Flag of the Grand Dragonaii Empire of China, ("FICR")
Population at outbreak of war: 203 million
The war goes by many names. In politics, the Century Revolt is one common among the CSP, and the Great Tragedy finds great employment by the SWP. Those in the SWP call it the Dragoni Civil War. But as for those still alive when the battles were fought and rest of the populace, it is simply the War of Black Blood.
Historians have disagreed constantly for when the war ended, some incredibly optimistic sources ranging from the surrender of the first OCDP government in 1878 to the evacuation of OCDP troops to the coastal delta and Eastern Theater in 1958 and official sources marking the end to be at February 3, 1978, with the destruction and capture of the last stronghold and troops. It is universally agreed though that the war started on 1815, December 2.
In the early nineteenth century, the economy of the FICR was widely dependent on an agrarian economy of rice and potatoes, with tax collectors being members of the nobility. Around 76 percent of the population were farmers, 21 percent educated middle class, and 3 percent nobility. A recent series of bad harvests and blights had caused some worry to the farming population, but the aged dragoni tradition of stockpiling food for emergencies had prevented any major famines for the time.
Corruption was rife through the FICR's nobles, who along to controlling most of the political power in the national legislature, recurringly placed those ill-fit to lead in military, administrative, and civil roles, skyrocketing anger against the current Emperor-Regent Ming Xinhai for his inaction despite watching dozens of peaceful protesters being beaten by thugs hired by nobles during a peaceful student demonstration in 1803. (There is some evidence that the Emperor-Regent enjoyed "special privileges" in return for turning a blind eye to the growing deterioration of the nation, which would have explained the inordinate amount of luxury goods delivered directly to the Imperial Palace at the time.)
In 1807, the Great Famine occurred, bringing a man-made disaster that caused the emergency stockpiles to dwindle away by 1812, caused by the over-taxation of the local peasantry. Crops were taxed by the nobility who kept increasing quotas to add to their own wealth, and when those quotas failed to be met, water supplies were cut off and livestock seized as payment. This added resentment against the upper class combined with an especially early harsh summer that killed most farmers' crops and froze livestock to death. This culminated in the June Revolts, where 230,000 peasants in Gan'xi began to at first protest en masse to their local lords to reduce quotas, then openly revolted as their emergency food supplies were confiscated. The provincial nobility dispatched Lord General Guo Weiyi was sent to crush the rebellion but during the clash in the village of (now-abandoned) Linlukou, many imperial troops began to defect to the farmers' side, resulting in an even more chaotic battle.
Despite the eventual victory of imperial troops, the nobility was shaken to its core and demanded the Emperor-Regent do something, thus resulting in the Guanghai Massacre, where an entire town suspected of housing rebels was selected to be used as an example to the rest of the nation. Nearly seven thousand residents were made to march over the town bridge and were promptly shot or beheaded, their bodies falling over into the rapids below. The town was then forcibly resettled by political prisoners, where secret police kept a close eye on all inhabitants and executed those suspected of traitorous ideals at a whim. It was here where Meng Renming wrote the "Peasants' Rows," its ideas being used as the base rhetoric for the growing populist Crimson Banner Movement in 1814.
Instead of suppressing and instilling fear as the nobility and Throne had intended, the executions resulted in public outrage and increasing support from the middle class, who were beginning to feel the impact of the Famine on their trade. Impoverished peasants began to organize and refuse to pay, lynching tax collectors and terrorizing local officials. Other, wealthier and more educated radicals began forming political far-left groups based on the ideas of "Peasants' Rows," culminating in the 1814 Crimson Banner Movement. They began forming "rice unions," parties that collectivized harvests to sell together for an equally distributed profit. While the political alignments of these organizations ranged from anarchy to centralized top-down distribution systems, all shared the use of armed militias to both keep peace and drive government influence away, their member usually consisting of deserters from the imperial army proper. Clashes between militias and provincial armies often resulted in dozens of deaths and hundreds of wounded, usually from friendly fire.
