When the Transvaal was re-established, there were three big three in politics, and since the retirement of Little Pretorius, only President Krueger and Vice President Jubert remain. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 infoThe vice president of this country, the powers are not completely fixed, when Pretorius Jr. was president, Vice President Kruger was mainly responsible for foreign affairs, and the military power was in the hands of the president. Kruger became president, but the military power was still out of his hands, and Vice President Piette Jubert was also the commander-in-chief of the army. Who made Kruger not from a military background, and this Jubert happened to be a hero who won the crucial battle for the founding of the country again.

The office of Piette Jubert, the office of Piet Jubert, on the edge of the Appis River south of the city, is on the top three floors of the Army Headquarters.

Piette was a burly man, with a Boer beard, and although he was already 67 years old, he was in good spirits and his beard was only gray. He had just received a call from President Kruger, which made him very angry. The British began to find fault with the provocation again, and even suspected out of thin air that the Transvaal soldiers were involved in the attack on the British colony.

He was a soldier by training, and he intuitively had a hunch that a new war was not far off. The position between the British and the Boers was fundamentally different about suzerainty. According to the London Agreement, the Transvaal did not have independent diplomatic rights after independence, but as the economic power of the Boers grew, they were no longer satisfied with the definition of a fully self-governing government under the suzerainty of the British Queen.

Agreements are meant to be torn up, and Piette has never been pedantic, he is a descendant of the French Huguenots, inheriting the tenacity and persistence of his ancestors. In 1877, the Transvaal was financially depleted and unable to defend itself against the Zulu attack, so it was temporarily refuted by the British and the Transvaal was abolished. When the British subdued the Zulus, they could also take advantage of the opportunity to re-establish the state by force in 1880 when the British were busy suppressing the black riots.

Looking at the photo on the wall from seventeen years ago, a middle-aged man in hunting suit is holding a rifle and standing on a high cliff looking out. The photograph was taken after the Battle of Lang Gap in 1881, in which he led a brave man among the Boers to climb a steep cliff in the darkness of the night, and defeated the British army in a battle, killing the British general Colley. After the war, the British Gladstone cabinet collapsed and an armistice was signed.

Justice and justice are only within the range of cannons, and Piette absolutely agrees with the words of the German Prime Minister Bismarck. The differences between the British and the Boers were resolved with cannons and rifles.

Bangbang, there was a knock on the door.

"Come in"

He didn't look back, he looked in the mirror under the photo, his thick beard was still there, but the traces of time crawled all over his cheeks.

"Commander-in-Chief, General DeWett has arrived."

It was the voice of his adjutant Brent. Piette turned around and saw Christian DeWett and Joshua Joubert walking in.

"Christian, sit down."

He gestured to the chair across from the desk.

General De Wet, Director of the Transvaal Military Statistical Survey. The highest military rank in the Transvaal is only general, and the country has a small army, so it is no longer like the European powers to subdivide the few generals. At present, only a few people have been awarded the rank of general, and in addition to him, the commander-in-chief, only the other four generals of Derary, Deweit, Botha, and Cronge are in active service. In fact, De Witt's rank of general is not public, and even his military identity is kept secret. In Cape Town, he was a successful Boer businessman, a respected philanthropist who helped the needy, and a social activist who could maneuver among the dignitaries.

"Just now the president called and said that someone had attacked the Kimberley posing as our Boers, and had killed a lot of British soldiers along the way." Piette glanced at De Wet, who should have known the Bureau of Investigation first.

"Yes, these guys are all white and speak Dutch. In one day, he killed almost all of Rhodes's police force in Kimberley, and then killed more than 200 British soldiers in Freyburg. "DeWett is worthy of being the intelligence chief, and he knows the latest developments well.

Rhodes was the public enemy of the Boers, and Piette was happy to see Rhodes attacked, but pretending to be a Boer was a taboo.

"What kind of immortals are these people?"

"There is not much information on this subject, and the British are probably only speculating, and there is no hard evidence in their hands. Some time ago, Milner has been frequently receiving a lot of foreigners, and the British media has also reported a lot about the so-called unfair treatment of British expatriates in our place. The British in Johannesburg have also organized a so-called petition group, delivered a petition to Milner, and are preparing to go to London to lobby Parliament and call for a tougher attitude towards us. ”

De Wett spent half of his time in Cape Town, liaising with staunch elements among the Boers and secretly developing the outskirts of the Bureau of Investigation.

"These Brits, they should have used the Jameson incident to kill them all, and see if anyone dares to jump out and talk nonsense." Under pressure from the British, President Kruger relented and imposed a fine on the Johannesburg rebel chieftain and a member of the so-called Aliens Reform Commission.

DeWett chose to remain silent about Piette's complaints, he was engaged in secret work, and knew that if he did not retreat at that time, for the sake of face, he was afraid that the British could only choose war.

At that time, Britain made enemies on all sides, clashed with Germany and France in Africa, and almost sent fleets in the Americas to declare war on the United States. In the 1895 border dispute between British Guiana and Venezuela, the newly emerging Americans unexpectedly took a hard-line Monroe Doctrine and stood firmly on the side of Venezuela against Britain, forcing Britain to re-examine its strategy in the Americas and then strike a compromise deal with Germany and France in Africa. Now that the British have no external drag, the call for a military solution to the South African problem is getting louder and louder.

"The president just mentioned another problem," complained and Piette returned to work, "Nobel Torras approached the president, and their sales had dropped sharply this month, so he suspected that someone was smuggling gunpowder for mining. The president's intention is to let the Bureau of Investigation investigate in secret, and if the situation is true, then he will decide how to take measures. ”

This is also a reason why Piette was dissatisfied after receiving the call. Smuggling is a crime, and if it is verified, it will not be possible to crack down on it directly, and the president will make decisions himself. Nobel Trust, the enterprise left over from the great chemist Nobel, the Transvaal officially designated monopoly to operate fierce powder, providing more than 300,000 pounds in taxes in this area every year.

"Let Joshua take care of this."

De Wett said on the spot and handed it over to the Internal Guard, on the one hand, this is the jurisdiction of the Internal Guard, and on the other hand, it is also to give Piette a face, and Joshua is his eldest son. Moreover, DeWett was also busy with British intelligence and the mobilization of the Boers in the Cape colony, and he was indeed in charge of these things.

The streets of the Kimberley had already been cleared, the bodies had been taken away for cremation, and the blood stains had been simply washed away, but if you looked closely, dark spots of blood could still be found in the corners. The most striking thing was the small three-story building reduced to rubble, and the clean-up crews occasionally found one or two bodies from the rubble.

Anne kept taking pictures at the scene, and the folding tripod was simply not put away, which was very powerful and explosive. News of the attack on Kimberley three days ago sent a stir through the media in southern Africa, with newspaper reporters from Cape Town and Pretoria rushing to the diamond town. The two Cape Railways run parallel to each other, and Anne and her team took a train from Pretoria to Bloemfontein and then rode to the Kimberley.

"The Cape Colony is officially going to hold a press conference."

Someone shouted in the distance. Journalists in this era were still friendly with each other, they were all regional newspapers, and they were more cooperative than competitive.