Francis Cumberland (Napoleon's World)

Francis Patrick Cumberland (15 April 1880 - 4 January 1951) was an English politician and political theorist, serving as the controversial Premier of England from 1934-1937. As a proponent of a strong, centralized state as opposed to the loose, decentralized communal state envisioned by his political rival David Barham, he was responsible for the mass industrialization of England in the early to mid-1930's as the Deputy Chairman of the Socialist Party and the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

After an intense power struggle in which he eventually forced Barham's retirement, Cumberland authorized the mobilization of the English Army to suppress insurrection in Wales, potentially invade Scotland and reclaim the Island of Manx. This mobilization and attempted territorial grab directly resulted in the Irish War, which was the dominant issue of his Premiership. Following a French invasion and occupation of Kent and Cornwall and a bombing of London, Cumberland agreed to step down as part of the hastily negotiated 1937 peace agreement in favor of Neville Chamberlain. Cumberland retired permanently in 1940 from the Socialist regime after a token appointment in the Chamberlain and Churchill ministries and lived his retirement in his hometown of Manchester. In 1951, during a bout of starvation in Manchester, the occupying EWA confiscated his personal stores of food and killed him and his two sons when they resisted. His death inspired the poem, The Tyrant Is Dead.