Chapter 378 Having Your Own Path
According to his own plan, Samuel calmly performed a surgical operation on the Abyssinian Empire, trying to take advantage of the divided situation of the Abyssinian Empire to pry away approximately 60,000 to 70,000 square kilometers of land in the southeast region from the territory of the Abyssinian Empire.
This area contains about a quarter of Ethiopia's high-quality arable land in the past, but is now completely undeveloped.
"General! This is a telegram from home."
The signalman delivered the telegram from the mainland by ship from Egypt to Desai and then handed it to Samuel.
Samuel read the telegram with a frown on his brow the whole time.
Sapeto, the boss of Rubatino Company, noticed Samuel's expression and asked, "General! What orders did the government give?"
Samuel shook his head and said, "That's not the case, but some people in the country think that my current actions are too timid and not proactive enough in dealing with indigenous countries like the Abyssinian Empire."
Sapeto was a little nervous. He said, "Don't they know how much military funds they have withheld? We spent two or three months just to ensure the food supply of the troops with limited funds, and now we are the ones who are afraid to act!"
Samuel: "This is not a big deal. I expected that some people in the country would be restless, especially after we took over Desai City."
Although Samuel gained a firm foothold in the Abyssinian Empire only after occupying Desai, the large tracts of land between the port of Assab and Desai, including the land north of the Great Rift Valley of East Africa (the land south of it belonged to the East African military town of Dire Dawa), had already been incorporated into the territory of the Kingdom of Italy. These lands were mainly deserts and a small amount of grassland, but the area reached more than 50,000 square kilometers.
The current area of the Kingdom of Italy is only over 200,000 square kilometers. The number of areas occupied by Samuel alone is enough to excite most people, although many of them are barren lands unsuitable for human habitation.
Sapeto: "It seems that they have forgotten the lessons of the Italo-Austrian War. They rashly started the war without knowing the Austro-Hungarian Empire's intentions. As a result, they ran into the elite troops of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Abyssinian Empire is not an existence that can be defeated with one blow as they thought."
In the past few months, Sapeto has followed Samuel and has learned a lot. He knows how difficult it is to deal with the warriors armed with Arab doctrines, and the more backward the Arabs are, the more difficult they are to deal with. Fortunately, General Samuel is a master strategist and handles things properly. He can predict the movements of the natives at every step of his decision and crush the natives' conspiracies one by one. Samuel can't do anything about sneak attacks and guerrilla warfare, but instead suffers casualties. When it's daytime, Samuel's army will go out to encircle and suppress villages, and even carry out extermination activities. Samuel doesn't care about the resistance army or the good people. He only knows that the soil for the guerrillas to survive is these villages rooted in the desert.
Although the Abyssinian Empire was mainly Orthodox, it must have been strong to have fought the Arabs for so many years. The Ottoman Empire in its heyday could not do anything about the divided Abyssinian Empire.
Samuel: "There is no other way. The news I got is that the Kingdom of the Future may send troops to attack the Abyssinian Empire from the north. They have negotiated with Egypt and have been guaranteed by the British to attack the Abyssinian Empire from the north of Eritrea (Latin, Red Sea, the Italian name for the area meaning the land along the Red Sea)."
Sapeto laughed directly: "They want to attack the Tigray region directly!"
Samuel was also infected and laughed, saying jokingly: "Maybe they don't even know what Tigray is."
The Tigray region, as the core of Abyssinia, has always been the most economically developed and militarily powerful region of the Abyssinian Empire. The capital Aksum is also located here. When Johannes IV was the commander-in-chief of the northern fortress, he was responsible for the defense of the north and had dealings with the Egyptian army all year round.
So Tigray concentrated a large number of the population and troops of the Abyssinian Empire, which is why Samuel avoided the richer north and bet on the south.
The biggest threat to Samuel was the Shoa Kingdom on the southern shore of Lake Tana (the largest lake on the Ethiopian Plateau) within the Abyssinian Empire in the west. However, the Shoa Kingdom and the north were mutually restrained, and they were also afraid that the north would take the opportunity to move south, so they chose a passive defense.
