More than ten days after the capture of Medellín, the rear corps and baggage troops arrived one after another.

The road was difficult, and the baggage troops, who marched along the wide, flat asphalt roads of the province of Panama, had enough to endure when they entered Colombia.

Although there were engineering units repairing the roads, more than 1,720 of the 7,600 heavy wagons that set off were still damaged, and many supplies were forced to be stranded on the way.

There were 2,400 or 500 broken wheels along the way, tens of thousands of broken wheels and spokes, and some carriages even fell apart in the bumpy pit and pond, and the carriages loaded with heavy goods broke off from them.

Thinking about this terrible road condition is a big head, the commander, Lieutenant General Mai Hsiao-cho, divided his troops according to the plan. The First Army went north, and the First Army went south, and the supplies were carried by mules and horses as much as possible, and swept through the coastal areas of Colombia with a swift posture, occupying the surrounding towns.

As for the grain and grass essence that the war horses lacked, they were given to the enemy and solved by seizure on the spot, and they could make do without black beans and corn.

Tortillas are the staple food in these countries of South America, and if there is a shortage of anything, corn will certainly not be lacking. As for the fact that the horses solved the problem of fodder, and what the local farming Indian tribes ate, His Excellency the Commander never seemed to have considered such a question.

Colombia is a country geographically divided into the Western Mountains region and the Eastern Plains region, and the border with Panama is 263 kilometers long and is located in the Western Mountains region, where the mountains are continuous.

Its densely populated areas, most of which are located not far from the coast, are sparsely populated deep in the Andes Mountains and vast expanses of primeval forest.

Medellín, as well as the southwestern town of Cali, are located in the western mountains, with rough roads and difficult to navigate, and the entire country is covered by more than 70% of the country's primeval forests, with a total area of 1.17 million square kilometers, and the degree of development is low.

The important city of Medellín is located in a mountainous valley, a flat valley with an area of more than 170 square kilometers, crisscrossed by rivers that originate in the surrounding mountain territories.

The valley is fertile with a climate of about 21 degrees Celsius, and is a traditional area with a history of agricultural development for thousands of years.

It is precisely because of the self-sufficiency of the smallholder economy that there is no need for large-scale commercial circulation. Although Medellín is located in an important transportation area, most of the traffic is mainly carried by mule and horse caravans, horse-drawn carriages are difficult to pass, and the road conditions can be imagined how bad it is.

Of the roads leading east, west, north and south, the best is the road to Bogotá, which barely fits through horse-drawn carriages, and nothing else.

When the army goes out, logistics is the most important. In view of the poor road conditions in Colombia, Lieutenant General Mai Hsiao-zu, the commander of the Southern Army, simply sent 20,000 prisoners and 35,000 young men into the coolie camp to build the road.

It is necessary to build a flat gravel road from Panama to Medellín with a width of about 8 meters in a month and a half, laying a solid foundation for the next step of the construction of the railway.

The border between Medellín and Panama is about 287 kilometers, so why 55,000 people go to build a road at such a distance?

This is due to the abundant rainfall and numerous rivers in the area, and there are 300 streams of all sizes on the road, and there is not even a decent bridge.

It takes 70 or 80 or even 100 people to build a bridge, and so many rivers need to remove more than half of the labor.

If you want to build a road, you have to build a bridge, build a road in the mountainous area, open the road in the mountains, build a bridge when you encounter water, and then cut some roads to straighten them, and the amount of work can be imagined to be quite huge.

However, no matter how difficult it is, roads must be built to ensure the smooth flow of the army's logistics. Only by building a smooth road can we lay a good foundation for the next step of railway construction.

Complete the necessary preparatory work for the continued southward extension of the Pacific Intercontinental Railway. The 55,000 laborers were spread out across the line, cutting trees and digging ditches, opening mountains and filling rocks, and it was necessary to go all out to build this road in just 45 days without delaying the logistics supply of the army.

For this reason, Lieutenant General Mai Xiaozu had to leave behind a contingent of tens of thousands of people to urge these hard labor prisoners to work day and night, and not slack off for a moment.

The baggage troops in the army were also under great pressure, they had to build and transport the necessary steel beams, nails, steel rivets, hammers, iron drills and other necessary tools and materials for the construction of roads, and later transported some building materials such as cement and steel bars, and had to ask Panama to reinforce a large number of horse-drawn carriages.

