East Europan Revolution

While the Empire had always had to deal with internal dissidence, they had historically been able to keep it’s population under control though a combination of ‘bread and circuses’ and iron-fisted suppression. With the defeat of the Empire in EWII, however, not only did it utterly failed in achieving it’s strategic war aims of securing additional sources of ragnite, the war meant that they had used up most of their reserves. And with the loss of resource rich territories due to the peace treaty, the Empire entered a state of economic decline and hardship, causing the mounting internal dissent (which was already high due to anger over the war) to escalate. Soldiers who just came home from the front soon found themselves being deployed to violently put down protesters in their own country.
The definitive trigger that caused the revolution is still a hotly debated topic amongst historians to this day. All that is known for sure is that worker at the Zechmeister Armaments manufacturing plant organized a labor strike, demanding better wages and living conditions. Judging it’s armaments industry to be of national importance, the imperial government sent in soldiers to break up the strike by force.
Accounts from those sympathetic to the strikers suggested that when orders came in for soldiers to open fire on the workers, the captain in command (the same one that served as Fritz’s commander, and let Welkin and Alicia walk away during their encounter in VC1) refused to obey his orders, resulting in the political officer attached to his company trying to arrest him. While Imperial sources maintain that the captain was secretly a dissident who has been building up underground support within the company under his command for months prior, and used the opportunity to escalate an already tense situation by verbally provoking the political officer in charge.
The only that is certain was that a single shot was fired, but no matter the cause, it was enough to turn the scene into chaos, with many of the soldiers making common cause with the impassioned and enraged strikers, turning against their own former comrade-in-arms. A brief firefight later, the soldiers loyal to the Imperial government was forced to retreat from the factory.
News quickly spread across the Empire, with rumors of an armed insurrection against the Imperial government supported by elements of the army. As a result, sporadic violence began to break out across the country, as mutiny spread though out the ranks of the Imperial Military (With the loss of so many of their seasoned veterans to both Gallia and the Federation during EW2, the remaining officers, who mostly came from nobility, were unable to keep their troops under control).
Despite the Emperor and his minister’s promises to restore order, the situation escalated with each passing day. As the violence spreading further across the country, gangs of discontent workers and mutineer army units began to attack and loot the grand estates of the aristocracy, seizing their property at gunpoint and setting up ‘people's courts’ to purge those they deemed responsible for dragging them into the war. In turn, the loyalist forces enacted brutal crackdowns upon the rebels using the same terror tactics that they employed in occupied territories during the war.
The violence finally came to a climax when a group as assassins infiltrated the imperial palace and assassinated the Emperor alongside the entire direct line of the royal family. A council of high nobles, together with loyal military generals quickly took control to keep what remain of the Empire together.
Realizing the hopelessness of the situation, the ruling council decided to effectively concede defeat by abandoning the capital. Evacuating what is left of the government and order all remaining loyal military units to regroup in the north-western parts of the country near the Gallian boarder, in the hopes that someday the Imperials will be able to ‘restore order’ in the rest of the country. The surviving aristocracy and their loyal retainers quickly followed suit, moving as many men and materials (most importantly, many materials relating to the Artificial Valkyria project) to safety as possible in the few remaining roads that were still under Imperial control. This temporary arrangement however soon became a permanent one, and the Imperial Remnants find themselves effectively in exile and reduced to a rump state, but still claiming to be the legitimate government of all of East Europa.
Category:Wars
Category:Civil War Universe
Category:Conflicts