The Anarchy (Napoleon's World)

The Anarchy is the name given to a period of instability and civil war in England that has come largely unmatched anywhere else in the industrialized world between 1950 and 1956. Also referred to as the, it is seen as the capstone end to England's position as the French Empire's subject state living in a position of anger over their loss in the Forty Days Campaign, and their reemergence as a new country backed by the United States of America. The Anarchy claimed the lives of nearly eight million Englishmen, as well as 22,000 Scottish soldiers, 34,000 Irish soldiers, 14,000 French soldiers and 9,000 American soldiers.

Political Instability
The 1940's began in the Socialist Republic of England on a sour note; the economy was in shambles, they had been made a protectorate of the French Empire following their devastating defeat in the Irish War and the Socialist Party's competence was being questioned. Premier Winston Churchill was the head of the Party, and his economic policies had mixed success due to the heavy reparations being paid out and the ruined infrastructure in many English industrial hubs from French bombing in the Irish Wars.

Churchill was not a universally unpopular leader; he supported the Sebastienites during the French Civil War, and managed to establish a tentatively good rapport with Scotland during this time. In 1943 he described an ambitious vision for a new Socialist England that would be "the shining star of Europe by the year 1950". He secured the 1946 Summer Olympics to be held in London when questions arose over the viability of the games due to the still-ongoing French Civil War. At one point, Churchill traveled to Dresden to meet with Sebastien and arrange for a stronger postwar bond. On January 19th, 1944, as Churchill prepared to introduce a new Five Year Plan to Parliament, he was assassinated as he looked out of his window over London.

Jonathon Trenton was the clear successor to Churchill due to his status within the Party, but he was seen as a bully. The Party factionalized following Churchill's death and a powerful, strong faction began to plot the overthrow of the weak and unpopular Trenton. During Trenton's rule, the English economy slid deeper into the hole that Churchill had begun to dig out of.

In 1945, the first signs of trouble emerged when Trenton got in a fistfight with powerful Party member Edward Kent. Kent demanded an apology from Trenton, which was stubbornly refused. He then called for the resignation of Trenton, to which Trenton responded in a mocking letter: "You haven't seen the worst of me, you cock-eyed bastard."

On May 20th, 1946, Trenton arrived in Parliament and realized that other members of the Party had brought guns with them. Kent's faction opened fire on Trenton and known Party members who supported him. Kent himself was shot in the head twice as the massive firefight engulfed Parliament. In all, forty-two men lost their lives that day in the Parliament Massacre, as it was known. With the Party having cannibalized itself, the only remaining Party member who had enough clout and experience to take over was Francis Turley, who many of the old-guard members of Parliament had never intended to usurp the Premiership.

The "Accidental Premier" was about as good of a leader as his name implied. Turley was intensely paranoid and routinely exiled other Party members that he believed were plotting against him, although in reality he was marginalizing his allies and removing able leadership from Parliament. As the 1940's drew to a close, he would come to regret this decision.

Economic Downturn and Collapse of Law
Some historians argue that the Anarchy began with Turley's rise to power, but the reality was that the Anarchy had been underway for some time. The English economy was in the deepest depression ever experienced by any industrialized nation. With France still recovering from its civil war and other Western powers reluctant to invest heavily in the English economy for fear of losing money, England began to print money. Hyperinflation began and soon the English pound was not worth the paper it was printed on.

Turley did little to appease the workers, who his Party claimed to support. Poverty had struck every corner of England and the deepening hole began to affect Scotland and Ireland, England's most critical trading partners. Stripped of colonial possessions that had fed the economy prior to the Irish War, England found itself sliding into a mire from which there was no clear recovery.

The lack of investment in the economy by the government led to the importance of local mayors and vicars, who struggled to keep their townships afloat. The first reports of starvation came in 1948, and in 1949 Turley received the sobering news that a militant army called the English Volunteers had been formed in central England to overthrow the Socialist Party and had the support of the Imperial government.

