Workers Spring

The Workers Spring, also called the Wheelerist Revolution, or the Revolution of 1921, was a period of instability and political upheaval in 1921 in Edury. From early February to early May, tensions increased between the government and conservative movement, lead by then Lord-Magistrate Yohn Smith, and the leftist workers movements. By the end of this brief period, most members of Smith's circle were forced to resign, many institutions created and preserved by the conservative movement were abolished, and new democratic reforms were instituted by the ascendant workers movement.

Background
Most of the set up for the Workers Spring can be found in the Revolution of 1801. The Eduran Revolution is considered to be the defining moment of Eduran nationhood, and its consequences are still be answered today. Generally, the Revolution abolished class distinctions, and instituted a new constitution. However, the overall structure of Eduran government was not changed; the Forwielder, the Assembly, and the Senate all continued their existence, despite their powers ans responsibilities changing. The position of Forwielder was changed from what was de facto an elected king, to a symbolic figurehead with a fixed electoral term, and term limits. The Senate was downgraded to almost an advisory body, and the Assembly was elevated to the primary house of the Eduran legislature. Furthermore, the position of prime minister was formalized with the institution of the Lordd-Magistrate, the leader of the Assembly. However, newly unformalized class distinctions, privatization of the commons, the growing pains of industrialization, and the emergence of the bourgeoisie and the industrial labor force would grow to be existential issues.

Pre-revolutionary stresses
Before 1800, Eduran society was stratified into several formalized classes, each with its own rights, privileges, and obligations. The nobility was the politically dominant force, and it was from this class that the Forwielder was elected. The position of Forwielder had developed, by the 18th century, to be a powerful executive. While Edury was still legally a medieval confederation of cities and states, the Forwielder had jockeyed to have powers similar to other east Alutran kings. He appointed judges, approved laws, lead the army, and conducted foreign affairs. The Senate was at this point a body made up exclusively of nobility. Senators were appointed by the cities and provinces to represent their polity, not the people who lived within them. While there was an Assembly of Estates, its opinion on laws was not legally binding.

The nobility was defined as the body of Edurans who either held privileged citizenship within a city, or were granted fiefs of land in Feudal tenure, effectively land ownership. By this point, the right to trade internationally had been monopolized under the nobility, and merchants existed as employees of different nobility. At this point, the commons and the guildsmen&mdash;two separate and distinct classes&mdash;had changed significantly since the medieval period. Guildsmen were a class of persons who held membership in a guild recognized by the state, and membership in this class was contingent on them remaining members of these bodies. Commoners were simply persons who were not nobility, nor members of a guild, nor bonded peasants. By the 18th century, the number of guildsmen and peasants had decreased dramatically, and the existence of a new, informal class was cemented. The bourgeoisie was a class of persons who owned property in non-feudal tenure, or whom were otherwise wealthy, outside of the typical system. A group of petit merchants (Eduran, little salemen) started to be named, these being merchants who operated as the chartered agents of noble mercantile concerns, or as captains of the Eduran Expeditionary Company (EEC). At this point the work force of the EEC, a 400 year old institution, was entirely non-nobility workers, whether they were captains or ships officers (usually members of this petit mercantile, and therefor, the bourgeoisie,) or longshoremen, deckhands, or other workers. The EEC had also shifted in purpose, being founded in the 1300s as a guild of captains and skilled navigators and seamen, to a profit driven corporation. The administration of the EEC were clerks, secretaries, and other bourgeoisie, however, much of the funding came from noble patrons.

The peasantry were also legally defined, and a limited class. There were, depending on where in Edury they were, two types of peasant; landed, and bonded. Landed peasants had a contract as subtenants of a lord, where they received free use of a plot of land, but had to pay for it, either in currency or in a percentage of the product of the land. Bonded peasants received no land, and had to work their lords'; however, the pay they received was not dissimilar to a modern salary. While they were undoubtedly the least privileged class, bonded peasants would typically expect a set amount of food or produce of the land, regardless of the condition of the harvest. If harvests were plentiful, this meant the lord would profit greatly; however, a bad harvest would mean that a lord may have to go into debt in order to pay his bonded peasants.

The Alutran Enlightenment had also swept through Edury. Prior to this, theories on the source of power of the Forwielder and the Senate were usually justified with religion. Edury being a Stroomist state, justified the existence of these institutions by saying they were either endowed by, or outright created by, the two gods of Stroomism as the protectors of the holy balance of the realm. However, many philosophers dismissed this as superstition. Many enlightenment thinkers, such as Bringus Hingus, Eorl Cupturner, and Turtleboy posited that it was not religion that created the political institutions of the state, but the other way around. Many of them insisted that it was the people who ordained that the state exist as an executive committee to ensure the common good, and that as part of this, the state created religion in order to ensure social cohesion.

This idea was very popular amongst many of the legally nebulous bourgeoisie, who by the 1790's included industrial investors, factory operators, lawyers, scientists, and other wealthy men who were not members of the nobility. The nobility, of course, saw things a little differently. Many endorsed the religious argument, of course, but a large number also endorsed this "popular sovereignty", but saw themselves as the citizenry who gave the state its charter, and everyone else&mdash;the commons, guildsmen, and peasants&mdash;simply as subjects of society, not citizens with equal membership in it. Many noblemen called for reform by including the bourgeoisie in the nobility, or as a sort of secondary citizenship. The peasantry was split, with some endorsing popular sovereignty. However, an abolition of the feudal system would leave many peasants without the benefits they received for their labor. The state, of course, outright condemned the idea of popular sovereignty, with various senators and Forwielders decrying it as a threat to balance and harmony. Various philosophers, writers, and public speakers were censored or even forced into exile for their claims that the Senate and the Forwielder were not gods-appointed administrators of balance, but instead errant public servants.

