After the group wedding, the morale of the people in Fort Riverland reached a new level.

Old residents got married and shared houses, and new Charlua and Guarani immigrants, as well as British immigrants who had fled from Cape Town, also benefited.

In view of the perfect conclusion of the northern sweep a while ago, after more than a week of intense counting and accounting, all the loot has now been counted. The operation lasted two months, and the army on the east bank with the South African garrison as the core swept across a vast area north of the Berg River, south of the Great Salt Pond, east to Dongshan, and west to the sea, and smashed more than 10 indigenous tribes, large and small, with extremely slight casualties, seized more than 1,100 cattle, more than 2,000 sheep, some ivory, fur, and grain, and captured more than 3,000 Khoisan reds and more than 900 Xhosa blacks.

To this end, Mo Ming, as the leader of the South African pioneer team, signed a special amnesty decree, pardoning a large number of slave soldiers of the lower two banners and British fugitives who obeyed the command and fought bravely in this battle. The soldiers who were under the two banners were not only promoted to the top six banners as freemen, but also received a small number of slaves as a reward. And those who fled from England were pardoned as freemen on a large scale because of their outstanding performance in the war. Unlike the natives of the Eight Banners, they were given some farm tools, seeds, cattle and sheep by the town government, which officially incorporated them into the inhabitants of the Fort of River.

The government gave each of them a cow, as well as some sorghum seeds, farming tools, etc., so that they could settle and farm in this area with peace of mind. Stop thinking about dangerous thoughts.

After all this is clarified. It's May 10th. this day. The herald on his horse once again rushed into several Eight Banner Tribal camps stationed around Fort River, and summoned the Eight Banner Masters...... Uh, no, it's the chiefs, the deputy chiefs, the Krars who came into town for a meeting.

The main topic of the meeting was how to harvest the wheat that the British had sown outside the castle of Good Hope. According to the information obtained from the reconnaissance, the British cultivated about 800 acres of wheat fields outside the city in the spring, near the water source, and two British merchant ships specially transported a batch of farm tools and seeds for them, so that they could successfully sow this batch of wheat. Now, more than eight months later, it's almost time to harvest the wheat. If at this time, the British had worked hard to cut off the grain that they had worked so hard to grow for a year, then most of the British would be depressed to death.

It is said that since the end of the last attack on the British in August last year. The Fort of the River had been at peace with the British to the south for months. Naturally, the British did not have the spare strength to take the initiative, while the people on the east coast were busy with heavy city walls, house construction, spring sowing, sweeping, etc., and did not have time to deal with the half-dead British.

Now, months later, the East Coasters have basically finished their business and are once again turning their attention to the British. The Cape Town Fort of Good Hope is now largely completed, and the British paid a great price for the construction of this not-so-majestic castle and its annexed docks. The 1,600 or so immigrants who came to build the castle in the early days had to do the heavy manual labor, coupled with a lack of food, bad weather, epidemics of disease, and constant harassment by the natives who had taken refuge in the East Coast. Most of these migrants either fled, died in indigenous attacks, died of exhaustion, or died of starvation. In short, to the present. There were less than 500 British immigrants in this castle, and it can be said that the threat to the people of the east bank of the Fort River, which had become a climate, was basically removed.

However, the people of the East Coast were not prepared to let them go so easily. It is necessary to know that if you don't kill a tiger, there will be endless troubles. For this reason, after careful deliberation by Mo Ming, Liu Ang and others, they decided to recruit a large number of indigenous soldiers from the Eight Banners to attack the British castle in the area of Fort Good Hope, and take the opportunity to seize the wheat of the British outside the city. The British had less than 500 people in the castle, and there were only more than 300 adult men with combat effectiveness, as long as the number of soldiers of the Eight Banners was large enough and equipped with certain weapons and equipment, the British might not dare to go out of the city to attack, and the chances of success were not small.

On May 13, the eight banners of the conscripted natives assembled on the south bank of the Berg River and began to set off. A total of 800 spearmen in armor were recruited from each banner, and some of the Eight Banners gunners trained by the East Coast carried 10 artillery pieces with them. In addition to them, hundreds of slaves accompanied the team as coachmen and handymen. Xiao Baitu and others, who were assigned to South Africa, followed far behind with the cavalry that had been expanded to more than 70 cavalry, serving as battlefield supervisors.

