Resistance in the Benacian Union

Small resistance group, active somewhere in Upper Elwynn. Image taken circa 1715 AN.

Resistance to the totalitarian and Humanist regime established by Benacian Union, founded in 1698 AN and unified in 1703 AN, took many forms in the face of savage official repression.

Background

Defeat in the Second Elwynnese Civil War, and the harsh subjugation of the conquered peoples of Amokolia and Elwynn that followed, did not transform these lands into bastions of willing supporters for Humanism and the Raspur Pact. Braving the power of the Benacian Union Defence Force, the Corps of the Gentlemen-at-Cudgels, and the Worshipful Guild of the Sacred Carnifices, resistance began to grow in the Benacian Union. It was in many respects a continuation or resumption of the last war which shaded over into lawlessness, brigandry, and terrorism; becoming instead a form of warfare that was without rules or regulations.

For Amokolia and Upper Elwynn, resistance began early on, from the moment of defeat in fact. Those contingents which, following the Scouring and the culminating offensive of the Pact forces striking northwards from Alalehzamin and Mishalan, had been unable to reach the evacuation ports and thereby the means of escape to Cimmeria and Raikoth, had been faced with the prospect of capitulation followed either by death or a lifetime of servitude in the Benacian Labour Reserve. Understandably there were many who found this prospect unpalatable. Those who were able to evade capture in the months immediately after the end of the war went to ground, either as individuals who buried their arms and sought to find refuge amongst the civilian population, or else as whole formations up to the regimental level who retired into the wilderness of the northern Benacian interior in the hope of living off the land and continuing to strike back against the conquerors whenever opportunity permitted.

Upper Elwynn during the winter of 1696-1697

Following the final collapse of the Self-Defence Forces in the tenth month of 1696, the remnant forces were able to make full use of the poor communications, large forces, and frozen sub-boreal marshes, and fight on during the hunger winter of 1696-1697. The more substantial agglomerations of surviving rebels were able to operate at the regimental level, periodically liberating entire districts of remote rural bailiwicks for weeks at a time. These continued to fight on in spite of the wave of ruthless repression imposed by the Raspur Pact occupation forces (primarily in the form of the conscripted Elwynnese Landstorm) with the Union Defence Force providing rapid response forces sent out to snuff out the flames of rebellion wherever they flared up.

Control of access to food rations was one of the means by which the Union Defence Force enforced the semblance of authority over the newly reconquered territories. Bailiwicks in which partisan attacks and brigandry were reported could face the prospect of food embargoes lasting for a week, a fortnight, or a month, depending upon the UDF bailiwick-commandant's assessment of the severity of the transgression. In especially serious instances of defiance, the withholding of state mandated rations could be supplemented by a total prohibition of food imports into a bailiwick and policing actions by the Elwynnese Landstorm aimed at confiscating foodstuffs from farms and warehouses in the area under interdict. Within a bailiwick subject to such a stoppage, provision would only be made for those citizens who had taken up roles in the service of the UDF, the Honourable Company, or the N&H. It swiftly proved expedient and necessary to remove cooperative citizens from their communities into adjacent fortified cantonments to ensure their safety against the reprisals of their erstwhile neighbours.

The Occupation solidified

Decided on the margins of the Congress of Chryse, the post-war Babkhi-dominated government of Elluenuueq determined that its foremost goal in reconstruction would be the removal or destruction of all industrial plants and equipment that would have any conceivable use in any future rebellion by the Elw or Amokolian peoples. Steel production was immediately outlawed in the former autonomous republics of Amokolia and Upper Elwynn and the Union Defence Force instructed to mobilise local corvée labour to support industrial disarmament. All industrial plants and equipment not destroyed by military action was to be completely dismantled and removed from the capitulated territories, or else destroyed in situ if removal was impossible. A proposal to demolish, through controlled demolitions, the mines of Amokolia and Upper Elwynn was entertained but eventually dismissed. The former rebel territories would instead be resource extraction zones, with refining processes and manufacturing would take place in the autonomous republics which had remained loyal during the conflict. Light industries, without an identifiable dual military purpose, would be permitted in an unconsolidated form at the level of the bailiwick, for the purpose of facilitating reparation payments. Economic enterprises, with preference given to those focused on activities that would facilitate reconstruction and reparation payments, would be permitted by the UDF bailiwick-commandant on a case by case basis.

The bailiwicks of Amokolia and Upper Elwynn faced a double indemnity, not only to cover the repayment to Benacia Command of the costs it had incurred in sustaining the war to reconquer the north, and its subsequent occupation, but also to make reparations to Alalehzamin and the Sovereign Confederation for the destruction of three major urban bailiwicks during the rebel counterstrike on the day of the Scouring. Naturally there would be no funding available for the four northern population centres obliterated during the initial orbital bombardment, nor for the other cities which had been subjected to conventional aerial bombardment during the war. Reconstruction was only funded to the extent that the infrastructure restored would facilitate the payment of reparations, and the cost of the reconstruction work itself would be added to the total reparations bill.