Revolution of 1801
In 1799, a failed harvest, natural disaster, and economic recession had rendered many people across all classes very unhappy. The Assembly of the Estates met that year in Eduvesting to voice their opinion on several laws that the Senate had passed. However, at the end of their session, they had instead passed their own resolution decrying the senate and calling for new appointments by several provinces in the confederation. The Forwielder, Aethling IV of the house of Lincastle, reacted swiftly and harshly. After a weeks long back-and-forth, Aethling sent his official herald to the meeting place with the purpose of dissolving the Assembly, saying that he dismissed them from Eduvesting, and that he intended to sign a warrant to disperse their meeting. The herald had brought guards to protect his person, and the Lincastle crown, the symbol of the Forwielder's authority. A member of the Assembly, a representative of the commoners, procured a large hammer he had hid for self defense, and used it to smash the crown as the herald demanded the dispersal of the assembly. The Forwielders representatives fled, and the Assembly launched into action: in the Crown Declaration, they officially endorsed the ideas of popular sovereignty. They also declared, that since they were a more representative body than the Senate, they revoked the implicit charter that the Forwielder and Senate had to govern, and called for a trial of Aethling IV. The Forwielder, when he got report of this, ordered the army to arrest all members of the Assembly.

However, as part of the economic crisis, the state did not have money to pay much of the army. The soldiers of the garrison of Eduvesting had not received pay in several months. When orders arrived to march into the city, the footsoldiers largely ignored their officers. The state had lost the support of the army. Aethling fled the capitol, with many loyal senators. The Assembly declared themselves the natural government, and the revolution was truly under way.

Ecoralian and other international support for the reactionary faction would not do much good. Aethling would be captured by the Civic Guard that the Assembly established. His life ended as a convicted tyrant, under the guillotine. The army would largely prove ineffectual, and the Senate would not be able to elect a new Forwielder. When Ecoralian troops met with the remnants of the loyalist army, the Ecoralian force dwarfed them significantly. From 1802 on, there would be no formal loyalist faction, and the revolution had gone from a possible civil war, to an international conflict.

Through the strategic mastery of Napolioni Namelaterguy, who would rise to commander-in-chief through the revolutionary war, Ecoralia and the allies were checked. Napolioni would, at the same time, dig into a political career. After the Assembly reinstituted the position of Forwielder, but with set terms, he got himself elected. As chief executive of the state, and commander of the armed forces, he was set to begin a dictatorial reign. However, his opposition would get more politically stable as the revolution continued. As Napolioni instituted unpopular reforms&mdash;such as introducing a title peerage, the use of pre-revolutionary iconography, and then staging a coronation in the temple of Eduvesting&mdash;the opposition sought to depose the new Forwielder. As he was out on campaign, a resolution to depose him, as Aethling IV had been deposed, passed the Assembly. Another resolution, to strip the executive powers of the Forwielder and establish a new constitution, the Constitutional Corpus of Edury, also passed. Finally, a summons for Napolioni to stand trial as a tyrant was issued. Napolioni would receive it after defeating the allied anti-revolutionary army for the final time. Instead of answering the summons, he reacted to the destruction of his political life by committing suicide by way of auto-defenestration. The revolution was over.

The Eduran Revolution instituted the first liberal government in Alutra. A true republic, made not of nobility and subjects of the state, but of citizens, all equal before the law. However, not everything was perfect. Universal suffrage would take ten years after the end of the revolution to be passed, and even then, it was far from perfect; many rural agricultural workers could not get to cities or towns where ballot boxes were kept. Temples served as polling places, and in rural or very conservative constituencies, these temples would continue to charge the sacrificial fee required of visitors in old times, precluding pious non-Stroomists from voting. Furthermore, as the class system was abolished, the bourgeoisie found they needed to replace their source of cheep labor, as the official class of peasantry no longer existed. As industrialization continued on, efforts to stiff their workers of pay would get dire, until finally, the Rampdar Stuffmaking Factory in Helmden imported 20 slaves from (place that uses slavery here). Slaves had of course lived in Edury before, but there was no legal definition of slavery in Eduran law. The importation of such a large number instantly proved controversial; when the law offices of Lawis Of-the-Town submitted suit against the company on behalf of the enslaved persons, the newly established High Court of Constitutional Questions decreed that there was no legal slavery in the country, and the company would have to free them; if they wanted their labor, they would need to pay them, the same as other citizens. However, Burgesses in the new Assembly who were tied to the Rampdar company stalled attempts to pass a law officially decreeing that slavery did not exist in the Republic, and that all workers required to be paid. This attempt at stalling failed, and the law passed easily, but it was an early sign that many who now served the new republic were more beholden to self interest of their class, than the ideals that underpinned the law.

Post-revolutionary stresses
Throughout the 19th century, various issues would emerge in the republic. The Eduran constitution defined the layout of the government, mostly as it exists today; the moderating branch consisting of the Forwielder, the executive branch consisting of the Lord-Magistrate and their cabinet and ministries, the legislative branch consisting of the Assembly and the Senate, and the judicial branch, consisting of the courts. Many wished to include a bill of rights, but infighting began in regards to what rights should be protected, and how absolute they should be. A faction now called the ultra-liberals believed the individual rights should be wide, sweeping, and completely immutable. However, the conservative remnants of the old regime said that this would hamper the state's ability to protect the common good. Eventually, no bill of rights would be attached.

The constitution also contained no provisions for a partisan system. Due to electoral laws, a two-party system began to emerge. For most of the 19th century, the liberal faction would be the preeminent party in politics, with the conservative reactionary party being the usual opposition. However, these parties were loosely defined, and existed more as an alliance between burgesses, rather than centralized campaign-running, agenda pursuing entities in their own right. While other parties would form over the decades, the trend was that one party would win an outright majority, and would of course win the election for Lord-Magistrate. Elections in Edury contributed to this issue&mdash;the only people on the ballot would be the ceremonial Forwielder, and the candidate for that constituency. The Assembly would then elect its Lord-Magistrate from amongst themselves after the general election. Because voters could only vote for one burgess, and the majority party would win the magisterial election, most voters tended to strategically vote in order to avoid the spoiler affect, thus deepening the two-party system.

