Within the "Star Wars" narrative, the Clone Wars involve a three-year war fought to prevent thousands of planetary systems from seceding from the Galactic Republic and forming the "Confederacy of Independent Systems", often referred to as "the Separatists". The Republic uses an army of clone troopers, the namesake of the conflict, led by the Jedi Order against the Separatist battle droid army. The conflict was manufactured as a scheme for the Republic's Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, secretly an evil Sith lord, to gain power and ultimately to convert the democratic Galactic Republic into the autocratic Galactic Empire, which was controlled through means of a military–industrial complex and featured in the original trilogy.