I want to be emperor

Chapter 805 Determination
Although they encountered some dangers on the road, Meng Xiu and the others continued to move forward firmly. After a long journey for many days, they finally came to the outskirts of the Dutch immigrant settlement.

This place is more than 400 kilometers away from Maputo on the east coast of Africa in a straight line, but the actual distance is even further because of the twists and turns of the road.

Meng Xiu and the others walked all the way for 20 days before arriving at this broken place. On the way, because the road was really difficult to walk, and at the same time, they carried a large amount of logistics supplies, so that the speed of progress was very slow.

Later, because there was a lack of formed roads for horse-drawn carriages, I even had to give up using horse-drawn carriages, and instead carried supplies forward by means of horses and manpower, which made the speed of progress even slower. .

In places like the African continent, due to the serious lack of, or even lack of, good ground transportation, it is actually very indispensable to directly adopt the method of long-distance marching on the ground, which is not only dangerous, but also very slow.

Whether the European colonists in the past or the current Chu army, in fact, when they moved around the colony, especially when they went deep into the inland areas, they actually took boats and went deep into the interior through the river.

However, the Chu people have only come to the African continent for a relatively short time. They have not yet figured out the geographical situation of the inland areas, and they do not know any rivers that can reach the place where the Dutch immigrants are. In addition, in order to avoid long nights and dreams, they do not Going to procrastinate and slowly explore the river...

That's why I chose to go directly by land, and I just walked all the way to Tshwane, where the Dutch immigrants are currently settled.

After arriving at the outskirts of Tshwane, Meng Xiu didn't rush to kill them directly with his men. They had traveled a long distance along the way, and they were exhausted and needed a rest.

So Meng Xiu and the others found a better and more secluded small valley to camp and rest.

During the period, Meng Xiu also asked several men with rich experience in field survival and combat to ride horses to carry out preliminary investigations to find out the situation of the Dutchmen on the opposite side.

Although Meng Xiu had never been a soldier, he was a serious pirate. Later, he plundered overseas in India and Africa for a long time. I can't say anything else, but he has quite a lot of experience in fighting the natives.

He knew very well that although he had many people and more advanced equipment, if the tactics were not chosen correctly, it would be easy to capsize in the gutter.

After all, matchlock guns and spears and swords can also kill people.

Although Mengxiu's flash cap percussion gun has better performance and is two generations ahead of the Dutch arquebus, in actual use, the rate of fire is actually similar to that of the arquebus, and the hit rate and power are also the same.

The advantage of the flash cap percussion gun is that when the regular army adopts line tactics, it exerts more intensive firepower.

If there is no formation and scattered small-scale operations, the advantages are actually very limited!

If there is anything to say, then the firing rate of the cap percussion gun is better, and there are very few cases where the bullets are not fired after shooting, while the flintlock and matchlock guns are much worse.

However, this is basically limited to windy, rainy, wet and other weather conditions.

If it is sunny, windless, dry and not humid, the firing rate of arquebus and flintlock guns is actually very high. If the operation is correct and the maintenance is proper, the dud rate is actually very low!

The firing rate mentioned by the people of Chu State actually refers to the all-weather firing rate, that is to say, the comprehensive firing rate under various weather conditions, including good weather, windy and rainy weather, wet weather, severe cold or hot weather, etc. The average data of two kinds of common weather. Of course, different weather here, such as rain, only test the case of light rain... It is impossible to test in the downpour, because under the downpour, even if it is a firing gun no way to shoot either...

To fight in heavy rain, you can only use rifles with metal fixed bullets, whether it is paper-wrapped bullets, front-loaded bulk bullets or even rear-loaded paper shell fixed bullets, it is difficult to fight in downpours.

These limitations mean that the percussion gun still has huge limitations, and it is difficult to obtain any decisive advantage in some cases.

This is why the Great Chu Empire has been devoting itself to the research and development of metal fixed bullets in recent years. Hebei Weapons Company and Huguang Weapons Company have successively launched two metal bullets with different technical routes, and they are attached to their respective research and development. on firearms.

The 21-year-style flash cap percussion gun used by Meng Xiu and the others has performance limitations. In this small-scale irregular combat force, it is easy to capsize in the gutter if it is not done well.

