[colour=gold][u][h1][centre]Empire of Violette[/centre][/h1][/u][/colour]
[centre][img]https://i.imgur.com/fRiTWvK.png[/img][/centre]
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[centre][h3][u]Dordogne, South Serranthian State, Empire of Violette,[/u][/h3][/centre]
[centre][img]https://i.imgur.com/KzR2n8U.jpg[/img][/centre][centre][i]The Mayor of Dordogne (left) meets with Lieutenant General Isaac Droz (right) to discuss the Saad River Ambush[/i][/centre]
Violette's largest colony was experiencing an issue. North of Dordogne, a relatively small city in the east isolated from the better connected western cluster, a minor revolt seemed to be brewing. Some months past, a patrol of Veletian soldiers along the River Saad had been ambushed, their officers beheaded by rowdy colonials in the interior. The Mayor of Dordogne, Roméo Beaugendre, a wealthy elite from Confluence with business ties to South Serranthia, had been having difficultly convincing South Serranthia's colonial administration that the ambush and ensuing sporadic incidents of unrest along the Saad were worthy of attention. The interior of Serranthia had always been quite chaotic, the government in Namunir had argued, and sending security forces away from the crucial Sadir-Namunir rail-line would make South Serranthia's primary source of resources (and revenue) vulnerable. The mines in the deep interior, in Namunir's outskirts, were simply vastly more profitable than the meagre riches to be made in Dordogne, and from a fiscal standpoint—the only standpoint that South Serranthia's government cared about—Sadir-Namunir was omni-important.

As tribals along the northern Saad began encroaching further and further south and west, nearer to Dordogne itself, the Mayor determined that he would take matters into his own hands. Using a combination of city funds and some of the profits from his own enterprise, he established a militia in Dordogne, made up of colonials. Little more than farmers and fishermen with rifles, the presence of the Dordogne Militia nonetheless seemed to be enough to keep the rebellious tribes of the interior at bay. Whenever sighted, the tribesmen of the interior, a different ethnic group than Dordogne's own colonial citizens, would be shot at without warning or legal challenge. The dead rebels piled up nicely, and not a single Veletian life needed be lost. Yet, arming the locals would draw the ire of a higher power than the Mayor of Dordogne: Lieutenant General Isaac Droz.

Isaac Droz's unit was the [i]1st Garnison Nationale de South Serranthian State[/i]: one of Violette's "National Garrisons", the Veletian born and raised professional soldiers that kept the peace and maintained Violette's dominion in the colonies. Many of the National Garrisons were infamous, looking down on those they were theoretically meant to be defending and thinking little of executing any and all local troublemakers. Just as important as defending the colonies from rivals and rowdy tribesmen, though, was the Garnison Nationale's foremost imperative: keep the colonials down. Unless formally enlisted as a local reserve of the National Garrison (an unenviable job that paid little and made one unpopular), a citizen of any of Violette's colonies was forbidden from possessing a firearm of any kind. This was mostly fine for the denizens of the large cities of Violette's colonial possessions, but locals of the countryside were left having to make do with primitive weaponry for hunting and keeping livestock safe from local predators. Many of those same ranchers made up the National Garrison's 'local reserves', enrolling themselves just to be able to own a rifle. The Dordogne Militia was not enrolled, though, and so the city found itself visited in August, just a short while after the declaration of war against Tyria-Redania, by some ten thousand soldiers of the Garnison Nationale. The Mayor of Dordogne was thankfully able to defuse things before the Garrison had simply started firing on any armed black man they saw.

