Easter Revolution
| Easter Revolution | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the aftermath of the War of the Triple Alliance | |||||||
 The burning of the Katterburg palace by the revolutionaries at the height of the revolution. | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
  Revolutionaries | |||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
 Adalbert Adolf von Hoetzsch |
Sebastian Mertz † Fabian Vogelstein  Bastian Fischart Ludwig Vollmar Ioseb Cherkezishvili † | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 130,000 |
150,000 (de jure) 20,000-40,000 (de facto) | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 468 killed, 4,579 wounded, and 96 missing | 4,683 confirmed killed and buried; unconfirmed estimates between 8,000 to 10,000 killed | ||||||
The Easter Revolution (Weranian: Osterrevolution) sometimes known as the Wiesstadt Uprising (Wiesstädter Aufstand) was an anti-monarchist insurrection in Werania that occurred in 1856 from 27 April to it's suppression on the 19 June. Occurring in the aftermath of the War of the Triple Alliance it is generally considered to be the last major revolutionary action to establish a republic in Werania in the 19th century and its suppression heralding the end of the process of Weranian Unification.
The War of the Triple Alliance had radicalised the Weranian working class who endured widespread devastation wrought by the nations of the Triple Alliance, rapidly rising bread prices and high war taxes. The Torrazza Accords which were signed to end the war were not seen particularly by Weranian republicans as sufficient for the sacrifices Weranians had given to the war leading to the famous writer Bastian Fischart to call for patriots to "throw off the shackles of this Torrazza peace" to establish a revolutionary republican government. Although discontent of the Torrazza accords gave impetus for the revolution stagnant living conditions, a desire for political reform, the unpopularity of King Adalbert and republican agitation led to the conditions for the revolt.
The immediate cause of the revolution was the Tuesday Massacre when protesters in Westbrücken were suppressed by the National Guard who killed 21 people. Similar protesters backed by the police and army units stationed in the city soon stormed the Katterburg palace in Wiesstadt where they declared a revolutionary government. The veteran revolutionary Sebastian Mertz was given extraordinary powers to oversee the defence of the revolution as the revolutionaries began assembling forces to secure the rest of the country.
The Easter revolutionaries came from a broad spectrum of ideologies - although traditional republicans dominated the revolutionary government itself feminist, socialist, and anarchist elements were also present. The revolutionary leaders were mainly intellectuals, journalists and writers with only three figures - Mertz, the former head of the Wiesstadten garrison Fabian Vogelstein and the exiled Vedmedi revolutionary Ioseb Cherkezishvili - having substantial military experience. A falsified report that the revolutionaries had killed cardinal Conrad Clemens von August turned public opinion in the provinces hampered the revolutionaries appeal, leading to the Weranian government to seize the initiative and dispatch 130,000 troops under the command of Adolf von Hoetzsch to crush the rebellion.
Von Hoetzsch's strategy was to utilise attrition warfare to permanently destroy the revolutionary forces. This strategy backfired as the revolutionaries instead gained popularity being able to mobilise more volunteers. However an inability for the revolutionary leadership to organise an effective fighting force hampered their counter-offensive against von Hoetzsch's forces, particularly as there was infighting within the leadership. The burning of the Katterburg palace - the symbol of the monarchy - galvanised Adalbert to order von Hoetzsch to crush the rebellion more promptly.
Government forces would retake the city by mid-June with many revolutionary leaders either being killed or fleeing to Azmara. The subsequent repression of revolutionary forces by von Hoetzsch led to up to 10,000 deaths making them some of the worst massacres in east Euclea in the time period with women and children also being executed. The suppression of the revolution led to republican and socialist politics to decline in the following decade, emerging again in a less revolutionary form in the 1870's when the Weranian government issued an amnesty to the revolutionaries.
The revolutionaries in their brief time in power experimented with a wide range of policies ranging from the prohibition of child labour, the abolition of organised religion, the right of employees to take over an enterprise, the granting near equal rights to men and women and the restoration of the republic. The short lifetime of the Wiesstadt revolution however meant many of these policies remained only partly fulfilled.
The revolution and its failure would play a role in influencing socialist and republican thought in Euclea, notably for Weranian socialists Bastian Fischart and Ludwig Vollmar who directly participated in the revolution but also Yuri Nemtsov, xxx and xxx.
Background
Weranian Unification had been completed in 1842 through an alliance between the Cislanian monarchy under Rudolf IV and his minister-president Ulrich von Bayrhoffer and an assortment of radicals and republicans such as Klemens Müller and Sebastian Mertz who were members of the Septemberist secret society that advocated for a restoration of the Weranian Republic. The process of unification meant that the unified state was a federal monarchy rather then the unitary republic favoured by many Weranian nationalists. Nevertheless Rudolf IV's adroit management of the political system was able to ensure that a liberal, anti-clerical majority where able to govern placating republican sentiment. Rudolf IV's successor, Adalbert, was more absolutist in his character but unlike Rudolf IV was more supportive of annexing the Eastern Marches of Kirenia (Zinngebirge basin, Garz, Zittau, Delland and Ruttland), areas coveted by Weranian nationalists.
