Pâolin de Phouspet
Pâolin de Phouspet, duc dés Ozouets (1972–2008) was a nobleman from Saint-Calvin, and was the driving force behind an attempted coup in 2006 against that country’s government and its ruling archprince, Benouét IV, to whom he was cousin and heir-apparent. With the failure of the coup, Phouspet was taken into custody and subsequently put on trial for treason against the archprincipality. The inevitable pronouncement of guilt and a sentence of death was followed by his execution in Nollonger 2008, making him the first Messenian nobleman to be executed since the death of Massimo di Bragoni-Opagna in 1962.
| Pâolin de Phouspet | |
|---|---|
 Pâolin de Phouspet addresses the country, Dominy 2006 | |
| Born | 11 Dominy 1972 Saint-Calvin,  Saint-Calvin |
| Died | 11 Nollonger 2008 (aged 36) Saint-Calvin, Saint-Calvin |
| Cause of death | Execution (hanging) |
| Nationality | Saint-Calvinian |
| Religious beliefs | Cairony (Orthodox) |
Early life and studies
Phouspet was born on 11 Dominy 1972 in Saint-Calvin, the capital of the country to which it has given its name; he was the son of Ariane de Phouspet, the younger sister of the ruling archprince Chînquin II, and her husband Lionel de Monnay. Although falling within the line of succession to the throne of Saint-Calvin, Phouspet’s place within that line was such that, during his childhood and early adolescence, the likelihood of his attaining the throne was considered small; nonetheless, he was earmarked at an early age for a career in public service befitting a scion of the royal house.
Educated at the elite Êcole Polytechnique Saintcalvinaise in the capital, Phouspet was sent to Savam to undertake tertiary-level education, enrolling in the Université Cairienne de Quesailles in 1990 for a degree course in economics and business administration, where an analysis of the successes and failures of the Justinian Miracle in Saint-Calvin’s neighbour Argevau formed part of his final dissertation. Critics of Phouspet’s later actions remark on his clear admiration for Ouistinien III, archduke of Argevau and chief architect of the Miracle, but have dismissed him as “the discount-store version”.
Although Saint-Calvin is largely Orthodox Cairan by faith, the country’s orientation towards Savam as a loose patron and its membership of the Savamese Customs Union made the choice of UCQ an entirely expected one. It was nonetheless a difficult environment for the quiet and introverted Phouspet, where he was surrounded by Reform Cairans whose faithly practices he saw as troublesome and, in some cases, actively disturbing. This disquiet may have impacted on his studies to a degree, although his performance remained creditable; however, he was able to take some solace from the support of a number of other Orthodox students.
The numbers game
Phouspet graduated in 1994 and returned to Saint-Calvin and a family which was at something of a loss as to how to accommodate him; however, a decision was ultimately made to make use of his university education through an internship with the Bureau d’audit saintcalvinaise, Saint-Calvin’s parliamentary audit office. Sources close to the royal household have suggested that this was at the direction of Chînquin; while the civil service was probably not envisaged as a permanent career, the archprince felt that the close work done by the Bureau with the parliament would help to provide his nephew with insights into the country’s functioning which would serve him well in the advisory position for which he was being earmarked.
Phouspet, whom even close friends described as “better with numbers than with people”, appeared to thrive in his new environment; among other responsibilities, at the beginning of 1997 he was seconded to the steering committee under chief minister Adrien Gibyi which put together proposals for a sovereign wealth fund to be placed at arm’s length from the government, and to be named Fouai en l’avenîr (“Faith in the Future”). To some degree this followed similar plans put into service in Argevau under Ouistinien, and, as there, was intended to provide a cushion against adversity, built up during the then-current times of prosperity. The plan received widespread support in parliament, and the fund was opened on the first day of 1998.
Heirs and (dis)graces
This minor success was far from Phouspet’s mind at the time, as archprince Chînquin passed into the company of Aedif on 27 Conservene 1997, at the relatively young age of 73 years, bringing Benouét, Phouspet’s cousin and six years his senior, to the throne and casting Phouspet himself into the role of heir-apparent – a shift which he had not expected (at least at that time) and against which he protested loudly. Benouét talked him around, saying that, while the cousins had not been particularly close as children, he recognised Pâolin’s abilities and insisted that he needed the presence of a person whom he could trust as he got to grips with his own new responsibilities.
Forced to leave the BASC, Phouspet instead now took up the position which his brother had occupied for the royal house in parliament. While Benouét had been indifferent to the role, his cousin threw himself into the duties of a working peer and parliamentarian; from his previous work with the BASC he knew many of his fellow members professionally and personally, and he had built up some significant levels of respect on all sides of the chamber, even if, as heir to the throne, he could not formally align himself to any particular faction. He also found the work itself both stimulating and challenging.
This did not necessarily leave him content. Through close-quarter involvement with other members of the parliament, he concluded that all too many of them had little ambition or interest in properly serving the country, and were entirely too willing to use their status as leverage to personal ends. Nor was his cousin the monarch whom his country needed; Benouét was, he concluded, intelligent but lazy, and more interested in riding and hawking (falconry being one of his few discernible talents) than in the responsibilities of rulership. In his private journals he described Benouét as “a cushion which bears the imprint of the last backside to sit on him”.
