African Entrepreneurship Records

Chapter 398: Every dog ​​needs to be slapped twice

Ernst did not know that Cape Town was already preparing to intervene in East Africa, and was planning to start from Germany. However, before the war, Ernst knew whether there would be good relations between East Africa and Cape Town, but he planned to intervene from Germany. East Africa is nothing more than wishful thinking on the part of the British.

The strategic goal of East Africa this time is to use mountains and rivers as boundaries, occupy some easily defensible places, and take possession of the mining areas in South Africa. There are British forces in many places in the mountains and rivers of South Africa. The typical example is the Grigualand Republic, but the Grigualand Republic is north of the Orange River.

If the Republic of Grigualand is south of the Orange River, then East Africa will probably not annex the Republic of Grigualand. After all, it is difficult to defend and can easily become a bloodletting trough.

The second is the junction between the Zulu Kingdom and the Natal Colony. There is no clear boundary here. This is understandable. After all, the British used to think that they were the dominant party and had no opponents in Africa, at least South Africa. If they compete with these indigenous When signing a border treaty, let alone whether these indigenous people are qualified or not, it will also hinder their own expansion advantages.

As a result, the East African Kingdom is now the same as the United Kingdom, and East Africa does not pay attention to this. From the colonial era to the present, East Africa has only signed a border treaty with Egypt.

 First, Egypt has an important strategic location and a long history, and major powers are paying close attention to it. The second is that the area bordering Egypt and East Africa is Sudan, which has a mainly desert climate. Only the Jezira Plain has some cultivated land, which is not conducive to the advancement of the troops. The third is that Egypt itself is not weak.

 At least East Africa believes that Egypt has the strength to sit at the negotiating table, but even so, in the end, Egypt was the loser when it signed a treaty with East Africa, and ceded some "bad land" with oil in Sudan to East Africa.

 …

They didn't stop long in Pretoria. Shortly after the 123rd Division supported Felix in the war against the Zulu Kingdom, the 514th Division, which had rested for a few days, was dispatched again. This time the 514th Division's destination was the Kingdom of Basutoland. That was the Kingdom of Lesotho in its previous life.

 In South Africa now, it can be said that every dog ​​has to be slapped twice by East Africa, and the Kingdom of Lesotho has to bear the slap from East Africa.

The reason why East Africa beats Lesotho is quite simple. Lesotho is the country with the highest altitude on the South African plateau. It is also the water tower of South Africa. Many rivers in South Africa originate here, such as the Orange River, some tributaries of the Fal River, and the Tugei that flows into the Indian Ocean. Lahe et al.

In the previous life, the Kingdom of Lesotho and South Africa had a well-known water diversion project, which diverted water from Lesotho to solve the industrial water problems in Pretoria and Johannesburg, South Africa.

At the same time, the Basutoland Kingdom happened to be the watershed of the Orange River and the Tugela River, so Ernst planned to swallow up the northern part of the Basutoland Kingdom.

This will help East Africa center on the Kingdom of Lesotho and build a defense line based on the Tugela River, the Fite River (a tributary of the Orange River), the Champagne Mountains, the Fal River, and the Orange River.

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Ernst called this line of defense the Southern Line of Defense. The main defense target of the Southern Line of Defense was the Cape Colony.

East Africa has offended all the forces in South Africa, including the Boers, Swazis, Zulus, Basutorans, Griguarans (Boers), and the British.

But East Africa must restrain its ambitions and not be too rough with Cape Town. So far, the contradiction between East Africa and Cape Town can be regarded as a conflict at best. If it really attacks Cape Town, it will not be a conflict, but a declaration of war with Britain. .

Although the Republic of Grigualand is part of the Cape Colony, it is not important. Basutoland is also a British protectorate, but East Africa does not intend to directly wipe it off the map; Choose to leave half.

 These two main conflict areas are subordinate areas of the Cape Town Colony, not the main body of Cape Town. Only the Natal Colony in the southeast is one of the core colonies.

