| Unbroken Rushes Rebellion |
| Date |
RY465 RA to RY466 DF |
| Location |
Blessed Isle |
| Result |
Victory for the Scarlet Empire |
|
| Belligerents |
| Scarlet Empire |
Peasant & slave rebels |
| Commanders |
Scarlet Empress
Tepet Marek
Peleps Zuo |
Seven Rivers |
| Strength |
250,000 Realm Legionnaires
250,000 Great House auxiliaries
10,000 Dragonblooded |
2,000,000+ peasant rebels
600,000+ slave rebels
1+ Anathema |
| Casualties and losses |
50,000 Realm Legionnaires
88,000 Great House auxiliaries
600 Dragonblooded |
500,000+ peasant rebels
600,000 slave rebels |
|
Overview
The Unbroken Rushes Rebellion was one of the largest uprisings to take place against the Scarlet Empire, devastating vast swathes of the Blessed Isle between the start of RY465 and the end of RY466.
The Rebellion was perhaps the largest civil conflict faced by the Realm since the ascension of the Empress. Its seeds were planted in RY462, when the Blessed Isle suffered a severe and unexplained drought that struck the central areas of the Blessed Isle, normally perfect in their meteorological stability. The drought caused the harvests of peasant villages to fail, leaving villages unable to pay their taxes and forcing granaries to disperse their reserve supplies. In RY463, and RY464, the drought continued unabated, reserves of food ran dry, and the inability of the Scarlet Empress to resolve the situation caused increasing numbers to whisper that she had lost the favour of the Dragons.
RY465
When the Air season harvest of RY465 failed completely, rebellion broke out, erupting simultaneously to consume nine different prefectures and spread beyond with incredible speed. Millions of peasants rose up to demand the Scarlet Empress leave her Throne so the blessings of the Dragons would be restored, and they were joined by mass rebellions amongst the slave population of the Isle, from which over half rose in defiance of their masters. Though the weather began to improve through the year, the Rebellion itself disrupted food production and starvation was rampant even where stability could be maintained, and slave rebellions meant that Dynastic households lived in fear of attack from their own servants.
Though the rebellion was at first uncoordinated, as months wore on the name of one Seven Rivers emerged as the leader of the rebellion. The origin of Seven Rivers remains unknown, though the Immaculate Order tells that he was an Anathema who used his evil powers to lead the peasantry astray.
RY466
At the height of the rebellion in RY466, it is said an army of a million rebels rampaged through Lord’s Crossing Dominion and a million more marched into the Scarlet Prefecture bound for the Imperial City, with other large rebel forces marching upon Arjuf and Juche, faced by the full might of the Dynasty and the Imperial Legions.
When Seven Rivers led his army within sight of the Imperial City walls, it is said that the five Elemental Dragons themselves took shape, massive and terrible, in the skies above, proclaiming the righteous rule of the Empress and the crime of defiance. Faced with this awesome display, peasant morale was broken and the army scattered, many peasants murdered by villagers as they attempted to flee back to their homes. Monks of the Immaculate Order, Imperial agents, Legion soldiers, and Dynastic heroes (particularly those of Great House Tepet) spent the next several years combing the countryside to locate rebel leaders and bring them to justice... unfortunately the anathema Seven Rivers was never found.
Aftermath
The aftermath of the Unbroken Rushes Rebellion was severe. The Great House Kurosa, born of an ancient Shogunate gens, had seen its holdings hit hardest by the rebels and was too devastated to make good on its financial obligations to the Throne... its junior ally House Tepet assumed many of its assets and adopted some of its members, with House Kurosa itself dissolved.
Punishments for rebelling slaves were made far harsher in the Realm, based on the Correction Wheel that had been invented by angry Dynasts for the torture-execution of traitor slaves. The Wheel became a fixture in nearly all Dynastic households where slaves were kept, used to inflict punishments for any betrayal and even when unused serving to remind slaves of the price to be paid for defiance. It remains common amongst Dynastic families to have a slave tortured on the Wheel by the family’s children before departure for primary school, to steel them against hesitation in accepting their superior place.
The rebels had made use of quartered jade coins, known as bits, to identify each other and exchange coded messages. In the aftermath of the Rebellion, bits were made illegal, though the law has not managed to bring about an end to their use as peasant charms or currency.
House Ragara used its financial assets to import vast quantities of grain during the Rebellion, to keep the Realm’s armies and loyal peasants fed, securing the House favours from the Throne and other Great Houses that it used to further its interests in the coming decades.
RY467 provided five good harvests, and while shortages persisted for some years after the Rebellion this was held as proof by Immaculate and Thousand Scales emissaries that the original drought was caused not by unworthiness on the part of the Scarlet Empress, but rather by thoughts of rebellion which had been growing in the souls of the peasantry and slaves, for had not the Dragons spoken directly in support of the Empress, and had harvests not burst back to full bounty as soon as the rebellion ceased?
