Brumley Rebellion

Brumley Rebellion
Men of the Teutonberg Militia pose by a captured barricade
Date 14 November 1897 - 2 December 1897 Location Brumley, Ravenstern and the surrounding area Result Government Victory
Belligerents
Vionna-Frankenlisch Brumley Police Force	Brumley Commune	Anzotac-Frankenlischian Kingdom Liberals
Commanders and leaders
Alexander II Oswald Poltov Calis Rotail Chief Comissioner Matthew Reichwald Torvald Barrow	Winton Ó Rodagh   Frank Leavitt   Ian Mason   Gareth Griffith † Nola O'Duffy  (POW)	Gerold Rambart   Marshal Errol Stanton † Marshal Robert Angelico † Colonel Richard Fairfax  (POW) General Edward Miller
Units involved
Imperial Army of Reaction Third Army Corps Teutonberg Retainers Brumley Squadron	Worker's Brigades Socialist Army of Frankenlisch Commune Militias	Anzotac Imperial Guard Anzotac-Frankenlischian Army Anzotac Frankenlischian Navy
Strength
64,600 Men 10,000-40,000 Civilian volunteers	39,000-70,000 Men	20,000 Men
Casualties and losses
1,028 Military Dead 3,101 Military Wounded and Captured 109 Police casualties 471 Militia and Citizenry casualties	Mediocre, at least 6,000 captured	Heavy, presumed above 10,000

The Brumley Rebellion was a series of major uprisings in and around the major industrial city of Brumley, south of Frankenlisch. The uprisings effected, in particular, the city of Brumley itself along with the port town of Luxington and local market town of Ravenstern, the castle of which was used as a headquarters for Gerold Rambart, a claimant to the Frankenlischian throne. Local policemen, militia and armed citizenry held for several days against the relentless assault of leftist forces of the Brumley Commune and the mainly liberal forces of Gerold Rambart who represented the Jacobins, Monarcho-Liberal supporters of the claim of King Jacob Rambet who ruled the Kingdom of Frankenlisch in the early 14th century.

Belligerents

The Brumley Rebellion is remarkable as a case in history in which everybody present can be presumed to have supported one side or another, there were few genuine bystanders which is why the Rebellion is so hard to document: Despite the three major factions, Government loyalist forces, the Anarcho-Leftist Brumley Commune and the Liberal Jacobins, there were many smaller factions representing almost every political ideal that existed at the time. The reasons for Brumley's sudden descent into civil war and for the city's overly diverse political spectrum have been debated without end since the end of the Great Europan War but no true answer has ever come to light. Nonetheless, there is still clear factual information about the three major combatants.

The government forces were led almost exclusively by the King himself with the Duke of Teutonberg and Baron Barrow serving directly under him but the forces within the city were commanded by Calis Rotail, the Earl of Brumley and police and citizenry were directed by Matthew Reichwald who was the Chief Commissioner of the Brumley area. Military forces under the command of the King numbered 46,000 men with much artillery as well, the Earl of Brumley's marines and landed sailors tallied at 2,600 men. Police documents dated the First of November detail police numbers in the city as being on the rise since January and the Brumley area boasted 5,000 constables and NCOs, and around 1,000 other ranks by November. The number of civilian supporters can never truly be known but the closest estimates are between 10 and 40 thousand throughout the whole Earldom.

Forces of the Brumley Commune were divided into several groups throughout the Earldom of Brumley but the majority of their support came from the industrial districts but did find supporters from the middle class, particularly women who desired a militant alternative to the Suffragette Movement. The Chairman of the Brumley Labour Union, Winton Ó Rodagh, was elected as the temporary leader of the Brumley Commune and commanded the Worker's Brigades, the militant forces of the Commune. A sympathetic army officer, Captain Frank Leavitt, commanded the Socialist Army of Frankenlisch which was established as a proposed standing army in the last days of the uprising, it never reached further than two thousand men and was practically identical to the Worker's Brigades. Countess Nola O'Duffy was the prime figurehead of the female and upper/middle-class supporters of the Commune and was spared execution following the uprising for her social status and gender.