Furthermore, loose campaign finance law meant that private interests could essentially bribe burgesses without breaking the law. Corporations or wealthy individuals would give campaign contributions to candidates of their liking, with the unspoken contract being that then these newly elected parliamentarians would protect the interests of these financiers. By the end of the 19th century, the issue of campaign finance had gotten so dire that there were no burgesses who had not taken campaign contributions from large industrial interests, as not taking them would ensure defeat. Conglomerates like the Eduran Expeditionary Company would spend millions in what were effectively legal bribes, and were receiving hundreds of millions in subsidies, or other governmental support. That institution in particular would gain large unpopularity, due to it getting the government to spend taxpayer money on foreign adventures, support of foreign regimes, and other investments, which would only give returns to the shareholders of the EEC or companies like it.

Industrialization would also prove to offer growing pains. By the 1840's, there were more factory and industrial workers than there were agricultural workers. With the abolition of the class system, but nothing to replace it, the labor force&mdash;which made up most of the country&mdash;had little in the way of legal support. While the Rampdar case had precluded slavery from existence, no minimum wage law would be passed until after the revolution. As manufacturing swelled in profitability, wages plummeted. Worker rights protections were virtually nonexistent. By the middle of the 19th century, most men in Edury would be expected to work long hours for meager pay, in unsafe conditions. Child labor began to be exploited by mining concerns in the 1820s. Taking cues from the guilds of old, several workers tried to form labor unions.

Unionization would be a hot button issue for most of the bourgeoisie period of the republic. The liberal party was the one more tied to the bourgeoisie interests, and so supported union-busting legislation; while a minority of liberal burgesses said that the workers had the same right to form unions as the corporations had to incorporate, most supported the efforts to impede unionization. The lack of a bill of rights also meant that there were little protections for the workers right to assemble; police, both public and private, would regularly raid union meetings. While conservatives initially gave tacit support to labor unions as the successors of the guilds of the old regime, finances meant that soon, the worker unions had no friends in government. Strikes and sit-ins would be responded to by raids and arrests, mass layoffs of unionized employees, and the hiring of scabs.

By the 20th century, things had progressed to the point of breaking. Reforms took more and more effort to pass, as gridlock only worsened with an increase of corporate interests. By 1890, most governments would end their term with severe unpopularity, and parliament generally had a low approval rating. The proliferation of railways, increases in literacy rates, rise of newspapers and print media, and other bullshit would lead to significant shifts in demographics and opinions. Cities had always been the hub of Eduran life, but now they swelled way out of their borders, with slums and overcrowding becoming the standard of the day for the majority of the labor force. By world war one, things were ready to burst.

Causes
In the 1900's, events transpired which pushed the population towards resentment, and then armed reaction against, the government. In the 1890's, the conservative party changed tact, and Eduran conservatism went from a desire to apply pre-revolutionary ideals to post-revolutionary government, to a desire to preserve the Edury that existed during and right after the 1805. John Smith, the burgess for Shittington, would become the leader of the conservative party in 1901. His "bourgeoisie conservatism" as it was later called, would shape much of Eduran policy for the first decades of the 20th century. Meanwhile, the labor movement, popular progressive philosophies, and other forces would slowly begin to unite against Smith and the order that he championed.

Foreign revolutions and rise of blue-shade ideology
The end of the Silent Years in Lathadu, and the cementing of Wheelerism as their governing ideology, as well as Acul Noyon's writings, and the fomenting of the events in Velorenkia were all spread to Edury. The Brotherhood of Foresters offered asylum to Lathadun, Ordrish, and other Alutran blue writers and activists. Much of this syndicalist ideology was popular with many of Edury's industrial workers, who began to form their unions into clubs that emulated the structure of the Foresters lodges and the Lathadun gund hall system; small, mostly independent chapters that were part of a looser association. Eventually, this would form the folkmeet partisan system of Edury. Nonindustrial workers, middle class clerks, artisans and other citizens also formed similar clubs, reading rooms, and mutual aid associations.

One person who was a member of such a club was Barend de Boer, a lawyer of Gundiagh descent. Born (Gundiagh name here), he adopted an Ecoralian name as a nom d'plume to avoid backlash for his blue-shade writings. Born to a family of ferrymen who fled Lathadu during the Silent Years, de Boer had written to and kept in touch with many of the revolutionary leaders of the anti-aristocrat movement. As a lawyer, he would provide legal aide to workers and unionists in lawsuits against their employers, as well as organizing a network of the chapters of various labor groups in order to hide wanted organizers, shuffle aide to groups in need, as well as other activities. By the First World War, he was the leader, and linchpin, of a wide association of labor chapters and workers clubs.

Smithist conservatism and reactionary policy
Yohn Smith, who had been born to a former blacksmith guildsman, idealized much of the culture of pre-revolutionary Edury, and desired to infuse his policy with those ideals. He had been brought up by his uncle, a wealthy petit-merchant who instilled in Smith the values of the bourgeoisie, as well as a strong sense of pragmatism. It was this pragmatism that drove Smith to abandon most of his pre-revolutionary idealization in his bid for conservative leadership. Knowing that the conservative party would not be ascendant without the backing of the bourgeoisie elite, he strong-armed and forced his party members into abandoning what pro-labor sentiments still existed, as well as adopting a policy of loose government interference, tax-cutting, deregulation, and other business-friendly policies that he essentially stole from the liberal party. However, he maintained conservative policies strengthening the executive, giving wider breadth of powers to the police, and other issues that would allow the state to enforce the interests of the new elite. As labor unionism continued to rise, he turned to press censorship, the breaking of assemblies of people, police raids, and exile to suppress the anti-bourgeoisie movement. At one point, Smith personally signed a request for an arrest warrant of Barend de Boer, forcing him to go into hiding.