The East African Kingdom's attack on these two areas is two different concepts from its attack on Cape Town. Cape Town is the son of the United Kingdom, and these two are its grandsons. Moreover, the British mainland cannot control these two areas, mainly Cape Town. Responsible for hosting. The Cape Colony can actually be regarded as an independent country. Although it is part of the British Empire, it has certain autonomy. Its main authority is the Cape Town National Assembly, which is composed of local people, but the head is the Queen of England, and the actual administration The chief was Henry Buckley, the British commissioner to South Africa who also served as the governor of Cape Town. With the British military presence in Cape Town, Britain could now firmly control South Africa.

 This configuration is actually similar to Australia and a little worse than Canada because the British Parliament passed the British North America Act in 1867, making Canada a British Dominion close to an independent sovereign country.

 In fact, if the East African Kingdom had not intervened, the white people in the Cape Colony would have been able to obtain autonomy this year, and then they could have set up a cabinet responsible to the Parliament to achieve autonomy in the true sense.

Now, the white people in Cape Town are about to reconsider the need to fight for autonomy. Obtaining autonomy itself is that the white people in Cape Town want more rights and at the same time reduce obligations, relying on the importance of the Cape Town colony. , forcing the British mainland to make concessions.

 But after the enemy East Africa came, the conflicts among the white people in Cape Town shifted from central London and Cape Town to the conflicts between Cape Town and East Africa.

Without the protection of the British Empire, how could the Cape Colony resist the East African Kingdom with stronger military strength? Therefore, the white local forces in the Cape Colony now need to bow to London. This may not be a bad thing for the British government.

 …

 The war between the East African Kingdom and the Zulu Kingdom was carried out almost at the same time as Lesotho. The Zulu Kingdom was the most difficult place to fight. However, after the East African cavalry division joined the battle, the situation improved greatly.

In the open area, the cavalry division can take control of the Zulu Kingdom at any time, but the Zulu Kingdom cannot escape the pursuit of the East African Mountain Division if it wants to retreat into complex terrain.

This is a huge headache for the Zulu Kingdom. The reason why the Zulu Kingdom can fight back and forth with the Boers is that its terrain advantage accounts for a large part.

But the soldiers of the East African Mountain Division all come from mountainous areas, which gives them an advantage in the Drakensberg Mountains and even gives them an advantage over the Zulu people living here.

The Zulu Kingdom actually arrived here only a few decades ago and established the kingdom. The people who lived here before were the Khoisan people. The entire South Africa was previously the territory of the Kosanyi people. Now the Kosanyi people are mainly distributed in the Cape. There are only about a hundred thousand people left in Dun and the East African Kingdom, as well as Namibia in the previous life.

The Khoisan people belong to an independent group, and their skin color is yellowish. Because the Bantu people moved south (including the Zulu people), the Khoisan people in eastern South Africa are of mixed race (the maternal line is Khoisan people), so the Netherlands belongs to East India. The indigenous people are darker.

It can be said that in the current land of South Africa, except for the Khoisan people, they are all invaders, and the Zulu people are no exception. Even the history of the Zulu people in South Africa is almost the same period as the Boer people.

 In addition, the Zulu people are also nomadic people. They do not often run into the mountains, so their understanding of the terrain is the same.

The Zulu people who were encircled and suppressed by the East African army had to continue to flee to more complicated mountainous areas, because although the East African Mountain Division was difficult to deal with, the cavalry troops were even more difficult to deal with, and it was basically a dead end in the plains.

On June 8, 1872, the last rebellious Zulu Kingdom army was forced by the East African Army into the Fort Champagne Mountain on the left side of the Tugela Valley. However, the East African Army continued to pursue until the remnants of the Zulu Kingdom entered Nata from the Fort Champagne Mountain. By the time of the Seoul colony, the Zulu Kingdom had perished.

On June 12, 1872, East Africa raided Maseru, the capital of the Kingdom of Basutoland (Lesotho) (located on the south side of the Tugela Valley). The Kingdom of Basutoland was forced to move its capital to Guting on the south side of the Orange Valley. The Kingdom of Basutoland turned to the British for help.

 On June 14, 1872, the Transvaal Republic's government-in-exile arrived in Cape Town, and Pretorius the Younger sought to restore the country.

 (End of this chapter)