Butterfly crossing time and space sodu
On the political arena, if one cannot win with wisdom and strategy, resorting to physical elimination is a manifestation of incompetence.
However, once political struggles involve religious factors, they usually end only with physical elimination. Because religion is not rational, even if the high-level accepts defeat, the lower-level followers do not agree!
If class factors are added to such a struggle, then... hopefully people won't be completely wiped out before the struggle ends.
The royal family of the elves, after enduring a long period of puppetry, finally found themselves on the verge of losing even their puppet status. The gendarmerie had already extended its dirty paws to the members of the royal family, and the next step would likely be to abolish the monarchy and establish a theocratic state with the unity of politics and religion. For their own safety and to overthrow the overlord riding on their heads, the royal family, who had been hiding for many years, finally took action and launched a coup d'etat called the "Glorious Revolution".
The Elven Royal Family was already the de facto co-ruler of all Elves before moving to Yongju Island, commanding the heavens for thousands of years with deep-rooted prestige. The Xuefolas Church actually grasped great power only in the past two centuries, and the previous God of Hatred was just a small fry with little speaking power in the Elven pantheon. It was all thanks to the church members' glorious reputation won in overseas wars that the Xuefolas Church gradually suppressed the royal family and other elven deities, becoming the de facto ruler.
But the church's subsequent series of misdeeds will once again tarnish its hard-won reputation. Alas, these intellectually degenerate holy men, sitting on a powder keg, are still unaware of their own mistakes, thinking that they hold the country's power in their hands and have divine protection. Not only do they refuse to reflect on their past errors, but they also intensify their worship of the twisted logic of "leniently constraining oneself, strictly demanding others", which has reduced the status of fellow spiritual beings to almost that of colonial natives. On the surface, they have indeed concentrated all wealth and power in their own hands, solidifying the dominance of the Xiefula Church, but in reality, they are dismantling their own foundation, pushing the government into the abyss.
A colonialist country with a clear internal hierarchy and cruel exploitation means is originally sitting on the volcano of oppressed nations. Now, those in power not only do not think about how to strengthen the exploiting class's power but also want to reduce the number of the local ruling class. However, they do not know that once the number of the ruling class decreases to a certain extent, the "legitimacy" of the regime will disappear. This "legitimacy" is not the "legitimacy" declared by the rulers themselves but the "legitimacy" of the rulers in the hearts of the people. Once the ruler's rule is no longer legitimate in the hearts of the vast majority of people who truly hold power, only military dictatorship remains. That is to create a military organization that is consistent with its own interests and detached from the general public, using strong armed forces to suppress national resistance and carry out terrorist rule. Only then is it possible to gain a thread of life.
Those who worship gods are too trusting of their deities and do not take the military power of the mortal world seriously, even offending the army of the Elf Kingdom. Soldiers bleed and sweat on the front lines, but they don't get any benefits. When they return home, they face hunger, cold, and even humiliation from their wives and children. How can morale be high in such a situation? How can loyalty to such a government arise? Therefore, later on, the army generally lacked interest in killing enemies. On the other hand, they were very interested in how to kill their own military police and quartermasters. As a result, they suffered defeat after defeat in foreign wars.
Of course, as long as there are all-powerful gods backing them up, even if the government is corrupt and brutal, it won't be overthrown by the people below. The problem is that the gods of the spirits are not just the hateful god Xefras and his family, but many other gods!
Although the main god of the elves, Corellon, had fallen hundreds of years ago, a series of old gods such as Anguish, the elven goddess of life, Hanali Celanil, the goddess of love, Labelas Enoreth, the god of fate and history, and Shevarash, the moonbow, the goddess of prophecy and illusion, still exist. The god of hatred, Shevarash, has no capital to boast about in front of these old predecessors, and the so-called main god position is also a self-proclaimed title by Shevarash after his wings are full. It has never been formally recognized, and the gods have only defaulted to Shevarash's strong reality.