World War One
The Eduran state did not officially have colonies, but the Eduran Expeditionary Company was the sole trading forum for the Salish government and its colonial system, and the EEC supported various states with money and material in return for control of various resources. Shemia and various parts of Haksarad had EEC, and tacit Eduran, backing. The EEC outright owned large plantations and mines in the Salish colony of Leánmór, which earned a huge amount of money for the company and its benefactors. All of this was propped up with Eduran government support, pouring millions of monies into these efforts, while the profits went to private interests.

In YEAR, Haksarad invaded various Alutran colonies in the Abayadi Sea. Eduran involvement in WWI was initially popular, as propaganda successfully whipped up jingoistic fervor. However, as the cost of the war dragged on, the war became less and less popular. Economic downturn depressed most Eduran wages, and the excuse of wartime allowed Yohn Smith to pass even more draconian laws repressing the freedoms of speech, assembly, and allowing the state to interfere directly in labor disputes. Despite the fact that Edury officially won the war, by the end of it, the public felt demoralized and downtrodden. Expecting wartime measures to be relaxed, many newspapers began calling for the end of conservative governance, which was met swiftly with censorship. The navy was used to quell a dockworkers strike in Godshaven, and people began to realize that the wartime measures were there to stay.

Expeditionary Company
The loss of control in Haksarad and the Abayadi Sea during the coffee wars, the destruction in Shemia during WWI, and the beginning of the collapse of the Salish colonial system meant that the EEC was on the brink of economic ruin. The independence of Leánmór during WWI, and the seizure of EEC property, pushed it over the edge. Following WWI, layoffs were swift and brutal. The EEC were at this point wildly unpopular. The state had poured millions over several decades into attempting to preserve the EEC's status quo, and the Company had very little obligation to the common citizen. Despite the economic downturn, and despite the recent un-profitability of the EEC, the leadership of the company continued to publicly live privileged lives.

1921
By January 1921, Yohn Smith had been Lord-Magistrate for some 20 years, the longest serving Lord-Magistrate in history to this day. Despite 120 years of liberal democracy, Edurans lived under similar censorship, repression, and hardship as they had been under the Old Ways. Despite victory in WWI, most Edurans felt as if they were under the strain of defeat. Meanwhile, many workers organizations had begun to form secret stockpiles of arms in response to repression from the Smithist government. Furthermore, Smith had forced a law through which allowed corporations to hire private police in order to enforce strikebreaking and union busting policies. Several people decried Smith as establishing the dictatorship that Napolioni failed to do during the revolution of 1801, although many such accusations had to be made privately, either in correspondence to the Lord-Magistrate, or in secret meetings of illegal opposition groups.

It is not very well known what Smith's personal positions were in January 1921. His diary entries stop around this time, and the journal entries that do exist from before this period show a stressed and depressed man. Some postulate that his policies had genuine good intentions, and that his repression of opposition was intended to slow the erosion of what little trust there was left in the government. Proponents of this theory point to the evidence that Smith's government did not delay, cancel, nor interfere in elections; he and his party were legitimately elected into power in accordance with the law. However, past 1915, his party held only a plurality and not an outright majority in parliament. Other historians argue that Smith was attempting to preserve his legitimacy by using the law to further entrench his dictatorial power, and if threats to his position emerged that required extralegal methods, he would have done so. Whatever the case, Smith's cabinet in 1921 had enacted policies allowing them to censor or even jail opponent newspaper publishers, break up assemblies, and violate other civil rights.

At the same time, Barend de Boer had organized a wide network of laborer's organizations. This network would form the frame for the Workers Party, but at the moment was held together only by de Boer's efforts. In his headquarters of the General Laborer's Brotherhood (which would later become Workers Party Chapter #0001) in Godshaven, de Boer had stockpiled caches of arms across the city, but with the intention of defense; he would not commit to a first strike against the Smithist government. With the layoffs of the dockhands (a large section of Godshaven's workforce,) much of the membership of de Boer's core support was now idle and without pay. Certain party dignitaries underneath de Boer tried to pressure him into initiating a revolution, with Aodhan Berker and his supporters insisting that once they started an armed movement in Godshaven, other workers institutions would come to support them. Barend de Boer, in his communication with worker's chapters across the country, thought this to be false. Many industrial associations were hesitant to poke the bear, thinking that an armed rebellion to be doomed to failure. De Boer instead focused his efforts on providing mutual aide, and small acts of industrial resistance and sabotage, rather than outright striking or armed action. His main concern was that working too much in the open would provoke a police raid, leading to the arrest of himself or others who were crucial to his organized network; his closest party ministers, while they disagreed on a large number of doctrinal issues, were committed to de Boer's leadership and working together to establish a fairer society, in which they could settle their differences parliamentary.

De Boer worked little on theory or ideology, and is quoted as having said "Ideas are worthless to a man who can't feed himself." He concerned himself with material action first, preferring to have tangible results for his partisan comrades, rather than focus on ideology. While much of his party leadership were lawyers or scholars, he knew the make of his party were daylaborers. While these people did have policy desires and ideologies, their first focus was on whether they could pay the bills to provide for them and their families.

However, de Boer did work on some general theory. Part of why is due to the cultural position of politics in Edury; a person without political opinions, even if they were disenfranchised, was seen as an idiot. Wheelerists in Lathadu and much of Alutra considered politics unimportant, or even a tool of the economically privileged. Most Edurans saw things the other way; most Blue-shade writers of the early 20th century saw economics as the tool by which the politically privileged classes kept their power. De Boer secretly printed pamphlets and newspaper articles outlining the policy that would be required for a worker's state; worker ownership of industry, voting reform, a bill of rights to protect freedoms of speech and assembly, as well as other things. This was how he held his network together: the outlining of a general manifesto that appealed to a wide swath of the members of these laborers chapters.

