being motivated by disdain for the rebellious populace who had caused the explosion in the first place. However, the quote attributed to this commander - “If Fort Kaenota does not want our protection, we will not give it” – is widely believed to be apocryphal. His decision was more likely due to pure cowardice and unwillingness to make himself and his troops vulnerable to Atirhagenrat counterattack.
Word of all the events at Fort Kaenota had reached Chief Tonsahoten of the Wendat Nation. The Atirhagenrat army was making its way deeper and deeper into Wendake while it had become clear that no Arkevujay reinforcements could be expected in the near future. Tonsahoten began recruiting young men of his own nation to fight the Atirhagenrat, and secured the help of the Warriors stationed in his capital to help train them. However, as the Wendat warriors had not fought an offensive campaign of their own in generations, they required extensive training. [2] It soon became clear that the Wendat would be unable to fight anything more than a delaying action until the end of the summer.
At the same time, Tonsahoten opened negotiations with Ehundayga and the Traders loyal to him stationed at Fort Ouentironk. While Tonsahoten was unwilling to openly fight alongside the rebel Traders as he still feared the wrath of Tawinday, he was willing to trade give the Traders food and other supplies in exchange for arms and ammunition from the armory of Fort Ouentironk. At the same time, he made it clear that, if the Traders could repulse the Atirhagenrat army before reinforcements from Hochelaga arrived, his Wendat warriors would be willing to fight alongside them.
The Traders at Fort Ouentironk didn’t have the numbers to defeat the Atirhagenrat army on their own. However, what they did have was mobility. The lakeboats [3] used by the Traders as transportation between the trade posts on the Upper Great Lakes were usually used as cargo vessels with a small crew, but could also be outfitted with a larger crew of paddlers to enable them to become fast-moving war boats. While they weren’t as fast as the slimmer, lighter canoes used by the Atirhagenrat and other Great Lakes nations, they were more stable, and thus could be used as platforms for the firing of Atsiju [*Muskets]. Lakeboats had been used as gun platforms in the 1650s against the Meskwaki along the shores of Lake Michégami, and had proved effective at demoralizing a larger army with no canoes of their own.
However, while the Trader lakeboats were based out of various forts on the Upper Great Lakes, the Atirhagenrat they wished to strike against were located along the shores of Lake Atirhagenrat and Lake Untareo. The most direct route to the Atirhagenrat would have been the portage from Lake Ouentironk to Fort Kaenota, but that route lay directly on the path of the Atirhagenrat army, and the Traders would be vulnerable while portaging their lakeboats.
Thus, instead, the Traders decided to travel the long route to Lake Untareo, following the lakes from Lake Wendake through Lake Atirhagenrat to Lake Untareo. The rapids between Lake Wendake and Lake Atirhagenrat were known to be navigable if appropriate safety precautions were taken, but between Lake Atirhagenrat and Lake Untareo lay the great falls of the Onyakara [*Niagara Falls], along whose banks lay the Wenro people, allied to the Atirhagenrat and enemies of the Kanatians. Upon their departure the Traders were unsure of whether they would be able to portage their lakeboats around the falls, but decided that they were willing to abandon the boats and continue on foot if necessary.
300 Traders, led by a young commander named Luk Hujaka, departed in mid-June in a fleet of 10 boats. The voyage from Fort Ouentironk to the rapids leading to Lake Atirhagenrat went smoothly. The Mescoutens, allies of the Atirhagenrat who lived in the vicinity of the rapids let the Traders pass undisturbed. They had no firearms of their own, and knew they were no match for the lakeboats.
By July, the boats had made their way to the Northeast shores of Lake Atirhagenrat. From here, the Traders would undertake a number of raids against nearby Atirhagenrat villages. The goal was twofold: firstly, to replenish the food supplies in the boats, which were starting to run low, and second, to incite fear in the Atirhagenrat populace in order to provoke the withdrawal of their army from Wendake. The Traders confiscated or destroyed any canoes they found in order to prevent the Atirhagenrat from pursuing them out onto the lake. However, despite these precautions, the Traders lost one boat to gunfire and two more to boarding parties. Many of the men were now forced to travel in captured canoes.
