"Aargh! My eyes! I can't see!"
"Ah... Aaah...! My leg, where is my leg!"
The New Year's Uprising of 1017 met its end, leaving behind nothing but blood-soaked screams.
Blood flowed through the square like a small stream.
Over a hundred workers, students, and intellectuals swayed as corpses in the blackened winter air, hanging from the gallows.
Beneath them, parents and siblings wailed, tearing at their collars. Some rushed forward barefoot, attempting to pull down the innocent bodies, only to be cast aside by the cold blades of the military sabers.
In this tragedy, not even the hospitals were a sanctuary.
Soldiers forced their way through the wounded, twisting the arms of bloodied patients and dragging them out.
When the doctors stood in their way, the soldier's blades flashed.
"Wh-what are you doing in my hospital? Leave at once!"
"This piece of filth dares to defy the Count's decree? Do you think being a doctor makes you immune to steel, Master Physician?"
"Eeeek! Doctor!"
A short scream followed.
The doctor collapsed, his throat opened, his white coat stained crimson. The soldiers hauled his corpse to the gallows, branding him a 'Collaborator of Traitors.'
Terror flowed through every alleyway.
Merchants refused to look each other in the face.
By morning, someone would be dragged away; by night, the rhythmic thud of combat boots echoed off the cobblestones.
One merchant was hauled off by the military police at dawn for the crime of "lending a pen to write a slogan on a banner."
That afternoon, his body was found crushed flat on the sidewalk beneath the police headquarters.
The official report was "death by a fall due to unknown causes."
The military fared no better.
A soldier who hesitated to loose his arrows took his own life with a rope, unable to endure the abuse of his superiors.
The student council president of a certain high school was beaten into total paralysis by police because he failed to 'control' the students of his institution.
The citizens trembled in fear, and the city sank into a deathly silence.
Whenever the shadows of the military police loomed, mothers clutched their children and covered their mouths. As soldiers passed, shop shutters slammed shut with a heavy rattle.
The uniforms they wore were no longer symbols of honor; they were the marks of slaughterers.
No longer did the citizens look upon the soldiers with respect.
Yet even in this atmosphere, the printing presses producing underground newspapers whirred heatedly. Displacing the mainstream Victorian press, 'The Truth'—Pravda—surfaced to take its place on the desks of Count Archibald's territory. Magazines of various leanings, such as 'Future' and 'Progress,' sprouted like mushrooms, spreading anti-government rhetoric.
These media outlets transcended the borders of the Count's lands, reaching the ears of various Dukes, Viscounts, and Barons, agitating their lordships and 'enlightening' the masses.
The people finally realized: Power is maintained solely through violence.
Ultimately, the tree known as the Communist Party grew violently, nourished by the blood of the New Year's Uprising.
Its roots burrowed deep and wide into the city, twisted yet unyielding.
"We have 400,000 members across Victoria alone. Despite strictly prohibiting minors from joining, our numbers are this high. The number of those who sympathize with our ideology must be far greater."
"The day of revolution and vengeance approaches. We must never forget the martyrs of the New Year's Uprising."
In this chaotic climate, the International Communist Party drove a final wedge by publishing a single book.
[The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.]
It explicitly revealed that the sole objective of the proletariat and the intelligentsia was the class struggle.
It declared that this was not a decoration of history or philosophy, but the most honest and raw definition of revolution.
It proclaimed that the world was moved neither by the king's benevolence nor the nobility's honor, but by the clash of interests and the struggle between different classes.
[Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character and has become a mere appendage of the machine. The worker becomes a slave of the managers, the employers, the bourgeoisie, the nobility, the royalty, and the state.]
Our manifesto stripped away the false facade of industrial prosperity.
Behind the glittering machines and the growth of productive forces, it exposed the reality of workers being ground down like parts and exploited; the illusion of worker freedom; the watchful eyes of overseers; the employer's ledgers; and the value of labor being converted into the costs of the nobility's lavish banquets. It exposed the system that feigned giving workers freedom while turning them into slaves.