Gerold Rambart's forces were mainly made up of liberal rebels but there were still a fair few Jacobins who supported his family claim to the throne of Frankenlisch. He established an Imperial Guard which he nicknamed the Rainbow Guard and was made up of seven prominent warriors of his staff, each of which he knighted and anointed a specific colour. The Anzotac Army was not an impressive spectacle, few photographs exist but textual accounts suggest the force was ununiformed and mainly armed with outdated muskets and stolen militia weapons. The strongest part of the Anzotac force was its navy, a group of civilian ships outfitted with light artillery captured from the Ravenstern works along with a gunboat which failed to escape from Hansmith Naval Base. The flagship of this fleet was the schooner ISS Ruby Ford, named after the Cunard River Redwater, which boasted a crew of 200 sailors and twenty guns.

Early Stages

According to contemporary sources, the uprising began in Brumley's Central Industrial District at around 7:30 in the morning on November 14th, it was coordinated with similar labour uprisings in Ravenstern, Hansmith and Luxington which all saw somewhat more limited success. The working day had just begun and most workers had only just clocked in, violence began first in the Purcell Arms Works and many workers seized rifles. Oliver Purcell, the factory's owner, was forced from the building at gunpoint and his chief supervisor, Samuel Connell, was killed by the revolting workers. Similar actions took place throughout factories and workshops throughout the district until five in the evening that day by which point almost the entire district was under leftist control. A prominent exception being the Altman Works where Billy Altman's workers remained loyal to him and, along with police and local militia, held the works throughout the entire uprising and proved instrumental as an army headquarters for the government counterattack.

Combat on the Outskirts

Brumley Fort

At 9:30am, the Erinite Countess Nola O'Duffy banded 800 rebels together in a warehouse in the Upper Harbour District, most of them sailors or dockyard workers. The Countess was well respected by the socialist community and was quickly elected as a leader of the uprising. She stressed the need for arms and ammunition and declared that the rebels should capture Brumley Fort, which overlooked Brumley and Harbour Bay. The rebels surged towards the fort and overpowered the disorganised gate guards. They rampaged through the fort, killing many members of the Brumley Territorial Reserve Brigade and broke into the fort's two armouries and arsenal. The rebels captured the fort entirely intact and the armouries contained twelve-thousand infantry rifles, just over a hundred thousand rounds of ammunition, bayonets. More importantly, the fort's arsenal contained twelve mortars, four field guns and, most important of all, six Clement Guns.

Royal Counterattack

King Alexander II, the new King of Vionna-Frankenlisch, was told about the uprising on the third day of a summit, held in honour of his coronation and the death of his brother, Richard. He quickly formed a force of six thousand men in the Frankenlisch Military District, named the Royal Force, which he commanded personally. Consisting of four battalions of the Royal Frankenlisch Rifles, a battalion of the Royal Hastings Fusiliers, the Imperial Palace Yeomanry and thirty-two guns of the Imperial Zianian Artillery. 160 militiamen from villages on the road to Brumley joined the force, led by the Baron Barrow. The Quenminese ambassador and several Quenminese military advisors came along with the King. At 18:00 on the fourteenth, the King established his headquarters at the village of St Illebins, a settlement that overlooked Brumley from the heights surrounding the city. By seven, the Imperial Zianian Artillery had deployed and the infantry were busily engaged in entrenching the field guns. The IZA began bombarding Brumley Fort at 19:15 but the bombardment was slow due to a lack of ammunition.

For every moment the fort remained in rebel hands, more rifles filtered out into the city, arming more rebels. The fort had yet to turn its guns on the loyalist positions but it was only a matter of time. Alexander grouped the four battalions of the Frankenlisch Rifles together and placed them under the command of Brigadier Matthew Fosworth. The Frankenlisch Rifles were ordered to enter the city and carve a path to the Central Industrial District where loyalists were defending William Altman's factory, under heavy attack by socialist rebels. The Hastings Fusiliers and the militiamen were ordered to make an attack against the fort. Both of these actions were planned for the morning of the fifteenth.

At 08:00 on the fifteenth, the Royal Frankenlisch Rifles entered Brumley from the North-East, meeting little resistance. The Hastings Fusiliers marched against the fort, their right flank guarded by the militia. Led by Colonel John Quilter, the attack was met with accurate rifle fire and repulsed with twenty casualties, suffering from lack of equipment. By 11:00, the RFR had reached Industry Plaza, the direct middle of the industrial area of Brumley. North of that point was the Central Industrial District and, almost immediately, Fosworth's troops were met with snipers and roadblocks and barricades.