However, by early August, the Traders had made it to the Falls of the Onyakara. A prisoner they had taken from the Atirhagenrat had told them of a portage route around the falls. Immediately before the Onyakara River went over the falls, there was a smaller side river on the Western bank [the OTL *Welland River] which could be followed upstream. A portage would then lead down a slope to a smaller creek [the OTL *Twelve Mile Creek] and from there to Lake Untareo.
It was during this portage that the Traders came under attack from a group of Wenro and Atirhagenrat warriors. It was luckily only a war party of 500 (the main Atirhagenrat army operating in Wendake contained about 2000 warriors) with fewer than 100 firearms, and the Traders were able to fashion a makeshift breastwork out of three upturned lakeboats. This defensive position eventually allowed the Traders to repel their attackers, although not before many men had died and the three boats had sustained enough damage that they were no longer seaworthy. Thus, upon reaching Lake Untareo, the Traders only had four remaining boats, a collection of captured canoes, and only 200 men.
Now on Lake Untareo, Commander Hujaka faced his ultimate objective: Fort Kaenota. Having been cut off from Wendat messengers for over a month, Hujaka had no idea whether the fort was adequately defended or even whether it had been recaptured by the Arkevujay. However, he hoped that his raids on the Atirhagenrat homeland would have caused the withdrawal of enough warriors that his 200 men would be sufficient to take the fort. He also knew that there was no opportunity to put ashore and enquire as to the status of the fort, as doing so would lose them the advantage of surprise.
The four boats remaining to Hujaka were not enough to hold all of his men, and keeping the rest of his men afloat in canoes would give them nothing to do in battle. So, before dawn, Hujaka led half his men ashore just out of sight of the fort. He would make his way to the opposite side of the fort from the shore, and would send some scouts to determine who was currently occupying the fort. If the fort had already been captured by Tonsahoten and his Wendat warriors, the scout was instructed to turn himself in and instruct Tonsahoten to signal to the boats offshore not to attack. However, as expected, the fort was still under Atirhagenrat occupation. The attack would begin.
Just after dawn, the boats would move to within range of the fort and would begin firing into the breach in the walls (which had still not been repaired). This woke the garrison, who took cover, but not before a number of them had been wounded or killed. However, the main objective of this attack was not to do real damage to the fort or garrison, but to distract the defenders from Hujaka’s land-bound force.
The wall of the fort opposite the breach was exposed to attack from the lakeward side through the breach. [3] Thus, this portion of the wall had to be abandoned by the defenders. Hujaka and his men soon began scaling that wall of the fort. Once they reached the top, they waved a signal flag, letting the men on the boats know it was time for the final assault. Soon, the boats were ashore, and the defenders were caught between the fire from the boats and the blades of Hujaka’s men on their own battlements. While Hujaka lost almost half his remaining force in the resulting melee, the fort was his.
The capture of Fort Kaenota turned out to be the last straw for the Atirhagenrat army. They were being harassed by Chief Tonsahoten’s warriors, had heard tales of raids on their home villages, and were finding fewer and fewer targets for their raids. The loss of the fort guarding their supply and communications route back home broke the last bit of morale they had. They army returned home in small groups on trails through the woods with the captives and loot they had secured. Stragglers were caught and taken captive
by Tonsahoten’s warriors, but Tonsahoten’s men were themselves still too green to chase the fleeing Atirhagenrat back to their home villages.
The Siege of Fort Matawang
During the whole length of the Atirhagenrat campaign, Tawinday’s Arkevujay Warriors were conspicuously absent. This is not because Tawinday was ignorant of what was going on in Wendake, nor was it because he didn’t care what happened to the Wendat people. It was simply because the vast majority of his troops were tied up elsewhere.
