On July 12, on the eastern border of Portugal, on the avenues that crossed many canyons between Elvas and Estremos, in the thick and hot soil, a cavalry team of 200 people was escorting a four-wheeled convertible carriage riding by officers and entourages, slowly heading towards a grape planting manor in the northwest.

Two days ago, Lieutenant Jacques, who served as the intelligence officer of the Northern Line Detachment, saw a four-wheel convertible carriage that was parked on the side of the road with a very good appearance. It should have been a Portuguese nobleman or estate owner. Before the French attacked Portugal, the owner of the carriage fled to Evora or Lisbon and was forced to abandon it because the axle was damaged. Therefore, this four-wheel convertible carriage became the spoils of the French army in the Northern Line Detachment.

Because the seriously damaged carriage blocked the road of the baggage team's carriage, a group of infantry surrounded the carriage, and they shouted that they would send "this unmovable broken thing" to the kitchen as firewood. Jacques, not far away, was moved. He took out 50 riyals to buy the abandoned carriage from the soldiers, and spent money to ask the military craftsmen to replace the damaged axle, then put two horses of himself and Thias on the front end of the carriage, and eventually became the personal transportation tool for the intelligence officer.

Although the road occupied by the Northern Line Detachment had been fully repaired by the Engineers' Corps, the road was still bumpy. In the shaking convertible car, Thias was sweating heavily in his head, and with a painful expression on his face, he was attacking a French introductory textbook on his knees.

After the Battle of Caishi Town, Lieutenant Jacques kept his promise and guaranteed that Tias had obtained the status of the Aragonese. At the same time, the surrender also received a bonus of 3,000 riyals and a war horse. Originally, Jacques just wanted to send Tias to the North Aragon regiment or return to the Aragon area to make a living, but the latter refused to do so and kept staying with the intelligence officer.

It's not bad for Thias to want to work with him. Jacques also likes this "lucky star" that brings good luck to him, but the first condition is that the latter knows French, and is not only good at speaking, but also knows how to write. Jacques promises to give Thias three months to learn French, and then recommends it to Major Passel to the Military Intelligence Bureau afterwards. If a stupid guy can't learn French, he should ask Thias to join the army in the North Aragon regiment.

So, Thias accepted the conditions proposed by Jacques. He bought a half-old French introductory textbook from somewhere, and he stole the intelligence officers to be his French teacher every day. In an equivalent exchange, Thias was also responsible for Jacques' daily life and served as a lieutenant's orderly corps, including washing and cooking, serving tea and water.

If English is compared to elementary school students, French is a graduate student. Although this is a bit exaggerated, the rigor and precision of French are indeed incomparable to other European languages. The pure and standard French comes at the cost of its complex grammar, numerous verb conjugations, and erratic words such as Yin and Yang.

Therefore, it is obviously a very difficult thing to learn French within three months. In fact, Jacques just wanted to verify Thias' patience and self-restraint ability. But the result of the development of things was that Jacques' own patience was exhausted by the lucky star who was eager to learn. No matter where, Thias would always use the French introduction to ask the teacher for many questions about French grammar, which made him very upset. Therefore, one hour ago, Jacques decisively ordered that Thias would not speak out, let alone ask questions.

With the soft sofa cushion in the car, Jacques tasted the red wine leisurely, and glanced at him from time to time. Looking at Tias's frowning face and his strange look of his lips tightly closed, he felt a little funny in his heart.

"Okay, the ban period is over, but you can't ask questions about learning!" Jacques finally made a mercy, but the same restrictions were placed.

Tias finally breathed a sigh of relief, "Yes, Lieutenant!"

Jacques asked to Thias again: "You should have met black people in Spain, what do you think?"

Thias nodded and replied: "Before, when I followed Major Alonso to station in Merida, I saw many black slaves. To be honest, in the eyes of all Spaniards, they are just a race with extremely lazy, dirty bodies, cowardly personalities and narrow minds. Apart from being able to act as slaves under the whip, blacks are not as good as shit!"