The burden of reparation payments was initially divided equally between each bailiwick, irrespective of size and ability to pay. Eventually exactions were scaled to taking forty-percent of a bailiwick's pre-war economic output.

By 1706 AN, 1,585,525 subjects were classed as protected persons after being assigned to the Labour Reserve in lieu of punishment. The majority of these were adult males of fighting age deported from Amokolia and Upper Elwynn taken to preclude their participation in ongoing resistance efforts.

The liquidation of disloyal elements in society was increasingly spearheaded by the Worshipful Guild of the Sacred Carnifices, a civic and religious fraternity of magistrates and executioners, with the typical carnifex-magister being trained and empowered to perform both roles, established under the terms of the Edict for the Restoration of Justice and Order promulgated by the Congress of Chryse in 10.XIII.1698 AN.

Interlude (1703-1708)

The reorganisation and consolidation of Elluenuueq and the Unified Governorates of Benacia into the Benacian Union, combined with the deployment of the newly unified Benacian Union Defence Force into regional garrisons was instrumental in the suppression of the initial resistance. With the occupied north parcelled out into governorates, and the establishment of the Humanist municipal guild governance within the conquered bailiwicks, the population found itself subjected to the hierarchical structure of the Union-State. On account of their rebellion, no subject resident in Amokolia or Upper Elwynn was permitted to leave their bailiwick of residence, and none could travel abroad under any circumstances.

The establishment of Cull Commissions at the bailiwick-level, comprised of a censor, joined by representatives of the bailiff, the official appointed by the Governor of the Governorate with jurisdiction in order to ensure that the bailiwick meets its stipulated manpower and tribute payment quotas, and the president of the municipal corporation, who represents the guilds present in the city. These officials were charged with the referral of disaffected societal elements to the magisters-carnifex for execution or exile to the labour reserve.

Meanwhile surveillance became almost ubiquitous as the Commission for the Panopticon built up its mass-observation infrastructure on a pan-continental scale. The consequence was the creation of a “digital yoke”; which was the Commission encode the biometric data of all subjects, along with any stateless or displaced persons found within the realms, so as to avoid a repetition of the catastrophic data loss that occurred in the wake of the Scouring. All would receive the digital yoke, a data chip and processing unit embedded into the spinal column at the neck and fused into the central nervous system, connecting the digital yoke to the cerebellum of the recorded person. All homes and residential apartments would thereafter, in addition to their BDN terminal and panopticon view screen, receive a remote syncing station, to which the key metadata related to the recorded person's daytime activities would be uploaded. This data would then be interrogated remotely during the night-flights of the Panopticon Department's Reaper Drones and transferred to the Panopticon Nodes of each locale for entry into the data vaults of the bailiwick, available for review at all higher levels of authority.

The “Railway War” of 1708

In the third month of 1708 AN the order was given by the Szodan of Elluenuueq, Adam al-Osman, that all existing railway tracks and infrastructure in the realm of Elluenuueq was to be uprooted, demolished, and sold for scrap. Work parties of the Benacian Labour Reserve, commencing from Ardashirshahr were to radiate outwards from the capital of the realm, along the course of the railways and to erase all trace of their existence.

Such locomotive engines as had survived the civil war were to be broken up for the resale value of their scrapped metals, whilst the carriages and rolling stock were to be burnt under the supervision of the Corps of the Gentlemen-at-Cudgels. Former railwaymen were to be branded, placed under the discipline of the Guild of Dunporters and sent out into the fields of Alalehzamin to work as auctionable agricultural labourers for the tenant farmers of the bailiwicks there.

The attempted destruction of the railways, focused primarily in the old region of Alalehzamin, occasioned much protest and open speculation within the regime as to the sanity of the Szodan. This doubtful and resent-laden dissent was hardly lessened by the news, promulgated later in the same year of 1708 AN, that rails for cargo transport would be housed in the central partitions of the guarded roads that would be the sole means of lawful travel permitted for meritorious subjects passing over the bounds between the bailiwicks that would henceforth be fenced and guarded.

Faced by widespread resistance, a wave of strikes and industrial actions matching only those seen in the immediate aftermath of the Scouring, and the unmitigated fury of the Chamber of Guilds and Corporations at the self-inflicted disrupted to a vital link in the supply-chains of the Benacian Union, the fate of Adam al-Osman was sealed by the Congress of Chryse which obliged him to depart into exile at Teldrin in 1709 AN.