After coming to power, the Xuefo Laosi Church repeatedly struck other churches by restricting material supplies and hunting down "thought criminals". In order to improve its own status, but it did not increase the number of believers in its own church (the members of the church do not want to share things with more people, and they hate the relationship between the clergy and the number of believers). This contradictory approach resulted in the gods remembering Xuefo Laosi's harm to themselves, but without depriving them of their ability to collect debts, and even increasing their unity - the gods who used to fight each other now have a common enemy, thinking about how to take revenge on Xuefo Laosi at all times.
Other churches already full of grievances, the army thinking of rebelling every day, and the poor people suffering from hunger and cold, all these together with the rebelling colonies and the counter-attacking enemy countries, formed the tomb to bury the dictatorial regime of the Church of Xeridia. But the indulgent clergy still felt good, and even stretched their evil claws further towards the repeatedly tolerant royal family, finally provoking the last force outside the system, and taking the last step towards their own tomb.
With the royal family's great moral authority, anti-system factions joined forces. Thus, the "Glorious Revolution" broke out.
The capital of Lusitania is the headquarters of the Church of Septim, with over 10,000 clergy and more than 50,000 iron-clad believers, gendarmes, guards and church armed forces. These are all vested interest groups in the current regime, extremely loyal to the leadership of the Church of Septim, and the military force in their hands is also quite strong, with several times the number of coup d'etat troops in the Dragon Knights Air Force. Therefore, although there were as many as 40,000 sailors and marines participating in the coup, the government still had a powerful counterattack force.
After the coup began, in an extremely short period of time, the government army, which was caught off guard, quickly regrouped through the short-distance transmission gates scattered throughout the city and engaged in fierce battles with the insurgent forces from all directions. The dragon knights on the government's side also swiftly seized air superiority, shooting down flying ships that were still distributing flyers, and began bombing warships in the harbor.
But the problem is that the "Glorious Revolution" was not only a restoration of monarchy but also a religious war and a people's war.
All clerics of Xerath's church found themselves stripped of all divine magic at the start of the coup. No amount of prayer could get a response from the God of Hatred. Priests serving other deities fared no better.
The head, to the citizens distributing previously reserved weapons, calling on them to fight for their beliefs and under the rule of the Xuefeng Church, the impoverished and downtrodden spirit nobles also launched their respective families, joining the battle against the government army.
The royal family, nobility, navy, church, commoners and the vast majority of civil servants. If a government faces so many enemies at once and doesn't collapse, it's simply unreasonable. Moreover, the government's intelligence agency had long been infiltrated by the coup plotters, so not even a hint of wind was heard beforehand. As soon as the coup broke out, the prisons under the jurisdiction of the gendarmerie were controlled by the rebels, and all the "thought criminals" inside were released and immediately armed to form a suicide squad to attack the gendarmerie headquarters. The government army had not even had time to deploy its defenses when its own command center was surrounded.
To ensure the success of the battle, the coup d'etat army adopted a beheading strategy from the start. The central church, the capital's Xuefeng Main Temple, was attacked with priority. Amidst the thunderous artillery fire, countless expensive poisonous gas shells whizzed down from the sky and landed in the temple that had lost its divine protection, knocking the priests who were still desperately praying for divine intervention to the ground. After the poison gas dissipated, there was no need for the army to take action. The poor people around shouted and rushed into the magnificent temple, using sticks, stones, and kitchen knives to attack the pastors who had barely survived. These men who had been wielding divine power just a moment before were now like fish out of water, being slaughtered at will. They were soon beaten to death. Occasionally, there were a few who could still use scrolls to counterattack, but they also fell under the absolute advantage of the coup d'etat army and died in battle one after another.
At the same time, a detachment of Wang's troops, with the help of former Lieutenant General and current Foreign Minister Daniel, took control of various departments of the central government. They then blew up the headquarters of the Gendarmerie, which had put up its main force, into rubble. The commander of the gendarmes was shot six times and killed. The government army controlled by the Xuefengras Church lost command at the start of the war and fell into a poor state of fighting on their own.
