On December 12, 1647, Port Santa Fe...

Two Malay sailors silently transported boxes of canned food to the shore, and some soldiers from the 6th Company who were resting on the pier immediately surrounded them.

"The grass is also canned meat, I want to eat canned spinach and cod." A military soldier started to curse on the dock. There were a few blisters on the corner of his mouth, which seemed to be quite strong. It can be seen that fighting on the front line is not easy, with great mental pressure, bad environmental conditions, extremely average food, and even bad food. It is indeed normal to get angry in a hurry.

"The canned whale meat with scallions and sauce last time was pretty good, why didn't it be there this time?" A corporal stood in the crowd with his arms held his head and looked forward, "Did you let those white shirts be corrupt? Damn, they knew to hide behind and pull us back."

"Hey, there are too many canned yellow peaches, not bad." A supplementary soldier who was obviously just joining the army said happily: "There are also soybean and beef, which is not bad, and it's a good thing again."

Captain Ventura sat on the deck with his legs crossed his legs, drinking matte tea comfortably, and smiling at the group of East Coast soldiers on the shore who were resting. They were all good boys, and they fought for more than a year without regrets for the country to fight for land in the sun. In the past year, the wheat at home has been planted, harvested and planted, and the children have been one year older. The style of his hometown has also changed a lot. Now he only hopes that these young men can safely bring their trophy back to their hometown to reunite with their relatives.

There were still dull guns sounding on the battlefield in the distance. Most of them were artillery from the East Coast people, because their opponent, the Spaniards, suffered heavy losses and could not provide for supplies at all. At present, only two or three newly transported gates are still installed in the facade. The offensive and defensive battles between the two sides in the transportation area of ​​Santa Fe have lasted for several months. The Spaniards' troops here have also increased to more than 3,500 (2,000 Crandi people + 1,500 Lima soldiers). The defensive forces on the East Coast include two infantry companies, two artillery companies, four cavalry companies, a militia brigade and some Gao Qiao Volunteers, with a total force of about 2,500.

At present, except for the cavalry troops that have been sent out to suppress the Crandy army and maintain the security of the city and the suburbs, the rest of the infantry and artillery were all deployed inside and outside the city, and they were engaged in increasingly boring offensive and defensive battles with the Spaniards. The Spaniards did not attack outside the city, and the East Coast people temporarily lacked enough superior forces to push the Spaniards back.

However, Captain Jiang Zhiqing, who was in charge of the Santa Fe War Zone, was not in a hurry. He stood on the side of the East Coast people, with their backs on the Parana River dock, and transporting supplies was more convenient - well. Because a large number of ships have been drawn back to China recently, the transportation of supplies was not as convenient as before - it would have been much more labor-saving than the Spanish who relied on mules and horses to transport large amounts of supplies from Cordoba. If the Spanish had not had hundreds of thousands of Crandy slaves in Cordoba, Turkmen, Jujuy and other places, and the Paraguay region in the north, they would have been able to hold on until now, and had been dragged to death by the long supply line.

Jiang Zhiqing recently saw the Spanish attacking Santa Fe rampant. After inconvenient supply, he had already tried to completely defeat the Spaniards outside Santa Fe City. However, it would only be possible after the two militia brigades that were disbanded and returned to the local area to rest and do farm work were assembled for the second time. At that time, the East Coast people would have an absolute advantage in military strength, and the Spaniards were exhausted by long-term work-less offensive and defensive wars and various epidemics, and they would be defeated in one go. They would stand straight towards Cordoba.

But now it is impossible to counterattack the Spanish, which does not mean they have nothing to do. Isn't that? Just as Captain Ventura was drinking mate tea, a group of soldiers recruited from the country drove a group of mooing black cows. These cows were collected in nearby villages. Their original owners could not stand the harassment of the riots of Crandi, either fled to the western part of La Plata, or ran to the East Coast people to register and demand development overseas. They had already had enough of the chaos and endless killing here. They only wanted to live quietly in a place with fertile land, even if they did not hesitate to start from scratch.

Of course, there are also quite a lot of livestock here that are from the enemy property of Spanish "spy" executed by gunfire. In order to compete for the Santa Fe, the Spanish and the East Coast people have invested thousands of troops to carry out a series of battles for half a year. There were originally a considerable number of white Spanish residents in Santa Fe. Naturally, there were many of these people who secretly communicated with the Spanish army due to religious factors or the levies of the East Coast people. The fate of these people after being discovered can be imagined. Captain Jiang Zhiqing ordered that more than ten people who were guilty of the crime be executed immediately, and the others were all sent back to the local area. Some would spend their miserable lives in the Changshan Iron Mine Hard Labor Camp, and some would serve as materials for human experiments in the Ping'an County Medical Research Institute.