The road downward
Phouspet’s frustration with Saint-Calvin’s increasing dysfunction was already reaching critical mass when he received alarming information through former BASC colleagues. The Fouai en l’avenîr programme which he had helped to create had become badly subverted under Gibyi’s successor as chief minister René de Mouesson, appointed in 2003, and audit enquiries conducted under the BASC’s remit had uncovered alarming holes where attempts had been made to cover up huge losses on bad investments. While enquiries were continuing, Phouspet’s contacts said, it was becoming plain that the fund which was intended to bolster Saint-Calvin’s future was effectively bankrupt.
Phouspet was horrified – not merely by the scandalous mismanagement, but also by his certainty that neither Mouesson nor his cousin the archprince had the intellectual firepower to deal with the consequences or, possibly, to even acknowledge that mistakes had been made and that heads would have to roll as a result. After a frenetic two weeks in which he made his own enquiries and confirmed his contacts’ despairing opinions, he presented his findings before the parliament on 5 Floridy 2006.
The result was chaos on a near-metacosmic scale – but even this was not enough to clear a path forward. While Mouesson’s government was censured, a vote of no confidence which would have dissolved the parliament failed, albeit narrowly, with opposing factions in the chamber unable to agree on a course of action were they successful; Mouesson himself chose to brazen it out, while Benouét – understandably given normal protocols, but regrettably – declined to intervene, instead giving the chief minister an opportunity to find a way out for himself. And it was at this juncture that Phouspet made what would prove to be a fatal misjudgement – figuratively and, in his own case, quite literally.
During his spell in parliament, he had built a substantial list of useful contacts both inside and outside the house; and he now turned to one of them. The army general Caûvin de Pertchian was a somewhat comic figure even by the standards of an army already seen as faintly embarrassing by its supposed peers; portly and blustering, he was described around this time as “a bulldog stuffed into an army uniform”. However, he was an astute mind within his professional field, a man of clear and unimpeachable patriotism, and a trenchant critic of most of the “spineless time-servers” in the Mouesson government; Phouspet was confident that Pertchian would place his loyalty to his country above his loyalty to its politicians, and would hold the ground while he himself confronted the archprince.
The coup
Three further weeks passed while clandestine preparations were made, but on 23 Floridy, shortly after dawn, Phouspet and Pertchian moved to seize the country. In front of the parliament building, a detachment of nine armoured cars disgorged more than a hundred armed soldiers, who forced entry to the building and took control of it; at the royal palace some three kilometres away, another squad overpowered the palace guard and removed the sleeping archprince from his bed, taking him prisoner.
At 7:00 AM, Phouspet made a statement over state radio, declaring that the parliament had been suspended “in the interests of public safety and confidence” and that Benouét “had been removed to a place of safety while order is being restored”. The archprince was in fact being confined to his own chambers in the palace, where he would remain for the next two weeks before being removed to an up-country estate near the border with Rochardy.
Over the next two weeks Phouspet began to assemble what he probably still envisaged as an emergency government. This proved more difficult than he had anticipated, with several of his magistratial candidates declining to be involved, and some of them decrying his actions in terms of treason against the state and the crown (it is worth noting here that at no time did Phouspet claim the throne himself). With the help of the military and police he did secure a precarious order in Saint-Calvin city and its environs, although protests against the coup were put down with severe force; by the second week of Fabricad it could be said that a tentative state of normality had been restored.
The response
Action against the coup from outside the country was, at least at first, surprisingly tepid. Savam, in many respects Saint-Calvin’s patron through the Savamese Customs Union, was markedly slow to respond, and claims have been made that Quesailles saw the affair as something that would increase Saint-Calvin’s dependence on Savam and, thus, as a net positive outcome. Brex-Sarre was more immediately concerned, with incumbent chancellor Hoste de Ferreau and his would-be successor Lionel Robertson both condemning the coup (in Robertson’s case, arguably with an eye on the chancellery election in Nollonger), and some pressure was placed on the government in Neuchâté by the arganic authorities in Etamps-La-Sainte, where traditional rights of sanctuary were being hugely strained by thousands of Saintcalvinian refugees. It may have been at Ferreau’s urging that Savam put together an intervention force which crossed through Brex-Sarre to enter Saint-Calvin in the middle of Empery.
Once challenged, the putschists proved astonishingly brittle, with the weaknesses of Saint-Calvin military being thrown into sharp relief against a fast-moving Savamese force which was more heavily armed and supported. Resistance held out for less than two days before the Savamese reached Saint-Calvin city on 19 Empery and forced a surrender, placing Phouspet, Pertchian and other leading figures under arrest. Benouét was released from custody the following day, and his statement to the people was broadcast live across the country from the unlikely surroundings of a Cairan temple in La Râde, close to his place of captivity.
The aftermath
To the surprise of virtually nobody, within a matter of days Phouspet and Pertchian were arraigned on charges of treason, one of the very few crimes which carries a death sentence under Saintcalvinian law. Both men petitioned for clemency, with Phouspet in particular stressing that he had not forced Benouét from the throne, and that he had acted out of a real belief that failure to take strong action in the best interests of the country would have been an offence in itself.
The pleas fell, as could have been expected, on deaf ears; although the coup leaders would have their chance to seek exculpation in court – the trial, which began in Nollonger 2007, sprawled over six months in which the events of Phouspet’s three-month usurpation were examined in painstaking detail – no disinterested observer could be in doubt over the outcome. Phouspet was found guilty on 2 Estion 2008, and although formal appeals delayed sentence, he was executed by hanging on 11 Nollonger; perhaps as a last stab of irony, the Fouai fund, the failures of which had triggered the whole sorry sequence of events, was formally wound up.