The Dune Encyclopedia

by Willis E McNelly

  One of the prominent features of many of the operations of the fleet during the first two decades of the Jihad is best illustrated by the attack on Illerda in 199 B.G. Simply through the use of extraordinarily clever shifts in the disposition of their forces, the crusaders forced the Illerdans to abandon their moon, and then to surrender their entire planet. The casualties were limited to the crews of two scout vessels that attempted to run the planetary blockade just before the capitulation occurred. The operation has remained a textbook example of the distinction between the use of power and the use of force, as these terms are understood in strategic analysis.

  Examination of the history of the Jihad until the attack on Carthagos shows that this preference for the use of power over the use of force is at the heart of the planning of the Jihad during these years. Rather than crushing opponents by the overwhelming application of the force of the vessels and troops of the Jihad fleet, the threat of such an attack was used to compel the surrender of the enemy. Intelligent use of "power" treats force as a tool best used when it remains implicit. One's superior strength is used, not to obliterate an enemy, but to force surrender, ideally without battle. While this ideal was only approached in the campaign off Illerda, many of the actions of the Jihad through the early years show this principle in their conception. The attack on Thapsus in 196 B.G., and that against Parlon in 191 B.G., are cases in point: the combined casualties to the Jihad forces in these actions could not have exceeded ten thousand, and may have been considerably lower.

  Indeed, Jehanne's military career began and ended with operations of this sort. The attack on Carthagos presented the same tactical situation as had that on Illerda, and was already unfolding along identical lines. The Sarah III was leading a maneuver designed to place the forces defending the moon of Carthagos in an untenable position, while leaving the path of retreat to the planet open. Once the Carthagans were isolated on their planet, blockade would have produced the same result as on Illerda — surrender. The extinction of the planet's population resulted from the flagship's encounter with an undetected mine and the tidal wave of rage that swept the fleet when Jehanne's fate was learned. It was not part of the plan of the campaign.

  Thus, the last operation Jehanne directed bore this characteristic stamp. And so too did the first. The ravaging effects of the war on Richese have obscured the fundamental nature of the plan which the Komans followed. But, if one considers the situation on Richese within two days of the arrival of the tribute fleet, the tactical position of the Komans versus the forces of Richese shows the same sensitivity to the uses of force and of power.

  In only three days standard, virtually the entire population of Komos had been transported to Richese, and the Richesan navy had been captured by the Komans. The army of Richese then faced the prospect of a war with an opponent several million strong, on the territory of Richese, and in control of the only space vessels. Under such circumstances, in spite of the far greater size of the Richesan army, the prospects for victory were extremely limited, and clearly any war would be protracted and severely damaging to the planet. In sum, an excellent basis for a negotiated settlement had been established, and under normal circumstances would in all likelihood have been reached. One did not ensue because of the machine domination of Richese, which introduced an utterly unexpected element into the relations between the two armies. But if the opponents of the Komans had been normal and human, the outcome of the war might well appear to us as another instance when the planning of a military genius had achieved a victory with extraordinarily low loss of life.

  The pattern is clear: from her first battle to her last, the actions Jehanne participated in bear an unmistakable imprint. These are battles planned and led by a tactical genius, whose concern for the lives of her soldiers and of her enemies is the dominant element. And, in spite of the fact that Thet'r survived his wife, after the disaster off Carthagos this stamp disappears from the campaigns of the Jihad.

  As noted, though, the staff work retained its characteristic level of efficiency. This should not be surprising, for Thet'r continued as chief of staff for the Jihad. New generals were sought, and within the next few years several different individuals led the crusade, but the execution of their plans remained in the same superbly capable hands.

  The arguments which oppose this view are not founded upon examination of the evidence of the events of the Jihad. Rather, they base themselves upon certain assertions regarding the inability of a woman, or of women, to lead such a force as the Jihad, or to plan such actions as the attacks on Richese and Illerda. These arguments have in common their ignorance of the society of Komos, and the position of women within it.

