.“ Rebels? Hum! It's just a bunch of bandits! On a brown horse, the rider in a flat felt hat and a large black poncho drove his horse slowly, and complained indignantly to his companions, but the rain was so great that most of his voice was drowned out by the sound of the rain. As for the war horse under him, which was already completely soaked, carrying a guy of height and weight on his back after a long journey, his nostrils could not stop panting.

The rider next to the man was dressed in the same way: a flat felt hat, a black poncho, and a spear wrapped in canvas in a holster beside the bridge in front of the saddle. There were dozens of riders in the same attire in front of each of the two men marching side by side, and the long line was now heading south on the winding and muddy road.

There was a disdainful smile on the wet face of the answerer:

"They always call themselves rebels!"

At this moment, a thunderclap sounded, so that the former did not hear what the latter was saying at all.

"What?" The guy in front asked loudly.

"I say......" The latter had not finished speaking, but suddenly fell from his horse.

The former was stunned, and only after a while did he shout: "Enemy attack!" ”

In the heavy rain, the scattered gunshots were not so obvious, the team had not dispersed, and most people did not react at once.

In a matter of seconds, several more riders fell off their horses, and it was only then that the rest understood what had happened, and they drew their spears one after another, and scrambled in the direction of the suspicious woods. However, the right side of the road was covered with woods, and with the pouring rain, they couldn't see the exact location of the attackers.

Within half a minute, several more people had been shot.

"Dismount! Take cover! Fight back! ”

There was a rough shout in front of them, and the riders, who had been in a bit of confusion just a moment ago, turned over and dismounted in an orderly manner, and then relied on their mounts or the grass and mounds beside the road to shoot into the woods.

After several minutes, a dozen riders rushed together towards the place where the bullet had been fired, but by the time they entered the woods, there was not half a figure there.

It took half an hour. The procession moved again, the dead and wounded were placed on horseback, and the dismounted men continued their demoralized march forward.

One of the riders at the head took out his pocket watch and looked at it, and if it went on like this, he might not be able to reach the scheduled camp before dark, but if he camped in the wilderness, I am afraid that such an attack scene would not be avoidable.

"Shit!" The man cursed rudely, scolding these elusive Mexican guerrillas, who were also the people who gave the order to march.

Over here. It was on the banks of the Balthus River in southern Mexico, and the identity of these riders was a patrol under Brigadier General Pershing of the United States Army. Why U.S. patrols patrol thousands of kilometers from the border begins a long, long time ago.

After winning the Revolutionary War in 1776, the United States decided to control all of America. In 1823, President James Monroe put forward the slogan "America is the America of the Americans", establishing the basic national policy of expanding territory and dominating the Americas.

Soon, the aggressive eyes of the U.S. government fell on Mexico, a neighboring country. In 1835, American immigrant slave owners in Texas and California, Mexico, launched an armed rebellion, and the Mexican government sent troops to suppress it. The United States went so far as to directly intervene with troops. and supported Texas' declaration of independence the following year.

In July 1845, U.S. President James Polk, known for his frenzied expansion, officially announced the incorporation of Texas into the United States. At about the same time, Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to quietly move into the Nueses River on the Texas-Mexico border. Waiting for an opportunity to launch a war of aggression.

In November of that year, Polk demanded that Mexico recognize the Rio Grande as the border between the two countries on the threat that Mexico should repay the $3 million debt owed to the United States, and the United States "bought" New Mexico and California for $15 million to $40 million, which was flatly rejected by the Mexican government.

On May 13, 1846, the U.S. government declared war on Mexico, and the Mexican-American War officially began. The declaration of war was nothing but a trick to deceive the world, and the US military operation had been going on for more than four months before that. At the outbreak of the war, although the US Army had only more than 8,600 personnel, it could recruit a large number of volunteers, and its weapons and equipment were relatively advanced, and it had a fleet to cooperate with the army's operations. The Mexican Army has a large number of officers and few soldiers, and its weaponry and tactical thinking are relatively backward and backward. Moreover, without the cooperation of the fleet, the result was a complete defeat under the blow of the US ** team advancing by sea and land.

