Rise of the 1630s South America

Chapter 232 Harvesting and Reserves

The artillery battle was over before the sun went down.The artillery placed by the British at the top of the city stopped firing first. After the British turned off the fire, the people on the east coast would naturally not be stupid enough to tease them again.

There was an eerie silence on the battlefield.

After nightfall, Sun Shengjun gathered all the Eight Banners soldiers back, and built a simple position with the artillery bunkers scattered around as the core, and then carefully stretched barbed wire around the position, and blocked the important parts with carts .After everything was over, the lights in the entire camp were extinguished, and the sentinels led the wolf dogs to patrol the barbed wire, and everything was arranged like a regular army.

The night of May 5 was peaceful in a sense, because the British had never left the city to attack their own positions; It kept shaking for most of the night, but it wasn't that there were some faint noises, and the wolfhounds inside the barbed wire also barked for most of the night.However, considering that the soldiers of the Eight Banners were not of high combat quality, Sun Shengjun still decided that no matter what happened outside, the most important thing was to stick to the camp and not to change.

After dawn, Sun Shengjun looked at the wheat field in front of the camp and was stunned.Next to the wheat fields that the slaves had harvested yesterday, a large unharvested wheat field was suddenly harvested completely overnight.

The co-author last night, the British guy tossed around most of the night just to sneak out of the city to harvest wheat!Sun Shengjun couldn't help laughing a little, but also felt a little unbelievable.How could the morale of these Brits be so low?He didn't dare to face his troops head-on.This is not enough. There are at least 300 militiamen equipped with firearms in the city who can fight. Although the possibility of victory is not great when they meet their own troops, it is not possible to just stay in the city like a tortoise, especially the enemy. It was still harvesting the grain that I had worked so hard for a year.

But isn't it what I want to see when the enemy's morale is low and being a turtle?If they made up their minds to go out of the city under fire and fight with themselves, who would they turn to for reasoning if the Eight Banners soldiers collapsed in the battle?Others don't know the fighting qualities of this group of people, but he, Sun Shengjun, knows it all too well.To put it bluntly, those black flags may still have a little combat effectiveness, while the combat effectiveness of those short red flags is very suspicious, and the probability of collapse is very high once they enter a close combat state with the enemy.

But what is "gratifying" is that when they fought against the local natives, they were unparalleled and unstoppable.As if they stood under the banner of the Eight Banners, all of them possessed miraculous powers, and they didn't need to fight against their own people, they didn't need to fight against the east coast army, they just needed to watch them win from a distance.

Today, outside the Fort of Good Hope, there was another scene of quickly cutting wheat with the accompaniment of rumbling cannons. As a result, the artillerymen on both sides of the accompaniment were a little slack. It was just after noon, and the cannons that had been ringing all morning stopped.

The sound of the cannons stopped, but the action of the slaves cutting the wheat could not stop.It wasn't until the evening that Sun Shengjun blew the horn to return to the camp. The slaves who were working hard in the wheat field immediately rushed back to the camp like a tide, as if they were pardoned.After two days of uninterrupted fast harvesting, more than half of the 150 acres of wheat fields sown by the British outside the city of Fort Good Hope have been harvested.Since the wheat is not yet fully mature, the harvest may not be too much when the statistics are made, but Sun Shengjun roughly estimated that the wheat harvested in the past two days will be about [-] tons by then.

This amount is quite a supplement to the existing grain reserves of Hezhong Fort.A large amount of grain harvested during the day yesterday has been shipped back overnight in a cart, but most of it is still piled up in the camp.Xiao Baitu, who supervised the army in the rear, had already sent people back overnight to report the news, asking Hezhongbao to send a large number of carts and servants to pull the wheat.

The night of May 5 was the same as the night before. The commander of the British did not know what method he used to persuade the demoralized English militiamen to go out of the city to harvest wheat. They also kept tossing in the dark until four or five o'clock in the morning Withdrew back.Regarding the actions of the British, the artillerymen on the east bank who were facing the guns tacitly did not fire, and let the British harvest wheat back and forth.

After the sun rose on May 5, hundreds of slaves made a final rush to harvest the last piece of wheat in the wheat field.Two hours later, as the last sheaf of wheat was handed over to the camp, the plan to snatch the British wheat field was basically successfully completed.