Fortunately, Panama started with land and sea transportation, and lacked everything else, that is, there was no shortage of horse-drawn carts and mules, horses and livestock.

At the sound of an order, thousands of heavy-duty wagons were quickly gathered to support the front line. At this time, it can be seen that the Tang Empire has a strong foundation, and with the power of Panama Province alone, it supports the huge logistics and transportation tasks of the southern invasion army, and there is no longer a need to mobilize from other provinces.

The transport of mules and horses is different from war horses, Panama Province started by land and sea transport, and the transportation industry is also the pillar industry of the province, with more than 30 million employees unable to stop.

The two major cities of Panama and Cologne had 23,700 horse-drawn carriages of all kinds, and it was a no-brainer to temporarily send thousands of them to support the war effort.

The war that spread throughout Colombia broke out, and the armies going north and south were frequently attacked by Indian tribes...... In Europe, the Chinese building of Sanssouci Palace in Berlin is in Europe, and in terms of which country pays the most attention to the Tang Empire, except for Britain, it is Germany, which unified the entire German nation.

In the splendid palace, the German Emperor Wilhelm I and his favored chancellor and close friend Bismarck walked and chatted, stopping from time to time to admire the treasured silks, antiques and various works of art full of oriental elements in the Chinese building, and the topic was also related to it.

"My dear Prime Minister, have you heard? The Emperor of the East embarks on a new adventure of his own, this time targeting the less fortunate Colombia. God, that's jealous! "Kaiser Wilhelm I was accompanied by a huge white tiger, extremely large and strong, standing on all fours and walking half a man's height.

This is a beast from the Tang Empire that contains a trace of the blood of a divine beast, which was originally presented to the Kingdom of Prussia as a national gift, and it is extremely smart.

Compared to the IQ of ordinary tigers, this head is called

The more the IQ of Augustus' pet beast is equivalent to that of a 7-year-old human child, who understands almost everything except that he can't speak.

When he came to the German court, he was only a three-month-old cub at that time, and he always accompanied Kaiser Wilhelm I, sleeping next to the bed at night.

It has been more than 10 years now, and William I treated

"Augustus" treated the crown prince as much as he did, and even more intimately. In William I spoke

"Emperor of the East",

"Augustus" rose from his original languid state, and his ears were visibly pricked up. Its owner, William I, did not notice the anomaly, but continued in a tone of envy;

"You know, it's a great place with an area of 1.15 million square kilometers, a pleasant climate, the birthplace of the northern end of the Andes, at the southern end of the beautiful Caribbean Sea. While we were in the great glory and happiness of the unity of Germany, His Majesty the Emperor of North America was not idle. He easily captured Yunzhong Province and Suyinshi City, established a strong sphere of influence on the Red Sea, and expanded his colonial empire into Northeast Africa. Now it has invaded Colombia on a large scale, taking almost all of the Americas under its control. Whenever I think about it, I go crazy with jealousy. In my dream, everywhere the sun shines in this world, there should be German colonies, not second-class citizens of North America. Prime Minister Bismarck replied;

"Your Majesty; As a member of the Junker aristocracy, I have the privilege of having the same strong aspirations as you do. There is no hypocrisy in this, and I sincerely hope that the German nation will have a wide range of colonies all over the world, spanning the seven seas, and can proudly spread the glory of Germany. But reason tells me that now is not the time. The German Empire, which is at the center of the world stage, is both honored and inevitably regretful, and it is an honor that we have noble and pure Anglo-Saxon blood flowing in our veins, and are destined to be the masters of the world. Unfortunately, our strategic environment is very bad and complicated, and we have to face the Tsarist Russia in the east, the unpredictable Britain across the English Channel, and the rearmed and powerful France, and we have no spare energy to devote ourselves to global colonization for the time being. It is a pity that we do not have the unique and superior strategic geographical location of the Tang Empire, and we have the advantages of two oceans. Deeply controlling the political situation and economic life of the North and South of the United States can almost act recklessly in the Americas. In the monster room of Europe, the German Empire is facing all the world's top opponents, which cannot be distracted! ”

"Dear Mr. Prime Minister, it is precisely because of this that I am particularly melancholy."

"Your Majesty, things won't always be like this, the German Empire is rapidly growing stronger." Prime Minister Bismarck said with confidence.

Within the German Empire, there were also two opinions: internal development and external colonial expansion, and Chancellor Bismarck was the representative of the former, and his policies firmly limited the pace of the Germans to the world.