On the morning of May 18, this large force quietly arrived in the outer area of Fort Good Hope. The cavalry troops stayed on the periphery, and then the Eight Banners troops under the command of Sun Shengjun and others began to swagger towards the city of Fort Good Hope.

At this time, the Cape Town area is a good time for autumn and harvest. The British had carved out more than 800 acres of land about a mile outside the city near the water source, and now the wheat planted in these fields was ready for harvest, and the golden waves of wheat rose and fell in the breeze as far as the eye could see.

"Set up the cannon!" Sun Shengjun waved his hand, and behind him, an artilleryman, Clair (originally the name of the basic social unit of the Bantu people, but now evolved into the official position of the Eight Banners), bowed down to answer the order, and then trotted back to urge his artillerymen to start erecting artillery positions. These Eight Banners artillery usually received a certain amount of training from the East Coast people, this operation took into account that the British were equipped with a large number of muskets and a small number of artillery, which was much stronger than the Eight Banners soldiers who were all cold weapons, so they allocated an additional ten artillery pieces to these indigenous soldiers to use, of course, after the use of these artillery guns were strictly inspected and recovered, the East Coast people have been very strict in controlling the flow of firearms into the Eight Banners.

The Eight Banners soldiers made such a big move, and the British would definitely not be blind as long as they were not blind. In fact, as early as the Eight Banners began to set up artillery positions outside the city, all the British commanders in the fort of Good Hope had already ascended the city. Ensign Potter, who had insisted on leading his troops to defeat these barbarians, suddenly closed his mouth when he saw the ten cannons in the distance, and the other British officials were also a little silent for a while, these barbarians were actually armed with ten cannons, and it seemed that two of them were 12-pounder guns, God, have you abandoned your people?

"The choice of gun emplacements for these barbarians is very particular, not only to ensure frontal fire, but also to take into account the cross-kill firepower on the side, and it is definitely an artillery position designed by a professional-level artillery officer. I don't think these stupid barbarians would have such tactical qualities, damn the East Coasters, they are so shameless! "Ensign Potter walked up and down the city, fidgety like a caged tiger.

The English militiamen in tattered clothes around him looked at him indifferently, the wheat fields outside the city were very important, but they couldn't fight with their lives. After all, there are so many artillery pieces there, if they are all stuffed with scattered bullets, how many lives does your side need to fill in to be able to get close to those barbarians? What, you expect that those barbarians will not skillfully operate artillery? Don't be funny, whoever likes to go, don't let me die anyway!

Besides, the food reserves in the castle are not too scarce at the moment, is it necessary to work so hard? It will only be the nobles and officers who will benefit in that way, but it will be us unlucky people who will die. Moreover, I had recently heard from a whisper in the castle that the East India Company had intended to transfer the Cape Town colony out of the castle in view of the turmoil in Britain and the huge losses of more than £30,000 that had lasted for two years. There is already some information that the Dutch seem to be interested......

Damn it! These old men deceived us from China, and now they want to leave. What's worse is that they still seem to want us to fight these barbarians! Oh God, please punish these shameless people.

In the silence of the British militia, Second Lieutenant Porter, who had been alone for a long time, seemed to realize something. I saw him sigh heavily, and then left the place, walking towards the two gun emplacements at the head of the city. Since the soldiers were reluctant to go out of the city to fight back, they had to let the four cannons on the head of the city fight back against these barbarians.

The soldiers of the Eight Banners outside the city did not know what the British were thinking at this time, and they were still racing against time to dig bunkers under the supervision of the leather whips of the Clare officers to install the cannons; And the armoured spearmen were also in a sparse formation under the strict military law, ready to respond to the British militia in the city. Beside them, hundreds of slaves were already carrying sickles and carts into the wheat fields of the British, and began to harvest the wheat that was almost fully ripe.

The slaves were told in advance that the first 100 people who had the most wheat harvests and their families would be pardoned as freemen and ascended to the Upper Six Banners, thus becoming human beings. As soon as this order was issued, the slaves rushed into the wheat fields and began to harvest the wheat with their heads covered, trotting all the way to the cart after each sheaf, handing the wheat to the coachman, and then receiving a slip of cloth with written writing on it (to prove that he had handed over a sheaf of wheat himself). After the slaves had collected their vouchers, they galloped back to the wheat fields and continued to harvest the wheat with such speed that the officers and soldiers on both sides of the battlefield were dumbfounded. (To be continued......)