How big was the Rebellion?

[Darth Ruinus]

From what little I can gather, it was incredibly small, incredibly small. What with that one quote saying that all the Rebels, civilian and soldiers, were at the battle of Endor, and they were outnumbered by one sector fleet. That, and my search of Rebel worlds on Wookie yielded a list of 17 planets.

So, how big was the Rebellion, how much support did it have?

[Lord Relvenous]

If i remember correctly, The rebels gathered together hundreds of ships for the Battle of Endor, and their support worlds numbered in the low hundreds. Someone with a lot more documentation can give you definate numbers, I'm sure.

[FA Xerrik]

The Rebels had only a few worlds openly declare support, Mon Calamari being a notable example. They preferred to operate out of secret bases, such as those described on Nar Shaddaa in Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, or extremely remote worlds like Yavin or Arbra. Additionally, the Alliance itself was a union of several smaller pre-existing groups. What we would call the "Rebellion," with the capital 'R,' was not by any means the entirety of resistance to the Empire. You are, presumably, wondering specifically about just the forces of the Alliance?

[Darth Raptor]

Before the Battle of Endor, the Alliance was laughably small. The destruction of Yavin would have completely decapitated the entire organization. Their flight from Hoth sent them reeling for years. That was nearly everything they had at Endor.

After Endor, they became more of a galactic power one could take seriously. Although they called themselves the New Republic by then, and owed much to the self-destructive nature of the Empire without a Sith emperor.

[Darth Ruinus]

Well, yes, I am referring to the forces of the Alliance, however I am also asking as to how much support did they have?

However, the second question is harder to answer, since support is pretty vague.

[Darth Ruinus]

Mmmh, wait, I cant be doing this right.

Ok, I used the Chommell Sector (the one with Naboo in it) and it says its a scarsely populated sector, and has 40,000 dependencies on it. If I get that and multiply it by 51,000,000 I get the number 2,040,000,000,000 worlds. (Im assuming that the 50 million colonies, governorships and protectorates quote can imply that each governorhip or protectorate can have the same number of worlds as Naboo did)

So, if thats right (I think Im messing up with that assumption though) then if the Rebellion really did have only support from planets numbering in the low hundreds, even being generous and giving them 999 worlds, then wouldnt they have support with only less than 1% of the galaxy? (something like .00000000004%?

Or do the worlds themselves represent more planets like Naboo did?

But then again, based on that, and Naboo's population, I got 1,224,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1.2 sextillion) as the galactic population, and it says on Wookiee that the galactic population is 100 quadrillion? So I am pretty sure that I am wrong.

[Stark]

Read Domus Publica. It has all the information you want.

[lord Martiya]

According to The Truce at Bakura, in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Endor the Alliance was weak enough that if the Moff of the sector knew about them he could destroy the Alliance Fleet with overwhelming force. I suppose that the death of Vader and Palpatine at its hands not only caused the immense chaos between Imperial forces that we all know but even conquered to the Alliance enough support and military power from various planets, other Rebel groups and maybe even from some Imperial to beat the weakening Imperial forces one by one.

[Darth Hoth]

All active Rebels, as in military or field support, were at Endor, establishing a lower limit in approximately the tens (or perhaps if one is generous, hundreds).

In a remote and midnight vacuum beyond the edge of the galaxy, the vast Rebel fleet stretched, from its vanguard to its rear echelon, past the range of human vision. Corellian battle ships, cruisers, destroyers, carriers, bombers, Sullustian cargo freighters, Calamarian tankers, Alderaanian gunships, Kesselian blockade runners, Bestinian skyhoppers, X-wing, Y-wing, and A-wing fighters, shuttles, transport vehicles, manowars. Every Rebel in the galaxy, soldier and civilian alike, waited tensely in these ships for instructions. They were led by the largest of the Rebel Star Cruisers, the Headquarters Frigate.

The Declaration of a New Republic, ratified by the members of their immediate post-Endor organisation, the Alliance of Free Planets, was signed by eight planets. At that, one of them was the destroyed world of Alderaan, and another signatory merely claimed to represent Corellia, in reality a world still firmly under control by the pro-Imperial Diktat for years to come.

Without doubt, their political following and military organisation was pitifully small by any meaningful galactic standard (there would likely be more terrorists in the United States at the present moment than Rebels in the Empire at the height of the Alliance, counting relative percentages of the population, for example). However, viewing such evidence as Castin Donn's tale of a Coruscant resistance group, or Elscol Loro's revolutionaries on Cilpar, it appears reasonable that smaller local groups with no formal connection to the Rebels were not included in the Endor count. This would raise the number of Rebel sympathisers, or at least anti-Imperials, but does not change the status of the Alliance itself.

[Darth Hoth]

According to The Truce at Bakura, in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Endor the Alliance was weak enough that if the Moff of the sector knew about them he could destroy the Alliance Fleet with overwhelming force. I suppose that the death of Vader and Palpatine at its hands not only caused the immense chaos between Imperial forces that we all know but even conquered to the Alliance enough support and military power from various planets, other Rebel groups and maybe even from some Imperial to beat the weakening Imperial forces one by one.

