Rape of Xhusovo
It is very unlikely that our Glorious and Divine Emperor shall approve any provocation of a conflict with the Florians. Certainly not if that conflict would have the grave consequence of the recommencement of hostilities with the Shirerithians. In the mean time, the Secretary of Slaying seems convinced that if we don't strike early, the Shirerithians will have mobilised their troops. A quick victory is necessary. But if we want victory, we first need a reason to wage war. And it seems like the Gods themselves have shown us the way: not the death of a foreign king who lived far, far away will be our casus belli, but the simple precaution of our enemies to attack a small, worthless nation which would have been used as our springboard into their [Florian] lands anyways.
—Hajime Todo, Secretary of Hanging, 312 EGA
The Rape of Xhusovo was the claimed Florian-Shirerithian mistreatment of both civilians as military personnel during the invasion prior to the outbreak of the War of Lost Brothers. While meant as a strategic move of the Apollonia Command to delay any Jingdaoese attack through the neutral state of Xhusovo, and therefore circumventing the stronger fortifications and trenches at the Jingdaoese-Florian border, it gave the Jingdaoese general staff a reason to bring the war to the Florians' homeland.
Background
The Yao Plan had indeed been made with the afterthought that Xhusovo was the weakest part in the defences of the Florian Republic. This nation, ruled by a military junta and in economical and political crisis since the Xhusor War and its referendum for independence was - according to the general staff - prone to any kind of financial and military support. In return, the Jingdaoese expected free movement through the country in case war broke out.
The Xhusovoran leader Zhu Cheng had actually (in secret) agreed to certain terms with the Jingdaoese when hostilities with the Florians broke out. Xhusovo's untrained and poorly equipped army was quickly crushed in a twelve days campaign. The Shirerithians immediately began with setting up a provisional government, but the Jingdaoese public viewed it as one more attempt to bring the Apollonian nations in its sphere of influence.
For many it confirmed the thought that the Shirerithians were really behind supplying the Florian assassin who murdered king Nikolaj of Coria. While this was contradicted even by high Jingdaoese officials in private, the increasingly high tensions and war-scare made reasonableness one of their lesser priorities. At the same time, the Jingdaoese Army was more than willing to strengthen the feeling that the Shirerithian were on the war path, and that Jingdao was the only nation which could aid the smaller Apollonian states.
In 1719 AN war crimes committed in the event were brought to light and brought forward to the Supreme Court of the Confederate States and Florian officers and soldiers involved were imprisoned for life. A few years later, in 1723 AN, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the war and the Benacian Union state visit to Floria, a social media and press campaign supported by the World Humanist Organisation, began in support of a petition for the mass pardoning of personnel involved in the attempted liberation of Xhusovo. As the action had been undertaken in an attempt to forestall an inevitable Jingdaoese invasion through a preemptive spoiling attack, and had been done with the objective of creating a Greater Floria firmly in mind, it was widely held that those involved should have been celebrated rather than condemned. This petition triggered a hostile response from many individuals - especially the Jing officials - in the Shirerithian government. Large scale protests against Humanists erupted in several Greater Kildarian cities, with their party officials being harassed and treated like traitors.