In recent years, quite a few Chu people died overseas after being killed by the natives with outdated weapons!
Meng Xiu didn't want to be one of them.

In order to successfully take down the Dutch stronghold and seize the gold mines, all kinds of necessary information must be collected in advance.

With sufficient intelligence and information, they can formulate a battle plan more calmly, and then take down these Dutchmen and seize the gold mine at the lowest cost.

Meng Xiu and the others rested in the unnamed valley for three days. During these three days, the investigators sent by Meng Xiu also reported a lot of intelligence information one after another. For this reason, they secretly grabbed a tongue and came back to torture them.

Now they can basically confirm that these Dutch people migrated from Cape Town, South Africa. The current number is about 2000, and the number of young people is about [-].

There are probably more than 300 people holding matchlock guns, and 300 people are equipped with spears or swords. The total of 600 people is the armed forces of these Dutch people.

Some are stationed in their settlements and surrounding areas, and some are in gold mines five or six kilometers away.

According to the tongue, some people went out to capture the native slaves.

For the convenience of defense, their settlements are not large in scale, and most of them are made of wood, and only a few places have stone walls built.

The gold mine was a small basin, and the Dutch built some wooden watchtowers around it, and stationed many armed men.

However, judging from the deployment of these sentry towers and armed personnel, there are about 100 Dutch armed personnel here, mainly guarding a large number of indigenous labor forces in the mine, not to deal with external attacks.

The indigenous slaves working here, at least two to three thousand, use the most primitive and simple wooden tools for mining. The mining mode is not deep digging, but the gold panning mode on the surface.

But it is worth noting that among these Dutch immigrants, apart from the more regular-looking armed personnel, some other adults, even some women, also wear some relatively backward cold weapons. These people use these backward cold weapons to guard And supervise those slaves to work.

These Dutchmen captured a large number of slaves not only for mining, but actually more for farming.

Seeing these Dutchmen make so many slaves to work, Meng Xiu was amazed... He didn't even know what these Dutchmen used to feed so many slaves.

You must know that these Dutch people have only been here for a few months. Although they brought food when they left Cape Town, the food was enough for 2000 of them to use by themselves, let alone for the slaves to eat.

No matter how little the slaves ate, they still needed to eat, otherwise they would starve to death in just a few days.

It is naturally very little for a slave to eat a little bit, but these Dutchmen have at least 2 slaves... This is a lot of food consumption.

Naturally, Meng Xiu didn't know that when these Dutchmen went north, they defeated and wiped out many indigenous tribes and obtained a batch of food. At the same time, after arriving here, they continued to plunder the local indigenous tribes to obtain food.

It doesn't matter if you can't afford it anymore, just starve to death, and wait until the autumn grain harvest to catch more slaves.

And this is actually a common method used by European colonists these days. After arriving in a place, they often capture a large number of local aborigines as slaves, and then use them for infrastructure construction and more important plantation work.

The Dutch, the Portuguese, and the Spaniards basically do this.

This is the case with the Indians in the Americas, and the population fell off a cliff. After the nineteenth century, there were not many Indians left... But even the last Indians were completely wiped out by the westward movement of the United States. The remaining sporadic Indians live in Indian reserves to show the benevolence of Americans!
Because the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the Spaniards treated the local natives too hard during the early colonization, there is now a strong demand for slaves, which in turn gave birth to the notorious slave trade.

In the Americas, there are not enough natives to farm and mine, so naturally they can only introduce new slaves from Africa.

Therefore, the idea of ​​these Dutch people is very simple. The slaves are captured first to farm for gold, and after a while the food is enough to continue to use it.

As for Meng Xiu, although he also engages in the labor intermediary business, to be honest, he has not truly understood the cruelty of slavery.

After all, even though Meng Xiu was a former sea merchant and pirate, now an arms dealer, trader and bandit, he was still a serious Chu native, and his understanding of slavery was still too superficial.

Slavery is very cruel, especially after European immigrants moved to a new place, the capture of local aborigines was used as an effort to carry out construction and development, and there were many aboriginal tribes in the nearby areas that could allow them to capture and replenish slaves at any time.

These slaves will become cheap consumables in the true sense.

It is not like some slave owners in the Americas, because it is already difficult to catch a large number of natives as slaves in the local area, and they can only rely on purchases. The cost of slaves is not low, so they still cherish their property.

