The systematic destruction of the Mandalorians by the Galactic Empire during the Imperial Era, spanning from 4 ABY to 5 ABY, is known by many names. These include the Great Purge of Mandalore, often shortened to the Great Purge or simply the Purge, and also the annihilation of Mandalore, the cataclysm of Mandalore. Moff Gideon sometimes referred to it as the Siege of Mandalore. This event aimed to punish the Mandalorians and erase their cultural memory, and involved the Empire bombarding Mandalore, slaughtering the majority of its inhabitants, and seizing their beskar. As a result, Mandalorian survivors, including groups like the Tribe, were forced into hiding. The Mandalorians were scattered across the galaxy, and a belief arose that Mandalore was cursed.
Mandalore's liberation from the former Sith Lord Maul at the close of the Clone Wars was achieved through the actions of a Galactic Republic clone troopers intervention force. This force was under the command of former Padawan Ahsoka Tano and Clone Commander CT-7567 "Rex," who had formed an alliance with Lady Bo-Katan Kryze's Mandalore resistance. The Jedi appointed Kryze as regent before most Republic forces departed, while Maul's Mandalorian commanders, such as Gar Saxon, were taken into Republic custody. A clone peacekeeping force remained on Mandalore to ensure a peaceful transition. However, within hours of the siege's conclusion, Chancellor Sheev Palpatine transformed the Republic into the Galactic Empire, declaring himself Emperor. Utilizing the troops still stationed on Mandalore, the Emperor ordered the occupation of the planet.
Kryze's refusal to submit to Imperial authority led to the Empire installing Gar Saxon, a former commander under Maul, as governor of Mandalore. Saxon was permitted to create a group of Imperial Super Commandos, Mandalorian warriors who were loyal to the Empire. For years, the Empire exerted its control over Mandalore, its houses, and its warrior clans, supporting Clan Saxon and providing military support.
Eventually, a superweapon designed to target beskar, known as the Arc Pulse Generator, was created by a student named Sabine Wren. The Empire turned this weapon against the Mandalorian people. Horrified by her creation, Wren spoke out against the Empire, even though her family and clan, Clan Wren, supported the regime. Before fleeing Mandalore with her friend Ketsu Onyo, Wren destroyed her weapon, but the Empire later managed to replicate it with a limited range. Wren eventually joined a rebel cell called the Spectres. In 2 BBY, Imperial control of Mandalore was challenged when Wren claimed the Darksaber, an ancient symbol of Mandalorian leadership, from Maul within the abandoned Nightsister lair on Dathomir.
After training with the Darksaber, she returned to her clan on Krownest, where Saxon arrived to take the Darksaber. To protect her daughter, Wren's mother, Ursa Wren, killed the viceroy, sparking a civil war between Clan Saxon and Clan Wren. During a mission to Mandalore in 1 BBY, Clan Wren allied with Kryze and her clan. After destroying the Empire's copy of the Arc Pulse Generator, which the new leader of Mandalore, Governor Tiber Saxon, intended to use against the population, various Mandalorian clans united to form a Mandalorian resistance against the Empire. Wren gifted the Darksaber to Kryze, who accepted leadership of this resistance. The Children of the Watch, a rogue sect, were dismayed that Kryze accepted the Darksaber as a gift rather than winning it in combat, believing this act cursed their world to fall. They believed internal conflict weakened the Mandalorians, leaving them vulnerable to the Empire.
Recognizing their inability to fully control Mandalore and determined to prevent any other faction from doing so, the Empire resolved to punish the Mandalorians, erase their history, and discourage rebellion on other planets by 5 ABY. In conjunction with the Imperial Army, the Imperial Navy initiated an assault, later known as the "Great Purge of Mandalore," with the objective of annihilating the Mandalorian people as a warning to the galaxy. TIE/sa bombers devastated Mandalorian settlements by deploying fusion bombs, obliterating cities, including the capital of Sundari and its Civic Center, in an event remembered as the Night of a Thousand Tears.
During this Night, gunships armed with repeating blasters decimated fields of Mandalorian recruits and survivors of the TIE bomber attacks. Imperial ground troops executed any remaining survivors, while KX-series security droids and Viper probe droids searched the wreckage to eliminate any stragglers. Mandalorian beskar armor proved ineffective against the bombings. The Empire bombed every area twice, intercepted departing ships, and took no prisoners. It was said that the Mines of Mandalore were destroyed during the Purge. However, the mines remained intact, though the bombings caused seismic activity that deepened the Living Waters within them. The Great Forge's fires were extinguished after the bombings.
Kryze and her followers fought against the Imperial forces near the Great Forge, but she lost the majority of her forces during the Night of a Thousand Tears. Following this event, Gideon, who participated in the Purge as an Imperial Security Bureau officer within the Advanced Weapons Research division, contacted Kryze to negotiate a ceasefire. Gideon offered to spare all Mandalorian lives and remaining cities if she surrendered to the Empire and disarmed. Believing the survival of her people was paramount, Kryze, aware of the dishonor it would bring, surrendered the Darksaber to Gideon. However, Gideon betrayed Kryze, continuing the purge and claiming the Darksaber for himself. The purge resulted in the near-total genocide of the Mandalorian people.
Some Mandalorians, including Kryze, survived the Purge and fled Mandalore, scattering across the galaxy. The mass bombings and fusion rays glassed the surface, transforming the sand into trinitite, and disrupted the planet's magnetic field, making surface scans from orbit impossible. Dormant species were awakened by the bombings. The Empire seized Mandalorian beskar as spoils, melting it into Imperial ingots. Descendants of Death Watch, known as the Children of the Watch, survived the Purge by remaining secluded on Concordia. The Mandalorian group known as the Tribe was forced to operate in secrecy due to the purge, even after the fall of the Empire in 5 ABY. Members of the Tribe came to believe Mandalore was cursed, fearing death for anyone who traveled there. Some Mandalorian survivors remained on the planet, migrating along the surface in a Langskib until the war ended, remaining loyal to Bo-Katan.