Adalbert's pan-Weranic views were informed by his belief that if Werania was unable to annex the Eastern Marches republicanism amongst the burgeoning middle classes would increase and that by decisively defeating Kirenia the Cislanian monarchy would secure its status as the representative of the Weranian people as a whole. This diagnosis was shared by the centre-left within the Bundestag led by von Bayrhoffer who Adalbert restored to the premiership shortly after his coronation. Of particular note was the widespread perception that large elements of the military supported a republican government modelled on that of Balthasar Hötzendorf's "republic of colonels" that governed Werania during the revolutionary wars. Many members of the military were former members of the Central Revolutionary Federation, commonly known as the Septemberists, who had spent much of the pre-unification period agitating for revolutionary action to achieve unification.
Post-unification Werania was marked by a discrepancy between the rural countryside and rapidly industrialising urban centres. Urban centres were seen as bastions of republicanism with the middle classes and proletariat fondly remembering the legacy of the republic and resenting the conservative order imposed on Werania in the aftermath of the revolution in the 1810's. The cities also tended to have stronger feelings of a shared Weranian identity due to the influx of Weranians from different parts of the country into them as they rapidly expanded. Urban centres such as Westbrücken, Wiesstadt, Ostdorf am Main, Gothberg and Frankendorf had been major centres of revolutionary, republican and nationalist agitation in the pre-unification period. Comparatively rural areas remained more conservative due to the continued influence of the Solarian Catholic Church, higher rates of illiteracy, greater provincialism and negative memories of the republican period which was remembered more for the violent suppression of monarchist sentiments and the destructive effects of the massenaushebung.
Republicans and revolutionaries
Following unification republicans continued to remain politically active. In the Bundestag they sat in their own parliamentary group, the far-left Republican Bloc whilst they remained influential in the public sphere in their Wiesstadt-based newspaper, Der Herold. The traditional republicans were mainly based in Westbrücken, the historical centre of radical politics in Werania, but were divided between a more revolutionary and reformist faction. The reformist faction, which was stronger within the Bundestag, supported the creation of a federal republic based on Asterian nations such as Ardesia and Marchenia, essentially replacing the monarchical federal presidency with an elected president, whilst maintaining a liberal and anti-clerical position. The revolutionary faction, influential in Der Herold and amongst army officers, was more appraising of the old republic supporting the restoration of a centralised, radical regime predicated on dirigisme and the Cult of Rationalism.
Whilst traditional republicans were more influential in elite circles newer strains of radical republicanism were emerging as Werania industrialised. Socialist movements had begun to emerge across Euclea as activists and writers began to criticise the inequality and social deprivation associated with industrialisation. Early Weranian socialists generally were utopian in character based on advocacy of meritocracy and social and economic relations based around consumers' co-operatives rather then profiteering. Utopian socialists such as Fritz Möhring also influenced the early trade union movement which tended to be radical in their demands for workplace militancy but less ambitious in terms of broader political reform.
A key figure in the development of socialist republicanism in Werania was the writer Bastian Fischart. Fischart had come to prominence in 1843 for his play I. Eine Tragödie but had become by the early 1850's an increasingly influential social critic who abhorred what he saw as the moral failings of the unified Weranian state. His 1855 continuation of Eine Tragödie was noted to comment more broadly on social phenomena reflecting Fischart's increasingly left-wing views. Fischart in the 1850's was a regular writer at Der Herold and advocated for a synthesis between the revolutionary republican politics dominant within intellectual circles with socialist ideas of worker militancy and the creation of a "social republic". Fischart's advocacy of a republican-socialist union helped introduce both socialist ideals to the republican movement whilst encouraging socialists towards more revolutionary action.
Fischart's protégés such as Ludwig Vollmar went further in this synthesis calling for workers' organisations to become the basis for revolutionary action and for the creation of a räterepublik based around workers' councils, a forerunner to syndicalist and councilist ideologies. Vollmar was credited for helping create a network of cells within worker movements around Werania in the 1850's that were trained and armed a professional revolutionaries based on the Septemberist model whilst being embedded into worker movements.
Additionally Werania's relatively liberal political climate compared to its neighbours meant particularly in its urban centres it hosted members of nationalist diasporas exiled from their homelands which were ruled by foreign powers. Most notable of these in Werania were people from the Soravian Empire, predominantly Vedmedis and Miersans. These individuals were often close to the republican movement who often supported their independence from Soravia and Gaullica and were considered to be amongst some of the more professionalised revolutionaries in Werania.
The rural to urban migration encouraged by industrialisation and terrible living conditions for workers' in most major cities made the spread of socialist ideologies more pertinent throughout the late 1840's and early 1850's. Trade unions were strictly illegal and in many cases employers often utilised violence to destroy them which helped lead to revolutionary groups such as Vollmar's "neo-Septemberists" gain more leeway due to their secretive nature over reformist groups. Many workers' supported a more just way of managing the economy and alleviating social ills. Whilst they didn't necessarily support the precise goals of the republican and socialist movements these movements were able to articulate worker discontent with the status quo and the failure of the Weranian government to improve social inequality leading to an increase in discontent within urban areas.