On February 2, 1848, the United States and Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The United States has seized nearly half of Mexico's territory, totaling about 2.3 million square kilometers. This is most of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico in the United States today, as well as parts of Colorado and Wyoming. The United States paid Mexico only $15 million as "compensation."

Through the Mexican-American War, the United States became a great power across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and has since become the dominant power in the Americas.

U.S. ambitions did not stop there, and for more than half a century, the U.S. government frequently interfered in Mexico's internal affairs. and with its own military and economic superiority, it controlled many of Mexico's railroad and oil resources.

In the 20th century, Mexico's domestic situation became more and more turbulent, and the great dictator P. Díaz relied on the army and the township police to carry out a reign of terror. The brutal suppression of the bourgeois democrats and the broad masses led to the expansion of workers' strikes and the revolt of the peasants for the land.

In 1910, in the Mexican presidential election, Díaz rigged the election. Madero, the representative of the bourgeois and liberal landowners, ran for election with the slogan "valid elections and non-re-election". In September, Díaz was re-elected president by illegal means. In October, Madero unveiled the San Luis Potosí Plan, declaring the presidential election null and void, proposing that "the land be returned to its former owners" and calling for a national uprising.

In November, the revolution broke out, with the emergence of two outstanding peasant leaders: Zapata revolted in the state of Morelos; Villa revolted in Chihuahua. The revolutionary movement soon swept the country, and on May 24, 1911, the masses of the capital held demonstrations, and on the 29th Díaz was forced to announce his resignation, and the next day fled the capital, Mexico City.

When Madero was elected president in October 1911, instead of fulfilling his promise to return the land to the peasants, he attempted to disband the peasant army. In November, Zapata established a revolutionary council in the state of Morelos. He advocated the seizure of land by revolutionary means. In February 1913, Huerta staged a coup d'état under the auspices of the United States, arresting and killing Madero. In March, Huerta was inaugurated as interim president and imposed a dictatorship, and representatives of the bourgeoisie, liberal landlords, from constitutionalists such as Carranza and Aobregón, also organized an army to unite with the peasant army against Huerta.

July 1914. Huerta was overthrown, but power fell into the hands of the constitutionalist Carranza.

In October 1914, Carranza convened a congress of all revolutionary forces. The Pancho Villa and Zapatista factions constituted the majority in the assembly. However, Carranza rejected Zapatista and Villa's demands for local social reform and moved the government to Veracruz. After that, the contradictions between the two sides further developed into a large-scale civil war.

In December 1914, the peasant armies of Zapatista and Villa marched into the capital, where the two leaders met on the outskirts of the capital and pledged to fight together. Zapata established a farmers' committee for the distribution of land and an agricultural loan bank, Mexico's first agricultural credit organization. There is also an attempt to cooperativeize the sugar industry in Morelos.

Meantime. The Mexican Civil War continues.

In 1915, after the accession of the new Kaiser Wilhelm III, Germany began to intervene in the Mexican Civil War. The German government's chosen supporters were the famous Zapata, the leader of the peasant movement in southern Mexico.

Chen Tian himself still admires this rebel general, who is only three years older than himself, because his fate is somewhat like that of China's General Feng Yuxiang, with outstanding achievements and outstanding achievements, with a loyal patriotic heart, and a weak view of power and ambition, he supported Madero in the early days, but after Madero became president, he not only refused to return the plantation land to the Indians. He also insisted on disarming the guerrillas, and finally, Zapata had to be disappointed to declare that Madero was incapable of achieving the revolutionary goals, and he raised the slogan "Land and Freedom", allocating the recaptured plantation land to his subordinates for cultivation. When General Victoriano Huerta assassinated Madero, Zapata led his men to the outskirts of Mexico City, where he rejected General Huerta's offer to cooperate with him, pinning down Huerta so that he could not send his entire army to attack the guerrillas in the north. Huerta was forced to leave Mexico. Zapata knew that the constitutionalists in Carranza were afraid of him. He brought some intellectuals from Mexico City and later founded the Peasants' Party. When Huerta fell, Zapata told the constitutionalists that he would fight independently and would not give up until he had achieved his goal.

For such a leader of the peasant movement, Chen Tian's description is very simple: very personal!

