Archducal Vacancy
The Archducal Vacancy (Embute la vacanche archiducale1) is the name usually given to the constitutional crisis which struck Argevau for a period of just over two months in the spring of 1964. The clash between the country’s reform-minded archduke, Ouistinien III, and a suspicious and intransigent state parliament ultimately resulted in the removal of the parliament and its Chief Magistrate Pièrre de Sarrelet, and the installation of an unelected technocratic government team with Ouistinien ruling by decree between 1964 and 1987, during which period he presided over the dramatic turnaround in Argevau’s economic fortunes now referred to as the Justinian Miracle (Mithacl’ye de Ouistinien).
Origins
Ouistinien had originally come to the archducal throne in 1957, at the age of 26 years, following the unexpected death of his brother Martîn. A noted savamophile who had been educated mainly in Quesailles (to the extent that he had probably spent more time living in Savam than in Argevau before he became archduke), Ouistinien had become convinced that his homeland’s larger neighbour held the answers to questions over how to improve the Argevan economy, raise the standard of living of his people, and protect Argevau in an increasingly threatening world. While he had been unable to make much headway in building a programme for reform due to the drastic downturn across Messenia caused by the years without summers, the issue was rarely far from his thoughts in the early years of his reign.
Bouonnes vacanches
Although he had had some modest successes, by the beginning of 1964 Ouistinien had become frustrated by the obstructiveness, even the wilful obstinacy, of his magistrates and his parliament. Argevau’s economy had been ever more woeful since the accelerating collapse of the silver-mining industry which had been the mainstay of the archduchy since medieval times; and the years without summers had driven it even further into the ground. If he did not take strong action, the archduke reasoned, before long he would not even have a country over which to rule.
His solution was elegantly simple. Late on 21 Animare 1964, four days before the beginning of the Argevan parliament’s new legislative session was due to begin, Ouistinien left the country and flew to Quesailles, where he took up residence at what was officially a “holiday home” in the city centre, placed at his disposal by his friend Serge de Frantelle, a Quesailles-based financier and a scion of a long-established Savamese noble house with extensive banking interests. Remarkably, he was able to do this with such secrecy that Sarrelet did not find this out for more than an entire day; and a further eight hours went by before the Chief Magistrate could locate the Archduke. In a bizarre telephone call on the evening of the 23rd, Ouistinien informed Sarrelet that he “considered that [he had] been under some severe stress of late, and felt that a vacation, in which [he] could seek the kind of Restoration of self that all good Cairans should strive for, would be just the thing”, and that he “insisted on not being disturbed until such time as [he] believed that [his] equilibrium had been properly restored”.2
In constitutional terms, this action was unprecedented in Argevan history. While the parliament and the various instruments of state could continue to function to some extent, no new laws could be passed without being approved by the Archduke. More immediately, Ouistinien’s absence meant that the new parliamentary session could not be convened. Further, Hubert de la Chaumière, Argevau’s chief justice, ruled that, without the imprimatur of the Archduke, any action taken by the incoming parliament was legally invalid and open to challenge in court, should the attempt be made. In this large-scale game of latrones, the duc had thus evaded capture very well.
It must be said that, to the wider Sabamic world, the events of the Vacancy were something of an amusement. A political cartoon in the downmarket Quesailles newspaper Aujourd’hui showed Ouistinien slumped on a sun-lounger, dressed in swimwear with a floppy-brimmed hat perched on his head, blissfully ignoring a fully-suited, sweating and swearing Sarrelet. The weekly journal Le Compas, known for its collectivist leanings, ran an opinion article entitled “Êtes-vous l’archiduc? Eh bien, je n’ai pas voté pour vous” (“Are you the archduke? Well, I didn’t vote for you”).
For Sarrelet and the Argevan government, though, this was entirely in earnest. The Chief Magistrate attempted to continue in office as he had been doing (and, it should be pointed out, as he was legitimately entitled to do, since Ouistinien had not dismissed him), but without the Archduke’s authorisation, the machinery of government began to shudder and break down. In particular, the absence of an agreed budget – normally presented in late Metrial – meant that government offices had to begin a phased program of closures from the start of Floridy. Increasingly, Argevau seemed to be running off the rails.
Cannily, Ouistinien had largely kept a public silence during this period, allowing Sarrelet ample licence to make his position worse; but this was not to say that he was wholly inactive. On 10 Fabricad he visited the Argevan embassy in Quesailles, from where he sent a secure telegraphic message to his own capital, in which he set out his personal manifesto for the rebuilding of Argevau. A copy was sent to the parliament building, but also, crucially, to the offices of Le Cahouain, Argevau’s leading newspaper; as he had expected, the entire text of Ouistinien’s message formed most of the paper’s front page the following day. Thoroughly outflanked and with public opinion rapidly moving against him, Sarrelet contacted his archduke through the Quesailles embassy and tendered his resignation. Ouistinien returned to Argevau on 14 Fabricad.
Aftermath
Deliberately, the archduke did not request his parliamentarians to nominate a successor to Sarrelet, as would ordinarily have been the case; and with parliament itself not in session (at least officially), it, too, was set to one side, with Ouistinien putting together a hand-picked team of advisors in what may have been the first overtly technocratic government assembled anywhere in Messenia. This team included his good friend Frantelle presiding over finance and the treasury, with the archduke personally quashing any arguments over the presence of a foreigner within this Argevan government. While this lurch towards autocracy was greeted with some concern (particularly after the end of the Mênagement in Emilia in 1965), the actions were received largely positively in Argevau itself – all the more given the effects over the next few years, as the country’s economy drastically improved in the period named after the archduke himself as the Justinian Miracle.