Time flies, and in a blink of an eye, another two years have passed in a hurry. In the first two years of the new century, the struggle over the situation in the world was still complicated and intense.

In the Far East, Russia is stepping up its stockpiling of supplies, sending troops, digging ports, building city defenses, and building the Trans-Siberian Railway with a length of more than 10,000 kilometers day and night, preparing to completely seize the northeastern region of Mites and Korea as their Yellow Russian colonies; Japan, on the other hand, is also digging three feet into the ground, vigorously expanding its armaments and warfare, and is waiting for their purchased ships to be completed and returned to China. The signing of the Anglo-Japanese alliance on January 30, 1902 undoubtedly gave Japan a very strong shot in the arm. The treaties in the First Anglo-Japanese Alliance stipulated that Britain and Japan had special interests in China and North Korea, respectively; When Britain and Japan declare war on a third country in order to protect this interest, the other country should maintain strict neutrality. And if a third country joins forces with its friends to join the war, then Britain and Japan will stand in the same trench and fight together.

From the above clauses, it is not difficult to see that although this treaty of alliance was signed by Britain and Japan for their own common interests to counterbalance Russia's expansion in the Far East, the British were extremely cunning and treacherous. On the surface, this treaty did not seem unusual, but in fact Britain took advantage of it: because Russia was close to Japan and far away from Britain, the first thing they had to do to realize the colonial intentions of Yellow Russia was Japan, which was entrenched in Korea; The British power is far away in the Yangtze River basin, and there is still a distance of more than 2,000 kilometers from the northeast. Therefore, in order to protect its own interests, it is only Japan, not Great Britain, that can declare war on Russia first; And after the war between Japan and Russia, Britain can remain neutral in accordance with the provisions of the second paragraph of the treaty and sit back and watch the battle between Japan and Russia go dark!

Although the treaty made it clear that Britain wanted to use Japan as a gunman, it was still a much-needed alliance for Japan. Because the signing of this treaty showed that the British Empire, the largest in the world, had sided with Japan, and Japan could get more loans and financial assistance from Britain, which was undoubtedly a rather favorable situation for the Japanese government, which was already very reluctant to split a yen in half. In addition, Japan has nothing to gain from this treaty. As a result of the provisions of paragraph 3 of the treaty, Britain was to join the Japanese trenches in the event that Russia united with another country to wage war against Japan, and the weight of the British Empire was undoubtedly very heavy! Therefore, if Maozi's ally, the Gallic chicken, wants to go shirtless for his good friends, it must take into account the possibility of Britain joining the Japanese camp to declare war on Russia and France; In this way, Japan could concentrate on dealing with one enemy of Russia, without worrying about the French threat. With the completion of the first four 7,000-ton armored cruisers ordered from Germany, thousands of Japanese sailors poured into the German military ports and then operated them on the vast ocean on their way home.

However, compared to the Far East, where the smell of gunpowder is getting stronger day by day, the war that broke out on the other side of the world has attracted the attention of the whole world. After two and a half years of bitter fighting, the British Empire finally stabilized the situation in South Africa with the help of the British pound, and a large number of demoralized and desperate Boer guerrillas laid down their weapons, and the gunfire in the southernmost part of Africa gradually subsided. Looking back on the more than 900 days of conquest, the British Empire did not have the joy of victory; Because in this war with the Boers, the descendants of Dutch immigrants, Britain not only spent a lot of money, but also lost the face of the empire on which the sun never sets.

In 1867, a child was playing on the banks of the Orange River in South Africa when he accidentally picked up a crystal "stone", thus opening a new chapter in the history of South Africa. As European powers continued to come to South Africa to explore treasures, the world's richest Rand gold mine was discovered by explorers, setting off an unprecedented rush for diamonds and gold in Europe. This is especially true in the United Kingdom, where the number of gold prospectors in just a few years has more than doubled that of the indigenous Boers. Because these British gold diggers took a huge share of the cake that originally belonged to the local Boers, the Transvaal Republic established by the Boers imposed harsh conditions on these British gold diggers, and this became the flashpoint of bad relations between Britain and Burkina.

Since the British occupation of Egypt, they have vigorously pursued their 2Cs plan to establish a colonial empire across Africa (Cairo-Cape Town Plan); After the French withdrew from Fashoda, the only remaining obstacles were the two Boer-founded states, the Transvaal and Orange. It coincided with the discovery of the largest gold mine in the world, and the Boers had a policy of extreme exclusion towards the English gold prospectors; Strategically, economically, and politically, there was no reason why Britain should not take action against the Boers. In the eyes of the British, these two small countries, with a combined population of only about 400,000, are simply angels sent by God to send diamonds and gold to Britain; With the glorious power of the empire on which the sun never sets, sweeping them away is not like hitting the top of Mount Tai?

