Indeed, while I worked away at various duties concerning my rank and station, the country folk conspired against me, muttering suspiciously behind closed doors like a band of cowardly rodents, and so chanced one another into some dreadfully whimsome labels and a fairly hasty, hand-tailored casus belli – all seditious themes which turned distrust to anger and anger to transgression, whence a single handful of...agitators somehow convinced their would-be peers that my assets and, more importantly, my right, had somehow worsened their condition.
Source: wiktionary