At the same time, moderates made up of the educated middle class and certain parts of the peasantry formed the pro-democracy pact, which aimed to establish either a republic or constitutional monarchy in place of the horribly corrupt and ineffective Imperial administration
As the Great Famine worsened, so did the Emperor-Regent's appeal to the nobility. He was deposed in a coup late 1914 and replaced by the Just Council, an oligarchy of nobles. They were then replaced by the 23-year old Emperor-Successive Ming Huoxing and his loyalist Imperial House Guard, all in the span of a month. The new Emperor-Regent raced against time to stop the oncoming revolts and soften the blow of the Famine, but it was too little and too late. On December 2, disaffected military officers sympathetic towards the Crimson Banner Movement allied with officials and other military officers that were pro-democracy staged a coup, intending to place a temporary junta in charge of the nation. However, unexpected fierce resistance by the House Guard prevented the revolutionaries from capturing the Emperor-Regent, who was evacuated to first loyalist Blut-Himmel Stadt and then Eltenbacht, where Imperial supporters rallied and prepared to retake Nanjing.
The nobles quickly seized power as chaos unfolded, becoming warlords with varying alliances for or against each ideology. In Nanjing, the political situation quickly deteriorated as the moderates and Crimson Banners were unable to find common ground and burst into skirmishes along the streets of Nanjing, eventually resulting in a victory for the moderates. Meanwhile still, loyalist enclaves of now-exiled brigades began to make their way west, harassing both presumed warlord and Crimson Banners elements alike as they retreated towards friendly lines.
The war did not begin there by the chaotic dissolution of the nation, but it is considered the beginning of the end as it created the environment needed for the war's start by marking the same day the Imperial Army began mobilization. His Majesty would perish at his own hands a few hours later, leaving his younger brother to take his place as the Monarch of the Imperial Dragonaii. The moderates would seek an alliance and reconcile with the Emperor in the following days as Nanjing, only 17 miles from the marked front lines, was threatened by presumed Crimson invasion, creating the Dragonaii Imperial Coalition faction of the early war to rival the National Defense and Action Council of the Crimson Banners.
An ultimatum by militia leaders from the Crimson Banners was received on December 5 following the unsuccessful coup as violent clashes began to break out along the mess of a front line by settlement militias, often with bloody hand-to-hand and close-range combat, as army hardware was hard to come by and old muskets and shotguns appropriated from farms were used in place alongside dao and often kitchen knives strapped to the end of wooden or bamboo poles. It is believed that the message was transported by horseback to the gates of the capital, unescorted, by a young woman whose name purportedly was Min Xinhai- however, sources for this all refer to propaganda media by the OCDP, and is therefore largely held to be false by the major scholarly community.
The Lord President de facto at the time, Lord Elector Wu Qiangan was largely a puppet of the nobles, and as such was mostly powerless. Nevertheless, he attempted a secret peace negotiation with several Crimson leaders, including one Erlich Guo, who would later become the first Premier of the OCDP. The meeting's conclusion was dubious but resulted in an agreement to consider talks in the future, only for Wu Qiangan to be bludgeoned to death by a rioting mob two days later as he tried to reenter the capital.
Though the position of Lord President would change hands for dozens of times as competing factions fought for power within the Electorate, attempts for peace did not stop there. One of the generals of the then Imperial High Guard, An Xi, desperately attempted to convince the new Emperor-Admiral to acquiesce to some of the terms of the Crimson Banners' terms in their demands, including completely free reelection of the Electorate to give the Banners' representation by pro-peasantry nobles. However, the new monarch suspected the officer of treason after being urged by pro-divine-right-of-king eunuchs and had him promptly imprisoned.
The Imperial Army was officially fully mobilized by February 14, and the frontline militias were quickly supplemented by army officers from both sides by March 27. Negotiations broke down for good on May 3, when Imperial Army officers ordered an entire village shot after suspecting the population of espionage. Both sides figured a relatively quick and decisive war would follow, further encouraged after the brief siege, capture, and occupation of Nanjing by Banner forces on May 10.
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