September Content Update: Woe to the Tyrant

WOE TO THE TYRANT - A DENOUNCEMENT

Of the Crimes of the Citizen Frederico d'Ortensia:

Who has through high corruption and low cunning, has been acknowledged as DOGE of the SERENE REPUBLIC, though he has long since forfeited any claim to that title due his unpardonable offenses.

Who has committed crimes against the PEOPLE of the city, the integrity of the SERENE REPUBLIC, and the PEACE of all the world.

Who has inflicted, through his AVARICE, suffering upon the defenceless, war upon the peaceable, suspicion among those of good faith, terror among the innocent, and repaid honesty with faithlessness, charity with cruelty, and love of the public good with narrow-minded ambition.

Who would see himself addressed as "Conqueror", but whom we now denounce as TYRANT, DESPOT, MURDERER, THIEF, and TRAITOR.

HIS CRIMES AGAINST THE REPUBLIC

When a Doge is elected to the chair of the Republic, they are expected to serve for life. Yet to allow such a figure to hold power and remain immune to any form of censure or recall would make them no better than a King. The people of Fiore hold the right to impeach our Doges for the same reason we elect them in the first place: to keep them responsible to those who they hold power over, and to ensure that they will ever make judgement in the interests of the Republic's citizens.

See now how the Tyrant has corrupted that sacred covenant of responsibility. Thrice now, responsible citizens of the Republic have sought to bring the Despot to justice for his crimes, to make him face the consequences of his vile actions, and to ensure that he will be stripped of the power to commit yet more egregious offences. Yet thrice now, he has responded not by respecting the laws and agreements which are intended to bind us all as equal citizens, but through treachery. Instead of allowing the people to decide his fate, he has riled up masses of hired thugs to force the result of every vote of impeachment leveled against him. He has used force of arms to achieve through threats and cudgels what he was barred from doing by law.

By resorting to such actions, he has broken faith with the very basic principles of the Republic and proclaimed to all with ears to hear and eyes to see that he rules not as a legitimate captain of this city's people, but as nothing more than a base despot. In doing so, he steals the rights of the citizens of Fiore, fouls the dignity of the office he claims, and betrays not only our Republic of flesh and blood and stone, but the very guiding principles of its foundation.

HIS CRIMES AGAINST PEACE

Now we are left with the question of how the Tyrant has been able to pay for such machinations, when it is known by all that he had expended almost all of his fortune in campaigning for the office of Doge in the first place. Here too, the answer is known by all: through soiling the reputation of the Serene Republic in lands across the sea, in turning his back against th traditions of our noble city and its illustrious forebears; in making our august and noble banners - which have ever stood for peace and friendship and alliance between lands - into a symbol of hatred, conquest, and cruel aggression.

Always have the people of the Serene Republic sought peace and commerce with the peoples of the West. Always, we have come as traders and scholars and envoys to them, bearing gifts and treaties. Yet to preserve his own power and refill his own coffers, the Despot comes to these foreign lands instead bearing the sword, with no intentions but pillage and despoilation. For years, he has ravaged the coastlands of the east with hired blades and his armed lackeys, cruelly oppressing those who live there, stealing all that they own through force, and killing those who resist with the utmost savagery. He claims the fruits of such vile expeditions as the wages of victory, and lies of mighty enemy hosts vanquished and fortresses brought down.

Yet we have heard or seen no evidence of these great hosts. It is known to all that the coastlands of the west are disunited and poor, that for all their wealth in land, they cannot match the prosperity of our fair Republic. No, in this, the Tyrant only compounds his crimes of assault and larceny with falsehood, like a brigand or a pirate embellishing the difficulty of his crimes to add lustre to his own wretched reputation.

And who will pay for these offenses? The innocent people of the coastlands today - but it will be our children tomorrow, for how will they seek out trade and diplomacy with those who have known our Republic's banners only as the harbingers of a war fleet? How deaf will all ears be to their diplomacy when all remember Fiore only as a nest of despoilers and pirates? And when those scattered coastland cities do unite, and decide to put an end to the threat which the Tyrant in our midst embodies, what will their armies of retribution find, but a city exhausted and impoverished by the cruel ambitions of he who would claim to be its sovereign?

HIS CRIMES AGAINST THE PEOPLE

But how can this be? How can a war-captain returning from one victorious campaign after another with ship holds filled with loot leave his city poorer than it was before? Where go the gold and silver, the gems and magical artifacts which arrive in the ships of the Tyrant to befoul the waters of the Republic's harbour?

And here lies perhaps the Tyrant's greatest crime, for many offenses may be forgiven if they are committed for the good of the people, when they are embarked upon for the enrichment and strengthening of the Republic. Not so, the Tyrant's actions. The wealth which swells his coffers go not to building almshouses for the poor, or the digging of new canals, or the creation of new parks. They do not go to the creation of new commerce or new allies.

No, instead, the Tyrant's riches go only to perpetuating the Tyrant's own vainglory. They go to statues to glorify his form, paintings and tapestries to glorify his visage, and most of all, they go to the instruments of further plunder, to ships, to arbalests, to swords, lances, and the other implements of war, far beyond what is needed for the defence of the Republic. To this, he adds stocks of arms from the Republic's own arsenals, so that in strengthening his own avaricious expeditions, he weakens the cause of the common good.

And how does he find hands to carry these arms and sail these ships? Not through the levying of the Republic's own citizens, whom he knows despises him - but through foreign mercenaries and adventurers, from Isonza, Arran, even Mazzare. It is to these strangers which goes the shares of spoil and booty which the Tyrant brings back. By doing so, he impoverishes the Republic, preys upon those who would be the Republic's allies, and gives strength to those who may one day be the Republic's enemies. In this, he proves worse than a pirate-king, for even such a disreputable figure would not stoop so low as to plunder his friends to enrich his enemies.

To enrich himself, he weakens the people of the Republic, and in doing so, betrays us twice-fold.

FOR THESE CRIMES, WE, THE PEOPLE OF THE SERENE REPUBLIC OF FIORE, CALL UPON THE IMPEACHMENT OF CITIZEN FREDERICO D'ORTENSIA, NOT BY THE BALLOT, BUT BY THE SWORD!

WOE TO THE TYRANT!

DEATH TO HIS TYRANNY!

OBLIVION TO HIS MEMORY!