Chapter 464 - Episode 447: Political Upheaval
"Two weeks have passed since the scheduled return date, and the previous transport fleet has still not returned. The dispatch ships meant to report on the status of the invasion force have also failed to arrive. Great unrest is spreading among the Wealthy Party factions within the military."
"...I see."
The capital of the Betumia Republic. In the office of the Supreme Commander at the Republic Army Headquarters, Irene muttered as she received the report from her adjutant.
"There is no mistake that the Lordberg Kingdom Navy handled this well... We were intercepted by the Kingdom, and our supplies have been cut off. No matter how the battle over there turns out, the invasion force will not be able to return for the time being. We shall proceed."
"Yes. As planned, we start with information manipulation?"
The adjutant who questioned Irene was the son of her uncle George, who was recorded as dead and was currently staying in the Lordberg Kingdom as a secret envoy. He was Irene's cousin.
"Yes, please do that. Regarding the details, follow the instructions of Representative Volan Woodmel, the head of the National Party. They are likely more adept at this kind of political theater than the military."
"Understood."
The adjutant saluted and left the room.
Left alone in the room, Irene looked up at the ceiling.
"Now then, first, let's see if I can seize the capital..."
.....
The Wealthy Party representatives, led by Prime Minister Blanche Fildrack. They held generational ties with the wealthy merchants who formed the vested interest class of the Republic, monopolizing wealth and power.
They did not even bother to slip through the cracks of the law; they broke the law openly and committed fraud. They had collaborators among the military high command and the gendarmerie responsible for domestic security, or they used their power to threaten members of such organizations and force money into their hands, accumulating history without ever receiving the punishments they deserved.
To ensure the flow of dirty money did not come to light, they created collaborators even among the financial bureaucrats. Or, they placed their own kin as financial bureaucrats to hide their corruption.
However, those were merely crimes for which evidence had not yet surfaced. It was not that evidence did not exist. Since the Wealthy Party representatives and the wealthy merchants who backed them did not trust each other completely, they exchanged secret agreements. These were signed in their own handwriting and stamped with magical ink.
Irene spent several years gathering a vast amount of such evidence, particularly evidence of the corruption of big shots like Prime Minister Fildrack.
At the same time, to compensate for the lack of volume, she created fake evidence. Once true evidence and fake evidence were mixed together, the common people would no longer know where the truth ended and the lies began. In short, it only needed to serve as a detonator to make their anger explode, even if only for a moment.
Information regarding this evidence began to leak into the streets through those within the National Party representatives who were absolutely trustworthy. Several originals of clear evidence, such as secret agreements with Prime Minister Fildrack's obvious handwriting, were also leaked.
Among the commoners, there were those with a certain amount of influence, such as prominent activists, heads of small and medium merchant guilds, heads of tiny artisan guilds, and scholars sympathetic to the common people. Having been handed fragments of evidence, or the evidence itself, they enthusiastically spread the information to the masses.
Parallel to this information manipulation, Irene made moves toward some of the Wealthy Party representatives and wealthy merchants.
Even within the Wealthy Party, there were moderates. Those who thought Prime Minister Fildrack's radical policies went too far, those who believed the current deadlock of the Wealthy Party was the fault of the radical faction led by Fildrack, and those who believed that a certain amount of wealth should be returned to the common people in order to maintain their own interests and power.
Irene set her sights on them. She contacted those who had not been deeply involved in corruption and who had room for reconciliation with the National Party and the commoners, and she proposed a deal.
The evidence of their corruption would be buried in the darkness, and it would be decided that they were among the few true possessors of common sense within the Wealthy Party. By doing so, their wealth and status would be guaranteed.
In exchange, she would have them speak publicly. From their position of having seen the Wealthy Party from the inside, they would testify to how evil a group the Wealthy Party had been.
By the time Irene proposed this deal, the flames of dissatisfaction among the commoners had begun to reignite, while many of the Wealthy Party's military officers were away from the country. Perhaps feeling they had no other choice, several of those she contacted accepted the deal exactly as Irene intended.
Furthermore, through their introductions, she was able to pull other moderate Wealthy Party representatives and merchants to her side.
These traitors of the Wealthy Party, receiving assistance from the National Party representatives who had previously been their enemies, took on the role of public relations, exposing the misdeeds of the Wealthy Party to the common people.
The flames of dissatisfaction among the commoners eventually became a blast of fire. Just as after the first invasion of the Lordberg Kingdom, violent protest movements became a daily occurrence on the main streets.
Once the situation had deteriorated to the point where it could be called a riot, Irene informed Prime Minister Fildrack that she had a "secret plan to calm the situation." The Prime Minister, overjoyed, invited Irene to the executive office.
"Oh, General Foster! I'm so glad you came. Come, please sit."
Prime Minister Fildrack welcomed Irene with a smile, despite the sweat on his forehead, and had her sit on the sofa. Irene responded with a smile and sat obediently on the sofa.
"Honestly, this has become an absolute disaster. Traitors from within the Wealthy Party... how lamentable. What do those people think the order this country has built up is?"
The traitors of the Wealthy Party, whom Prime Minister Fildrack called "those people." Within the Wealthy Party, the understanding was that they were the ones who had leaked the evidence of their corruption and caused this situation.
"As one who leads the national army, I feel truly apologetic for being unable to suppress the domestic unrest, Prime Minister."
When Irene spoke with a solemn expression, Prime Minister Fildrack shook his head.
