Augustus Eliphas
| In office | 1644 AN to 23.XII.1653 AN |
| Predecessor | Donat Ravaillac |
| Successor | Alcides Hall (interim) |
| Other offices | Leader of the National Provisional Authority Member of the Council of State for the Salvation of Hamland |
| Born | c. 1596 AN New Kirrie, Commonwealth of Hamland |
| Died | 23.XII.1653 AN (aged 57) Pratchett Hall, New Kirrie |
| Cause of death | Natural causes |
| Allegiance | Commonwealth of Hamland National Provisional Authority |
| Rank | General |
| Wars | Hammish Civil War |
| Signature |  |
Augustus Eliphas (c. 1596 AN to 23.XII.1653 AN) was a Hammish general and military ruler who governed the remnant of the Commonwealth of Hamland as Interim Prime Minister and leader of the National Provisional Authority from 1644 AN until his death, for nearly the whole of the Hammish Civil War of 1644 AN to 1653 AN. He was the second Interim Prime Minister of Hamland and the last to rule it.
A career officer who reached general's rank before the war, Eliphas led the hardline military faction that opposed the promises of elections and constitutional reform made by his predecessor, Donat Ravaillac, and covertly financed the revolts of the Order of Rochefort against Ravaillac's government. He was installed by the ruling junta, the Council of State for the Salvation of Hamland (CSSH), after Ravaillac was shot dead at a military review in New Kirrie, a killing that Ravaillac's supporters attributed to the military itself. From Pratchett Hall in New Kirrie he ruled a regime marked by purges, the suppression of dissent under the laws known as El Silencio, and the biological weapons program that produced the Alexandrian Flu, the pandemic that killed a large part of the Hammish population and destroyed the Empire of the Alexandrians. By the war's final years the united opposition had made his removal a condition of peace.
Eliphas died in his sleep at Pratchett Hall on 23.XII.1653 AN, two days before the Declaration of Zalae, leaving a will that ordered the war ended and invited Regina Ravaillac, his predecessor's daughter and the future Queen Elizabeth I, to march on New Kirrie and reunify the country. The kingdom she founded dissolved his regime's institutions, froze their assets, and vetted their officials.
Early life and military career
Eliphas was born at New Kirrie in about 1596 AN, in the city that housed the headquarters of the Hammish armed forces, and he spent his whole career in those forces. He rose through the officer corps of the Commonwealth of Hamland during its long peace, reached general's rank in the last years of the Commonwealth, and by the eve of the war sat among the country's top brass. Nothing is recorded of his family, and he left no wife or children.
That peace ended with the disappearance of the Seneschal, Juan Teaodir, the Commonwealth's head of state, and of Prime Minister Lewis, its head of government, which left Hamland without its leadership. In the vacuum the sole surviving member of the government, the Minister of the Homeland Donat Ravaillac, declared a state of emergency, suspended the constitution, and established the Council of State for the Salvation of Hamland, which was folded into the National Provisional Authority with Ravaillac as Interim Prime Minister. Eliphas sat on the Council of State among its military members.
Opposition to Ravaillac
Ravaillac undertook to hold new elections and to propose the constitutional reforms needed to replace Teaodir, and he met fierce resistance from the military leadership, Eliphas foremost among them. Where the Interim Prime Minister answered the unrest in Haifa, Israat, and Neo Patrova with mediation, the generals pressed for force, and the two sides clashed over the army's heavy-handed pacification of Haifa.
Eliphas directed a misinformation campaign that secretly funded and instigated a series of armed revolts by the Order of Rochefort against the government, with the object of bringing Ravaillac down. The revolts ended when Ravaillac met the Order at New Kirrie and gave assurances that elections for a new Parliament would proceed. The balance between the civilian and military halves of the government did not survive the unexplained death of Gerardo Lopez, a popular leader from San Luis de Hamlandia and one of Ravaillac's chief negotiators and advisers. After Lopez died the military officers held practical control of the country, and Ravaillac served as the unwilling face of their government.
Rise to power
Lopez's death set off a wave of unrest in Anglia and Israat, fed by the military's obstruction of Ravaillac's independent investigation into the killing, and the response divided the Council of State: Ravaillac and his loyalists argued for negotiation and for accelerating the promised elections, while the hardliners under Eliphas demanded military action, the postponement of elections, and a constitution written by the Authority itself and ratified by a future Parliament.