Interesting. Could anyone with a copy of the Imperial Sourcebook confirm what numbers a Sector Group holds? Wookieepedia says twenty-four Star Destroyers and 1,600 smaller combat ships; is this correct?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I'm pretty sure that way back in the pages down around 100-110 on this forum, somebody bothered to copy the organisation out in full, that might be worth searching for.

Anyway, p.111 of the Imperial Sourcebook (published West End Games, January 1995) states

A Sector Group can be expected to contain at least 2,400 ships, 24 of which are Star Destroyers, and another 1,600 combat starships. Thousands of Sector Goups are at the Emperor's command...

The Sector Group breaks down into Fleets organised for specific tasks, the six destroyers plus escort Superiority Fleet, the transport heavy Assault Fleet, Bombard, Deepdock and Support Fleets.

Two small caveats; the 2,400 number derives from four Superiority and two Support fleets, include say, two Transport, a Bombard and a Deepdock fleet, that adds another 1,748 ships, including some 300 escort.

Heavier ships like Shockwave, Allegiance classes, are assigned as part ofthe Moff's personal command, lighter destroyer types are stated on p.105 to be assigned as part of Heavy Attack squadrons.

[Darth Hoth]

Yes, I am aware that MKSheppard did so way back, but regrettably those links no longer seem to be working. Therefore I asked. Thank you for the information, by the way.

[Connor MacLeod]

Given that its always been described as a "Galactic Civil War", you might consider the Rebellion to consist of two separate elements. The Rebellion proper, and those worlds who secretly or openly seceded from (or overthrew) the Empire, the ltter of which can vary in number (it probably grew quite a bit after the Emperor dissolved the Senate and the Deah Star plot was uncovered.)

The Rebellion proper are, for the most pat, terrorists/freedom fighters. They work "inside" the Empire mainly to create trouble and overthrow the Emperor. Its also probably the smaller and less well equipped of the group. Its not a formal government or force, per se, its more a collection of renegades, rebels (duh), terrorists, and whatnot who work together under broad goals but not neccesarily under centralized command (they lack the Empire's better communications remember.) Their indutry and forces tend to be hidden, either in isolated locations or amidst Imperial worlds, with a minority of "outright" suppliers (IE Mon Cals)

The other side is going to be, for lack of a better term, the "allies" - those that supply funding or materiel or sometimes even troops and ships to their efforts. EArly on it might be seen that these worlds were not "openly" hostile to the Empire, but probably fought it indirectly via proxy (IE the "Rebellion proper") and only went into open conflict (at least steadily) post Yavin. (Palpy probably spent a couple years consolidating and conquering, which prevented him from doing anything about the Rebels until sometime around Hoth.)


Numbers, wise...

the RASB on page 91 states the following

The Empire's forces outnumber the Alliance forces by a factor of almos t30 to one in raw manower, by better than 12 to one in equipment, and by about 15 to one in warships and transports. The numbers are equially grim when you compare weapons research, intelligence, and supplies."

Generally speaking, there's more than an order of magnitude difference in capabilitya ll around, and it probably doesn't even factor in qualtative advantage (IE the Empire has not only more ships, but many of them tend to be better armed/armored and many are bigger, like the SSDs. The same is probably true of transports.)

Its interesting to note that "over half of Imperial troops in the galaxy" are tied down defending the Empire's assets/territory.

An average "sector force" (though such thing is loosely termed) is generally described as having dozens of fighters to it as well as thousands if nto tens of thousands of troops. Since there are tens/hundreds of millions if not billions of worlds in the Empire, this means many thousands if not tens of thousands of sectors. This means at least many millions of fighters and billions of troops at least at a low end - the exact figures aren't very vague. The fact that they have a small (but still significant) fraction of the forces of the Empire is probably more telling (numerically at least.)

[Warsie]

Before the Battle of Endor, the Alliance was laughably small. The destruction of Yavin would have completely decapitated the entire organization.

Mon Mothma was still alive.

Their flight from Hoth sent them reeling for years.

more like a few months at most, and that was combined with other defeats like the Battle of Gal Milnor and The Sargesso Base (not sure if right name; asteroid battle that was documented in X-wing Alliance ("Rescue Aeron") and Shadows of the Empire

[Darth Ruinus]

Before the Battle of Endor, the Alliance was laughably small. The destruction of Yavin would have completely decapitated the entire organization.

Mon Mothma was still alive.

He never said she wasnt.

[lord Martiya]

Before the Battle of Endor, the Alliance was laughably small. The destruction of Yavin would have completely decapitated the entire organization.

Mon Mothma was still alive.

If I recall correct, the novelization says that the Rebel leaders had the possibility to escape Yavin IV before the arrive of the Death Star but chose to stay. If the Death Star fired, Mon Mothma was disintegrated.

[Warsie]

If I recall correct, the novelization says that the Rebel leaders had the possibility to escape Yavin IV before the arrive of the Death Star but chose to stay. If the Death Star fired, Mon Mothma was disintegrated.

He never said she wasnt.

oops, misphrased it. Meant that Mon Mothma was not at Yavin but somewhere else