The Mayor explained the events to the Lieutenant General, how he had armed the citizens of Dordogne himself following the raids coming from the Saad. For his part, Droz was sympathetic to Mr. Beaugendre; the traitors of the interior would have to be dealt with harshly. Yet, he was insistent that the Dordogne Militia be disbanded, insisting that their existence defied the laws of the Empire. Instead, the Lieutenant General had Mr. Beaugendre hand-pick some 100 of his best shooting and most loyal seeming militiamen, and had each of them commissioned as formal local reserves. He then personally led his entire assembled division along the coast to the east fork of the River Saad. There they set up camp and awaited a supply chain to assemble from back in Sadir: they would need plenty of bullets for what could come next. Having already shot some dozen tribesmen on the journey, in a handful of failed attempts by the revolt to sabotage the Garrison's overland supply lines, the soldiers of the Garrison were pleased when the ships carrying extra ammunition and provisions arrived. Once they had, the punitive expedition begun.

Taking a third of his men on-board the supply ships and having the rest scour the wild countryside near the Saad, the contingent of the National Garrisone eventually found themselves at the spot where the River Saad divided. They had not be hassled along the way, apparently too numerous and well-provisioned for any attempts at sabotage to be made. There, at the fork, they again set up camp, and Isaac Droz sent cavalrymen of some local reserves to fan out and ask nearby villages if they had heard anything. Most of the scouts had little to say, but one reported that the village he had tried to approach had been hostile to him, and be had barely escaped with his life when he tried to approach the inhabitants. It was there that Droz chose to strike. Marching with a full half of his assembled force of five thousand to the remote village, leaving the rest of his men to defend the camp at the fork, Droz's caravan was attacked in the night. One of his men had died, stabbed from behind in the woods, and several others were wounded from primitive projectile fire, but the attackers suffered heavy and early casualties and quickly withdrew. The next morning, the caravan was attacked again, and this time Lieutenant General Droz was himself wounded: the rebels had acquired some number of rifles, and had now suddenly seen fit to expose this fact to the National Garrison. Droz knew he was close.

Once they reached the village, Droz's fears were realized. A defensive perimeter of stone and wood had been set up around the town, and rifles could be seen poking through holes in the walls. The defenders, though, were outnumbered and outgunned: on the transport ship, Droulez had brought a small number of artillery pieces, which he had kept obscured during the caravan to the town. Setting up a siege in the dense shrubbery surrounding the village, to obscure their positions, the riflemen of the National Garrison took a few shots, firing into the holes from which the defenders inside were waiting to rebuff a charge. Only half of his men actually engaged the village, as Droz had seen fit to have the other half prepare defensive positions behind his attackers, in case the Veletians own encirclement was itself encircled. Then, rather than order his men to storm the town, General Droz gave word to his five artillery squads to open fire. Instantly, five holes opened up in the barricade, and the riflemen of the Garrison followed up each strike from the field-guns with a massed rifle shot into the gaps in the barricades. Soon, bullets and shells were whizzing through the town, tearing apart the barricade, the defenders, and the buildings inside all alike. As Droz had predicted, the Garrison's position was then attacked from behind by rebel stragglers in the jungle, but the defensive perimeter fended them off with minimal casualties. A small few of these reinforcements had been armed with rifles, but seemingly had no ammunition, and simply utilized the bayonets.

Once the fighting in the village died down, and an elder from inside the town came out holding a white cloth above his head to signify the town's surrender, Lieutenant General Droz would know why. Several buildings inside the town, including one which had collapsed, were being used to store small stockpiles of stolen ammunition. Droz was harsh in victory: every man who had fought to defend the town was summarily executed, and the women, children and elderly were exiled, their homes ransacked for firearms and ammunition before being burnt or torn down. Most came back with the National Garrison, to be brought to Dordogne as refugees, but some simply went off into the countryside to settle in other nearby villages. As far as Isaac Droz was concerned, the revolt had been subdued, but he chose to keep one thousand of his riflemen in Droz as insurance against a retribution attack; they would serve alongside the now legal but largely diminished Dordogne Militia until time had guaranteed a peaceful countryside. Droz returned to Sadir with the rest of his forces, eager to retake his defensive positions in the crucial port-city, and happy to have another victory under his belt against the Serranthians.