War of the Triple Alliance
The spectre of a social crisis engulfing Werania alongside widespread support for pan-Weranicism meant that in April 1852 Adalbert and von Bayrhoffer engineered a diplomatic crisis with Kirenia with a proposal to create a condominium in Ruttland. When this triggered widespread rioting across Ruttland the Weranian government issued the Elmsberg ultimatum that demanded the entirety of the Kirenian Eastern Marches, an ultimatum Kirenia rejected leading to Werania to declare war on the former on the 24 May 1852. The declaration of war against Kirenia led to the republican and pan-Weranicist movement to temporarily support the government - the republican legislator Reiner Neuhäusser commented upon the news
"What a joy! What a delight! We are on the cusp of righting the wrong of 1801, of finally ending the unbearable fiction of Kirenian sovereignty of Weranians. Werania did not wish for war, but it is now our solemn duty to prosecute it with the utmost enthusiasm and rigour until the corpse of Kirenia lies at our feet."
The Weranian army would in the initial months of the war win decisive victories over Kirenia prompting the latter to activate the so-called "Triple Alliance" of itself, Gaullica and Soravia which itself prompted Estmere to enter the war in support of Werania. Ultimately the war would last for three and a half year from May 1852 to December 1855. The decisive defeats of the Soravian army at the battle of Trierbeg and siege of Rokrika would lead to the latter to conclude a white peace leading to the Triple Alliance to lose their numerical advantage resulting in the war to enter a stalemate between the Gallo-Kirenian and Estmero-Weranian forces. Attempts to break the stalemate such as a failed attempt to goad Etruria into joining the war (known as the Augsberger Affair) led to the two sides to after the inconclusive siege of Aimargues organise a conference in the Etrurian city of Torrazza to determine an equitable peace between the powers.
Prelude
Congress of Torrazza
The Congress of Torrazza, presided over by the Gallophile King Caio Onorio and Weranophile premier Leopoldo d'Azeglio, was fraught with difficulties in terms of coming to a just peace. In practical terms the Estmero-Weranian forces had defeated the Gallo-Kirenians but as the Gaullican army still remained strong in the field the Gaullican government insisted it would not pay an indemnity nor oversee large scale territorial transfers. Premier von Bayrhoffer had prior to the congress boasted that Werania's success on the field entitled it to the entire Eastern Marches of Kirenia stating any other outcome would be farcical. However the reliance on Estmere in the latter stages of the war alongside the more skilled diplomacy of [Lord Crumpet] and the [duc de Baguette] meant that these demands were seen as unreasonable by other members of the congress.
Ultimately Werania would gain from the war the entirety of greater Ruttland (modern day Ruttland plus the Zinngebirge Basin located in modern-day Kirenia) whilst Gaullica ceded Hennehouwe in return for Gaullica and Kirenia paying no indemnity and Werania disavowing the use of force as a method for gaining territory in the future. The Torrazza Accords as they became known were seen by the nations of the Triple Alliance as excessively generous to Werania whilst both Adalbert and von Bayrhoffer saw the territorial acquisitions as sufficient to ward off criticism from republican opposition. Shortly after their signing foreign minister Ludwig von Augsberger confidently predicted that "with the Torrazza Accords we can be sure that the republican protestations will have exhausted themselves".
Radicalisation of the workers'
During the war the Weranian government implemented a variety of measures to sustain the war effort including the raising of war taxes and control over food distribution via rationing. During the war the population of urban centres suffered from shortages of food, firewood, coal and medicine especially as conscripts were raised to defend strategic points. These shortages led to worsening living conditions - during the war itself an outbreak of cholera decimated Wiesstadt leading to 10,000 dead and arousing further discontent with the federal government. The war also saw the government harshly repress domestic dissent censoring the press and repressing workers movements which protested about the rising costs of rent and bread.
The activation of the conscript system meant that by the end of the war there were many working class men armed and trained (albeit poorly) in military drill. Those in cities such as Wiesstadt which had avoided much of the war were radicalised by the increasingly poor working conditions and repressive government attitude, a sentiment exacerbated by the calls from revolutionary factions to oppose the Weranian government. As well as this there was an exodus of upper and middle class people from the cities during the war to the countryside whilst refugees and army garrisons went into the cities, further leading to a base of armed and radicalised groups within urban areas.
The government had during the war operated an effective propaganda network that had sustained consistent public support for the war effort despite government repression. However this propaganda often led to supporters of the war effort to have unrealistic expectations of the gains Werania would secure in the event of a victory, with the feeling that Werania would annex the entirety of the eastern marches being seen as all but assured, a sentiment buoyed by republican and radical voices lending conditional support to the government.