Tyranny of Steel
chapter-526

Reyneke Trossingen was a General in the ranks of the Austrian Royal Army, and he was not the greatest example of a field commander. His skills were much better set to task on managing logistics than it was strategy and tactics. It was because of this that the Crown had entrusted him to look after the warehouses which housed the various weapons of the Austrian Army.

Of course, when being in such a comfy position for so long, corruption was unavoidable. When one officer approached him roughly a year ago with the proposition to sell decommissioned arms to the black market, he was initially hesitant.

After all, the Crown was very strict on organized crime. However, he also had thousands of old firearms lying around that were no longer in service and were kept as a strategic reserve. Surely if a few dozen of the guns went missing, nobody would notice, right?

Or so he thought. Never in his wildest dreams would he imagine one of the pocket pistols in his warehouse would find its way into the hands of an assassin who mistakenly wounded the Princess in an attempt to claim the King's life. It was because of this event that the General was sweating bullets as he wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.

Though he had gone to great lengths to conceal his involvement in the black market, he was well aware of Austrian Royal Intelligence's ability to bring secrets to the light when they were determined. With the declaration of Marshal Law by the Second Queen, who was the Director of Intelligence, he knew that his time in this world was limited.

Thus, at the moment he was preparing to flee Austria, perhaps he could bring some of his expertise to one of the neutral nations. The relatively obese, and bald man stuffed one of his coats into a suitcase as he barked orders at his house servants.

"Fetch my stash of guldens, quickly! I do not want to be here when the Agents of the Crown show up!"

It was at this moment a knock resounded at the door. The moment the General heard this, the life faded from his eyes, and he instinctively halted his actions. It was too late, and he knew it. The Crown's agents had acted quicker than he expected.

With a heavy sigh, the General approached the door to his mansion and opened it, revealing an entire company of the Royal Guard at his doorstep. These men were armed to the teeth and were prepared for conflict. The sight of which had practically caused the man to soil himself in fear.

Rather than resist his fate, the General threw up his hands and surrendered himself to the authority of the Royal Guard. A group of soldiers quickly approached him and bound him with chains as they began to read him his charges.

"General Reyneke Trossingen, you are under arrest for the charges of High Treason, Arms Trafficking, bribery, and extortion."

As the General was loaded off into the prisoner wagon, his neighbors gazed in horror. While this arrest was being made, many more like it were occurring across the city, some of which were far from as peaceful as the General's case.

On the other side of the city, a man wore a cloak concealing his identity as he sat in the back of a carriage with his family. The city had been completely sealed off since the assassination attempt on Berengar's life. Nobody was allowed in or out, as martial law prevailed.

This man was a member of Parliament, and was considered by the people to be a man of upstanding virtue, and a true champion of the common man. However, in reality, he was as corrupt as a politician could get.

Werner Goßhain was not born a nobleman, or even the son of a wealthy merchant. Instead, he had grown up as another peasant beneath the von Kufstein family. However, when Berengar came to power and began educating the public, the man's quick wit aided him in becoming among the first commoners capable of qualifying for office.

He ran a campaign for the House of Commons on the principle that he would make the lives of commoners better, something that naturally occurred because of Berengar's reforms. Despite the reality, he had largely taken credit for many of Berengar's policies that benefitted the average person, making him a popular candidate.

However, vanity was not the only sin of this man. How could it be, without wealth, what was the point of popularity? Thus, he quickly found himself accepting bribes by entrepreneurs wanting to open up businesses in his district without following the many regulations Berengar had put in place, which existed not only to protect the people, but the environment as well.

Bribery naturally turned into extortion as he forced new prospective businesses to pay a "fee" to his office in return for the right to operate in his district. When a few entrepreneurs found out this was illegal, they threatened to reveal his schemes, which resulted in him turning to murder to silence the voices of dissent.

All of this had flown under the radar of Austrian Intelligence. After all, they had been far more concerned with organized crime and external threats than the idea of corrupt politicians. Unfortunately for this man, one of his associates had ties to the black market, which was currently the target of the crown.

Because of his relationship to the black market, Werner's crimes had come to light, and he was now a wanted man. Luckily, his contacts in law enforcement informed him of this reality before it was too late. Thus, he had used his ties to the black market to get in contact with a smuggler who promised to safely escort him and his family out of the city.

From there, it was up to him to get them to a foreign nation. With all he knew about the Government of Austria, it would be easy to secure himself a place as a prominent nobleman abroad. Of course, that was the plan, however the moment his carriage pulled into the location where he was supposed to meet with the smuggler, he found himself surrounded by the Royal Guard who aimed their weapons at his carriage.

The driver immediately raised his hands to show that he was unarmed, which was met with a thorough rebuking by his master.

"Fool! Get me out of here! I will pay you a hundredfold if you get me and my family to safety!"

Despite these words, the driver did not budge. Instead allowed the Royal Guard to search the carriage. Werner was quickly dragged from out of the carriage, as were his family, who looked in horror at the situation, completely unaware of the crimes that the head of their house had committed.

Werner screamed at the Royal Guard, who had apprehended him.

"Get your filthy hands off of me! Do you have any idea who I am!?!"

The Guard in charge of his arrest merely responded by shovel punching him in the gut before reading him his charges.

"Werner Goßhain, you are under arrest for the crimes of High Treason, bribery, extortion, and murder."

The man's wife began to shriek as she heard these charges. She knew very well the penalty for such heinous crimes was death, and could not believe that her seemingly good and noble husband had committed such acts.

"You've got the wrong man. Werner is a champion of the people!"

Despite her protests, her words fell on deaf ears, as the Royal Guard did not care about the woman's hysterical delusions. Instead, they began to wrap the bindings around the man's wrists. That is, until Werner broke away from their grasp, and drew one of the Guard's sidearms.

The moment he did so, the rest of the guards raised their rifles and pointed them at the man while shouting their orders.

"Drop the weapon! Right now!"

Werner did not do as he was instructed. In an act of desperation, he opened fire on the guards, narrowly missing the man he had stolen the sidearm from. The moment the gunshot resounded in the air, the other guardsman fired a volley into Werner's chest.

Multiple projectiles riddled the man's torso and blasted his innards apart as blood sprayed forth from his body and onto the carriage behind him. His wife and children screamed in horror as they witnessed the man gunned down by the Royal Guard in the streets of Kufstein.

The guard who had his sidearm stolen quickly motioned for the men to cease their fire as he walked forth and grabbed hold of his revolver from the corrupt politician's dying hand. After doing so, he pulled back the hammer and pointed it towards dying man's skull.

"Good riddance."

After saying this, the Royal Guard plugged a round through Werner's forehead, ending his life on the spot. With the execution committed ahead of schedule, the Royal Guard issued his orders to his soldiers.

"Apprehend the family and interrogate them. I want to know what information they may have about Werner's criminal activities."

With that said, the Royal Guard took away the sobbing family and brought them down to the police station for questioning. On this bloody night, Werner was the first of many to be gunned down by the Royal Guard as they resisted their arrests. This night, which marked the first time the Austrian Crown used its authority to purge the criminal, and corrupt from its society would later be known as "Bloody Monday."