Red Temple Crisis

The Red Temple Crisis is considered by many to be the catalysing moment of the Daolese civil war, leading to the Haikei Temple Protests which then became the basis for both the Ren Uprising and the split of the New Gonshu movement from orthodox imperial authority.

The crisis occurred in the city of Luzhong at the Red Temple, the centre of the minority Yanbo Religion based in the region. The Yanbo are a majority in the Luzhong region alone and sought legal protection from the Daolese state in the form of regional autonomy, much as the Emperor Honshe Region of Prosperity has its own court separate to that of the rest of Daolin. The new 'state' within Daolin would be called Yanzhong, and would have its own military and police.

However the Imperial Court rejected these calls, claiming the Yanbo faith was merely a Tsung construction and a tool to claim full independence, as Luzhong could be described as a Tsung ethnic exclave and because the Yanbo faith has its roots in pre-Suka Tsung tradition. The Yanbo became disillusioned with the Daolese Imperial Court and began to band together for self-defence against the Daolin's paramilitary police. Tensions escalated such that the major Yanbo leaders holed themselves up in the massive Red Temple complex and fortified the building, with ample munitions smuggled through Luzhong's busy port.

The Red Temple Crisis is the name given to Daolin's response. The Imperial Court opted to besiege the building and take the leaders prisoner on charges of treason. The siege lasted for one week, and ended when Daolin brought the warship HRIM Huoshen down the Mailu river to the city to bombard the riverside temple. The short-lived Yanzhong Thearchy surrendered and all of the leaders were summarily executed. The civilian casualty of the week-long battle was massive: some estimates put it at over 600. Public outrage rippled across Daolin and triggered mass protests in Guoshi, the Haikei, Daobi, Yuen, and Jinsi.

In the Haikei, the Imperial Guard riot unit attempted to suppress the riots, causing protesters to take shelter in and control of The Haikei Central Train Station and, by sheer coincidence, the Grand Temple of the Divine devoted to the Suka faith, Hongyi faith, Daolese Imperial Cult and Beygul Imperial Cult. When the Huayu Emperor (Emperor Yushui Yuhai) ordered them to call off the suppression of the riots, he caused a split in his court between those who supported continued suppression and those who supported the emperor in his right to exercise imperial prerogative.

The ideological split spiraled into active dissent as several key military leaders sided against him and acted against his orders and continued to attack rioters and besiege both temple and station. Emboldened, other courtiers began to actively disobey imperial orders. They called their movement New Gonshu, after the military dictatorship that ruled the majority of Daolin outside the Imperial Hai during the Decadence Era.

Faced with no other choice, the emperor commanded the loyal remainder of his Imperial Guard to attack the dissidents and lift the siege. Large-scale fighting ensued and the ideological split turned into a national split, with the Military Government in Shidong from the east sending supporting troops on the side of the dissidents and eventually receiving the support of the High Council of Ying-Ma (and thus Empress Deisi Edun) in the north, crowning the empress as their claimant to the Daolese throne. The Jinsi Princely Court and the associated courts of the western coast declared for the emperor and sent his government similar military support.

Meanwhile the citizens and workers of the Tsung Region, the Southern Seaboard and the Haikei became increasingly militant in the face of repression by both the New Gonshu and the Royalist regimes. They seized control of their workplaces and eventually their cities, in the name of the pro-worker Ren Movement and cast down the merchants that ruled the region and facilitated their suppression. The seizure of the Luzhong Bourse, the secondary headquarters of the Sovereign Company of the Dragon, and capture of the Emperor Honshe Region of Prosperity marked the advent of the movement as a highly-organised citizen's militia with the capability of securing important military objectives. Their crowning achievement, however, came later with the Storming of the Imperial Palace. The Ren movement successfully penetrated the heavy defences of the imperial palace in the Haikei where the gates had been opened by supporters in the emperor's staff. They ransacked the treasures and forced the emperor and the remainder of his court to flee. However they failed to hold the palace and it was wrested from their control by the New Gonshu forces.