Great Jedi Purge

The Great Jedi Purge (19 BBY—3 BBY), also known as the war against the Jedi, was the sixteen year—long genocide that saw the scattered survivors of the Jedi Order hunted down by the Galactic Empire after the initial execution of Order 66, in which clone troopers slaughtered the Jedi upon the Sith Lord Darth Sidious command. After the Imperial Inquisitorius erased all traces of the Jedi Order they could find from existence, their objective was completed and the Jedi were all but extinct, the Inquisitors themselves seamlessly vanishing as well.

The campaign against the Jedi traced its origins to the ancient wars between the Jedi and the Sith, who were nearly eliminated around 1032 BBY. The Sith in fact continued operating in secret, plotting their eventual destruction of the Jedi. A millennium after the defeat of the Sith, Darth Sidious, using his public persona of senator and then Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine, forced the galaxy into the Clone Wars as a pretext for gaining emergency executive power over the Galactic Republic. He used the war to manipulate and deceive the Galactic Senate into giving his office virtually unchecked executive power in the name of security. In addition, the clone army that provided the Republic with its military force had secretly been implanted with bio-chips by its Sith creators that, upon activation, would trigger total compliance and force the clones into killing their Jedi leaders.

The Great Jedi Purge began at the end of the Clone Wars during the Confederacy of Independent Systems' final defeat by the Republic. Anakin Skywalker, a Jedi Knight believed to be the Chosen One destined to destroy the Sith, discovered that Palpatine was Darth Sidious and informed Jedi Master Mace Windu. In what Sidious would publicly label the "Jedi rebellion," Windu and three other Masters confronted the Chancellor, who killed the three Masters and engaged Windu in a lightsaber duel. Skywalker, who sought power from Sidious in order to save his wife, Padmé Amidala, from death, betrayed and incapacitated Windu before the Jedi Master could kill the Sith Lord. Sidious then killed Windu, and Skywalker became the Sith Lord Darth Vader and led Operation: Knightfall, killing everyone inside the Jedi Temple. While Vader carried out the assault, Sidious initiated Order 66, with the latter causing the clones' biochips to brainwash them into betraying and slaughtering the Jedi, ultimately leading to the Jedi Order being destroyed. With the Jedi branded traitors and the Clone Wars at an end, Sidious declared himself Emperor and transformed the Republic into a Galactic Empire.

The Age of the Empire saw the continued hunting of the Jedi survivors who were either not involved with the clones or escaped the trap survived and vex the Empire in years after. Vader commanded a number of Inquisitors, that was revealed following the formation of the Empire, whose job was to hunt any Jedi survivors. The Grand Inquisitor, a former Jedi Temple Guard from Utapau, hunted a group of rebels on the planet Lothal who were led by a former Padawan, Kanan Jarrus. These rebels ultimately helped create the Alliance to Restore the Republic, which fought against the Empire during the Galactic Civil War. The final act of the purge came on Malachor, during which the former Sith Lord Maul resurfaced, and Vader dueled his former Padawan, Ahsoka Tano—who assumed dead allowed the Great Jedi Purge to end.

Text and facts from the “Great Jedi Purge” article on Wookieepedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. Modified for this site.