After receiving the order to end the mission, the slaves who had desperately harvested the wheat for more than two days sat limply in the camp one by one.Sun Shengjun did not break his promise, ordered people to count the amount of grain harvested by each person on the spot, and ranked the top 100, and then immediately announced the pardon of the slave status of these [-] people and their families, and "raised the flag" to enter the upper six banners. became a free citizen.

After dealing with all matters here, Sun Shengjun sent someone to ask Xiao Baitu and others who were supervising the formation at the rear.After obtaining approval, he began to organize the Eight Banners soldiers and slaves to retreat slowly.Retreating in front of the enemy is an extremely complicated and delicate task, especially when you still have a lot of luggage and food to carry, it is even more difficult. There is potential for a terrible chaos.

But now that the morale of these British people has been so low that they are unwilling to go out to fight in the city, things are much easier to handle.Except for the artillery and some of the Eight Banners spearmen who did not move and were still watching the British, hundreds of slaves began to load carts of wheat back under the supervision of some Eight Banners spearmen.

The entire transportation operation lasted longer than the original harvest of wheat. The slaves and servants carried it back and forth for four days. Until the afternoon of May 5th, with the departure of the last cart, the entire camp The wheat and baggage were finally emptied.

On May 5, under the cover of Eight Banners spearmen and cavalry troops in the distance, the East Bank artillery pulled up ten cannons one by one, and embarked on the way back to the Fort in the River.At this point, the whole operation of harvesting wheat has finally declared a victory.

In this battle, apart from the loss of a dozen people from the Eight Banners spearmen, the people on the east coast had almost no other losses (the attrition of slaves was not included in the statistics), but the gains were huge.One is to harvest more than 100 tons of wheat that the British have worked so hard to grow, and the other is to test the low morale of the British in the Cape Town area.Especially the second article, it gave the Fort in the River a new understanding of the current situation of the British neighbors in the south, and it will be more targeted when formulating countermeasures in the future.

After harvesting the wheat of the British, the southern hemisphere has begun to gradually enter winter.At this time, not only the temperature began to drop gradually, but even the weather became bad, and the area in the southwestern corner of South Africa began to become cloudy and rainy.

Thanks to the relatively complete infrastructure in the Hezhongbao area, these winter rains and snows not only did not cause any disasters to the local area, on the contrary, it also injected precious rainwater resources into the land.During the slack season in winter, if the weather is fine, all the residents of Hezhong Fort and some of the slaves will be dispatched to clean up the silt on the river ponds, renovate the water conservancy facilities of the farmland, and build the houses and forts. All in all, they are extremely busy.

Of course, the most important job of the residents is the winter militia training parade.During this rare period of concentrated training, the militiamen on the east bank have to practice military skills such as discipline, formation, saber stabbing, volley shooting, and bomb throwing almost every day; in addition, intelligence investigation, field training, setting traps, and drawing maps , Interrogation skills and other subjects are the content that non-commissioned officers need to master.It can be said that the annual winter training parade is an important stage in which the military skills and military literacy of the militiamen on the east coast have been greatly improved.

A while ago, the executive committee and the military department have just promulgated a new organization and training outline for the local militia reserve.In the outline, in addition to specifying the training details of the local militia, it also mentioned the establishment of four companies of reserve forces.The reserve forces, as the name suggests, are all peasants and workers at ordinary times. They conduct regular intensive training and carry out ideological and political education.Compared with the militia, they trained more frequently, and they were more standardized and meticulous. Of course, they usually received one-third of the regular army's salary.

目前就全国范围来说，共有四个正规军连，分别是驻首都军营的第1连、驻镇海港炮台要塞的第2连、驻煤河乡的第3连以及驻河中堡的第4连。此次，经执委会批准，军部获准在东方县组建预备役第101连、在镇海港组建预备役第102连、在煤河乡组建预备役第103连以及在河中堡组建预备役第104连。

The officers and soldiers of these four reserve companies only exist on the roster on weekdays, and they will only be gathered together during regular training, which can be regarded as an important supplementary force for the regular army.Once the situation changes, they can be quickly mobilized as a regular army and put into combat.

After all, the situation in Europe is quite unstable these days.Major countries such as France, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Austria are all at war, and even Britain is now in danger of a full-scale civil war.Although the East Coast Republic is thousands of miles away in the New World, it is reasonable to say that it should not be affected by any war, but many things in this world are really hard to say.Especially things like war, many times you can't avoid it if you want to. Plan ahead and make more preparations in advance. You can't go wrong at any time.

(End of this chapter)