Jacques was not surprised by Tias's explanation. Not to mention the earliest slave traders (Spanish and Portuguese), even most of the French soldiers in the Desay Division did not like black people, especially after Napoleon's failure to send troops to suppress the Haitian ** movement. The so-called democratic spirit of "freedom, equality, and fraternity" was aimed at white people living in European civilized countries. As for black people, they could only act as slaves under the whip.

The topic of racial discrimination is not something Jacques wants to discuss. He is concerned about how to complete the task assigned by the Duke of Desay to the Military Intelligence Bureau: to incite black slaves in Portugal to cause trouble and use brutal and bloody means to resist their previous masters.

In accordance with the unified military deployment of the division's General Staff, after returning to the Badajos Fortress, General Barbanegel's Third Infantry Brigade, then joined General Bonai's Fifth Infantry Brigade and Lieutenant Colonel's Engineer Regiment (most part) to form a North Line Detachment of nearly 8,000 people. On July 8, the North Line Detachment left Badajos Fortress, and in the name of the Desay Division, he marched westward with great fanfare and entered the Portuguese territory.

Along the way, the Northern Line Detachment not only had to work hard to repair the destroyed highways, but also had to build pontoon bridges when encountering rivers, but also had to be highly wary of uninterrupted harassment from the Portuguese guerrillas. Therefore, after a week, the entire Northern Line Detachment walked less than 40 kilometers, and the vanguard had just arrived in Extermosh, an empty city.

All of this is naturally expected by Barbanegel and others. The main goal of the Northern Line Detachment at this stage is to restrain some of the forces of the British and Portuguese coalition forces and create a favorable opportunity for the main force led by the division commander to attack the city of Evora.

However, the damn guerrilla tactics are too annoying. Portuguese general Paul Coelo was reorganized into 18 infantry regiments under his command, and 2 to 3 regiments were dispatched every day, using the company as a small unit to launch a raid from all directions. Regardless of the victory or defeat, he would leave with one blow and would never fight.

In just one day, the French army would suffer no less than 10 attacks, almost every one hour. Although their own losses were minimal, under normal circumstances, the Portuguese just fired a few shots outside the French camp and shouted a few slogans in Portuguese that no one understood. However, the number of attacks was too frequent, and Barbanegel and others felt exhausted and exhausted, and decided to give the bastards some color.

On the fourth day of the Northern Line Detachment's expedition to Portugal, General Barbanegel carefully designed a trap to lure the enemy. He asked the Northern Aragon regiment to disguise himself as an engineer, holding shovels and hoes. In a mountainous road that is very susceptible to ambushing by local guerrillas, he casually repaired the damaged road.

In order to prevent the enemy from attacking boldly, Barbanegel removed a large number of soldiers who usually took on alert tasks for engineers, and hid all thousands of ambush soldiers 3 kilometers away to avoid early exposure, and then patiently waited for the guerrillas to take the bait.

At 1 pm, the Portuguese "went on schedule" as scheduled. Just as hundreds of Aragonese soldiers pretending to be engineer battalions gathered together to enjoy lunch, thousands of guerrillas suddenly jumped out of the bushes on the surrounding hills. They held rifles, waved their sabers, and shouted hysterically, rushing towards the French.

After calmly eating the last bite of food, the soldiers of the North Aragon regiment, calmly ate their last bite of food, they picked up their weapons. They hid in groups of three or five behind the convoy that was circled in a large circle. With the powerful power of the Minni gun in their hands, they accurately shot and killed every guerrilla who was trying to rush forward at a distance of 350 meters.

The raid on the French engineers turned out to be a massacre of their own. After losing more than 100 people, the guerrilla commander decisively stopped the attack and ordered everyone to quickly retreat into the hills and woods behind him, thinking of breaking them into pieces and breaking out. However, 2 kilometers away, the fleeing Portuguese were surrounded by French ambush. However, General Barbanegel was not in a hurry to order the soldiers to siege, but he slowly drove all the guerrillas back to the original hills to defend for help.

