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Clone Wars

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this was the name given by historians to the series of major battles which occurred during the last years of the Old Republic, in which the Jedi Knights worked with the armed forces of the Republic to repel the Separatist threat. The opening conflict of the Clone Wars was generally considered to be the Battle of Geonosis, in which the first cloned warriors developed on Kamino were used to augment the task force of Jedi Knights dispatched to Geonosis to combat the droid armies of Count Dooku. The Clone Wars spanned about three years in galactic history, and rapidly spread throughout the galaxy after the Battle of Geonosis. Ostensibly, the droid armies of the Confederacy of Independent Systems - known as the Separatists because they broke away from the Old Republic - were pitted against the clone troopers of the Grand Army of the Republic. The Separatists were led by Count Dooku, a former Jedi Knight who left the Jedi Order. His commanders were culled from the ranks of Dark Jedi and many criminal elements. The Old Republic's forces were led by the Jedi Knights, who were forced into positions of military command after Yoda commandeered the first clone troopers to participate in the Battle of Geonosis. As the war ground on, many beings within the Republic wondered whether the Jedi Knights were capable of winning the war. Many Jedi fell during the early stages of the fighting, nearly 200 of them at Geonosis. Thousands more died over the next thirty-six months. In the eyes of many, the Jedi were no longer the invincible warriors of light they had once been, nor were they the calm force of reason many believed them to be. This perception of the Jedi as military commanders driven to end the war, coupled with the propaganda spread by Dooku and the Separatists, left the Jedi Order in poor standing throughout the conflict. The last battle took place over Coruscant itself, after General Grievous was able to capture Chancellor Palpatine. Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi were the only Jedi able to infiltrate the Separatist flagship and defeat Count Dooku, rescuing Palpatine in the process and putting an end to the fighting around Coruscant. General Grievous managed to escape to Utapau, giving the surviving Separatist forces reason to continue fighting. The Outer Rim Sieges dragged on for several weeks, as the Grand Army of the Republic was forced to put out small fires while searching for Grievous. Ultimately, both sides of the conflict failed to realize that the Clone Wars were staged for a single purpose: to allow Darth Sidious to assume control of the galaxy. Much of the fighting was done on the terms of the Sith, with Sidious ordering the Confederacy to produce just enough battle droids to maintain parity with the Grand Army of the Republic. In this way, Sidious drained the bank accounts of the Council of Separatists while ensuring that the Republic never truly achieved a victory, thereby pushing both sides of the conflict to the brink of destruction. With the turning of Anakin Skywalker to the Dark Side, Darth Sidious was able to eliminate the Jedi Order and the Confederacy, ending the Clone Wars and initiating the era of the New Order. Historians later understood that the Clone Wars had been little more than an elaborate trab set by Darth Sidious to ensnare the Jedi Order with its own duty to the Old Republic, then eliminate it by spreading it too thin.