The Boers who went from being poor to becoming rich instantly made some people's mentality unbalanced.

What is the concept of tens of millions of pounds? In 1898, the richest British empire in the world had a total government revenue of only £165.32 million, which at first glance seems to be an inconspicuous amount of more than £10 million in the small Transvaal, but if you really compare it carefully, people will know the real difference.

By the end of 1898, in comparison, the native population of the British Empire was 41.75 million, the annual per capita income was 26.4 pounds, and the government revenue was 165.32 million pounds, compared with the total population of the Transvaal that year was only 475,000 people, which was less than 1/88 of the former, but the government revenue of the Boers was 11.39 million pounds, equivalent to 1/14 of all the taxes of the British government that year, and the national per capita income reached a staggering 120 pounds. That's 4.5 times that of a British, and that's more than the annual government pay of a senior British civil servant.

As a result, the local embassy staff in Cape Town in the Transvaal have recently begun to find themselves embarrassed to find that they are not dressed as well as an ordinary local Boer miner, and similarly, compared to their old Daimler official cars, the local Boer families have been using imported Seris Centrino cars......

Due to the large-scale mining of the Rand gold mines, the Boers gradually amassed a lot of wealth, and gradually the original dilapidated and backward Transvaal built a number of new buildings, churches, villas, factories, schools, and the original poor government expenditure has also greatly improved, and now the annual education expenditure alone has risen sharply from less than 2,000 pounds in the seventies to 1.65 million pounds, while the number of educated young people in the Transvaal was less than 72,000 at that time, and the per capita expenditure on education reached an astonishing 23 pounds. It is almost equivalent to the income of an Englishman after a year of full work, which shows the wealth of the Boers during this period.

By the beginning of 1899, the Boers had established a National Guard of 16,000 men, all armed with German rifled rifles, and had established a comprehensive reserve system.

Diplomatically, the descendants of the Dutch were equally successful, and the Boers, who were unwilling to remain hostage to the British, began to aggressively expand their borders and turn their attention overseas for support.

I don't know if it's because of the smell or the heroes, but with the help of German Chancellor Prince Hohenlohn, the current president of the Transvaal, Kruger Jr., and Kaiser Wilhelm, who is equally ambitious, have established a close personal relationship. The two gentlemen were like-minded, both were happy about their successes, they both admired the use of military force, and both had an ambitious plan of expansion against the British in terms of policy. From 1898 onwards, Germany began to provide diplomatic and military support to the Transvaal Republic, and the British were suspicious of it.

To outsiders, the Transvaal undoubtedly possessed immense wealth and vast expanses, and they would have taken it for granted that the Boers would be content with this. Are they not satisfied that the white population of the Transvaal, who have settled in the whole of the Transvaal, is less than 500,000 people, but the land area of France is already larger?

Regrettably, they did think badly, these old Boer peasants with the blood of the Teutonic knights in their veins were not satisfied with what they had, and after gaining enough wealth, these relocated Germanic groups were immediately filled with ambitious expansion ambitions! They began to dream of creating a large Boer empire that stretched from the Cape of Good Hope in the south to the Zambezi River in the north, with a total area of nearly one-fifth of the African continent, equivalent to the size of all of Europe.

In order to break free from the British's East-West Cape Railway, the Transvaal government began to invest in the construction of a railway from the city of Pretoria to Maputo, the capital of the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. Soon after, with German assistance, they built a joint venture with the German government to build the Namibe Railway to German Angola. Similarly, in order to abandon their dependence on the port of the British colony of Cape Town, the Boers began to speed up their eastward annexation of native African tribes, eagerly seeking their own access to the sea.

At this time, the British, the old capitalist power, began to show their "unique" skills. In order to cut off the "insatiable" claws of these Dutch descendants, the British began to take the lead, each time on the eve of the other side to start a war, signing seemingly tolerant protection agreements with large local black tribes or simply providing weapons support, which repeatedly frustrated the Transvaal's expansion.

As the world's only maritime power, the British were especially wary of the backward sea powers, which meant expansion in an era of great powers, and there was no other explanation. For this reason, British politicians have always been very disgusted with the Boers' plan to seek an outlet to the Indian Ocean to the east, you must know that in the entire East African coast and the other side of the ocean, Persia, India and Australia, but most of them are the sphere of influence of the empire on which the sun never sets, and the Transvaal's actions undoubtedly touched the sensitive nerves of the British.

If in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the British can still coexist with the maritime interests of other countries, and reluctantly accept the presence of several warships of the other side at sea. Then the Indian Ocean, which directly connects the Suez Canal and the Strait of Malacca, and is related to the security of India, Australia and its own colonies in East and South Africa, has undoubtedly become the untouchable sacred testicle of the British Empire, and any claws that reach out to it will be cut off by the British without hesitation, no matter who it is! Slavs or Germans, there is no room for compromise!

