Algosh coup

The Algosh coup refers to an event that took place on 8 September 2009 during the War of the Northern Confederation, when military forces loyal to the Algosh people seized control of or otherwise laid claim to the remaining portions of the Northern Confederation, destroying that institution and bringing many of its periphery members under Algosh control. The coup was the primary event in the formation of Algoquona as an independent state. In most sectors of the Confederation, the coup was bloodless, but areas and peoples who resisted the initial coup were brutally repressed in September and October of 2009, leading to more than 20,000 civilian casualties.

Background
The Northern Confederation had been established in the 17th century to, in part, resist Occidental incursions within Cusinaut. The Confederation had been largely successful in this effort, and by the dawn of the new millennium it still included many of its most prominent members, including the Algosh, the Honeoye, and Tepetlcali, among many others. The Algosh, who had been a member of the Confederation, made up a disproportionate share of the Confederation's military by the end of the 20th century. A people with a strong martial tradition, their influence within the Confederation's armed forces led to the Algosh accruing rising influence in the Confederation against a backdrop of significant internal discord within the Confederation. The rising influence of the Algosh and Honeoye, as well as Occidental encroachment and other factors, led to a sharp decline in the cohesion of the Confederation beginning in around 1985. This lack of cohesion enabled blood feuds and other domestic wars to take place between the Confederation's members, and the inability of Confederate authorities to stop the conflicts further weakened internal cohesion. By 2008, a renewed blood feud between the Mixcala and Tepetlcali saw Urcea intervene on behalf of the Mixcala, beginning the War of the Northern Confederation as Confederate members fought alongside the other Confederation members as well as the Urceo-Mixcalan coalition. The Urcean Royal and Imperial Army had overrun several of the Confederation's southernmost members by the summer of 2009, including Tepetlcali. The fall of the other rotating capital of the Confederation enabled the Algosh to assume a leading role in the remnant of the Confederation.

As of late summer 2009, a relatively late point in the War of the Northern Confederation, the Algosh remained the only major Confederation member still fighting, leading a coalition of minor Confederation members and free cities. Algosh society's increasing martial culture had taken on significant nationalist elements, and beginning in the early 1990s some Algosh began to agitate for an ethnic Algosh nation-state. As the Confederation unfurled at the beginning of the war and was then easily defeated in the field by Urcea, domestic opinion had decidedly shifted in favor of a move towards "Algosh independence". By mid-summer 2009, this position became commonplace in the Algosh sectors of the Confederated Army; the collapsing state of the Northern Confederation shifted the views of the movement's leaders away from a unilateral declaration of independence and towards an internal military move against the remnants of the Confederation that would create a "greater Algosh" state. This movement included a number of Algosh hierarchs, the political and social leaders of the Algosh. The Hierarchs began to consider the matter by the end of July 2009, but sought unianimity among the hierarchs in order to prevent a civil war. Following a month of contentious closed-door debate, the Algosh hierarchs unanimously agreed to seize control of the remainder of the confederation on 30 August 2009.

Overview
Many of the parts of the Northern Confederation that had not been occupied by or aligned with Urcea had been garrisoned by or were otherwise close to the position of Algosh forces. Accordingly, on the morning of 8 September 2009, Algosh garrisons throughout the Confederation seized control of government buildings, key infrastructure, media offices, and other strategic positions. The seizures occurred on the orders of Pa-Akanti, the highest ranking Algosh officer in the Confederated Army, who had been organizing Algosh-loyal units over the previous week. Most of the Confederation's remaining members were caught off-guard and had no opportunity to resist, such as Pachaug, and in most places the transition of power occurred smoothly, with limited civilian violence. Efforts to resist the coup occurred elsewhere with limited success, and the Algosh consolidated territory into chiefdoms and reformed their government by early November. As the military seizures occurred, the Algosh Hierarchs proclaimed a new Hierarchy of Algoquona, a state controlled by the Algosh people with other peoples and polities serving a subservient, dominated role relative to the Algosh. The new state claimed to be the legal successor of the Northern Confederation, and carried on the war against Urcea.

Resistance
Several members of the Northern Confederation, such as the Honeoye, the Gowandis, the Canandaigua, and the Saranac peoples and the city of Housatonic, resisted the coup for a time. Resistance was strongest along the Nysdra seaboard, with the four peoples in the southern end of the seaboard and Housatonic in the north and several non-compliant entites in between. With respect to the so-called "four neighbors", their resistance to the Algosh was a major strategic concern given their proximity to New Harren and occupied Urcean territories. Accordingly, the bulk of Algosh response forces were sent to respond, and although the four peoples were not subjugated until 14 October, the military frontier with Urcea was reestablished by 10 September. During this period, the four neighbors collectively decided not to invite the intervention of the Urcean Royal and Imperial Army which they had been previously fighting; this decision would prove controversial among the four neighbors by the end of the 2010s, following years of Algosh occupation. Housatonic in the north had managed to resist its garrison and eject it from the city, but the garrison regrouped and besieged the city the day after the coup. The city resisted for 20 days and fell on 29 September. In Housatonic and across the newly occupied territories, sacks were common as were reprisals. Major portions of Housatonic in particular were burnt to the ground. The harsh treatment of Housatonic had the effect of leading other resisting areas, especially those in modern Ashkenang, to offer terms of truce and submission to the Algosh, which were accepted without bloodshed.

Many of the areas which put up the fiercest resistance to the Algosh occupation would go on to cause significant internal division within Algoquona and would successfully invite Occidental interventions in their favor.

Legacy
The coup would be the defining event in Cusinaut for the first three decades of the 21st century. The establishment of Algosh dominion was never accepted by most of the newly subordinate peoples, and Algoquona would be rife with civil discord for the remainder of its almost decade and a half-long existence. Although the new state and its conquests were temporarily recognized by Urcea in the Treaty of Narasseta, the resistance posed by the locals would invite further Urceo-Occidental intervention and lead to a series of military interventions against Algoquona, beginning with Operation Mission Shield and culminating with the Final War of the Deluge. The establishment of the Algosh state in place of the Northern Confederation also lead to the establishment of novel confederations following Algoquona's collapse, most notably the Chenango Confederacy and Ashkenang. Following the Final War of the Deluge, the Algosh would remain a sovereign people with their own state - the Algosh Republic - constrained only to areas where they made up an ethnic majority.

The coup had a major role in exacerbating The Deluge, not only due to the links established between Occidental powers and the groups dominated by the Algosh, but also because the establishment of Algoquona in the place of the Northern Confederation fundamentally destabilized Cusinaut in the view of the Occidental powers. Urcean attempts at engagement with the Algosh through the Treaty of Narasseta and then the subsequent military acts which led to the Cronan Emergency Resolution rapidly escalated the number of Occidental interventions in the Nysdra Sea region. Many critics of Occidental involvement in Crona, especially the government of Ardmore have dismissed the role of the coup, citing it as "pretext" for "long held imperial ambitions". Some analysts, meanwhile, have suggested that the coup inaugurated a historically unprecedented era of domination in Cusinaut that was more or less only disrupted by Occidental involvement.