Brooble River Rebellion
By February of 1921, wage cuts and layoffs had gotten to the worst point of the recession. In the town of Bathstream, in response to an announcement that wages would be cut further, the miners working for the United Earthmoving Concern ignored instructions from Godshaven, and went on strike. On February 2nd, at 12:00, the miners put down their tools and formed a picket line outside the entrance to the mine. Unbeknownst to the local management, two local reporters from the nearby town of Bartleborough decided to visit the site of the strike. By 2:24, the private security of the UEC were on scene, and a scuffle broke out. According to contemporary accounts, either one policeman went to physically restrain a striking worker, or he walked up to the picket line in response to a rock being thrown at him. What is in agreement is that the police eventually shot into the crowd, killing about 7 men. One of these men was one of the reporters, the other fleeing the scene. By the end of the 2nd, the private police had successfully broken the strike. This was not the only strike breaking action to involve bloodshed, but it is the most infamous due to the events that transpired directly after it.

The surviving reporter, Joms Scriber, arrived back in Bartleborough between 2:15 and 4:00 AM on the 3rd. He had ran on foot the entire way, and had the printing press for which he worked stopped, reprinted the mornings local paper, and forced his bosses to start distribution as the papers were being printed. By 6:00 AM, rumors about the killings in Bathstream, and the death of the other reported (Jops Tiler,) were spreading through the town. The previous day, rail cars owned by the military had been shunted into Bartleborough. This contributed to a rumor that the military was coming into the river valley in which the two towns were situated in order to preemptively repress the citizens of the surrounding towns. An emergency meeting of the Coalminers Brotherhood of Bartleborough was convened at 6:35, and the decision was made to take up arms and seize the town hall- partly prompted by panic of the rumors of the military. However, the military rail cars were simply being moved to the depot in town for maintenance, and few, if any, soldiers were present with them. Furthermore, the private police in Bathstream had requested some support from the town police of Bartleborough, so the town armory was understaffed. At 7:00 AM, 25 miners with guns arrived on the steps of the town hall. Overpowering the few people present there, the miners barricaded themselves in the building. What happened next is not entirely known. Either the police in the armory heard of some commotion in the town hall, and left, or the miners who arrived at the armory simply outnumbered the police there and they surrendered. In either case; 15 men from the Coalminers Brotherhood gained control of the armory. The rest of the town followed soon after, and the remaining police surrendered, as well as the mayor. The priest of the local Stroomist temple was sympathetic to the cause of labor, and conducted a public sacrifice and prayer to honor the "re-incorporation of the town."

As the Coalminers Brotherhood gained control of Bartleborough, they communicated with other mining towns up and downriver. By the 5th of February, the towns of Ayeton, Beeborough, Cedington, and Deeham were in control of the various miners unions, as their stockpiles of arms came into use. Rail depots, stations, junctions, and signal towers were seized, as well as telegraph and telephone directories. Soon, the entire Brooble river valley was either under the control of various workers militias, or being contested.

News would only reach Godshaven by the 6th. As the morning news circulated, newspapers were only reporting on the rebellion in Brattleborough and Bathstream. Morning radio shows were based off the newspapers, and reported the same. However, by 11:30, other reports started reaching the capitol. Soon, rumors about the true nature of the rebellion along the Brooble were flying throughout the city. The workers organizations started emergency meetings, and Barend de Boer started frantically calling on his allies in the eastern provinces to get the facts of the situation. Similarly, in the Palace of the Republic, Yohn Smith and his cabinet had started deliberations on what to do about Brattleborough. However, by noon, the cabinet deliberations turned into an emergency session of the Assembly, with panic rippling though the house as rumors of rebellion ripped through the halls of government. Smith, without leave of the Forwielder or the Assembly, ordered the military to intervene. The closest military armory was in Shendlington, staffed by the Second Jora Regiment. The 2nd Jora were made up almost entirely of conscripts or reservists. At 6:00 PM on the 6th of February, the regiment received orders to descend upon Brattleborough and regain control of the town, before moving onto the rest of the river valley. However, due to the militia control of the railways, the 2nd Joru could only get as far as Cedington. The colonel of the regiment, Brick Hromby, made the decision to start with that town and then move on. The 2nd Joru disembarked their trains about 5 miles outside the city, and marched in. They encountered a barricade, having alerted the workers militia to their presence, on the outskirts of the town. After a stand-off, with the military ordering the workers to decamp and surrender, the order was given to fire upon the barricade. The conscript soldiers, however, would not fire. The commander of the workers militia at the barricade, Aethlestan Digger, maintained control of his men, and prevented them from firing as well; seeing that he had lost control of his regiment, Colonel Hromby surrendered to Digger and ordered his officers to do the same.

Central military command learned of the mutiny in the Brooble by the evening of the 8th of February. General Edmund Honter, the overall commander of the army, ordered his officers not to commit any conscript regiments to the rebellion. After giving his report to Cabinet, Yohn Smith broke down, and ordered a complete military campaign against the Brooble rebellion. Honter delayed, and went to his home in a posh neighborhood of Godshaven. On the 9th of February, he consulted with his officers, advisors, and staff. Honter knew that only about 10% of the army were professional soldiers, the rest being reservists or conscripts. According to some, he and his staff predicted that the rebellion would spread, and that foreign powers- Gladomyr, Ecoralia, and Ordrey- would react against them, as they had done in 1801.

