The more the Empire tightened its
grip on the people of the galaxy, the harder the Alliance to Restore the
Republic fought. Born shortly after Palpatine's transformation of the Old Republic into the New Order, the Alliance started as little more than a
rag-tag group of freedom fighters woefully under-equipped to challenge an enemy as mighty as the Galactic Empire. The continued injustices of the Empire, however, brought many into the Rebellion's
fold.
As it grew, so to did its
arsenal. To combat the Imperial starfleet, the Alliance's hotshot pilots made do with battle-worn
yet effective craft like X-
wing and Y-
wing starfighters.
The Rebel Alliance scored a major victory over the Empire by using stolen technical plans to formulate an attack strategy capable of destroying the Empire's most fearsome weapon: the Death Star. During the next three years, the core group of Alliance commanders fled from base to base, constantly eluding the Empire's forces.
The Alliance eventually established a central base on the
ice planet of Hoth. Imperial probes soon discovered the outpost, code-named Echo Base. The discovery precipitated the Battle of Hoth, wherein the High Command group was nearly destroyed. After the evacuation of the base, the
Rebel leaders, including the Alliance's architect
Mon Mothma, stayed with the ever-mobile and always-growing Alliance
Fleet.
The joining of the
Mon Calamari people into the Alliance bolstered the Rebellion's ranks, and brought badly needed capital ships into the
fleet. Finally, about a year after the defeat at Hoth, the Rebellion was poised to make an all-out strike against the Empire. The opportunity came at the Battle of Endor. Despite it being an Imperial trap, the Rebels persevered. The conflict ended with the death of Emperor Palpatine, the destruction of the second Death Star, the scattering of the Imperial
Fleet, and end of the New Order's long reign of oppression.