The government army, clearly on the defensive, seemed to be fighting in an enemy city. Every building, every alleyway had bullets flying from behind them. Tens of thousands of citizens, incited by the pastors, surged into the streets, some holding weapons they had just received, others brandishing kitchen knives, clubs and whatever else they could find, wildly shouting as they charged at the beleaguered government troops, venting their long-held grievances.
The sparks of various guns and cannons, the arcs of light drawn by knives, arrows, and bows, illuminated each other. Boiling water, tables, chairs, bricks, tiles, flower pots, even pianos and clocks were thrown from windows, balconies, and rooftops by citizens at government soldiers. Suburban insurgent workers controlled the capital's arsenal, operating hundreds of metal mechs that rumbled onto the streets, launching a powerful counterattack on the government army's rear, further increasing their confusion.
Many important intersections and buildings were already occupied by the insurgents before the coup forces arrived. The sentry posts and temples in each district were trampled one after another, blood stained the streets, and many houses became a sea of fire. Everywhere, insurgent crowds were besieging the mansions of the rich, beating up constables and Sifnios' priests, and even the dragon knights' continuous bombing of the insurgents could not stop the deterioration of the situation. Sifnios' claws are no longer defending this city, but fighting against both the attackers and the city itself, a hopeless war.
Under the multiple blows, the government army abandoned by the gods slowly lost its will to fight and began to collapse. As the battle raged on until dusk, when the flag of the Elf Queen appeared on the battlefield, the remaining government army finally "woke up" and began to lay down their weapons in batches, surrendering to the coup d'etat army.
A grand and luxurious building complex was ablaze, with sporadic gunfire echoing from time to time.
Swords, banners and muskets lay scattered on the ground, with over a hundred corpses of constables, church knights and royal guards piled haphazardly together, while even more bodies had been reduced to charcoal by explosives and magic. The Prime Minister's garrison was not actually that numerous, but in this fierce battle, these fervent supporters of Xie'Feng indeed made the coup forces pay a heavy price.
"Hah, these bastards really put up a good fight!" Princess Freyja walked out of the Prime Minister's mansion, which had been reduced to half its original size, her long sword broken and her breathing heavy. The soldier beside her held the Prime Minister's severed head, still dripping with blood. "The Government District, the Main Temple, the Gendarmerie Headquarters, Customs, the Police Department HQ, the Arsenal, the Armory, and now the Prime Minister's mansion - we've taken them all. Mother should be negotiating the surrender of the remaining enemy forces by now... it seems the battle is finally coming to an end."
"I'm afraid it's not enough." Daniel, wearing a suit of leather armor stripped from the corpse of a gendarme, emerged from a small alley beside the Prime Minister's residence with a rifle in hand, covered in bloodstains. "There's no time to clean up the battlefield, Your Highness! We must depart at once. The real battle has only just begun!"
"What's the hurry to occupy any more places? We've already got everything under control!" Princess Freyja plopped herself down on a rock, tossing her broken sword aside. "My soldiers are so exhausted they can't even stand up straight. Let's take a break first. What's the difference if we clean up those last few stragglers a bit later?"
"The relationship is getting bigger! According to my understanding, the claws of Xue Fula Si are all thorough madmen, and they would rather destroy them than not give them to others! We can't give them a chance to wreak havoc." Daniel waved his arms anxiously, trying to persuade Princess Freya, but the princess seemed unimpressed.
"All citizens of the city are on our side, and the sailors have all landed. What more can they destroy? Burn Lysippe?"
"It's hard to burn down the whole city, but it's relatively easy to destroy some key departments, such as..." Daniel didn't continue speaking, his eyes fixed on the direction of the setting sun, and his body suddenly stiffened.
Princess Freya turned around curiously and found a thick column of smoke rising slowly in the western suburbs, with faint orange flames dancing below. She immediately turned back to look at Daniel, not understanding why he had such a big reaction.
"There is the capital's largest strategic material reserve, stockpiling enough food to supply the entire city for two years!" The former army lieutenant general and current foreign minister fell silent for a long time. Finally, he let out a long sigh of regret, "We're still one step too late."
