Port Edward.

"The mountain roads in South Africa are really difficult to walk, and the British army in Cape Town is not completely powerless." Merk said to his subordinates.

With the military advance in East Africa, the Southern Military Region has also penetrated deep into the eastern hinterland of Cape Town, although it is affected by the Drakens. In addition to the rugged terrain, river swamps have greatly slowed down East Africa's travel.

Moreover, the British army could effectively take advantage of the narrow terrain to hinder the offensive of the East African Defense Forces, and Port Edward was about 150 kilometers away from Durban in a straight line.

Originally the territory of East Grigualand, East Grigaland was also one of the regimes established by the Boers, stuck between the colonies of Natal and Cape Town, occupied by British troops in the late seventies and early eighties.

So it was originally very desolate, and Port Edward was not long established, it was a small town by the sea, and the population was not large.

"Commander, military advance, it still depends on the inland area, now the western troops should have crossed the Orange River, after all, the inland plateau area is convenient for marching and the population is relatively sparse, and the eastern part is a more densely populated area of Cape Town, so the British army is stronger."

South Africa's population is clustered, with the city of Cape Town in and around the south, and then the east with East London and Port Elizabeth as the core, both of which are the heart of the United Kingdom.

Further north are the densely populated areas of the Natal Colony and the former Boer Republics, while the highlands between the Boer Republics and Cape Town in the west are population vacuums.

The same is true between the port of Durban in the eastern Natal colony and East London, except that there are more British here than in the west, and the main British army of the former Natal colony is moving south, so Merk's ministry encounters greater resistance.

"Port Edward has not been built by the British for a few years, and the core of East Grigualand is in Cokstad, not on the coast, so Port Edward is now the last hurdle for us to get to East London," Merk said. ”

"However, there are still more than 300 kilometers in between, and the speed is too slow to continue to consume with the enemy, send a message to the rear to see if the navy can help our army break through the enemy's blockade faster."

One of the main reasons why British troops were able to withdraw safely from Durban was the use of sea lanes to achieve an orderly retreat.

Previously, the East African Navy mainly cooperated with the North East African forces to strike on the coast of Mozambique, and now the war in Mozambique has ended.

Therefore, Merk intends to use the power of the navy to achieve its own goals, of course, if the port of New Hamburg can also achieve Merck's goals with the help of merchant ships, but the risk is relatively large.

Cape Town's naval strength is still there, and although it cannot go north to take the initiative to attack the East African Navy, it still has some role in preventing the East African Navy from moving south.

Therefore, if Merk wants to take the sea route, he must have a naval escort, and as for the British army on land, he can leave only a small part of the troops to entangle with them.

Because the population of the Cape Town colony was mainly concentrated around the city, as long as East London and Port Elizabeth were breached, the British army in the east was basically unable to resist.

East London and Port Elizabeth, which were also the rear of the British army, cut off the connection between the two places, and logistically alone, East Africa could kill the British army, so as to achieve the goal of forcing the enemy army to surrender without a fight.

……

At the same time as the Merk ministry moved south.

The East African units, which had just participated in the war in Mozambique, also began to move south, reinforcing the southern battlefield in accordance with the instructions of the General Staff.

The section of the Central Railway from the Port of New Hamburg (Port Richard) to Otto (Pretoria) has also become busy, since East Africa has retaken the eastern part of the Southern Frontier Province.

The Central Railway, which had been destroyed by the British, had also been completely repaired, but it was also difficult for the army to move south, leaving a large number of men to maintain order in addition to maintaining stability in Mozambique, and hundreds of thousands of prisoners to guard.

The current plan in East Africa is to resettle these captives in Mozambican port areas such as Maputo, and then transport supplies and rations by land and sea.

Of course, raising hundreds of thousands of mouths is not the style of East Africa, and after identifying valuable captives, a large number of blacks directly obtained the "slave" establishment of East Africa to maintain the plantations in Mozambique.

First of all, Indians are not indigenous, after all, India is so big that a British colony is in the Indian Ocean, but Indians do not belong to the British.

Now the biggest fear in East Africa is that the British government will directly abandon these Indians, you must know that so far in the South African war, more than 170,000 Indian soldiers have been captured in East Africa.

This is enough to learn from the Boers to form a state in South Africa, so the treatment of the Indians is a big problem.

Of course, this trouble is for Ernst, who has a poor impression of Indians, but East African officials see no difference between Indians and blacks, and they have no human rights anyway, and it doesn't matter if they are directly slaves.

However, if so many Indians are really allowed to take root in East Africa, then the future will definitely be one of the sources of trouble, after all, judging from the situation in Africa in the previous life, as long as the place was colonized by the British, it is easy to form a cluster of Indians, and with the reproduction rate of Indians in the future, as well as the distance between India and East Africa, it is easy to form a situation where India drags its family to East Africa to seek a living.

So in order to cope with the possibility of this "inferior" immigration, Ernst's idea was to pack up Indian prisoners in East Africa and send them back to India, even if the British were really scoundrels to keep Indians in East Africa after the war.

Of course, Ernst did not discriminate against Indians, and in fact there were quite a few Indian merchants engaged in commercial trade along the coast of East Africa.

But this kind of people are certainly different from the captured Indian soldiers, the Indian soldiers are basically the bottom of society, except for brute force at all, there is no use value at all, and although they are strong and strong, there are many bad problems, as a tropical race, Indians and the natives of Southeast Asia are very lazy, and Ernst is most afraid that these Indians will lead the East Africans into the ditch.

The "industriousness" of the people has always been a matter of great importance to Ernst, and do not think that this is a fuss, because East Africa is a suitable place to lie flat, and the blacks here have been lying flat for thousands of years.

Like the homeless people in the United States and Russia in the previous life, some may be threatened by the cold and food and have to do some labor.

And East Africa, a place like "spring all year round and abundant products", to be honest, if the infrastructure is completed, it is simply a paradise for the homeless.

Therefore, in order to avoid this situation, we can only start from the social atmosphere, and the East African government will guide the East African people to "roll in".

And this state of "laziness" in India is very negative educational significance, of course, in the 19th century, in fact, this was the case in many places, and Indians are not alone.

However, the population of East Africa is dominated by German immigrants and immigrants from the Far Eastern Empire, and it can be said that the inhabitants of these two regions are the "most industrious" people in the world today.

Of course, the same was true in Britain and France before the 19th century, but with the advancement of the Industrial Revolution, Britain had already passed the era of treating people as animals (in fact, they were worse than animals), and the French liked to enjoy themselves, so in the 19th century the gap between the two countries was rapidly narrowed in the face of German competition.

(End of chapter)