After the black cattle were transported to the dock, some small inland steamers would ferry the livestock one by one to the south bank of the Sarado River, and then the soldiers who had already set out there drove the cattle to the south all the way to Buenos Aires. Their safety was the responsibility of some of the temporary cavalry troops.

After these black cattle were driven to Buenos Aires, they usually had to be kept for two or three months, because most of the cattle that had been traveling for a long distance were already skinny and could not move forward again without sufficient nutritional supplementation. The fattened cattle were shipped again at the port of Buenos Aires to the mall port on the other side (Colonia), and then continued to be driven back to local townships by cattle herders for sale. Cheap cattle have always been one of the war bonuses promised by the government to farmers.

According to conservative estimates, the 700,000 mu of wheat fields sown in the East Coast Republic of China last year were calculated according to the three-crop rotation system, and a total of about 280,000 to 300,000 adult cattle were required to provide manure, otherwise the yield per mu of wheat would not be enough to reach the level of more than 120 kilograms. If the management is not good, it may not even be able to reach 100 kilograms. This is definitely not a joke.

How many cows are there in China now? More than 110,000! This figure is only achieved after snatching more than 60,000 cows from La Plata a while ago. In the past, it was not even half. It is no wonder that the average yield of wheat on the east coast is only seventy or eighty kilograms per mu. It is really too little fertilizer and the ground capacity is not enough. Although the climate on the east coast is good, the precipitation is rich, and the land is very fertile, the energy is conserved, and there is only so much nutrient in the ground, so you will have less food if you plant a crop of food. If you do not replenish the land at all times, then the yield will decline year by year.

Therefore, the huge herd of cattle in the La Plata area is one of the most favored property for people on the East Coast, because it is an indispensable part of achieving the "modernization" of agriculture on the East Coast. As the land reclamation area on the East Coast expands year by year, its demand for livestock is also increasing rapidly. The gap between these hundreds of thousands of cows is difficult to solve in normal times, because even if you can spend a huge amount of money (may require 5-10 million yuan) to buy cattle, the Spanish may not sell it to you. Even if you sell it to you, most of the steed steers, because it is difficult for them to sit idly by the East Coast people who also have large grasslands to develop the animal husbandry industry rapidly.

However, it is during the war, so this problem is much easier to solve. For example, what the East Coast people are doing intentionally or unintentionally, that is, by indulging the revenge of the Crandy slaves who restored their freedom to the Spanish slave owners, they bought a large amount of property that originally belonged to the Spanish colonists at a low price, or sometimes they can be picked up for free - because some slave owners were unfortunately killed by their whole family.

It turns out that this is the case with the multiple La Plata families that have maintained close commercial ties with the East Coast people. In addition to the first large merchants, farmers and ranchers led by the Rodriguez family, who are strong and have a certain number of private soldiers to protect themselves, the other small Spanish merchants who are weak have been in trouble. I don’t know anywhere else that in the first half of this month, there were 49 Spanish white farms in the city of Santa Fe (including the suburbs), and ranch operators were murdered. Although Captain Jiang Zhiqing, commander-in-chief of the East Coast War Zone, soon sent people to capture a group of stupid Crandy criminals who sold stolen goods (cows) publicly in the livestock market, the dead Spaniards could not be resurrected, and these "bored things" naturally became the property of the East Coast people.

In addition to cattle, the East Coast people were also trying their best to dig out the foundation of the Spanish rule in La Plata. For example, they planted a large amount of grass in the Spanish wheat fields to supply horses or passing cattle herds. For example, they cut down all the large hardwood suitable for shipbuilding and transported back to the country to avoid being used by the Spanish in the future. For example, they used all means to continue to lose the white colonists in La Plata - whether they were going to the overseas colonies on the East Coast or rolling back to the western half of La Plata, in short, don't appear in the Parana River Basin.

I believe that after the war, the Spanish colonial efforts of the entire La Plata will be regressed for ten or even decades. The sharp decline in the number of white colonists, barren land, deterioration of security and environmental damage, will undoubtedly plague the Spanish officials who are determined to rebuild the La Plata colony for a long time. If La Plata needs to be restored to its former prosperity, at least it can support the Spanish Kingdom to deploy an elite force of thousands of people here, it may be necessary for the Spaniard king to immigrate 20,000 to 30,000 people from the local area, and spend millions of pesos of early investment to carry out arduous construction for five to ten years, but is this possible?
Chapter completed!