[Your law and ideology are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and property, a mere means of class rule and a tool of exploitation.]
Furthermore, we declared our total rejection of the chains of 'traditional' ethics, morality, and laws created by the ruling class to protect their own privileges.
[The first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.]
[The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, and to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the working class.]
[The Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.]
It revealed that revolution was not a mere peasant rebellion but the establishment of a new order, declaring it a movement to achieve true democracy through the rule of the working class.
[The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.]
[Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution!]
Finally, it declared that a Communist revolution was necessary for the working class to create a new world of equality and freedom.
[The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working Men of All Countries, Unite!]
The contents were the Ten Commandments of the Party; the title was The Communist Manifesto.
**********************************
How did the Russian Revolution happen?
To understand that, one must examine the Bloody Sunday incident—not the revolution itself, but its precursor.
An event where a moderate protest, crying for the mercy of the 'Blessed Tsar' Nicholas II, was met with the pre-modern Emperor's misjudgment and the military's gunfire, resulting in the complete betrayal of the people's hope in the Romanov dynasty.
That event triggered strikes and riots across Russia. As a result, the Tsar soon stabbed the reformers in the back and betrayed the people again, but he did, at least, pass 'some' reforms.
But even after that, Nicholas—an incompetent administrator—his foolish wife, and Russia's disastrous performance in World War I piled up until a revolution broke out spontaneously in the capital, Petrograd, without any party organization behind it. That was the February Revolution.
But what is the situation in Victoria now?
Unlike the Russian Empire, where an Emperor ruled everything, Victoria is currently a feudal state with industry on par with the British Empire, where Dukes and Counts still swagger about, exploiting the people of their own fiefs.
Moreover, the royal family members are Aslans, not the majority race of Victoria. I'm not sure whether to call it racism or nationalism yet, but if we call it racial nationalism, that sentiment is inevitably weak in Victoria.
Thus, we can put aside one major concern.
The racial nationalists and the patriots.
There is a common misconception that the leaders of the White Army in the Russian Revolution sought to return to a monarchy. Aside from a few lunatics, there were none. Most were nationalists, nobles, landowners, or anti-Bolshevik democrats.
Those sentimental 21st-century folks might think the Russian people were outraged when the Red Army executed Nicholas's family, but the truth is they didn't care much, except for the patriots and a tiny remnant of monarchist dregs. In fact, many were quite pleased, saying they were glad they were dead.
If they don't exist here, who is there to stop our revolution?
I believe no one can.
Though the royal Steam Knights are said to be terrifyingly powerful, they are an asymmetric force, not regular infantry.
To further stoke the flames of this revolution, I secretly drafted another book alongside the Manifesto.
The textbook for vanguard anarchists: The Anarchist Cookbook.
Though I omitted some 'recipes' that couldn't be sourced here or due to lack of technology, the remaining recipes were more than enough to 'cook' the robber barons.
In any case, I printed about two hundred copies of this cookbook and gave them to the Liberty League. They were practically jumping for joy.
— BOOM!! —
"Long live the revolution! Long live Communism!"
"The... The Baron! The Baron is dead!"
Seeing as how they blew up a Baron's parlor along with his entire family in the borderlands just a week after I gave them the book, it seems they are making proper use of it.
Time passed—one month, then two.
A bomb went off at the Birmingham Police Headquarters, killing dozens of police officers. Bombs exploded at military courts in the dead of night. Requisitioned grain warehouses were set ablaze. An aristocrat-only train derailed, and a noble father and daughter were consumed by the flames.
Every week, every day, something exploded.
The military, previously composed of soldiers loyal to the Count, was now filled with conscripted men whose loyalty could no longer be guaranteed.
The Count, arrogantly believing he had suppressed the riots and that the Liberty League's terror attacks were merely the final thrashings of traitors, intended to mobilize troops to the Columbia colonies. However, his vassals opposed him, forcing him to keep the army within his fief.
The citizens are no longer loyal, and neither is the army.
The moment we raise the red flag, half of Birmingham's citizenry will join us.
The second hand of the clock has reached its critical moment.