The Treaty of San Branik (1919) is the foundational non-aggression pact between the Centralist Faction — predecessor of the later Divine Republic of Kresimiria — and the Republic of Kaskiv, signed in San Branik during the Kresimirian Unification War.
Kaskivian historians call the broader secession the “Velvet Exit”: independence without a eastern front war, secured when General Dominik Loncar recognised Kaskiv’s borders in exchange for strict neutrality from Governor Matteo Vorelli.
Background
As the Vosti Empire disintegrated after the Turnip Winter, Vorelli — formerly the imperial governor of the eastern steppe — declared the Republic of Kaskiv in November 1918 and nationalised provincial garrisons. Loncar’s Centralists were already committed against the Sprodvice Provisional Directorate in the south and west; he could not afford a second front.
Informal non-interference through the winter of 1918–1919 hardened into negotiation once Loncar prepared the campaign against Ravna Skrad. Talks convened in San Branik’s Old City under Vorelli’s chairmanship.
Terms and immediate effects
The 1919 instrument recognised Kaskivian sovereignty and the eastern provincial borders as international frontiers; bound Kaskiv to neutrality toward both Centralists and the Directorate; and committed both sides to non-aggression. Loncar withdrew residual eastern detachments and redirected them to the Siege of Ravna Skrad (1920–1921).
Vorelli refused aid to either Kresimirian faction and sat for San Branik Old City through the early republican elections, treating the treaty as the external guarantee of Kaskiv’s domestic constitution-building.
Legacy
The treaty remains the legal baseline for Kresimirian–Kaskivian borders. Later trade architectures — the Trans-Republic Pipeline, the automated crossing at Porta Franca, and cross-border energy and grain contracts — presume the 1919 settlement rather than a wartime conquest. Kaskiv’s judiciary dates its secular republican codes from the institutional reset that followed the treaty.
In Kresimirian military history the pact is remembered as Loncar’s most consequential diplomatic stroke: sacrificing eastern ambitions to win the Unification War. In Kaskiv it is founding scripture — proof that neutrality and negotiation, not Centralist bayonets, made the Republic.