The Jedi were regarded among many to be peacekeepers who sought to protect the galaxy from all
kinds of evil.
But there were moments across the Jedi’s long history that may muddle this accepted
notion, including what may be the most evil thing they ever committed: the Sith Holocaust.
And when we say Sith, we aren’t exclusively talking about the Sith Order and those who
harbored the dark side powers and the titles of Lord and Emperor.
We are talking about the entire Sith species, which consisted of billions of innocents.
So what led the Jedi to commit such a heinous act?
It began with the Great Hyperspace War, the first conflict between the Galactic Republic
and the original Sith Empire.
The war took place about 5,000 years before the Clone Wars.
The Sith Empire was in a way created by the Jedi long ago, when they exiled a group of
their own who they considered to be too dangerous.
Those exiled were known as dark Jedi, who during their exile came across the Sith homeworld
of Korriban.
The dark Jedi made contact with these red skinned people and noticed that they were
strongly connected to the force, particularly the dark side.
So the dark Jedi combined their knowledge of the force with the Sith magic practiced
by the Sith people to develop strong, unnatural force abilities that would become a staple
to future Sith Lords.
Many years had passed and the original dark Jedi that had come to Korriban had died off,
leaving only their force knowledge to the Sith people who used it to build up an Empire
within their isolated corner of the galaxy in the outer rim.
One day a pair of Republic deep space explorers accidentally landed on Korriban and made contact
with the Sith.
They were immediately imprisoned as the Sith believed they were spies who were from a government
that was preparing to attack them.
This paranoia of the Sith possibly stemmed from the past of when the Infinite Empire
ruled by the Rakata attempted to invade Korriban by at first appearing as friends.
The historic Rakatan attack devastated Korriban, so the Sith weren’t taking any chances this
time.
Possibly hoping to not be the victims of another surprise attack, as well as wishing to expand
their own empire and conquer new worlds, the Sith Empire located the Galactic Republic
and attacked some of its most important planets, including Coruscant.
Thus marked the beginning of the Great Hyperspace War.
The Sith Empire made quick gains in the war but ultimately lost when infighting occurred
within its own borders.
This infighting within the Sith Empire allowed the Republic to counter attack and effectively
fight back the Sith to their own territory and disable their ability to launch anymore
offensive attacks on Republic worlds.
In other words, the Sith no longer posed a threat to the Republic.
But some within the Republic felt that wasn’t enough, and that the already defeated Sith
Empire needed to be punished even more for starting what might have been the most devastating
war the Republic had fought in its history at that point.
So the Supreme Chancellor named Pultimo gave the order to commit genocide upon all worlds
within the Sith Empire’s borders.
This included wiping out the entire Sith species along with all others who so happened to live
among the Empire’s borders.
The Jedi followed through with this order and spearheaded the genocides along side with
Republic forces.
The Jedi probably thought that the dark side embedded Sith species were too dangerous to
be left alive, and that by killing them all would eliminate the threat of them attacking
again.
Billions of defenseless beings were slaughtered as a result.
This event became known as the Sith Holocaust in galactic history, and it was considered
to be one of the biggest mistakes ever committed by the Jedi by later members of the Order.
But these genocides were not successful, as a few groups of Sith and other people that
were among them survived and escaped into uncharted deep space.
They remained there, hidden from the Republic.
The survivors spent the next 13 hundred years building a new Empire under the leadership
of a Sith Emperor who went by the name of Vitiate, who prepared his people to one day
exact revenge on all those who killed their ancestors.
When the time came, the Sith returned once more to the Galaxy and reclaimed their lost
world of Korriban, waged war on the Republic, and sacked the Jedi Temple.
The returned Sith became a force to be feared once again as they forced the Old Republic
to submit to their demands through the treaty of Coruscant, which allowed the Sith to control
half of the known galaxy with ultimate authority.