"Not at all, producing traitors from within the Wealthy Party is a failure on the political side. It is not something for you to apologize for... However, the power of the military is indispensable for suppressing the situation. We are in the middle of an operation upon which the survival of the state depends—the re-invasion of the Lordberg Kingdom. We, the home country, have no time to be in chaos due to the riots of the common rabble."
"You are correct. Therefore, I have come to propose a plan to resolve the dissatisfaction of the common class and suppress the riots in one fell swoop."
At Irene's words, Prime Minister Fildrack's expression shifted to one of relief and joy.
"I've been waiting for that talk. Now, tell me, what is the plan?"
"Understood. Then..."
Irene wore a smile—and drew her sword.
Prime Minister Fildrack froze with a blank expression. At that moment, the sound of arguing and the clashing of swords echoed in the corridor outside the Prime Minister's office.
The noise soon stopped, the door opened, and several soldiers entered. They were soldiers under Irene's direct command, composed of close relatives of the Foster family. In other words, they were Irene's private army.
In the corridor they had passed through, the corpses of Wealthy Party military officers who had been on guard duty within the executive office lay scattered.
"...We request that you accompany us, Prime Minister."
By this point, Prime Minister Fildrack realized the situation.
"General Foster! Was it you! You caused this situation!"
"That is correct, Prime Minister Blanche Fildrack. The people demand your resignation. You of the Wealthy Party must receive appropriate judgment before the people. Please accompany us."
With a sword pointed at him and surrounded by soldiers in a hopeless situation, the Prime Minister's face stained with rage.
"Y-you... who do you think allowed you to reach the position of Supreme Commander! You ungrateful brat!"
"With all due respect, Excellency. I understand that you placed me in this position because you believed I would be easy to handle, for the convenience of the Wealthy Party. That you failed to see through the fact that I had sworn only a superficial loyalty to the Wealthy Party from the start is your own failing... We do not have much time. Excellency, excuse me."
"Wh-wait—"
Without time to resist, Prime Minister Fildrack was struck by Irene and lost consciousness.
.....
With General Irene Foster and her faction of approximately five hundred people forcibly seizing the executive office, the Prime Minister's official residence, and the courts, a full-scale political upheaval began.
Simultaneously with the paralysis of government functions, a large quantity of weapons leaked among the commoners. Of course, this too was arranged by Irene. Irene had ordered her comrades to leak weapons, which had been pilfered from the transport supplies for the re-invasion force, at this exact timing.
This was not a random distribution of weapons. Former regular army soldiers who had suffered paralysis in an arm or leg during the first invasion. Those who held a grudge against the Wealthy Party and were physically and mentally capable of handling the field command of a militia. By giving weapons to them, she ensured the intensification of the riots in a form that could be controlled to some extent.
Groups of commoners swarmed the capital's military headquarters, the gendarmerie headquarters, the parliament, and the courts, clashing with the guard soldiers who were pawns of the Wealthy Party. Irene and the National Party faction supplemented their lack of numbers in the political and military spheres by borrowing the power of the people.
The rapid response corps of Wealthy Party military officers responsible for the capital's defense numbered about one thousand. The gendarmerie similarly numbered about one thousand. They alone could not suppress the riots of hundreds of thousands of people. Even if they could withstand the offensive for a time with superior training, it was hopeless against such overwhelming numbers without supplies.
The area around the capital became akin to a state of civil war, and within less than a week from the start of the upheaval, the major government and military facilities had fallen.
Furthermore, the crowds of people swarmed the luxury residential districts where the mansions of Wealthy Party representatives and their connected wealthy merchants were located.
Among the vested interest class, those who had predicted the development early on fled the country with as much wealth as they could carry, while many who had been optimistic about the situation were captured. The most important figures within the Wealthy Party had been captured in advance by Irene's faction.
Irene, together with Representative Woodmel, the leader of the National Party, declared the overthrow of the current administration and established a provisional government with him as the interim Prime Minister. Following this, the riots by the people subsided, and the militias were reorganized; a force of tens of thousands, centered around those with military experience, was organized in a somewhat orderly fashion.
From the arrest of former Prime Minister Fildrack, only a few weeks had passed to reach this stage. It was the result of Irene's leadership as a general being fully utilized.
The remaining concern was the Republic Army that had remained in the country without participating in the re-invasion operation.
Among them, units tasked with border security and the like were commanded by National Party or non-partisan military officers who had been removed from the promotion track, so they submitted to the provisional government almost without resistance. They, and the soldiers under them, refused to fight the people head-on.
Units of military officers connected to the Wealthy Party who were responsible for the defense of key points also gave up resistance for the most part, having been promised lenient treatment by the provisional government.
They were dogs of the Wealthy Party, but they were not the Wealthy Party itself. Once it was decided that their past crimes would not be harshly questioned, few were willing to die for the Wealthy Party to the point of ruining themselves. Among that minority, some still resisted, but it had no effect on the general tide of the upheaval.
Thus, the old regime of the Betumia Republic collapsed with ease. It was precisely because the Wealthy Party had lost the power to move public opinion, and because the majority of the units under the Wealthy Party's influence were in the distant foreign land of the Lordberg Kingdom.
The provisional government assured the families of the re-invasion force that they would secure the return of the soldiers through negotiations with the Lordberg Kingdom, thereby suppressing their emotions.
Now that the Wealthy Party had lost its power, the re-invasion force that had landed in the Lordberg Kingdom would become completely isolated, having lost support such as supplies from the home country.