  Unlike many societies, that of Komos had for centuries granted, to women an especially important function, one not bounded by the home and hearth. One refers, of course, to the maintenance of the religious well-being of the people. Not only was the worship of the chief deity of the planet in the hands of women, but the sacred life of the family, which was the center of Koman society, was the charge of the women of the family. The males controlled the life of the farm or the ranch, and the land was passed on through the male line, but the women saw to the religious health of the family — a power which, to the Koman way of thinking, involved nothing less than the survival of the family.

  The point of this should be obvious: the Komans were used to following the leadership of the women of their society, especially when matters of religion were involved. This was the case with the rebellion, which began because of the abortions performed by the hospital director, and which struck directly at a religious issue, the survival of the family line. Once the movement had spread to Richese, the religious basis expanded. The actions of the machines were seen by the priestesses and by the Komans as an affront not only to principles of humanity, but also to their Goddess, Kubebe. It was the priestesses who first preached Jihad. Indeed, had there been no religious basis for this movement, it would by definition not have been a Jihad. And for the Komans, religious matters necessarily involved the leadership of women. We should be surprised, then, if the leadership of this Koman crusade had not been female. These points, which should be transparently simple, have been obscured by the socio-sexual biases of most of those who have approached the problems posed by the leadership of the Jihad. (One must hasten to add that by no means all of these scholars are male.)

  The concentration upon the matter of sex in the leadership of the Jihad has also distracted attention from other, more important questions. One should ask not "Why a woman?" but rather "Why this woman?" and "Why did she succeed?" The answers to these questions must be sought within Jehanne herself and within her society.

  The simplest answer to the question "Why this woman?" is of course, that it was her child who was murdered. But this is obviously inadequate. These abortions had been going on for two years, but Jehanne was the first we know of to suspect the hospital and act on that suspicion. There may have been others, but Jehanne is the one we know of because she succeeded. Thus stated, the matter of the death of Sarah Butler is placed in perspective; it was the motivation for Jehanne and Thet'r, but it was not the reason for their success. Their rebellion, which produced Jihad, the secret of her leadership — those are to be found in the combination of the social characteristics of Komos and the character of Jehanne Butter.

  One has only to remember the descriptions of Jehanne's presence and its effect on others. Her personality seems to have had such a strong impact on those she encountered that it could be felt physically; many compared meeting her for the first time to the sensation of being struck. The emotions produced in others were not those associated with fear, however. The words most often used to describe her presence asserted a combination of compassion and intelligence so great as to produce what one observer, in a phrase later known to billions, saw as "a living flame of a woman."

  But this was not fire as the devourer, it was flame as the beacon, the guide. This flame led the crusade for twenty years
. When it died, the Jihad became the flame itself, and this would be the fire of destruction.

  Two points remain to be made. First of all, no matter how unusual a person Jehanne might have been, the genesis and success of the Jihad are not explainable solely by reference to any individual. Even such a person as Jehanne could not have led a successful crusade of this sort had it not been for the peculiar combination of conditions offered by the planet of Komos and its relation to Richese. How many such rebellions, led perhaps by men or women as unusual as Jehanne, failed for lack of the circumstances that produced the "agar for rebellion" that obtained on Komos? We shall never know, for they did fail, and even the folk-memory of Leto II cannot rescue them from time.

  But this is not to deny Jehanne her due. Nothing can deny her that. She is the equal of Jessica, the mother of Paul Muad'Dib, in her effect on human history, and this comparison brings us to our second and final point.

  Both of these women, for the most intense of personal reasons, defied their order, the Bene Gesserit. To please her Duke, out of her love for him, Jessica bore a son rather than the daughter that had been enjoined. Out of her grief for her dead daughter, Jehanne embarked upon, a rebellion which she proposed to lead. This violated one of the most ancient of Bene Gesserit proscriptions, that against the public involvement of their members as social leaders of any sort. The dangers of exposure of the order under these circumstances were manifest, yet Jehanne persisted. After Richese, with the launching of a Jihad, the exposure of the order became a virtual certainty, but by then all the priestesses of Komos were involved also.

