In March 1871, Leopold II told his cabinet: "Belgium is small, scarce in resources, and we are caught between great powers, and we Belbeans must have our own vast colonies if we want to gain a foothold in this era!" ”

King Leopold II of Belgium had a dream of a great power since he was a child, but the size of Belgium was difficult to fulfill his idea, so Leopold II believed that the way out for Belgium lay in the colonies.

And in 1872, East Africa won an unprecedented victory in South Africa, and this news made Leopold II, who had been paying attention to Africa since he ascended the throne, completely unable to sit still.

Leopold II: "Kingdom of East Africa!" Who of you knows? ”

Well? The ministers looked at each other, no one knew the specific situation of the East African Kingdom, and even if they knew the name, they had only heard of it.

Looking at these ministers, Leopold II said with hatred: "I have always emphasized that the future of our Belgium lies in the colonies, and you just take my words as a deaf ear. ”

"Your Majesty, it's not that we don't care about this matter, it's just that colonization is extremely expensive, and if it's not that kind of rich colony, it's worthless to occupy it."

Leopold II: "That's a fart!" Any land has its value, but only the wise can discover it, and the only person in this world who has the same wisdom as I am is Prince Konstantin of Hohenzollern Hexingen. ”

"I have here the detailed information of the Kingdom of East Africa, this is the data I have investigated through many sources, since 1865, the royal family of Heixingen began to colonize East Africa, and by this year, the territory of the Kingdom of East Africa in Africa is likely to be about a few million square kilometers, from Somalia to South Africa, and Central and West Africa can see the presence of the East African Kingdom army."

Leopold II had early ambitions for Africa, so after his accession to the throne (1865), he began to send expeditions to investigate the overall situation in Africa.

What does this mean? This means that Heixingen, a small German country with no autonomy and a population of only a few tens of thousands, has become a superpower with millions of square kilometers of land in just eight years. ”

"The population of the port of Mombasa in the East African kingdom alone is larger than that of the Hexingen kingdom, and according to the data of March this year, there are more than 100 ships entering and leaving the port of Mombasa every day, and they are mainly ocean-going ships."

This data is true, because only two ports in East Africa, Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, are responsible for the export of bulk goods in East Africa, and the two ports are originally located on the traditional shipping lanes, so the import and export scale is relatively large.

However, Ernst could not imagine that Leopold II would send someone to Mombasa to spy on the development of East Africa.

"If you don't know about the East African Kingdom, you should know about the Hexingen Bank, right?"

"Why can the Hexingen Bank develop into the leading large bank in Germany in just a few years, I think the resources of the East African Kingdom have provided a huge boost to the Hexingen royal family, Africa represents a huge wealth that has not been scratched up, the Hexingen Kingdom can share such a big piece of the soup in Africa, our Belgium is hundreds of times the size of the Hexingen Kingdom, and we should obtain a huge area of land in Africa."

This sentence is a bit inappropriate, the reason why the Heshingen Bank can develop rapidly, East Africa has indeed played a role, but it is not as great as the contribution described by Leopold II, mainly because Ernst bets on the right treasure every time, especially the Second Schleswig War, the Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian War, the Italian-Austrian War and the economic frenzy of the European and American railways, which completely established the status of the Heixingen Bank as the largest bank in Germany.

"So we should take action in Africa now, or we'll have to eat scraps behind the ass of the East African kingdom."

Originally, Leopold II was a more cautious person, after all, it was indeed quite difficult to get a colony as large as the Congo in the hands of many great powers in his previous life, and he could not achieve such an achievement without extraordinary means.

When Leopold II invaded Africa, it happened to coincide with the European countries to turn their attention to the African continent, and Belgium entered quite late, only in 1876 to start the actual operation.

Now with the stimulus of the Kingdom of East Africa, Leopold II was completely impatient, especially the fact that the Kingdom of East Africa forced the Cape Town colony to compromise in South Africa, which became the fuse.

Cape Town was a British colony, and East Africa was able to compromise an old colony like Cape Town in less than a decade.

The matter of the Cape Town colonial compromise had already been refrigerated by the Cape Town colony, after all, it was too embarrassing, but it could not be concealed from Leopold II, who had been keeping an eye on the trends in East Africa.

Leopold II knew something about East Africa, and he paid special attention to it, starting with Archduke Ferdinand (Massimiliano I).

Archduke Ferdinand's wife, Princess Charlotte is the sister of Leopold II, when Archduke Ferdinand was in trouble in Mexico, Charlotte asked for help in various European countries, and naturally she would not let go of her mother country Belgium, when she also asked her brother Leopold II for help.

Leopold II had just ascended the throne not long ago, and Belgium was only a small country, how could it have the ability to intervene in Mexico, which was thousands of miles away, according to the size of the two countries, and in turn, Mexico's intervention in Belgium was almost the same.

Therefore, Leopold II was out of sight and out of mind, and sent his sister to the trouble of the Habsburgs, no matter how much Emperor Franz spoke better than his own monarch of a small country.

As a result, at that time, because of the Austro-Prussian War, the Austro-Crème was powerless to interfere in the political situation in Mexico, and even sending people to get Archduke Ferdinand would be of no avail, mainly because Archduke Ferdinand himself did not want to return to Austria in disgrace.

The original Grand Duke Ferdinand was a stubborn donkey, and he wanted to learn from Emperor Chongzhen to die generously, but he was directly fished to Africa by Ernst with brutal methods, and he was depressed for a while.

Leopold II naturally knew the inside story, and when his sister happily told him the news that Archduke Ferdinand was not dead, he thought that the Habsburgs had made a move, but he didn't expect that his sister's son-in-law had done it.

In addition, the royal family of Heshingen also took the path of colonizing Africa, so this made Leopold II quite interested in the East African colonies, and it was not bad to have the small country of Hexingen (compared to Belgium) to explore his own way.

In a few years, the Kingdom of East Africa has developed from a small land in East Africa to a superpower with a land of millions of square kilometers today, and Leopold II does not know how much the population is, but according to the actions of the cities of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam and the East African Army in South Africa, Leopold II guessed that it should be about one million.

Leopold II did not doubt the ability of the East African Kingdom to recruit immigrants, he specifically investigated this, after all, the Hexingen Kingdom is a small town with a population of about 10,000 people in Europe, and how can the Heixingen royal family colonize Africa without a population?

Leopold II then sent people to the two window cities of East Africa, Dar es Salaam and Mombasa, to observe and conclude that a large number of Germans and Far Easterners were introduced.

Germans are good at explaining that the German region has always been the region with the most serious outflow of people from Europe, so it is not surprising that East Africa can attract many Germans.

However, Belgium did not have the same population as Germany, so Leopold II was ready to learn from Ernst and also introduce Far Easterners as his tools to colonize Africa, and there were many Far Easterners in the East African Army.

After all, the Kingdom of East Africa has already given the answer, and it is right to copy it by itself, and it is only appropriate to use Far Easterners to suppress blacks, and Belgium can sit back and enjoy its achievements.

Thinking of this, Leopold II said: "What the Hexingen Kingdom can do, we in Belgium should do even more, let's see what the Hexingen royal family has become rich now?" Our Belgian population is more than three million, and the level of industry and agriculture is not bad in Europe, and the Hexingen Kingdom is just a vassal state the size of a projectile below Prussia, so we also have to learn from the East African Kingdom and create a second Belgium in Africa. ”

(End of chapter)