Eduran Revolution

The Eduran Revolution was a period of radical change, civil strife, war, political instability, and upheaval that occurred primarily in Edury, as well as elsewhere in central East Alutra. The causes, events, and effects, are still debated to this day. Some consider the revolution to be the culmination of the Alutran Enlightenment, a period of intelectual development that focused on individual rights, the nature of the state, the responsibilities and nature of leaders, and morality. By and large, the revolutionaries were opposed to the older of monarchical government which derived its legitimacy from divine intervention or religious justification. While the motivations and ideologies of both sides are wide and varied, the revolutionaries generally believed that the state received its legitimacy from the consent of those who they governed. The official position of the state before the revolution was that the government received its charter as a commission of the gods, in order to preserve the balance of life within their borders. Many members of government did express the view that the state didn't have an actual charter from the gods of Stroomism, but that instead, the nobility and state were the best abled to preserve that balance for the good of all people in the state.

Following the Last War, the Forwielders of Edury began to amass power. The aftermath of that conflict cemented the Forwielder as a lifetime executive office, with considerable power. Forwielder Hubert I Humber is generally seen as the last medieval Forwielder, and also as the first modern one. He jockeyed for power within the Senate, ensuring his faction in the body would stand by him with whatever decisions he made, through giving out expensive bribes, key appointments, and threats of violence. He was also the first Forwielder to send legislation, voted upon by the Senate, to the fledgling Assembly of the Estates, a group of the various different legal classes (nobility, commoner, guildsman, and peasant)

While the Eduran state had proven mostly stable, being able to withstand the nearly 160 year long tumult of the Senatorial Wars, the causes of the Revolution are generally agreed to be a series of natural and man made disasters which the state proved unable to manage. There had been a period of heavy precipitation in Edury for nearly 10 years by 1799, with little sunshine and overly wet ground many harvests were beginning to fail. Floods became more common, and disease began to flow down the Edu river. Compounding this, 1798 would be the Rampjaar (or year of disasters), with a major flood following the breach of a levee in Ontergoden and the collapse of a coal mine in Nordenfjaal, which together left hundreds to thousands dead. Both the levee and the mine were owned by prominent noblemen.

These events would lead to the Eduvesting Bread Riot, in which soldiers ordered to fire on the crowd refused to. Many see this as the beginning of the Revolution.

Context
Notes to flesh out later:

-Following Senatorial Wars, nobility had gone from merchants who owned land, to major landowners who had merchant fleets

-Formation of standing army

-centralization of power under the senate and the Daar

-Election of Duuras as Daar

Causes
--Flooding, lots of precipitation, etc

-The flood of blablabla and the mine collapse

-Harvest failures and famine

Revolution begins
--Bread riots

-Soldiers refuse to fire on civilians

-Daar and senate move out of Eduvesting

-Daar declares the Assembly an illegal group, Assembly declares Daar deposed

Conduct of the revolution
--Daar forms an army, Assembly institutes conscription

-Daar is defeated relatively quickly, he and his supporters are executed

-Instrument of the Executive is signed and becomes the basis for the new Eduran constitution

-Napolioni starts to rise; a brilliant military mind, but just an OK political one

-Lord Magistrate is founded and elected along with new government; power is still equally split between the petit merchants, craftsmen, and peasantry/commoners

-Foreign intervention begins

Foreign intervention
--Ecoralia is probably biggest foreign intervention

-Napolioni gets elected as Lord-Magistrate, leads the army

-These wars maybe extend beyond 1806??

-Foreign intervention is defeated, but no Eduran empire in East Altrua

-Napolioni is made irrelevant when he tries to abolish the Daar while on campaign; the new opposition sees the staying power the Daar and the Senate have, and so seize their moment to stop Napolioni. He is eventually electorally defeated, and retires, where he dies with no political influence.