  Twice in the history of the order, then, the severest strictures of the Bene Gesserit have been violated by one of their own Sisterhood, acting in response to intense personal motivation. It would seem that even the most compelling program of education and motivation ever devised, that of the Bene Gesserit, is not enough to completely extinguish the independence of mankind. Our history has taught us to be thankful for this.

  F.M.

  Further references: BUTLERIAN JIHAD; Lors Karden, The Flame and the Flower: A Short History of the Butlerian Jihad (Yorba: Rose); Th. Breno Patrick, The Kubeban Heresy, Vol. 52, Patrologia Diasporae (Libermann: Miller); Harq al-Ada, The Butlerian Jihad (Work-in-Progress, Arrakis Studies Temporary Series 283: Lib. Conf.).

  BUTLERIAN JIHAD ("THE GREAT REVOLT"); ITS CAUSE AND EFFECT

  Before the rise of the Atreides, historians argued endlessly whether great people made great events or great events made great people. The impact on history of Muad'Dib and the Emperor Leto renders the question moot, but before those tremendous personalities, the question is legitimately raised. We face the question specifically when we consider events as pivotal as those that occurred between 200 and 108 B.G.: Did a vast sea-change in the human ocean produce Jehanne Butler (see BUTLER, JEHANNE), or did this remarkable and luminescent woman by her will shift the currents of humanity?

  Even the name we use for the period implies an answer to the question: If we call those events "The Butlerian Jihad," we side with the historians who define as "great" those individuals who move the mass of humankind in a new direction; if we use the term "The Great Revolt," we ally ourselves with those who see "leaders" as simply the front rank of a humanity moving in the direction the masses determine.

  Historians close to those events also speculated on this same question. The writings of one of them, recently discovered, shows how that turning point was viewed in the calm immediately following it. Kruwl Sheivvun (c. 113-185) served as Imperial Historian under Saudir II. In his major work, The Founding of the Empire, Sheivvun speculates on the Jihad, employing the metaphor of waves as affected by the tides. At flow, each wave breaks and recedes, but the series of waves creeps higher and higher on the beach until high tide is reached. Should someone wish to divert the waters of the high tide for human purposes, the task would be impossible during the ebb. Likewise in human affairs, he argued. A popular readiness for change is aimless without capable leadership; but' the great leader without ready support ends in obscurity. However, when human genius combines with movement in the tides of the people, new directions result. Such a combination was the Butlerian Jihad.

  Sheivvun was the first historian to point out that the Empire rested on a tripedal structure, consisting of House Corrino (backed by the Sardaukar), the Spacing Guild, and CHOAM. The Jihad cleared the way for the establishment of all three of the organizations, none of which had existed, before the Great Revolt. In researching the conditions that led to the foundation of the Empire, Sheivvun was necessarily drawn to considering the events that had cleared the path. He began by examining the systems of commerce and government.

  Trade depends, of course, on transportation, and politics on communication. Born of these functions, prior to the Great Revolt, were coordinated by computers — both the patchwork of larger and smaller groups of planetary systems and the traders who served them depended on faster-than-light ships whose progress through hyperspace was controlled by computers.

  For example, consider Transcom, a trading corporation lasting for almost seven thousand years: the all-but-overwheming amounts of data processed in split-seconds during hyperspatial travel led Transcom to direct its ships from a central computer-bank, Centrans, located on an artificial satellite, Xenophon. As a ship entered hyperspace, its destination was transmitted to Centrans via Holtzman Waves. During the ship's progress to pre-designated points en route, Centrans processed the information and prepared course corrections. When the ship reached the first "mail drop," it reentered normal space and received course updates from Centrans. The computer-bank simultaneously handled routing for Transcom's more-than-twelve-thousand ships; during its long history, various mercantile associations subscribed to Transcom's service—the Van Rijn combine, Asconel, Far Traveler Couriers, and many others. With a clear perception of the indispensability of the communications satellites, the crusaders of the Jihad struck early at Xenophon and similar establishments. The result was immediate and final: the utter collapse of regular interstellar trade. Had Transcom (and companies like it) not been destroyed by the Jihad, there would have been no transportation vacuum for the Spacing Guild to fill.