In June 1915, Lord Matthias, the envoy of Chentian and a merchant living in Mexico, made his first contact with Zapata. In his report to the Kaiser, the envoy wrote:

Sincerely, Your Majesty the Emperor of Germany, I had the honour of meeting with General Zapata, the leader of the Mexican Peasant Army, on 17 June, who had the honour of meeting with you on 17 June, a man of little learning, who was a man of great integrity, who acted harshly and was well respected by his men. The peasant army in other places numbered more than 10,000, but it was very poorly equipped, and it was basically obtained by attacking government troops, and the soldiers were illiterate, but all of them were friendly. If our country can treat the general and his troops sincerely, I believe that we will be able to achieve rich rewards!

In July, on the instructions of the German government, Sir Matthias provided Zapata with the first aid worth $20,000 in the form of a collection of donations from merchant groups; In September of the same year, five people, including Major Sebastian, a German army officer, came to Zapata's base area as mercenaries to assist in training his troops; In December, the first shipment of weapons and ammunition supplied by the German Government was smuggled to Zapata, including 1,200 Mauser rifles, 50,000 rounds of ammunition and 200 D14 infantry mines.

It is worth mentioning that after entering the 20th century, the German Mauser series rifles with superior performance are favored by the armed forces of various countries, not only the government armed forces, but also many ** armed forces are also willing to be equipped with Mauser or imitation Mauser rifles, due to the production and imitation of Mauser rifles Arsenal, coupled with Germany's policy support for Turkey, Ireland and other countries, many Mauser rifles have successively flowed into the hands of some countries' ** army, guerrillas and even bandits, so that backward and turbulent areas often appear government military old rifles and ** Armed Mauser rifles against the situation, so people in these places jokingly refer to the Mauser series of rifles as "expensive bandit rifles".

In any case, the Mauser rifles were well known for their combat performance, so Zapata happily accepted the weapons and let his peasant army learn to shoot with German instructors, declaring that he was willing to be the best land for the Germans as long as the Germans were genuinely helping him and not trying to take Mexican land.

For such a "land guardian", Tatsuten knows how to deal with it. In January of the following year, Sir Matthias met again with Zapata as his envoy, and the two sides subsequently signed a written cooperation agreement, which set out the powers and duties of the two sides to cooperate, and that Germany would provide Zapata with funds, weapons, and instructors free of charge, and that he would not at any time encroach on an inch of Mexican land; After Zapatista seized power, all it was necessary to open ports to Germany and lease military bases.

In addition, the two sides also verbally agreed that in the future, the two sides would form a coalition to attack the United States together, and Zapatista would only need to retake the land that belonged to Mexico, and the rest of the area would be left to Germany.

Later, due to the leakage of the rumors, the US government learned of the secret cooperation between the Germans and Zapata, although the United States did not turn against Germany, but in order to eliminate the hidden danger, the US government and military officers began to actively plan to eliminate Zapata's forces. After President Wilson was killed in the bombing of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., and Marshall became president of the United States on an interim basis, he then ordered the U.S. Army to prepare for an invasion of Mexico, and by January 1916, the U.S. troops assembled on the U.S.-Mexico border had reached 25,000 men, and T. Marshall appointed Brigadier General John Joseph Pershing, who had extensive combat experience, as commander of the troops.

On 2 February, the German Army invaded Austria-Hungary in the name of intervention, a sudden incident that made the United States worried about the situation in Europe, but also gave them a golden opportunity. On February 4, under the pretext of suppressing bandits, the U.S. ** team crossed the border into Mexico.

Originally regarded the two peasant rebel armies in the north and south as a thorn in the side and a thorn in the flesh, coupled with the US government's guarantee to withdraw as soon as the "bandits" were completed, Carranza, the Mexican ruler, not only acquiesced in the entry of the US expeditionary force led by Brigadier General Pershing, but even sent guides to guide the American expeditionary force.

In this way, while the Germans were fighting Austria-Hungary in an undeclared war, the Americans also began their military operations in Mexico, codenamed "Spring Thunder".

On March 3, 1916, Lord Matthias made his third visit to the peasant army base in southern Mexico, this time accompanied by 15 "mercenaries" from Germany.