Although reduced to a small group, Kryze continued to lead Clan Kryze and the Nite Owls subdivision. She, along with Axe Woves and Koska Reeves, undertook missions with the goal of reclaiming Mandalore and the Darksaber. She planned to acquire the Darksaber through combat to legitimize her rule, rather than accepting it as a gift. By 9 ABY, Gideon's Imperial remnant possessed beskar from the Great Purge, using a portion of it as a down payment, stored in a camtono, to hire the bounty hunter Din Djarin for a job. Djarin later presented this beskar to the Armorer of the Tribe, who identified it as having been collected during the Great Purge.
After Djarin completed the job and delivered the bounty—a Force-sensitive infant named Grogu from a rare species—to the Imperial remnant, he received the remaining beskar as payment. When Djarin returned to the covert with the camtono of beskar, it attracted the attention of the other Mandalorian warriors. Paz Vizsla confronted the Armorer and Djarin, noting that the beskar had been smelted by the Empire and recalling how the Great Purge forced the Tribe to operate in secrecy, like sand rats. The Armorer argued that their secrecy ensured their survival and strength, but Vizsla countered that their strength once came from their numbers, and now they were forced to operate individually. Vizsla then accused Djarin of collaborating with the Empire, who had destroyed their world. Vizsla attacked Djarin, but the Armorer quickly intervened.
While Djarin was on a mission with a team of mercenaries to rescue a prisoner, the Devaronian Burg questioned his presence on the team. Migs Mayfeld responded that Mandalorians were considered the galaxy's strongest warriors, prompting Burg to ask why they had all died.
Later, Djarin and Boba Fett sought to recruit Kryze and her allies to assist in the rescue of Grogu from Moff Gideon. Djarin informed Kryze that the Moff possessed a light cruiser that she could use to retake Mandalore. Fett expressed his disapproval, stating that the Empire had "turned 'that planet' to glass," which angered Reeves, who attacked Fett. Kryze intervened, asserting that if they had displayed such strength against the Empire initially, they would not have lost their planet.
After Djarin rescued Grogu and the foundling was placed under the protection of Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker, Din Djarin resumed his bounty hunting activities, collecting on a bounty to gain information on reaching the sub-strata of Glavis Ringworld. He was informed that an access shaft was located down Kolzoc Alley.
There, Djarin encountered the surviving members of the Tribe—Paz Vizsla and the Armorer—in a new covert after their previous one on Nevarro was destroyed. The Armorer noticed the beskar spear that Ahsoka Tano had given to Djarin. While it was being reforged, Djarin inquired about Bo-Katan Kryze. The Armorer described Kryze and her followers as a cautionary tale, stating that they "lost sight of the way," leading to Mandalore's fall to the Galactic Empire and the destruction of "everything they knew and loved" during the Night of a Thousand Tears. She referred to the purge as a "curse prophesied within the creed" and the scattering of Mandalorians across the galaxy. Djarin then confessed that he had removed his helmet, making him an apostate and exiled from the covert. The Armorer explained that redemption could only be achieved by bathing in the Living Waters within the Mines of Mandalore, which were believed to have been destroyed during the Purge.
Seeking redemption, Djarin eventually found a Mandalorian inscription from Jawas that originated from Mandalore. Djarin and Grogu, accompanied by the astromech droid R5-D4, traveled to Mandalore on a mission to bathe in the Living Waters. They discovered the ruins of Sundari but found that the atmosphere was breathable. The Purge had caused Alamites, who previously lived in the wastelands outside the cities, to relocate to the ruins of Sundari. Later, Djarin and Kryze discovered that the Mines and the Living Waters had not collapsed. Kryze also encountered a mythosaur in the Living Waters. The Mandalorian resistance and Children of the Watch put aside their differences to reclaim Mandalore from Gideon's Imperial remnant.
Some Mandalorians survived the Purge and fled Mandalore, scattering across the galaxy, while others remained on Mandalore and migrated along the surface until the end of the Galactic Civil War:
- Bo-Katan Kryze: Survived and continued to lead Clan Kryze and the Mandalorian resistance. [4]
- Axe Woves: Survived and served under Bo-Katan Kryze after the Galactic Civil War. [4]
- Koska Reeves: Survived and served under Bo-Katan Kryze after the Galactic Civil War. [4]
- A Mandalorian fleet commander: Survived and served the Mandalorian resistance after the Galactic Civil War. [3]
- "The Armorer": Survived by being exiled on the moon of Concordia along with the Children of the Watch. [3]
- Din Djarin: Survived by being exiled on the moon of Concordia along with the Children of the Watch. [3]
- Paz Vizsla: Survived by being exiled on the moon of Concordia along with the Children of the Watch. [11]
- A Mandalorian judge: Survived and served with the Children of the Watch. [28]
- A Mandalorian captain: Survived and migrated along the surface along with other Mandalorian survivors until the end of the Galactic Civil War. [7]
- A Mandalorian scout: Survived and migrated along the surface along with others until the end of the Galactic Civil War. [7]
- A Mandalorian watchman: Survived and migrated along the surface along with others until the end of the Galactic Civil War. [7]
- Sabine Wren: Survived by being off-world around the time of the Purge. [34]
The Great Purge was initially referenced in "Chapter 1" of The Mandalorian, a Disney+ television series that premiered on November 12, 2019.