  As with trade, so with government. Political organization before the Jihad took many forms, although few planets were absolutely independent. Most, together with their nearest neighbors, formed federations, confederations, unions, pastorates, hierarchies, feudocracies, neofeudocracies, coalitions, commonwealths, colonial empires, autonomous dominions — every form of association that the ingenuity of ten thousand worlds could create. These groupings varied in size from a handful of worlds to mighty parliaments of hundreds of systems. Yet every one depended on communication: should one member of a federation be endangered, the call for help was sent forth by automatic and self-repairing machines. Without those machines, communication was slow and chancy, and planets were left to their own resources.

  The Great Houses survived the political chaos of the Great Revolt (indeed, some profited from it), and many saw the thousands of divided planets as ripe fruit for plucking. Almost as many reached for the fruit, and warfare raged for a century as would-be emperors scrambled for an imperial crown. The Corrinos emerged as victors, but the early members of that house little realized what a debt they owed to the Butlerian Jihad: even the legendary Sardaukar would have been little match for a unified and organized counterattack from a confederacy of hundreds of worlds. But the Jihad, smashing first interstellar communications, razed large and small governments planet by planet, leaving only rubble, ready for reassembly by the nimblest barbarian.

  The Butlerian Jihad, then, prepared the way for the establishment of the Empire; in the same way, the Great Revolt was itself prepared for by centuries of smaller waves rising to high tide.

  A shadowy figure of whom we know only a name — Dulden — enters the historical record in 711 B.G. as the founder of a group called "Humanity First," organized to promote less reliance on computers and to
advocate appeal from the judgments of the machines. Exactly what Circumstances provoked this group is not known, but for five hundred years thereafter, tensions increased. Some few planets — Sarash-Zillish, for one-had computer pogroms of their own well before the birth of Jehanne Butler.

  When she appeared on the scene, then, independent support for the movement she would create was already in place on thousands of worlds, waiting only for some great unifying cause to unite it.

  After her conquest of Komos, net native world, and its mother planet Richese (detailed in the entry for BUTLER, JEHANNE), a frenzy swept over the victorious forces, a frenzy fueled by almost equal parts of hysterical fanaticism and calculating greed. When Jehanne died in 182 B.G., the cause did not so much lose a leader as it gained a martyr. The generals who continued in her name were moved by a zeal she herself could not have matched; she knew her own fears and weaknesses, defects that were forgotten by her worshipers.

  Kruwl Sheivvun was the first to discover that the forces of the Jihad had another motive, too: wealth. Sheivvun found that the greater part of the Jihad forces on any given planet were mercenaries, usually recruited on the last planet conquered. The most adventurous and the most dispossessed were easily tempted by the thought of spoils on a planetary scale.

  And Sheivvun made one final discovery, one not fully appreciated until now: the Butlerian Jihad was not a monolithic campaign that swept irresistibly through the human galaxy. On the contrary, it was the composite of thousands upon thousands of separate forces lasting almost a century. To conceive of the Jihad, one should not think of the Imperial Army or Paul's Fremen, but rather of pirate fleets, moving when and where their commanders will, with little in common but the name of Jehanne Butler and a hatred for the machines they could neither understand nor replace. Many, many times — on the planet Wencolley, for instance — local resistance was absent, yet the planet was devastated by fighting between two groups of crusaders, each bent on proving the purity of their faith by the magnitude of their cruelty.