Between 6:00 AM and 9:00 AM on the 9th of February, orders from Godshaven began to go out. A mass mobilization of both professional and conscript regiments began- away from the Brooble, indeed the core provinces of the Richtal, and Marshire, where Godshaven is located, towards the borders with Ecoralia, Gladomyr, and Ordrey.

During all of this, the government had completely lost control of the censorship apparatus they had developed during and after WWI. Newspapers openly supported, or decried, the Brooble Rebellion. In liberal circles, feelings varied between support for the rebellion as an Anti-Smithist movement, or neutrality. Members of the middle classes were split on the issues in the week of the rebellion. Shipping captains, merchants, shopkeeps and clerks, tended to side on against the rebellion, saying that resistance against the Smithist cabinet would not be achieved though a rebellion that would bring unbalance and disorder to the Republic. Other middle class persons, such as middle managers, and others, had started the 1900s generally sympathetic to the bourgeoisie order that they were attached to. However, a decade of repression of the kind not seen since Aethlin IV had pushed most of them to the side of labor. Many openly sided with the labor militias, and formed secret pacts of their own with the intent to aide the Brooble Rebellion. All of this would push towards the 11th of February.

Violence and rebellion start
The General Laborers Brotherhood had been in emergency meetings for the entire week of the rebellion. As the police, and then the military, failed to contain the rebellion, feelings in the party presidium shifted. While a few had been continuously trying to push for armed revolution for years, by the 11th of February, the leadership and membership were of one mind: the time to strike was here. Barend de Boer had secret arms stockpiles shuffled around, with the goal of hiding their numbers and supplied from the police. After the 5th of February, the police of Godshaven had turned the city into a police state. Arrests, raids, seizures of property, and surveillance were all conducted without warrants. De Boer wished to delay until the most opportune time, but also knew that he could not wait forever, as eventually the police would break his network and stockpiles. By noon of the 11th, an unsubstantiated- but true- rumor began to circulate that the military was mobilizing out of the city. Supposing that this was a bid to move into the Brooble river valley, and that Smith's government had simply miscalculated, de Boer gave the order to take up arms.

At 5:00 AM of the 12th, 230-250 workers marched from their stockpiles, armed. They made their way first to the central train station of Godshaven, which their occupied without incident. The militia then moved on to gain control of telephone relay stations, telegraph stations, and of the city metro. By 5:30, barricades began to be built, and moved, as the General Laborers Brotherhood gained more control of the town. By 5:42, the police were aware of what was happening, and firefights broke out. Once the police began to react to the GLB, Barend de Boer ordered an attack on the Palace of the Republic.

Yohn Smith was woken up at 6:05 AM. Immediately calling General Honter, he found that the general and his entire staff had departed the city, and were on their way out of Marshire altogether. Ordering the police to pull back and reinforce the Palace of the Republic, where he also called an immediate emergency session of the Assembly. Only about a third of the Boroughmen would be able to make it, as the chaos in the city scared most of them off. By 10:10 AM, the police had fortified positions around the Palace, and the revolutionaries had control of most of the city. Fighting began, with the GLB slogging their way to the palace district.

Barend de Boer had communicated to the other workers militias in Marshire, and had them take up arms right away. Communications swarmed through the rest of the country, as loyalist Smithist police departments tried to stop telegrams and phone calls from leaving Marshire, and the revolutionaries (now calling themselves a variety of names, of which Februarists would be the most popular historically,) attempted to circumvent these issues. Revolutionaries sprang up across the country, but several moderate dominated workers halls were hesitant to act. However, a coalition of Februarists, anti-Smithist liberals, student bodies, and others came to existence. By the 13th of February, the country was in full blown revolution.

Widespread revolution
As the country descended into revolution, General Honter shored up the defensive lines on the frontiers of the country. He theorized that the nation would need to fight a war on two fronts, and that it would not last through a war of attrition. He first went west, to the border with Ecoralia, reasoning that he could beat them back and set up defensive works through the passes of the hills and low mountains. Then he would turn east, to deal with Gladomyr.

As he dealt with the coming reprisals from foreign countries, Edury went up like a tinderbox. In the Richtal and Marshire, the heartland of the commonwealth, Februarist revolutionaries clashed with private and public police. In the hill provinces to the east and west, villages and towns fell to the workers militias. As the army passed through these towns, an uneasy truce was formed as high command ordered their men not to engage against the revolutionaries. Conscript regiments suffered heavily from desertion as their men broke off to join the revolutionaries, leading to General Honter being forced to reroute conscript regiments away from their home provinces.

As the days wore on, the worker militias largely gained control of lines of communication. Railway workers and bargemen largely sided with the workers parties, and aided or took part in the militia action. The Richtal, the industrial heartland of Edury, went up in a blaze of fervent martial activity, and without the military there to repress the workers, local police agencies acted independently and without coordination. Barend de Boer's networking was able to reach the biggest unions and workers militias in the Richtal, and his control of the movement went mostly through the Altogeþer Workmeet of Eduvesting. Eduvesting, the former capital of the nation, was the city which had the greatest degree of control of the Edu river. By February the 20th, the city government of the old capital had surrendered, and a Workers Council was being set up to administer the city.

Throughout the country, in cities where the workers were successful, Workers Councils (or Workers Folkmeets) were set up generally to the same blueprint. If one union was prominent in the city, then it would generally be the leadership of that union who would claim the city hall or Stroomist temple as their base of operations. In one-union towns, generally this leadership would then host ad-hoc elections to legitimize their new positions. However, in larger cities with more than one Folkmeet, these councils would generally be the leadership of the most prominent unions, or the members who had handled the inter-operations of these institutions.