At a military review held in New Kirrie in 1644 AN to mark the pacification of Haifa and to send off troops, Ravaillac was shot by a sniper as Air Force jets passed overhead and distracted the crowd. Bombs detonated across the city, destroying the Prime Minister's Residence and cutting the roads out of New Kirrie. Ravaillac and ten others were killed, the Alexandrian ambassador Josef Droz was wounded, and the Interim Prime Minister was airlifted to a military hospital, where he was declared dead on arrival. Contemporary reporting recorded responsibility as disputed: Ravaillac's loyalists held that the military had arranged both the assassination and Eliphas's rise in order to wrest control from him, while other accounts laid the killing to the National Salvation Front.
The CSSH named Eliphas the new Interim Prime Minister and leader of the National Provisional Authority, and he answered the assassination by ordering a massive crackdown across Authority territory. As Interim Prime Minister he presided at Pratchett Hall, the seat of the Authority's executive.
Rule
The fighting between the Authority and the opposition, which rallied around Ravaillac's daughter Regina, leader of the faction known as the Ravaillac Loyalists, killed more than one million people. A failed countercoup, mounted after the officer Joseph Abib publicly gave Eliphas twelve hours to resign and name Regina Ravaillac in his place, ended in the execution of some 300 commanders, and the purges of suspected disloyalty that followed drove officers and officials into defection in numbers that depleted the Authority's own ranks. The laws and regulations enacted under his rule to suppress dissent were known as El Silencio.
His conduct of the war drew international attention within a year of his accession, and was discussed in 1645 AN at a joint conference of Shireroth and Natopia at Ardashirshahr. Shirerithian support had reached the Authority through the Sxiro-Hammish Agricultural Mission, which fought as the Authority's 2nd Army Corps before switching its allegiance to the opposition; Eliphas himself complained that Shireroth had abandoned his cause when he most needed its support. The Authority's accord with the Weanburg Militia, which traded immunity for the militia's looting and criminal activity in exchange for assistance and intelligence, was made in the same period.
Alexandrian Flu
The war was transformed by the Alexandrian Flu, a biological weapon developed under a covert program that Eliphas directed at the Bureau of Research and Defense Technology, an underground complex concealed within the fortified Iron Point Base. The weapon was intended to end the war decisively in his favor. Instead the containment measures at Iron Point Base failed as his government came under the pressure of the international coalition, and the virus escaped into the surrounding population; a transport accident at a weapons facility in Porapa carried it across the country. An estimated 30 to 60 percent of the population of the eastern regions died, and returning Alexandrian peacekeepers carried the disease home, where it killed between 500 and 700 million people and brought about the disintegration of the Empire of the Alexandrians. The pandemic ran from late 1650 AN to early 1652 AN.
Siege of New Kirrie and the peace
In the war's final years the Hammish Republican Army and the Ravaillac Loyalists, with support from Natopia and Shireroth, advanced to the outskirts of New Kirrie, where the fighting settled into a prolonged siege. A ceasefire was brokered by the Council of Free Nations at Maison Verneuil, outside Geneva in Alexandria, and the opposition factions united under the National League. The League held that the constitutional convention planned at Zalae could not proceed without Eliphas's removal from power.
Death
Eliphas died in his sleep at Pratchett Hall on 23.XII.1653 AN, at the age of 57, two days before the Declaration of Zalae. A broadcast from Pratchett Hall announced at 8:25 in the evening that he had "entered immortality" and made public his last will, which ordered the civil war ended, invited Regina Ravaillac, whom it styled "the Queen-in-Zalae", to march upon New Kirrie with her forces to reunify the country, directed that the National Provisional Authority be dismantled, and instructed its forces to withdraw to New Kirrie. A delegation of the Authority delivered a verified copy of the will, together with a signed statement of surrender and allegiance, to Ravaillac at Bellesea Palace before her march.
On 25.XII.1653 AN Ravaillac proclaimed the Kingdom of the Union of Caputia in the Declaration of Zalae and took the regnal name Elizabeth, and General Alcides Hall served as the Authority's interim prime minister through its dissolution. Caputian tradition counted Eliphas's sudden death among the signs from the goddess Melusine that accompanied the war's end.
Legacy
A royal speech early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I dissolved the corporate vehicles of the NPA and the CSSH, froze their assets, and ordered the vetting of officials for affiliation with what it called "the despised and brutal regime of General Augustus Eliphas". His property at 27 Avenue Lewis in Zalae, which he never occupied, was confiscated when the Ravaillac Loyalists seized the city and was later offered to Stormark for its embassy.
In 1657 AN the kingdom hosted the negotiation of the Zalae Convention on Biological Weapons at the Non-Aligned Movement for Peace and Prosperity Summit in Zalae, binding itself against the class of weapon his program had produced, and its armed forces retained the tri-service structure inherited from the National Provisional Authority. The Alexandrian Flu outlived him by decades, and the disease his program had made was not reduced to a manageable condition until the eighteenth century.