Barbanegel accurately predicted the first half of the battle, but did not expect the scene afterwards. Until 5 pm, nearly 4 hours after the battle, no Portuguese army came to reinforce the besieged friendly forces. Seeing that dusk was approaching, General Barbanegel ordered the hidden artillery company to open fire and cooperate with the infantry to encircle and annihilate the lonely guerrillas.

After the entire battle, the French army killed less than 20 people and killed (all seriously injured were shot and executed) and captured more than 800 Portuguese guerrillas, including 27 officers. The result of the battle was pretty good, but Barbanegel was not happy. It was because the Portuguese commander responsible for blocking the Northern Line Detachment was too exchanged. He would rather watch as many subordinates fell into the French trap and were trapped on the hills and were finally surrounded and annihilated than send troops to reinforce.

Therefore, in future battles, the Portuguese general would never be fooled easily. He would rather give up some seemingly easy victory. As long as the French army's progress is not more than 5 kilometers per day, Paul Coelho even ordered commanders at all levels not to take the initiative and monitor them secretly, in order to eliminate the enemy's patience.

At the same time, General Barbanegel could no longer find an excellent target for attack. The large number of ambushers sent every day had almost nothing except luckily destroying a few scattered devils. In addition, the Northern Line Detachment was seriously insufficient, and there were only less than 8,000 engineers accompanying him, so it was difficult for each unit to support a long-term round-trip dispatch.

As a last resort, General Barbanegel no longer made useless efforts to set up a secret ambush. Soon, between the French Northern Line Detachment and the Portuguese army, which was responsible for the blocking, the two sides returned to the previous non-fire state of being close and distant and not fighting.

Every day, the rotating Portuguese guerrillas would run to the hills, under rocks, in the jungle, or by rivers to closely monitor the every move of the French engineers. As long as the French advancement speed does not exceed 5 kilometers, everyone would be happy. The enemy and our soldiers in the tense state began to say hello to each other and disperse in a harmonious and friendly atmosphere.

General Barbanegel sent a messenger to report to the Duke of Desay, who was stationed in the town of Morran, that the Portuguese army, which had been successfully restrained by the Northern Line Detachment, had a number of between 15,000 and 20,000; General Coelo also told General Bellsford, the commander of the Eastern Line General, to describe the military situation in the front. He had suppressed the progress of the Desay Division. Before August 1, the French could not reach the city of Evora. It seemed that the initial strategic goals of these two generals had been achieved, and everyone could start a celebration banquet at any time.

However, the intelligence officer Jacques became restless. After seeking the consent of General Barbanegel, he seconded two cavalry squadrons (using infantry and cavalry composed of more than a thousand war horses seized by Caishi Town, pretending to be the cavalry brigade of the Desay Division) to help himself make a bold attempt.

"Tias, do you know how to get the black slaves in the plantation to stand on our side and rise up against the Portuguese?" In the carriage, Jacques threw a new topic to his entourage.

Tias thought for a while and blurted out, "Give them freedom!"

Jacques waved his hand and slapped it, slamming the young soldier's head, cursing: "Damn it, there is no civilized person with such noble ideas among the 10,000 black slaves. Think about it again!"

Tias rubbed his head aggrievedly, "You can buy them with money!"

Jacques slapped him again and said sarcastically: "When the black slave has money, he will hide it first. When the owner of the manor comes back, he will hand it over to him, so as to give himself a chance to mating with the female slave. Keep thinking!"

"Then give him a woman!"

"Get out, those black slaves trained by slave traders did not hear the whistle of the supervisor. Even though the woman in front of her was naked, she dared not look, let alone touch."

...

After being slapped innocently, Tias was a little angry and embarrassed. He raised his neck and asked loudly: "Okay, smart Lieutenant Jacques, what do you think you should do!"

Jacques smiled, showing the expression you should have asked this question, he lowered his voice and said, "We must give them hope and create an epic heroic role model, just like the slave warrior of the ancient Roman era, Spartacus!"
Chapter completed!