By February 27th, most cities with populations over 30,000 had been taken over by these Workers Councils. In the capital, the Buroughmen who were held essentially captive in the Palace of the Republic were starting to have enough. Yohn Smith's cabinet no longer had control of the conservative faction, who had largely rebelled, and Smith was forced to use the threat of the revolutionaries to try and bend the Assembly to his will. After two weeks of being besieged in the palace quarter, the revolutionaries did not lose steam, although the Capitoline police held out their resistance. However, their resources were becoming stretched, and the chief of police informed the Lord Magistrate that they would have enough men and material to last only until March.

Meanwhile, de Boer had control of the central valley of Edury and used the persistence of Smith to keep the cohesion of his movement together. Cracks were already starting to form that would dominate the next few years, as not all the workers agreed on policy. Many mining workers chapters wanted to continue exporting coal abroad, whereas manufacturing workers generally favored protectionist policies that would provide Eduran factories with plentiful coal. Dock workers in the north, despite the layoffs and wage reductions of the Eduran Expeditionary Company, wanted to continue the {neo-colonialist} policies in order to provide shipping and dock workers with plentiful employment. They also favored continued good relations with Salia. These dock workers made up a good portion of Barend de Boer's immediate support, however, they were a minority in the country and many of their positions were not as popular in the rest of Edury. However, for now, the hold outs in Godshaven, as well as the threat of international intervention, allowed Barend de Boer to keep his movement together for a little while longer.

Februarist governance
By March, it was apparent to the Assembly that they had not been in control of the country, and its core was probably now in the hands of the revolution. Most of the Assembly did not know the names of the leadership of this rebellion, as Barend de Boer had meticulously hid the centralization of the workers movements. However, the one thing that was for sure was that the Assembly had, by the 2nd of March, been worn down completely. As the revolutionaries pushed into the Palace district, and reports of their progress reached the Assembly during a meeting, panic exploded. One Burgess, Maerk Jaerk, stood up and gained control of the moment by shouting the loudest. He proposed that the Assembly recall Smith and depose him and revoke his cabinet appointments. Technically, as Smith, being Lord Magistrate, was the chair of the assembly, it was up to him to table this movement and put it to a vote. However, the mood of the Assembly was no longer able to tolerate Smith. They shouted the arch-conservative down, drowning out his calls of order. Some conflicting reports suggest that he threatened his fellow Burgesses, but by the end of the day, he had lost. He ordered the police to stand down and invite the revolutionary leadership into the Palace of the Republic.

Barend de Boer, upon entering the Palace, placed Yohn Smith under arrest and called the rest of the Assembly into session. Allowing two days for them to arrive in Godshaven, and informing the other Februarists of their victory in the capital, the revolution slowed. Police agencies throughout the country stood down. After deliberations, the Assembly and the Februarists agreed: there would be immediate snap-elections, and the workers militias and police agencies would not interfere. First-Past-the-Post elections were abolished, and the snap-elections of 1921 would be the first mixed-member proportional elections in Edury; the winner of the partisan vote would appoint their leader to be Lord-Magistrate, and so that position would be directly elected by the people. A bill of rights would be passed, protecting the rights to free speech, assembly, etc., that Smith's government had violated. The Folkmeet partisan system would be cemented as the official partisan system of the country, with most of the chapters that de Boer had organized forming the Workers Association. In return, for the immediate future, the constitutional amendments would not give Edury an official ideological stand; on paper, Edury would not become a workers state.

The elections took a week. Barend de Boer would work his Workers Association hard, making contradictory promises to his various electoral bases and running a propaganda machine that the country had not seen in decades. His party handily won the election, and thus far, is the only party to win over 51% of the Assembly after the introduction of mixed-member proportional voting. During his victory, General Honter briefly returned to Godshaven to congratulate de Boer, and give him dire information. He believed that Ecoralia could be held off, and Gladomyr dealt with, but Edury would not be able to win a protracted war against their neighbors.

De Boer's slate of reforms had to wait for the war, soon to be an international affair, to be over.

International Affair
During the elections and de Boer's new government, General Honter kept busy. Ecoralian military forces responded speedily to Eduran mobilization, moving troops to their border. Honter took the initiative, and flooded his troops into Ecoralia to defeat their forces in detail and push them out; this generally went well. Ecoralian forces pulled away from the border in disarray, expecting Eduran forces to pursue. However, Honter stopped his forces and hunkered down in the mountain passes, fortifying the border as fast as he could. Satisfied with the condition of the frontier, he began to organize troops to respond to Myrish intervention.

In Ecoralia, with the agression of Honter, Galvian and Renesian armies mobilized in order to bolster Ecoralian forces. Neither nation had particularly friendly relations with Ecoralia; Renesia and Edury had participated in the Ecoral Toll War some 50 years prior. However, to both governments, the revolution in Edury presented more danger than their relations with Ecoralia.

Renesia had throughout the industrial revolution had a profitable trade relationship with Edury. Eduran coal, and to a lesser degree, foodstuffs, were imported in large numbers. In turn, Eduran factories coveted Renesian steel, requiring it for their rapid industrialization. This relationship strengthened ties between the two states, despite their governments divergent philosophies. The quick victory of the revolution worried Renesia and its interests that coal would no longer be available for importation, and its biggest buyers of steel would be rent asunder. Galiva was, at this point, still ruled by its monarchy. The liberal revolution 120 years ago already had ruffled feathers, but the workers revolution threatened to destabilize the Blethic region.

Ecoralia, of course, had no love lost with their neighbors to the east. Universally panned in Eduran halls for hundreds of years, the primary respondent to the Eduran Revolution, an ardent bastion of monarchism, and a competitor with Edury for influence in the region and the world stage, Ecoralian governments held both the liberal bourgeoisie government, and the new workers government, in deep contempt. It was an easily justifiable war for them.

After the failure to hold back Eduran forces, however, Galvian General Nameguy Editlater assumed overall command of the southern armies. He held his position, waiting for Eduran forces to push further into Ecoralia to overextend themselves. Renesian Commander Audowin Werner similarly assumed overall command in the north. Both forces began digging trenches and building fortifications in Ecoralia, knowing that time was on their side.

