In Londonium, the sprawling capital of Victoria, a tempest of unrest was beginning to brew.
"Down with the war! Victory for democracy!"
"Overthrow the tyrants! Break the shackles of oppression!"
"The authorities must cease the policy of genocide against the Dracos!"
"Your Majesty, show us mercy!"
Tens of thousands of workers had poured into the streets, forming a seemingly endless column of protesters that snaked through the industrial arteries of the city.
They marched beneath the heavy folds of crimson banners and placards decrying the war, their boots rhythmic against the cobblestones. The standards of countless labor syndicates—the Londonium Steel Union, the Railway Union, the Textile Union, the Furniture Union—fluttered in the biting wind.
As the vanguard reached the front of the Londonium City Hall, they were met with a wall of mounted gendarmerie and uniformed police arranged in rigid, draconian phalanxes.
"Halt!" a high-ranking officer bellowed.
The police stepped forward in unison. They drew their black riot batons and began rhythmically striking them against their palms, a hollow, thudding sound meant to exert psychological pressure on the masses.
—Thud. Thud. Thud.—
At the sound, many in the crowd recoiled, their initial fervor dampened by the cold, bureaucratic certainty of state violence. They stalled, their momentum fracturing.
The police took the opportunity to inch forward, encroaching on the protesters' space.
"H-Help! They're coming!"
"Do not waver, comrades! They are nothing but the state's curs!"
"Get out of our way, thugs!"
For every individual who retreated, another stepped forward to fill the gap. The workers who had officially joined the Communist Party stood at the front, setting their shoulders to meet the police head-on. But despite their bravado, their efforts seemed trivial against the organized machine of the law.
"Dispersal begins in ten seconds!"
"Suppress the crowd in ten seconds!"
The rhythmic thudding of batons grew louder, more aggressive. A handful of workers broke ranks and fled into the side streets. The Party members gritted their teeth, planting their feet for the inevitable impact.
When the ten-second ultimatum expired, the police charged as one, descending upon the crowd with practiced brutality.
"Gah! My head!"
"Apprehend them all! Leave none behind!"
"Run! Disperse!"
The scene devolved into a chaotic meatgrinder. Protesters and police tangled in a violent knot; mounted gendarmes swung batons from their saddles until they were dragged down by desperate hands, while other workers were surrounded by squads of police and systematically beaten into the ground.
It was a suppression of moderate scale. Many were wounded, but none had yet died—the authorities could still claim, with a straight face, that this was a 'bloodless' restoration of order.
However, the catch was that this restraint was limited to Londonium and the territories held by the moderate nobility. In the far reaches of the Empire, it was a different story entirely.
Across much of Victoria, the blood of workers and citizens soaked the soil. In regions where the suppression turned particularly savage, the soldiers had mutinied, beheading their feudal lords to establish local Soviets. The entirety of Victoria was being swallowed by the dual fires of strikes and revolution.
Meanwhile, within the Victorian Royal Palace, a different kind of chaos reigned—one born of incompetence and panic.
"You mean to tell me a single city like Birmingham declaring independence has caused this much wreckage? Is something fundamentally broken?"
"Your Majesty, the workers have erected barricades in the East District of Londonium!"
The royal court was struggling to grasp the sheer scope of the crisis. However, amidst the paranoia, they managed to stumble upon a calculated decision.
"We must maintain a bloodless suppression here in the capital, Sire. If we cross the threshold into mass slaughter, this riot may truly become an irreversible revolution."
"Why? Won't showing leniency only embolden these traitors to expand their insurrection?"
"The nobility's loyalties are already fraying. If we lose the sentiment of the common citizens entirely, those wolf-like aristocrats will not hesitate to strike at the throne itself, Your Majesty."
"You speak sense. We shall proceed as you suggest."
Naturally, this decision did not stem from a fatherly love for the subjects. It was the cold calculus of a feudal monarch engaged in the eternal struggle against his own vassals. By keeping the capital stable through controlled police actions, the King hoped to outmaneuver the lords.
Once the police had successfully quelled the immediate surge, Frederick III began to look further ahead.
"Wait... if we utilize the traitors in Birmingham correctly, could we not use them to bleed the power out of the troublesome nobility?"
"I... suppose that is possible, Sire."
"Then we shall intentionally refrain from deploying the royal army. Keep the Steam Knights stationed in the capital to deter any local coups. Tell the nobility to raise their own levies to suppress the rebellion. As a reward, perhaps I shall offer them ownership of Count Archibald's old territories. Hmph... although I'd much rather keep Birmingham for myself."