Forty-six years ago, Tsarist Russia tried to disbelieve, and the three-year Crimean War followed. The veteran British used the most advanced breech guns and rifled rifles at that time to teach the Russians a hard lesson, and from then on the other side did not dare to go south, and finally turned the direction of expansion to the distant Ciomperian region. Now, 46 years later, the Boers of South Africa, the descendants of the former Teutonic knights and sea coachmen, have picked up this ambition again...... In the face of the "provocation" of the Boers, the British government also did not back down, and finally decided to teach this African country of Caucasian descent a good lesson, of course, it is undeniable that the eye-catching Rand gold mine owned by the Boers is also a factor that cannot be ignored.

Under the attention of Chen Zeyu in the Far East, the armed conflict between Britain and Burkina did not "break out as scheduled"!

On April 25, 1899, the colonial authorities in Cape Town, authorized by the domestic government, finally tore off their mask of "neutrality" during the Transvaal's attack on the Zulu tribes, and officially sent the local British garrison to join the Zulu side, hoping to completely wipe out the Boer army on the front line......

However, just as Jameson, the British colony minister of Cape Town, was waiting for the news of his victory, the northern front suddenly came with the bad news of the annihilation of the British army!

On 27 April, the British colonial forces "reinforced" the Zulu were confronted in Lesotho by the Boer armed forces.

The commander of the British army, General Coli, commanded his own troops, and there were many exchanges of fire with the Buenos forces in the three days from that day to the 29th. The British troops in the battle still used the tactics of the American Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic Wars, lined up in a neat and dense formation with the sound of drums, and raised their guns to shoot according to the orders of their commanders. However, the conservatism of the British army did not stop the progress of melee tactics in other countries, and the Boer army on the opposite side hid behind rocks and other covers, wielding Maxim machine guns to sweep down British soldiers one by one, just as they usually use rifles to shoot antelopes in their hometowns.

The corpses and blood of these poor British soldiers stopped the offensive of the British colonial army, and on the night of the 29th, Colly commanded the remaining British troops to retreat to an eastern plateau, and his lieutenant Hamilton suggested that he dig trenches around him, but the arrogant General Colly did not accept this suggestion, but let his exhausted men rest as soon as possible, so that they could recharge their energy and prepare for the next day.

At the same time, the commander of the British army, Julibert, who was well aware of the movements of the British army, was leading his troops to avoid the front of the British army on the high ground, and made a detour from the side to prepare for a sneak attack on the resting British colonial army. In order to achieve the effect of surprise, Jubert deliberately kept part of the army in front to attract the attention of the British sentries, while he himself led the rest of the main force from the steep and hidden hills

Ascended to the high ground where the British garrison was located.

At 21:59 that night, the cloth army that had climbed the high ground suddenly launched a sneak attack on the sleeping British army! The British in the camp were completely defenseless, 29 were killed, 51 wounded, 254 were taken prisoner, and even the British commander Coli was killed by Boer soldiers in the chaos......

After nearly 200 years of colonial history and hardships, the Boers were no longer as mild-tempered, mercantile and militant as their Dutch "relatives".

Compared with the "pampered" British colonial officers and soldiers in Cape Town, these Boers who have been "dealing" with the local natives for a long time are all experienced in battles, and while upholding the simple and conservative character of the ancestors of the Teutonic knights, the belligerent blood of advocating force has always been deeply rooted in the heart of every soldier of the Burennese Army. It is not surprising that every Boer who had been hunting on horseback all day long when he was still young and living in his own pastures was still contemptuous of such a fighting people, and that the British were so disdainful.

……

When Cape Town received the military information from the front, the local colonial governor Jameson couldn't believe his eyes, and before he could figure out what was going on, the families of the garrisons in the city who received the news had already rushed to the governor's palace one by one crying and "seeking explanations". Faced with a large number of angry expatriates, the British governor of Cape Town finally had to announce his resignation.

Since then, the new colonial governor of Cape Town, who has also failed to take the small Boer states of the north into account, has not learned the lessons of his predecessor. Without waiting for reinforcements from home, the vengeful and angry governor hastily dispatched all the remaining 2,000 British troops in his possession......

Under his orders, on 29 May, 2,133 soldiers of the 33rd Brigade of the British Army stationed in Leidenburg were ordered to march north to conquer the Transvaal Republic in the north.

After many days of arduous marching and harassment by the local Boer guerrillas, at 14:11 p.m. on June 3, when the army was marching to the Brunsgan River on the Transvaal Plateau, the whole force was suddenly ambushed by the main force of the Boer army!

Compared with the Boers who were born and raised in the region, these British colonial troops who recklessly penetrated into the South African highlands were not prepared for any reliable war, and these British soldiers who had long been stationed in the temperate climate of Dundee and Leidenburg were not only unaccustomed to the hot climate of the Transvaal Plateau, but also unfamiliar with the difficult terrain of the region. Not to mention any specific military deployment, the British army at this time did not even have a minimum accurate map, so it is not surprising why the other party has been leading away by the nose in the past few days.

When attacked, these exhausted British soldiers were completely unwarlike in the face of this sudden battle, and the troops were scattered and fled, and in the face of this unformed British army, the Boers won another great victory without difficulty. With accurate marksmanship and flexible tactics, the Burunes eventually killed 177 British soldiers, wounded 841 and captured the rest, while the Burnese army itself suffered only 2 dead and more than 40 wounded......