Start 1861: I Just Inherited the Dutch Throne

On August 1, 1862, the war in South Africa, which had been entangled in the media for several months, finally reached an agreement with the Netherlands and Britain.

These overseas ethnic groups in the Netherlands left there to make room for the British.

The United Kingdom transferred South Australia to these two places for transactions. At the same time, as various versions of the news were passed on, various countries also knew that the reason why the United Kingdom agreed to the coordination of the Netherlands turned out to be in the Transvaal Republic of South Africa. , a large gold mine was discovered.

Experts in the Netherlands estimate that the gold reserves transferred by the Netherlands this time are greater than the current tonnage of gold stored in the Netherlands.

With the release of this news, people from all over Europe began to flock to South Africa, and the British Cabinet held a special press conference to require international miners to conduct operations in compliance with British laws. He also expressed that everything in the agreement between Britain and the Netherlands was a reasonable deal.

In the words of William IV of the Netherlands, both sides benefit from cooperation, but both sides lose from fighting. In short, the Dutch people embarked on a migration journey away from South Africa.

With the departure of the Dutch, only the indigenous people, the British, and other European people from the German Confederation such as France and Prussia are left in South Africa. However, these people add up to less than 100,000 people, and they cannot have a similar impact on British rule. Significant Dutch influence before.

But for some unknown reason, these people were still supporting the Zulu Kingdom. People originally thought that everything was over, but they didn't expect that the British 100,000-strong army was still blocked there.

So the British government showed the courage to march with 100,000 troops. It took less than half a month to capture the Zulu Kingdom. However, the British also incurred the death cost of more than 20,000 people.

In the past few months, the British have suffered more than 70,000 deaths in South Africa, which is the highest death rate in a short war in just a few months since the founding of the United Kingdom.

The death of these 70,000 British troops had a profound impact on the United Kingdom, because the British Army even suffered from a shortage of troops for homeland defense.

The impact of this incident is very important, because it breaks the image of Britain that has been given to people recently, that is, the embodiment of victory, and the golden body is damaged. Governments of various countries have begun to not only be afraid of Britain, but also despise it. Britain will never be able to return. To the point where one sticks to one's word in Europe.

It can be seen from this invasion of colonies in Africa that countries no longer worry about occupying southern and northern Africa as the British sphere of influence, and are no longer afraid of dissatisfying Britain.

The colonization of Africa continued.

After the Dutch Colonel Braga completely occupied the Congo, he hurriedly sent a report to the mainland to complete the mission. Immediately, he was commended by William IV and was directly promoted to the level of major general. He also announced the formation of a Congolese division. In addition to 3,000 Dutch soldiers, 7,000 men will be drawn from the East Indian indigenous army to supplement Braga's army.

At a diplomatic press conference on August 1, the Dutch government stated that the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs had issued a notice to all embassies in the world in the Netherlands, announcing that the Netherlands had complete sovereignty over both sides of the Congo River Basin.

At the same time, it was announced that Madagascar belonged to the Netherlands, because in mid-July, under the leadership of Dutch Deputy Chief of Staff Leon Booker, under a double-layered attack by land and sea, the largest island in Africa and the Indian Ocean finally fell into the hands of the Netherlands. Countries respect the Dutch sovereignty and dominance there.

With the Netherlands taking the lead, other countries have followed suit and notified other countries of their spheres of influence.

On August 1, 1862, one month after the invasion, Prussia sent a total of 50,000 Prussian troops, and soon completely took control of Southwest Africa (namely Namicia).

Contrary to outside expectations, Prince Friedrich Carl commanded the army to advance eastward, crossing the traditional border of Namicia, and sent an army to Bechuanaland (i.e. Botswana) in northern South Africa, and quickly occupied Bechuanaland. Hangji, a town in the northwest, and Maun, a central city in the north. Eventually they reached Kasane and Katima Mulilo, where they encountered Dutch troops across the Zambezi River and stopped heading north.

Unwilling to be reconciled, the Prussian army continued to advance eastward and did not stop until it reached Barawana, an important town in the west of Southern Rhodesia.

Because when they got there, they met the British again.

It turned out that just after the Dutch people from the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State left, Britain quickly occupied the two countries, so it also had ambitions to annex Bechuanaland in northern South Africa.

Recently, I was preparing to go all the way north to capture the entire Bechuanaland, but I didn't expect that Prussia would appear in the north of Bechuanaland so quickly.

Therefore, the British Governor of South Africa, Joe Boone, was dissatisfied, so he marched north to force the opponent to retreat. But who was Prince Carl? He directly looked down on France in the first place, so how could he withdraw from the group?

The armies of the two countries finally met in the southern part of Bechuanaland outside Hangji, and continued eastward. The confrontation reached Lake Dawu and the British-occupied Francistown.

The British also occupied the two southern towns of Gwanda and Masvingo in Southern Rhodesia.

With the appearance of the British army, Prince Friedrich Karl of Prussia finally stopped his advance and faced off with Jobon and the British 100,000-strong army led by the British Governor of South Africa on the east and west sides of the Kalahadi Desert.

However, neither of them dared to make the decision without authorization and start a battle.

After all, Joben understood that Britain had more than one enemy, and Prince Karl of Prussia had many targets and was unwilling to waste his troops in a war of attrition against the British. In the end, the two armies retreated, forming a confrontation.

It is precisely because of this ambiguity that it was easier for the two armies to get into misfires during the subsequent battles in southern Africa.

Jobon saw that Karl was unwilling to go to war with him, so he sent his army north and surrounded the remaining French and Germans of the Transvaal Republic in Pretoria. Just as he was preparing to eliminate the opponent, the western Prince Karl of Prussia once again led his army eastward to Chapang, threatening South Africa.

This made Qiao Boon angry, but he did not make the decision to attack without authorization.

Forced to have no choice but to report everything here to London,

London was naturally dissatisfied with Prussia's provocation, so the diplomatic level began to criticize Berlin harshly, asking William I and Bismarck in Berlin to restrain Prince Karl in southern Africa from taking actions that would harm the relationship between the two countries.

An established power and a newly rising power collided in southern Africa.

However, Prussia did not restrict Prince Friedrich Karl.

On the contrary, Prime Minister Bismarck announced in Berlin that Prussia had obtained the dominance of Cameroon and control of Namibia and Somalia, and asked other countries not to touch Prussia's control there.

At the same time, he also announced that northern Bechuanaland had also been controlled by Prussia and asked Britain to recognize this.

However, London was obviously opposed to it, because just after Berlin declared that Bechuanaland belonged to itself, British Minister of Foreign Affairs Russell condemned Prussia's forcible occupation as shameful, and at the same time announced that Bechuanaland had been recognized by the UK as early as more than ten years ago. All countries in the world know this.

However, Prussia did not agree with the British view. It believed that a dependent country was not equivalent to a category of colony or territory. The British were just interacting with the indigenous royal family at the time and did not involve the issue of territorial ownership. Therefore, Prussia had the right to proceed to claim the regime.

The disputes between the two countries are not all the disputes in southern Africa.

Because they quickly welcomed two competitors into the game.

These two are the consistent presence in southern Africa, Portugal and the Netherlands.