Spirit Revolution

Spirit Revolution
Date	14-4 - 23-4 106 TT
Location	Padeno, Salino, and various small towns on the southern coast of La Rossa
Causes	• government crackdowns • rising anti-elite sentiment • Piazza Rossa Massacre
Goals	• the violent overthrow of the Six Families • democratization of the Republic of La Rossa
Parties
Anti-government revolutionaries • Student protesters • Reformist writers and intellectuals • Various supporters, including families of the massacre victims	Dux Edmondo Giannone di Salino • Rossan Moschettieri • Printing facility security
Casualties
• 417 arrested • 120 dead • 70 unidentified or missing	• 58 Moschettieri dead • 4 print workers dead

The Spirit Revolution was a short-lived period of uprise and revolt in 106 TT in La Rossa, which saw groups of violent radicals take control over several government-owned printing facilities in towns and cities across the southern Rossan coast, namely in Padeno and Salino, the home of the Dux at the time. The rebellion followed weeks of public discontent, but was mostly provoked by the Piazza Rossa Massacre in Padeno days earlier. Although the hostile takeover of the means of mass print was meant to be merely the beginning of a bigger movement, the revolution was violently crushed by the Dux's forces within days. Swiftly smothered, the aims and hopes of the vanguard sat in the quick reproduction and distribution of revolutionary material in hopes they would provoke a wider rebellion. Such support, however, failed to materialize, as a number of revolutionaries were swiftly arrested. Those who held out, in most cases, barricaded themselves in the facilities they took over for several days, forcing the Rossan Moschettieri to break into them, leading to arrests and, quite often, shoot-outs. In one particularly disturbing instance, the soldiers who broke through the defences were faced with an entire group who had starved to death, with machinery still faultily operating.

A variety of leaflets, booklets and posters, most of them destroyed in the weeks following the revolution, were spread throughout the cities. Most were unable to gather support, whether due to the presence of a significant degree of loyalism to the government, or owing to the violent suppression of the movement in the recent days. In Salino, a leaflet by the name of La Libertà received significant cultural importance as a symbol of the Spirit Revolution. An anti-governmental piece, written by an unknown author, sharply criticized the authoritarian hierarchy that ruled over the island at the time, and called for the overthrow of "the false republic". While most of its original copies were destroyed in the immediate aftermath, illegal printings in the future kept the text alive, helping it serve as a crucial theoretical and symbolic piece behind La Denunzia.

Aftermath

Although the revolution was unsuccessful in its goals of overthrowing the Rossan aristocracy, the violent period saw much disruption in wider society, and led to the shameful abdication of Dux Edmondo Giannone di Salino. In an internal election amongst the Six Families, he was replaced by his nephew, Michelangelo Giannone di Salino, a modest sympathizer of the movement's less radical ideas. A wave of democratization followed in the ensuing months, and suffrage was extended to all men possessing property, or the ability to pay the poll tax. This reform effectively extended the right to vote to about a third of the population. An Advisory Council, made up of five members, one from each of the city-provinces, excluding the one from which the Dux hails, was formed, capable of halting the Dux's actions with a 4/5ths vote. The new Dux's reign also saw the expansion of the freedom of mass distribution of written media, although many texts, mostly pertaining to the revolution, remained contraband.