In the autumn of 1899, when the British began to increase their troops on the Boers' borders, the Boers, feeling threatened, decided to strike first, so they declared war on Britain on October 11 of that year and took military action. After the full mobilization, the Boers established a coalition army of 4-45,000 men, who defended their homeland and fought with high morale, and with the mixed presence of retired German officers, the combat skills and command were quite impressive; Although Britain had the best navy in the world, their army was simply a mess: there were only 30,000 soldiers and horses at the beginning of the war, and their weapons were outdated, their training was lax, and their tactics were dull. In a battle that broke out on 5 December at the small station of Coronso, the British army, with 22,000 men and 46 cannons, suffered a crushing defeat in an attack on a motley Boer army of only 3,500 men and 5 guns: 1,139 killed, 250 missing, and 10 cannons discarded; The Boer army suffered only 8 killed and 30 wounded. The British Army, with a 6-fold superiority in strength and a 10-fold superiority in artillery, actually played such a jaw-dropping ending, and even the Italian army was ashamed and unattainable in terms of combat effectiveness! At the same time, the British army was also defeated on other fronts, and the Boer army wiped out 2,800 British troops at a very slight cost; For a time, the British Army became famous all over the world and became the laughing stock of the world, and it also regained the self-confidence of the Italian army, which was defeated by the Ethiopian natives.

However, the victory or defeat of the war did not depend on the strength of the army and the siege of the city, but on the attrition of comprehensive national strength. Although the Boers repeatedly defeated more with less, and inflicted heavy losses on these fledgling British young soldiers who had been at peace for many years, the strength of the British Empire was far beyond that of the Boers. Two months later, in January 1900, the total number of British troops on the Boer battlefield increased to 180,000, and in March to 250,000, forming an absolute superiority over the Boers. After half a year of hard frontal fighting, the Boers were finally outnumbered and annexed by the British. However, the Boer revolt did not subside, and under the command of Louis Botha, a commander skilled in guerrilla warfare, tens of thousands of Boer troops were reduced to pieces and fought guerrilla warfare against the British throughout South Africa.

Prior to this, guerrilla warfare had already appeared in European wars, but it was a very small sneaky riot that could have calmed the situation with a small army, but this time the situation was different. Although the Boers were defeated on the frontal battlefield, they still had an armed force of 20,000 men and more than 5,000 cavalry, and they were extremely quick to move into the battlefield. For a time, the whole of South Africa was full of gunsmoke, and a large number of British targets were frequently attacked by the Boers, and because the British Army had no experience in dealing with this tactic, the Boers' sneak attacks were repeatedly feathered. The British Army was once again forced into a hurry, with no place to exert its might, and in the face of repeated cut-offs by the Boers on the rear lines of transport and small units, the British finally had no patience: they pulled up barbed wire, built pillboxes, and adopted a scorched earth policy in the occupied areas, burning down farms and estates, and imprisoning all the Boers in the occupied areas in concentration camps in order to completely cut off the source of guerrilla activities. Hundreds of thousands of British troops and 20,000 guerrillas were deadlocked.

On January 22, 1901, Queen Victoria, who had ruled Britain for 64 years, died, and the eldest son, Edward VII, became the new king of the British Empire. Unlike his mother's strategy, Edward was not as tough as a queen towards Boole; With the Boer War going on for more than a year and still deadlocked, the king had decided to get the British Empire out of this bottomless pit of war as soon as possible. On May 31, 1902, the British and Burnese finally reached an agreement, and the exhausted Boer guerrillas, who had run out of 20,000 food and ammunition, laid down their weapons, and the Boer War, which lasted for 31 months, finally ushered in peace.

In this protracted war, Britain mobilized 450,000 troops and 450,000 mules and horses; The price of 22,000 men was still killed in this army, which already exceeded the combined population of the two Boer countries, and the Boer army lost only 3,700 men in the two-and-a-half-year war. In order to annex this small land, Britain spent 250 million pounds on the war war, which is enough for their two years of fiscal revenue. Although the British eventually got their coveted diamond gold mines, the incompetence and weakness of their army were completely exposed to the world; Seeing that the British Empire, which was the largest in the world, was so strong and powerful, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was full of self-confidence, felt that the time had come for Germany to dominate the world!

(Thanks to the book friend General Ma Tan for his reward, don't you want today's collection to be so unhelpful, it's not easy for the author to work during his work)