Historically, the Kingdom of Shoa was originally an ally of the Kingdom of Italy. Italy made great efforts to help Menelik II successfully unify the country. However, in the end, Menelik II handed Italy a disastrous defeat, making Italy lose face in Europe.
But in this dimension, the Shaoa Kingdom does not have this opportunity. Italy comes here to seize land, and with a clear goal, it is impossible for it to support its enemy.
Now the attitude of the Shoa Kingdom or Menelik II towards the Italian invaders is "I will not attack others unless they attack me." Of course, it would be even better if Italy could fight with the northern army of John IV. Then they could just sit back and reap the benefits, unify the entire Abyssinian Empire, drive out the Italians, and restore the glory of the empire.
However, when Menelik II met Samuel, his plan was doomed to fail. Samuel would not be so foolish as to fight Johannes IV. In the Italo-Austrian War, the most important experience he learned was not to underestimate any opponent. Even if he wanted to solve the opponent, he should take the method of starting with the easy and then the difficult. Therefore, his victories can all be found in common, that is, every time the Austro-Hungarian army failed, it started with the Hungarian army.
The easiest area to take control of in the entire Abyssinian Empire is the southeastern region, where forces are mixed and there is no strong warlord. This means that there is no faction that can unite the local Abyssinians. If the local connection with the north is cut off, the area will become completely leaderless.
Samuel said to Sapeto: "No matter who the kingdom wants to send to the Abyssinian Empire to share a piece of the pie, we don't need to care. Since the kingdom has chosen to open up a new battlefield in the north, it has nothing to do with us. We can ignore any non-local transfer orders."
Samuel was also angry. He knew the nature of those aristocratic bureaucrats too well. Now they felt that they were doing well just because they had achieved some success.
Samuel then speculated, "The new commander of the kingdom's troops must be a guy with a background. Such people are most likely to use chicken feathers as a token of authority. We'd better ignore them and find all kinds of excuses to prevaricate. Anyway, with our troops facing the heavily defended Abyssinian Empire in the north of Desai, it is normal that we can't get through. The kingdom can't find any reason to say that we didn't try our best."
Sapeto, on the other hand, showed a look of agreement. Now he completely agreed with Samuel because Samuel was always "right".
It cannot be said that Samuel was hypocritical. He also suffered a lot during the Italo-Austrian War and was often deceived by his superiors and colleagues. He was promised that his troops would hold on for a while and reinforcements would arrive immediately. However, not to mention reinforcements, the superiors in the rear had already fled with their troops, and his colleagues often watched them in danger without helping and remained as unmoved as a mountain.
After several experiences, Samuel understood one thing: he could not believe a single word his superiors and colleagues said. No matter how good the pie in the sky was, they would always find excuses to shirk their responsibilities.
The consequence of this was that Samuel was very out of tune with his colleagues during the war and was not liked by his immediate superiors, but he also avoided being led into trouble by his stupid teammates.
The strength of the troops led by Samuel was also preserved, and he was able to occasionally counterattack the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When the war was over, Italy searched the entire army and could only find Samuel, the only undefeated general. The aristocratic generals could only hold their noses and shape Samuel into a rising star in the army. Samuel could only rely on his peers to set off him.
Therefore, when the kingdom opened up a new battlefield this time, Samuel had no intention of participating. In fact, Samuel was already prepared to collect taxes within his jurisdiction and recruit Italian immigrants to supplement his army.
According to his experience, if he did not cooperate with his colleagues' actions, they would definitely make things difficult for him. Although his colleagues were incompetent, they had a good father and they were in the same group.
In this case, I am afraid that I will not see a penny of the military funds that have been deducted in the past. I encountered this situation when I was in Italy. Fortunately, I was fighting on Italian soil, so I could replenish troops on the spot, and the food and fodder were completely dependent on donations from the friendly Hungarian army next door.
Being unfamiliar with the Abyssinian Empire, one has to rely on oneself. From the day Samuel rose to prominence, he could say without any burden that his success was the result of his own efforts.
(End of this chapter)
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