The Salian response was more saline. While the Eduran bourgeoisie government had friendly relations with Salia and their largest prominent clans, and the colonially important clans themselves, it was not immediately clear as to what the new government's position would be regarding Salia and their colonial policy. The sailors and dockworkers favored continued participation in their agreements with Salia. However, as time wore on, it was clear that the interests if Salia and its government did not align with the new Wheelerist regime. It committed a response to the reactionary allies, although its mobilization was slow. It would not assemble a force in time to enter the war.

Meanwhile, while all this was going on, Barend de Boer was in frantic communication with Myrish diplomats and government officials. While the revolution was not popular with the Myrish government, de Boer was able to forestay their involvement in the war by promising to nullify the agreements with the Salian government, and pull EEC-like involvement from the colonial world stage. In return, Myrish colonies would allow Eduran merchants to do business in Myrish colonies, and Gladomyr would not intervene in the revolution.

By March 15th, General Honter was able to pull the soldiers he mobilized to the Myrish border to the Ecoralian front. With various workers militias giving aide, he pushed into Ecoralia further. While he controlled the passes into the country, they were still mountain passes; troops were slow to move, and tanks, artillery, etc., crawled. In southern Ecoralia, the Galvian lead forces triumphed, successfully pushing Eduran forces back and winning a string of victories. As Renesia and Ecoralia began to move in the north, Barend de Boer sued for peace and offered concessions.

Taking advantage of the fact that none of the allies particularly liked eachother, de Boer made the decision to acquiesce to Renesian and Galvian demands, in order to shaft Ecoralia. As such, Renesia would continue to buy Eduran coal, with a set quantity put aside in order to meet Renesian demand. No tariffs would be applied to coal sold to Renesian entities, and Edury would commit to spending a certain amount on buying Renesian steel. Galvia would harbor Yohn Smith and the other Smithist conservatives, and Edury would not submit international complaint in the future if Galvia punished Eduran blue-shade or liberal speakers in its country how it saw fit; furthermore, Edury would commit to buying Galvian copper.

Ecoralias allies, having gotten what they wanted, abandoned her. In the Treaty of the Six Bridges, the Treaty of Roodham was renewed, forcing Ecoralia to keep the canal open toll-free. Its military was weakened by the action within its borders, and the plethora of minorities within the country were disgruntled, discontented, and disabused of any notion of pan-Ecoralianism. The Tretuish minority, concentrated in the south-east, was the angriest. Furthermore, the central government's ability to keep internal cohesion was seriously hampered. In the coming decades, things would go poorly for Ecoralia.

Salia had finished assembling their force around the time of the treaty. They demobilized without much fuss.

Aftermath
With the cessation of hostilities, and his position secure, Barend de Boer almost immediately made it clear on every occasion he could how unhappy he was as the leader of the country. The Workers Association almost instantly began to fracture, as different workers groups wanted to pursue different agendas. The Dockworkers Meet, one of de Boer's power bases in the north, made it clear how unhappy they were with the Myrish agreement by splintering off and forming their own party.

However, for the time being, de Boer held power. The first policy object he pursued was worker ownership of industry. Liberal Burgesses who aligned with small shopowners, rather than large industrial concerns, presented the biggest obstacle. These particular Burgesses were still popular, as the small shops held a better position in the public consciousness than the large companies that had tied themselves to Smith and his ilk. De Boer mollified them by excluding them from most of his regulation, save a minimum wage, to which he offered assistance to small businesses that legitimately could not afford to pay this.

Next was land ownership. Aside from neutering urban landlords, which he achieved easily, agricultural land was more difficult. Many farmers were tenants of larger landlords, some the remnants of the nobility from over 100 years ago. Barend de Boer was wary of devolving land ownership en mass, for he feared that if he gave land away willy-nilly, people with little to no agricultural experience would fail as farmers and lead to food shortages. As such, the largest 2,000 landowners in the country, plus the lands of any Smithists who had been exiled to Galvia, were subject to seizure. Established tenants of these landlords would be eligible to have their rented plots of land given to them. Then, it was decreed that no land sales would be allowed to be completed for 10 years, and after that, any land sale over 10 acres would need to be approved by the government, in order to prevent massive farms from outcompeting smaller farms. In order to support these small farms and ensure that they did not go out of business from over competition, they would subrent out the usufruct of the land for growing government owned grain. The state would pay this to the farmers, and then take ownership of the harvest, and sell the product at a subsidized rate.

Large industries, such as coal and certain manufacturing centers, were taken control of by the government. Saying that they were controlled by the state, but owned by their workers, the ministry of labor separated administration from operations. Administrators would be civil servants, but day to day operations would be handled by the workers, who would on a case-by-case basis decide either to elect their new managers or have them be appointed.

The Eduran Expeditionary Company was the largest thorn. They owned partial stakes in every single mercantile ship in the country, as well as a horizontal monopoly in every aspect of the shipping industry. The state decided to expropriate their assets, and forcibly dissolve the company. A variety of partially worker owned, partially investor owned shipping companies took its place, and the state would assume the coordination that the EEC had over its massive mercantile fleet.

However, de Boer's stranglehold would not last forever. A dockworkers strike would fracture the party, with several workers unions accusing the Workers Association of turning into what they strove to kill. De Boer resigned at the leader of the party, and began a happy retirement after his term ended. Some say that he had purposefully engineered the splitting of the party, in order to prevent his new movement from becoming dictatorial.

The Workers Spring would bring into being Alutra's second Wheelerist government, if not a constitutionally ideological state. It would lay some of the foundation for the coming decades, and set Edury's course for the next hundred years. The Workers Association would, through coalitions, remain the dominant party until the 1971 Great Kerfuffle.