Fite River Line.

As the longest and most solid defensive line in East Africa, it has withstood more than a dozen Boer and British attacks since the beginning of the war.

In fact, the Feit River defense line in East Africa had a sense of "killing chickens with a knife" when dealing with the Boers, as if the Macedonian defense line was not used to resist Germany, but Belgium.

Merk had already begun to personally command the Battle of the Fette, preparing to end a three-month-long passive defense.

"Twelve o'clock tonight is the time for us to cross the river, and we must destroy the Transvaals on the other side of the river in a short time, and our army is ready to attack from three directions, and completely solve the nail in our territory of the Boer Republic." Merk said in the military department.

Hetzendorf asked: "General Merk, why do you want to start a night battle!" You are completely superior in strength and firepower, and there is no need to launch a counterattack at night, which may make your operations more prone to mistakes due to the interference of the night. ”

"It is true that night is not a good time to fight, especially when the enemy is well prepared on the other side of the river, and you have to deal with all kinds of problems, including ignorance of the terrain and the enemy's defensive offensive." Plitwitz also emphasized.

Merk explained: "Don't worry about this, we have long figured out the enemy's defensive disposition, and although the Boers have built fortifications on the other side of the river, their engineering is completely incomparable to ours, and do not look at the impregnable defense line of the Feit River, which was built with a lot of manpower, and this human resource cannot be achieved by the Boers on the other side." ”

The biggest disadvantage of the Boers is that they are sparsely populated, and there should have been more than 400,000 Boers during this time period in history, but after the toss of East Africa and themselves, I am afraid that the population of the whole country is close to the level of 400,000.

Of course, a large number of "black slaves" were used in the construction of the Feit River defense line in East Africa, and there is naturally no need to elaborate on this point with the military advisers of Germany and Austria.

Merk continued: "The Boers have been attacking our army for the past three months, but based on the last few Boer offensives, they have probably reached their limit. So I judged that the situation of friend and foe had already changed, and now the morale of the Boers was probably at rock bottom, and their morale was also depleted by our careless passive defense mode. ”

The current situation of the Boers is indeed very bad, as Merk said, one is that it has not been able to break through the defense line of the Fette River in East Africa for a long time, and the other is the disgust of the soldiers at the bottom of the war situation.

A country of the size of the Boer Republic now maintains a military force of nearly 50,000 troops, that is, one out of six Boers is in the army, and children and old people can be seen everywhere in the Boer army.

If it weren't for the material support of the British, the Boer army would have collapsed long ago, and even so, the spirit of the Boers is very bad now.

"More than 2,000 years ago in the Far Eastern Empire, there was an ancient war called the Battle of the Long Spoon, and there was a man named Cao Di who said that he would fight hard in one go, then decline, and then exhaust himself, and finally win by destroying the enemy's morale."

"We in East Africa have actually adopted this method, which has depleted the enemy's morale, and after three months of offensive without success, the recent Boer offensive has been weak." Merk explained.

At present, East Africa, as a country of immigrants, is not bad in all aspects, but it takes time to cultivate a sense of national belonging.

The South African War is an opportunity that the East African government sees, and at present, all fronts in East Africa are in the defensive stage, and this state of being able to passively be beaten and unable to fight back is absolutely very unpleasant for the East African soldiers.

In addition to the high-ranking officers, everyone in the troops below is holding back a breath in their hearts, that is, they will take revenge on the "white" beatings they have suffered in the previous months.

In this context, the sense of belonging of the soldiers of the East African army is actually increasing rapidly, and no matter where they came from before, they now have a common external enemy.

After three months of running-in, the East African army is more united than ever, and this is what the East African government wants to see, and now it is almost impossible to win the war and establish a sense of national pride and honor.

This is also the helplessness of the immigrant country, of course, to be precise, the helplessness of East Africa, like the United States, it is estimated that there will be no such problem.

Similarly, as a country of immigrants, the United States has all kinds of means to fool the people at the bottom into finding the north, while East Africa does not have such conditions, because in the world situation in the 19th century, the ideology of the United States was the most "advanced".

As an absolute monarchy, East Africa lacks such effective means, and at the same time does not have a well-developed aristocratic system like that of Europe.

The European aristocracy can be said to be a powerful force to maintain European royal power and political stability, especially at the local level, where the aristocracy has great prestige among the people.

Of course, East Africa also has a corresponding political model, but it is mainly a celebration of the "Heiheunggen royal family", which is very similar to the previous Joseon Dynasty.

But this situation will certainly not be sustained for long, especially after the demise of the first "gratitude" immigrants in East Africa, and the current East African government is still mainly moving towards the German political model.

Germany has a banner of nationalism at its disposal, but East African nationalism is not very reliable, and to change that, it is necessary to cultivate a sense of identity among East Africans.

One way to gain a sense of identity is through war, and if East Africa wins the South African War, it will be able to accelerate national integration in a short period of time.

The United States still has a history of 100 years, and after a long period of running-in, this is what East Africa lacks, and there is no more effective means than war to make East Africa make up for this, so the South African War is the real battle for the founding of East Africa in Ernst's heart.

As for the previous East Portuguese War, although it had a similar effect, Portugal, as a sunset, brought far less shock to the hearts of the East African people than the victory over Britain, the world's number one power.

Naturally, Herzendorf and Plitwitz did not understand the pursuit of such ideological aspects in East Africa, since there was no such dilemma in the two countries.

Of course, there was certainly something in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but the situation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire was very different from that in East Africa, and this was the difference between the thinking mode of Europeans and the thinking mode of Far Easterners.

No matter how independent Hungary is, it also supports the Habsburgs, and although the relationship with Austria is a little worse, everyone is used to it.

And Ernst certainly did not want East Africa to follow the path of Austria-Hungary, a political model that proved ineffective in the world war.

Merk: "For the war, this time the war will be fought in three major directions at the same time, even if we don't go well here, it doesn't matter, in the east of Wemburg, we and the Boer Republic are directly bordered by land, and in the west there are troops on the Orange River, as long as we have an advantage in one direction, then we can deal a huge blow to the Boers." ”

"At the same time, launching a counterattack at night, I think the Boers must not be comfortable, after all, this counterattack is the first initiative in East Africa, it is difficult for them to predict this situation, coupled with the backward intelligence system of the Boers, maybe we will be in Bloemfontein, they will be able to react."

(End of chapter)