This caused strong dissatisfaction among German nationalists, who fiercely criticized Chancellor Bismarck's conservative policies on various occasions, which put him under great pressure.

But Bismarck stubbornly adhered to the established policy, which was strongly supported by Kaiser Wilhelm I.

Under the leadership of Prime Minister Bismarck, after successive victories in the Prussian-Danish War, the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War, his personal prestige reached its peak and became known throughout Europe

"Iron-blooded Prime Minister Bismarck", all kinds of doubts are much quieter. Every time the world powers such as Britain, France, and Tang succeeded in expanding and colonizing, they were strongly stimulated by the rising national enthusiasm in Germany, which made them red-eyed and coveted, and imagined that Germany could do the same.

A strong desire came from strength, and since Chancellor Bismarck came to power, he began the industrialization process of the German Empire in a big way, and the German economy has developed rapidly.

Between 1867 and 1873, nearly 100 iron-making furnaces were built in Germany, and the number of coking plants increased from 920 to 1,720.

According to statistics, the production of pig iron in Germany increased from 1 million tons in 1866 to 2 million tons in 1873.

Steel production increased from 100,000 tons in 1866 to 1.6 million tons in 1874. After the victory of the Franco-Prussian War, the German Empire captured Alsace and Lorraine, which were important industrial and mining areas in France, and received a huge war reparation of 5 billion francs, which greatly strengthened the economic foundation of the German Empire and set off a new round of in-depth industrialization.

Germany's industrialization has developed extremely rapidly, and a large number of world-class machinery and equipment from Tang, Britain and other countries have been introduced to set up factories, almost running fast into industrialized countries, and it is becoming more and more like the Tang Empire from the perspective of the national system.

The two countries have a lot in common; They are all monarchical dictatorships, with parliaments and cabinets, and the separation of powers in the courts, but the so-called parliaments and cabinets are just the emperor's new clothes, a false democratic system.

Real power remains in the hands of a dictatorship, a system of state imperialism in which the national economy can develop at a transcendent and rapid pace in the hands of a strong and correct controller.

And if power is in the hands of careerists, it will lead to unpredictable catastrophes. Prime Minister Bismarck once served as a diplomatic ambassador to the Tang Dynasty, and he studied the political, economic and military systems of this emerging empire in depth, and was shocked by it, and was slowly led astray.

This situation did not only appear in Germany, but also in many other countries such as Fuso, Ryukyu, and Lanfang, which were vassals of the Tang Empire.

After taking power in Germany, Prime Minister Bismarck carried out drastic political and economic reforms, reduced internal friction among themselves, reduced the obstruction of trade unions and vested interests, promoted the decision-making system, and strengthened competition in the market economy, and achieved extremely remarkable results.

And all this has left an ambiguous shadow everywhere. The London press ridiculed Prime Minister Bismarck

"Poor Copycat"

"Maybe it's a white-skinned and yellow-hearted egg man"

"Transatlantic intimacy is the best gift from Mr. Bismarck to the emperor of the Tang State." No matter how ridiculous it is, those who succeed are not to blame.

The rapid expansion of the economic strength of the German Empire gave Chancellor Bismarck unprecedented unanimous enthusiastic support, and various policies were able to be carried out smoothly, and the country's development was flourishing.

It was against this backdrop that the voices of German nationalists, who advocated outward expansion and colonization, rose again.

Why? With money in his pocket, the French have a harder waist, and they are not convinced by France's rapid shift to foreign colonial expansion, always thinking that the Germans will also colonize all over the world...... It's like a next-door neighbor who is far inferior to himself in terms of talent, education, level, and degree of importance in the unit.

But you can always make a huge fortune in the stock market, which of course makes people feel unbalanced. The impact of this worldwide economic crisis on Germany has been small, because it has been a traditional importer of food and agricultural products, and today it does not feel a cold snap when international trade has been hit hard.

The scale of its industrial exports is also not large, and the increase in steel production capacity is quickly absorbed by the booming domestic demand.

In addition, the industrial categories are incomplete and the scale is limited, so you can live a very nourishing life after applying tariff protection. The Tang Empire is different, it is the largest participant in international trade in the world today, with a complete range of industrial and agricultural products, a huge export trade volume, and a wide range of points and a large scale.

In the cold wave experienced by international trade, the losses were naturally the greatest.