The crackdown against the Volunteers began that summer, and it was brutal. The English Army found itself being ordered to murder anyone and everyone suspected of aiding the Volunteers, and many soldiers defected. Turley began to realize that he was losing power, and that the most able commanders in England had all been exiled earlier in his reign.

In late 1949, the city of Manchester experienced a riot on a scale that had never been seen before in England. The city experienced warlike conditions as the Volunteers staged their counterattack against the Party. On Christmas Day, 1949, London experienced a similarly brutal uprising, this time by the English Worker's Army, an ultrasocialist faction that sought to crush the Volunteer presence in the capital. Turley resigned as Party leader on January 8th, 1950, with no clear successor. The Anarchy had begun.

Collapse of Socialist Government
Lawlessness had existed in pockets around England since Turley had assumed power, but shortly after the abdication of Turley, the Socialist Party collapsed entirely. Roger Folkes was the immediate successor of Turley, but he was quickly ousted by a military coup that put Edward Norrington in power on February 2nd. Norrington was assassinated on the 10th, and the Socialist Party, despite posturing, effectively ceased to exist.

The English Worker's Army, led by Henry Pierce, was the most powerful belligerent in the early conflict. Having seized control of London, the EWA sought to establish its control and claim legitimacy over all of England. Despite their tenous control over London, they couldn't avoid brutal violence against entrenched street gangs that had controlled the poor slums of London for almost two decades.

The Socialist government's collapse affected the countryside as well. Without clear central leadership, the Army's presence in the north and in Wales began to unravel. Commanders tried to prevent mutinies and were in turn quickly killed. No generals or ranking officers wanted to answer to Pierce, who claimed legitimacy in London. The People's Army began to form out of remnants of the English Army, and they were the best equipped to fight a long, violent war.

Law and order dissolved within a month of Norrington's assassination. By March, the English Police, which had been one of the few effective branches of the Socialist rule, was gone. Members hid their identities for fear of murder.

Parliament convened for the last time on March 8th, 1950. Several members were shot at by the EWA as they fled the House of Parliament that afternoon, and Pierce later barricaded the doors and threatened to kill anyone who dared question his rule of London.

Escalation of Crisis
At this point in the Anarchy, many assumed that Pierce would be able to entrench his position in London and slowly restore order in the capital, and from there reestablish normal government activities. The Revolution of 1909 had begun somewhat similarly and the Socialist Revolution had been a celebrated success.

The EWA's war with street gangs, however, proved to be its downfall. The EWA was comprised largely of unemployed blue-collar workers, who periodically engaged in brawls with gangs. The gangs, in particular the Roman Catholic South-Enders, took enormous offense to the aggression of poor Anglican laborers who laid claim to territory they felt they had not earned.

The EWA's battle against street gangs turned more and more violent. In April of 1950, the EWA killed sixty-two South-Enders over a five-day period in what became known as the South End Massacre. Other Catholic gangs throughout London, which tended to be the most powerful and most violent, teamed up to form the London Army, headed by Roger Steams.

Steams, despite factionalization within the LA, launched a vicious assault on the EWA on the morning of May 1st. The May Day Offensive resulted in the killings of nearly five hundred members of the EWA, the razing of neighborhoods and a massive gunfight at Barham Airfield. Henry Pierce personally met with Steams on May 6th to arrange a ceasefire after six hundred more of his men were murdered. Steams double-crossed Pierce, however, and his motorcade was shot to pieces on Hyde Way.

Without the stability in London brought by Pierce, the EWA had no clear leader. They also had a major grudge against the London Army. Roger Steams was himself stabbed repeatedly after he and his bodyguards were ambushed outside of a tavern. Catholic-Anglican violence escalated and smaller factions of both the EWA and LA created a gang war even more brutal than the one before. Civilians became targets all of a sudden, and the bloodshed raged into the summer.

In the countryside, EWA leadership reacted more forcefully and the organization, while one body, split into three regional groups led by capable officers who could coordinate and tolerate one another. The situation in London became so uncontrollable that the EWA gave up on controlling the city and instead decided to focus on controlling other major population centers.