Rebellion of the Council

Rebellion of the Council
Part of Third Unification War
Lord Kester Jilusevic is brought before King Ludan I after being captured in Beredino
Date 1 September - 21 September 1414 Location Greznea Result Arrest of Lord Kester Jilusevic Deposition of Duke Vylas Kartig of Vmegorsk Signing of the Council Accords
Belligerents
Greznea Several lords of the Ducal Council Greznea Dukes Vylas of Vmegorsk and Samol of Nyvaya	Greznea King Ludan I Antonu and the remaining nobility
Strength
255 men	400 men
Casualties and losses
12 dead	3 dead
The conflict's official name is The Rebellion of the Dignified House of Lords against the Acts of the Confederacy

Prelude

- Dukes angered by King's violation of peace treaty - Eastern lords near Dnieper territory anxious to avoid warfare

The Rebellion

Ducal Council boycotted

On the 1st of September, when the Ducal Council was scheduled to convene in the Palace of Lords to attend legislation and the matters of the King, many of the Eastern nobles, accompanied by the dukes of Vmegorsk and Nyvaya, sent a jointly-signed letter to the King refusing to attend the convened council and stipulating that their refusal is done in protest and in faith that the King would decide rightly, and back down from the war. This was of course an incorrect assumption by the rebellion, however also an intentional one, as the King refusing to acknowledge or attend to the worries of two of his Dukes would put him in a significantly negative light among the remainder of the council and the Confederation's people, and so the declaration forced him to act.

Late that evening, King Ludan met with the dukes in attendance of the council, whom were staying with their families in the Royal Palace, and discussed privately how the Crown would respond to the letter. After some hours of discussion and a likely few hot heads, it was ultimately decided that Ludan would force legislation through the council forming a second house populated by mayors and prominent merchants, which would be based in the smaller conference chamber in the Royal Palace known as the 'Chamber of Commons'. This decision was declared to the people early the next morning, and though the people themselves were elated that they were being given a form of representation, those selected to be appointed knew they would be a pawn for the King to use.

On the night of September 3rd, the Council of the Commons was convened for the first time alongside the second session of the Ducal Council, and the resulting debates and proposals swung heavily to the favor of the Crown, allowing Ludan to safely reject the condemnation by the Eastern lords and rebellious dukes who had failed to attend the Council, and further allowing him to pass declarations denouncing them as traitors, giving him a legal pathway to detain them and strip them of titles.

Bombing of the Chamber of Commons

When the eastern lords received news of the developments in the Capital, they were incredibly furious, and acted almost immediately. On September the 5th the Lords met with one another and eventually decided on a course of action, and knowing they must act fast or lose everything, the lords immediately raised their personal retinues and expelled the King's officials from their lordships, an act which officially rendered the lordships as being in open rebellion.

On September the 10th, carriages and regiments bearing the banners of the rebellious lords arrived in Kistu, a town just a day's ride from Beredino, and set up living situations within the local town hall, to the dismay of the local mayor whom had to sleep in the building's stable during the period of stay.. The lords then presumably dispatched seven soldiers from their party to enact their retaliation, as none of the lords were actually at the scene of the crime.

Late in the night of September the 11th, four men in dark cloaks were spotted in the gardens behind the Royal Palace, carrying a barrel of something between the four of them. A further two men were accounted for by a guard who stood sentry that night, whom he'd reported having conversed with about women and fine dinners for about an hour and a half. After this conversation, the guard reported that the two men continued on their way to the courtyard, where he lost sight of them.

According to several witnesses, an estimated hour to two hours later after the three men had spoken to eachother, a large gunpowder explosion erupted from the Chamber of the Commons, and the four cloaked men earlier spotted were again spotted, this time fleeing the scene. Local sentries caught the four and detained them, later revealing them to be soldiers belonging to Lord Kester.

Beredino Riot

The bombing of the Chamber of Commons greatly angered the people of Beredino, as to them it showed that the King was not safe, nor the city itself. This caused many hundreds of locals to form crowds on the streets the next morning, shouting for the sentries from the castle to be detained, and shouting for the Crown to find and kill those who bombed the chamber. Knowing that the crowds were angered and may go into a frenzy, King Ludan played to the crowds and announced that he'd found out it was the Eastern Lord Kester whom had perpetrated the attack, and soon after the city was torn apart by vigilantes and sentries alike as they searched for the man.

Only a few hours later, word reached King Ludan that the crowd had captured the Lord Kester while he was buying a new horse's bridle from a caravaneer in the slums outside the city, under disguise to prevent capture. The crowd had paraded him through the streets and were in Boscora Square, building a gallows from which to hang the traitor and save the nation. Not wanting to be blamed for inciting the death, King Ludan intervened, bringing a guard of forty-seven men and dispersing the crowds, taking Lord Kester into custody. The King then stood on the platform of the gallows as Lord Kester was dragged away, where he allegedly said: "For the people to have such a virulent anger, must we settle our minds with the safety of a sentry?" infering that, should this anger be turned on him, he believed that the current guard details of the city would not be adequate to save him.

March on the Palace

On September the 15th, Lord Kester's trial finally began, and he was brought before King Ludan in his office within the Palace of Lords, with the loyal Dukes of the Council and several of his guards in attendance. Lord Kester was reportedly eerily silent during the trial, barely speaking a few words in answer to his charges and relying on his vicaliy, or Judge, to speak in his defense. As he was a lord, he was granted a professional of the law to defend him during his trial, as part of the honor code of Gresiy nobility. However this judge was a poor one and was reportedly unable to defend Kester to any significant degree, and so the trial was only a few minutes long, and the result was a guilty verdict against Kester, and his sentencing to death by hanging.

In response to the verdict, the lords gathered their retinues in the morning of September 16th and marched on the palace, banners flying as they went through the streets and arrived at the palace gates by the night. They were met with the assembled retinues of the King, and as a result hundreds of men faced off at the gates to the palace grounds.

Shortly past midnight, a soldier reportedly spotted several saboteurs, at least ten, breaking through a rear gate and sprinting towards the palace, likely with grenades to assassinate the King. The soldier had several of his comrades follow him and engaged the saboteurs, and after a brief melee in the courtyard all ten of them were slain, and their bodies were dumped over the wall to prevent them from polluting the gardens.

That morning, the King's men threw shards of pottery and sealed jugs of hot water over the gates and walls and onto the conspirators, causing screams and severe burning wounds to the conspirators and greatly confusing them as well, creating a panic. Some fled, mainly those wounded by the attack, but a few were unharmed soldiers who didn't want to fight the palace guard. Shortly after, the gates were opened and the King's men left the safety of the walls, attacking the assembled retinue of the conspirators and attempting to cut them down. Only a few men died during this brief attack, as the attack was so sudden that it caused the conspirators to rout.

Surrender of the Rebellion

Following the fight at the palace, the lords of the conspiracy realized that they couldn't continue, and so they entered the city and surrendered themselves to the city guard. After being detained, the dukes of Vmegorsk and Nyvaya were brought before the King for trial, however the two dukes proclaimed that "The Crown does not receive the requests of its constituencies, and wishes not the survival of Justice, but the destruction of her purity." This proclamation was met with laughter in the trial court, and after a few more minutes a guilty verdict was passed.