Tawinday had begun the campaign season with a desire to end the Amekwista Revolts and Ehundayga’s rebellion in one fell swoop. Ehundayga’s headquarters were in Fort Matawang, just upriver from the settled part of the Amekwista Valley, and Tawinday dispatched an army of 2000 to the Amekwista Valley in an attempt to both put down the revolt and capture Fort Matawang. This army was not quite as large as that used in the against the English three years earlier, but the Arkeuvjay had suffered many losses due to the measles epidemic, and their fighting strength was also down due to defections to Ehundayga’s faction.
Tawinday’s army would proceed to advance up the Amekwista Valley, visiting each village in turn, and offering each an ultimatum. The Clan Mothers in charge of each village were given the choice of either accepting an Arkevujay garrison and willingly accepting Arkevujay fur tokens in exchange for food from their granaries or to have the same supplies be taken by force. With Ehundayga’s faction cutting off the fur supplies, the Arkevujay was denied their main source of income, and was forced to mint more fur tokens in order to pay for any expenses. This practice would be the main cause of the inflationary crisis of the mid-1670s. [4]
The purpose of establishing the garrisons in the Amekwista towns was twofold. Firstly, the hope was that the presence of Arkevujay troops would deter any future revolts by the local Clan Mothers. Secondly, the granaries of these villages would serve as sources of supplies for the army venturing father upriver, and the garrisons would ensure that the villagers would continue to accept the Arkevujay tokens as payment. However, these garrisons proved less effective than expected, and many of them would be expelled from their villages by the time the main army departed.
While no villages were able to stand up to the army, their resistance to the establishment of garrisons slowed down the army’s advance. By the time the army arrived at Fort Matawang, the forts defences had been reinforced, destroying any possibility of a quick assault. Ehundayga himself had been evacuated before the siege began, and Fort Matawang’s stores had been filled to the brim by foodstuffs purchased from the Inoka and Wendat (Ehundayga’s Traders, unlike Tawinday’s Warriors, were able to pay for their supplies in furs). The Arkevujay army set up siege camps in the hopes of waiting it out until either the defenders starved or Tawinday could send reinforcements.
The Siege of Fort Matawang is notable as the first time that a Native army besieged a Native fort north of the Cheraw Empire. Neither the defenders nor attackers had much experience in siege warfare, although the attackers had at least the brief experience of the struggle with England over Fort Henry and Fort Josev. In the end it would be the attackers who prevailed, as they were eventually able to wear down the defenders enough to force a surrender.
However, the surrender of Fort Matawang resulted in nothing more than a Pyrrhic victory for Tawinday. Ehundayga himself was long gone, and the fur trade routes to the interior were still protected by Fort Odawa on the other end of the portage from Fort Matawang. Fort Odawa was not quite as well-defended as Fort Matawang, but it had the advantage of being able to be resupplied by lakeboat from the West, so taking it in a siege would require a larger force than was logistically feasible. The Arkevujay advance would stop at Fort Matawang and would never get any farther.
Footnotes to Part a:
[1] A quick refresher: the Atirhagenrat are the people known OTL as the Neutral Nation. They live in what is OTL Southwestern Ontario. In OTL they were defeated by the Haudenosaunee. In TTL they are allies of the Haudenosaunee and are the Kantians most formidable Native enemy.
[2] The tributary relationship between the Wendat and the Arkevujay requires the Arkevujay to defend Wendake from attack in exchange for tribute payments. Since the establishment of the Arkevujay Empire two generations ago, the Wendat have not had to recruit their own armies for their defense. While Wendat warriors have been recruited by Arkevujay commanders to fight alongside the Arkevujay, they have served mostly as skirmishers, raiders, and logistical support with the Arkevujay forming the centre of the line in any pitched battles.
[3] At this point in history, the walls of Arkevujay forts are made from two layers of brick with Earth in between. Stone is used at corners of walls and in other key locations, but the quarrying of stone is still too expensive to built a fully stone fort. Any interior structure of the fort is made from wood, which can be penetrated by Atsiju balls. Thus any breach in the outside wall means that the defenders inside have little protection.
[4] The Kanatian economy is only really experimenting with money right now, and the inflation that is about to take place will slow down the transition from a gift/barter economy to a money economy by generations. More on the inflationary crisis and its results in an upcoming update.