1692 Hurmu internment crisis

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1692 Hurmu internment crisis
Part of Second Elwynnese Civil War
Date 16.III.1692 AN – 20.VIII.1692 AN Location Southern District (Hurmu)
Belligerents
Hurmu	Elwynn and Amokolia	Raspur Pact
Units involved
Hurmu Constabulary  ESB-Holïurs-Afzælt  ESB-Jagdverbände	51st Ter Div	AMEAHL

In early 1692 AN, the 51^st Territorial Defence Division of the Union Defence Force, deployed in Hurmu as part of the Allied Reconstruction Mission in Hurmu, was amongst the Elwynnese forces to join the rebellion against the Court of the Princess. In accordance with international norms, the government of Hurmu was obliged to demand that the mutinous Elwynnese troops surrender their arms and accept internment for the duration of hostilities in their home country. The refusal of the 51^st Division, having now transferred its allegiance to the Self-Defence Forces of Elwynn and Amokolia, to accede to this demand precipitated a diplomatic crisis that threatened the neutrality, security, and territorial integrity of the newly independent Hurmu nation.

The spread of the mutinies in Elwynn soon reached the UDF garrisons in the Southern District of Hurmu, with news reaching the Hurmu authorities of loyalist UDF officers being forcibly detained by the rebellious soldiery, scuffles breaking out of inside the cantonments of the 51st Division, and the expulsion of Raspur Pact officers from joint missions which the Elwynnese troops had been participating. Tentatively it was decided, on the night of 18.III.1692, that a delegation of the Senate and the Cabinet, headed Plenipotentiary Jan Spiik and Minister Ty Zem, would be dispatched to confirm the reports of the defection and to negotiate the internment of the defecting troops if this proved to be the case.

The commander of the 51^st, Generalmajor Axel Holmquist, received the Hurmu delegation coolly. Born in Cimmeria to parents of Norse ancestry, Holmquist had been privately disaffected with the regime of Kamilla Winther since the N&H coup of 1688 in Normark. Ironically, as a Norse member of the officer corps, he had been shielded from the more rigorous scrutiny which the Panopticon Department had lavished upon those Elw commanders who had found their careers side-lined or terminated since the commencement of Winther's contentious second term in office. All he had witnessed had left him with a dim view of the international order in which Elwynn had found itself, and of the "neutrality" of Hurmu. It was for that reason fortunate that no members of the House of Osman or the Honourable Company were included in the delegation he received in the squat red brick and adobe bungalow that served as his living quarters and office. To their mild consternation, his guests soon noted that there were sappers presently engaged in stacking sandbags against the interior and exterior of the structure, knocking out window frames to create gun-loops, and engaged in the excavation of foxholes around the building - work that was being replicated around almost every building in the cantonment and along the external perimeter.