But these Dutch...they don't need it. There are a large number of natives waiting for them to catch. It costs nothing except for a little time. It doesn't hurt to throw it away when it's worn out.

The high and low cost directly led to the different treatment of slaves in the hands of different European colonists and slave owners.

The higher the cost of slaves, the better the treatment.

The lower the cost of slaves, the worse the treatment.

If a slave is worth tens of thousands of Chu Yuan, these European colonists can treat this slave like a parent!

It's a pity that slaves in Africa are not as good as before. When some European slave traders bought slaves in Africa, the FOB price of high-quality slaves in Africa was only a few yuan. The price of the slave trader, if the slaves were captured by the team organized by the slave trader himself, the actual cost would be even lower.

Some slave traders in Europe shipped slaves to the Americas. The overall cost, including transportation costs, purchase costs and other costs, was calculated at around 20 yuan. These slaves were sold in the Americas, and the price of strong male slaves was based on Depending on the region and the situation of the slave itself, the price is around forty or fifty, and some high-quality goods can even reach seventy or eighty Chu yuan.

As a slave owner, you have spent dozens of Chu Yuan to buy slaves. If you don’t let the slaves work for a few more years, you will be to blame...so you will pay more attention to the health of the slaves.

And these Dutchmen in Tshwane, their slaves cost nothing at all... Their team wandered around casually, and they could catch a lot of them casually.

These Dutch people naturally don't cherish slaves with such a low cost.

So there was no question of whether the food was enough or not that Meng Xiu was wondering about.

But now, Meng Xiu and the others suspect that their settlements and mines have a large amount of food for storage, otherwise they will not be able to support [-] Dutch people and [-] slaves at the same time.

This means that the battle must be resolved quickly, and it cannot be delayed to the extent of besieging the city.

If this turns into a siege, Meng Xiu and the others don't have artillery, and they will be really blinded by then.

After receiving sufficient information, Meng Xiu and the others pondered over and over again, and finally finalized the battle plan.

On the fourth night of their arrival in Tshwane, they went to bed early to rest. At dawn the next day, before it was light, the Chu people’s camp had already lit up weak whale oil lamps. The cook started to cook, and the others started to pack the tent, pack various supplies and salute.

However, they did not carry these tents and a large amount of supplies to move together. Instead, each of them brought the necessary supplies, such as dry food, drinking water, and blankets, and then began to eat the hot meals cooked by the cook.

For some of them, this may be the last hot meal in their life!

While they were eating breakfast in silence, the sky gradually turned white, and the darkness was gradually driven away.

Before the sky was completely bright, the Mengxiu robbery gang, who had already prepared well, set off.

Meng Xiu and more than 20 other backbone armed personnel in more than 70 companies each led a horse and walked in front, followed by more than 21 armed personnel carrying [-]-year-style flash caps.

They continued to advance on the eve of the dim dawn, some of them were nervous, while others were excited or even looking forward to it!

They came out this time just to make a fortune, and they belonged to the kind who want money but not life!

If this gold mine is won, everyone will not only get the existing gold dividends in the mine.

And you can also get a certain amount of shares in the gold mine. Although the majority of the shares must have been taken away by Meng Xiu and other high-level executives, ordinary desperadoes like them can also get a small part of it, and everyone wants to buy it. have.

Even if this person dies during the battle, the share of the shares that the deceased should receive will be distributed to his designated heirs.

They had already signed corresponding contracts before they set off, and each of them actually owned the shares of the gold mine development company.

Therefore, strictly speaking, this action is a collective action of all shareholders of their company.

The reason why they are really killed in battle... If they want to make a fortune, they naturally need to take certain risks. They have this awareness and psychological preparation for this.

After all, those who can follow Meng Xiu are either real desperadoes, or ordinary people who are desperate and risk their lives to do it.

They may be a rabble, but they have the determination to fight for gold!

Therefore, although some of them looked nervous or even scared, they still moved forward firmly.

It's a pity that the Dutchman on the opposite side also has this kind of determination!
When Meng Xiu and the others grandly appeared outside Tshwane Town, the Dutch inside were very flustered at first, but quickly stabilized their position. A large number of people, even some healthy women and half-old children were holding cold The weapons came out.

They also have the determination to fight to protect their homeland!

(End of this chapter)