Following this logic, King Frederick III issued a general call to arms to the nobility. As it always had been, war was merely the continuation of politics by other means.
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The nobles were not fools; they were well aware of the King's internal maneuvering. While those who held their titles purely by blood and tradition rushed to gather troops to prove their 'loyalty,' those with actual intellect or capable advisors were more cautious. They put on a grand show of support but sent only a fraction of their mobilizable force to the front.
"Uproot the Reds of Birmingham who dared rebel against our sacred and inviolable King!"
On the day the Allied Nobility Army was to depart, the speech of one prestigious military aristocrat became famous throughout the social salons of Victoria. The fact that the same nobleman had only contributed 500 men was conveniently omitted from the polite conversation of the high-born.
Ultimately, the grand suppression force gathered by the various nobles of Victoria numbered a mere 35,000.
Yet, they mythologized this army as an invincible force, drowning in their own hubris.
"Do not fear! The Victorian army is unmatched under heaven! One of our soldiers can slaughter a hundred of those rabble! Therefore, our 35,000 men possess the combat power of 3.5 million!"
This statement was eventually turned into a satirical cartoon in a Birmingham periodical. However, despite the exaggeration, it reflected the genuine sentiment of the aristocracy. They truly believed that 35,000 men were enough to trample the revolutionary spirit of Birmingham.
Thus, this motley rabble of pampered, arrogant young lords and listless, unmotivated serf-laborer conscripts began their march into Northern Victoria, right into the maw of the revolution.
They marched toward their deaths with heads held high.
Meanwhile, events outside Victoria were beginning to resonate with the internal fire. It wasn't that they were having their own revolutions—not yet—but rather that foreign powers were eager to see the Victorian hegemony fractured.
"Support the Birmingham republicans. Funnel weapons and food to them through the black markets."
"Conduct massive military maneuvers near the Victorian border. Ensure their main royal forces cannot leave the capital to march on Birmingham."
"Exert diplomatic pressure. Force them to recognize the independence of the Northern republicans and the Columbian separatists."
These nations believed that a successful secession of Northern Victoria would permanently neuter the Empire's strength. With Ursus, Gaul, Iberia, and Leithanien all applying simultaneous pressure, the Victorian King was forced to swallow his pride.
"Dammit! Fine! Abandon Birmingham. Let the dice fall where they may. Whether the nobles win or we lose the North, let it be. After all, I have no crown lands in the North—it's all the territory of those troublesome decentralized lords anyway."
And so, the fate of the revolution was momentarily left to the winds of chance.
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However, the situation for the Northern Victorian Revolution was not exactly optimistic.
"Where in the hell did all the requisitioned supplies go?!"
The simple truth was: there was no food.
The Central Revolutionary Committee, having barely managed to secure the administrative networks, conducted an audit. They discovered that our dear Count Archibald had sold off the vast majority of the regional grain reserves to the Ursus Empire for a tidy profit, which he had then spent on a lavish lifestyle of debauchery and feasts.
The man was a lunatic.
I decided then and there that this man would definitely hang after a proper tribunal.
Because of this, we had to consider desperate measures—measures akin to 'War Communism,' as practiced by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. Those remarkably empty-headed Bolsheviks had used War Communism as a permanent economic policy in their zeal for collectivism, but we were in a position where we had to fight for the very survival of our movement.
If the entirety of the Northern Victorian farmlands fell into our hands, or if the grain from Columbia began to arrive, we might avoid this path. But for now, we had to wait.
If the suppression army arrives and digs in for a long-term siege, we are finished!
We hadn't even finished purging the reactionary elements within the liberated zones yet. To make matters worse, our revolutionary Soviets, newly formed and inexperienced in the ways of governance, were models of sheer inefficiency.
Consequently, Maxim Weber was put in charge of emergency rationing, while Fyodor Wrangel and Pyotr scrambled across the region to organize armed detachments for the factory Soviets. Alexandra and Laman were training the militias, but progress was agonizingly slow.
And yet... something felt inexplicably off.
Why was the suppression army so small? Our People's Army alone exceeded 60,000 men, and that didn't even account for the independent armed units being raised by the factory and farm Soviets. The nobility had to know this.
Moreover, why were the Steam Knights—the crown's pride—completely absent from the reports? Why was the enemy pushing for a decisive engagement rather than a war of attrition? Why? Why in the world?
I... simply stopped trying to understand their incompetence.
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