The pouring rain began to rain again.

Lightning bolts broke through the dark and dreary rain curtains, illuminating the somewhat dim earth. In the rain, a large group of soldiers from the east coast wearing rubber raincoats, holding bright bayonets, strode forward like fierce gods. The ground was slippery, and from time to time someone fell, but they soon got up again, and continued to come forward with their bayonets, like a silent stone statue, and threw themselves forward.

In front of them, there was a large figure of black pressing. There were a lot of figures, but they seemed to be in a panic, and there was a lot of noise, and some people seemed to be frightened, and ran towards the big lake behind them without a head; Some people are desperate to run in both directions, but there are too many people and they can't walk at all; Of course, many more people are kneeling in the mud by the lake in despair, crying and saying something, probably begging for mercy.

The sergeants with bayonets were unmoved, and under the leadership of the officer, they stepped forward quickly, just as Lin's bayonets stabbed the enemy in the chest. Fiery blood spurted out, splashing on the creamy raincoat and splashing in the black-gray mud, the sergeants drew their bayonets, kicked the entity away, and continued on, looking for the next enemy.

At this time, if you look down at the earth from the sky, then you will clearly find that on the shore of the wide lake, two "lines" extending more than 100 meters collide fiercely, and then one of them continues to move forward, and the other is knocked backwards, gradually scattered and disappeared into nothingness.

"Why not accept surrender?" Zhou Bo, a gendarmerie officer who was demoted by the company, asked.

Beside him was Lieutenant Colonel Peng Yuanzhi, who was also the commissioner of the Zelu District Administration, the commander of the garrison, the commander of the New China Infantry Battalion, and the acting captain of the New China Pioneer Brigade. The man was smoking a pipe at this time, his expression was very melancholy, and his eyes seemed to be staring at the battle ahead, but if you looked closely, he seemed to be looking somewhere else, and his attention was completely off the lakeside battlefield that was a foregone conclusion.

Lieutenant Colonel Peng Yuanzhi is now the acting captain of the New Huaxia Pioneer Team, but this acting mission will end almost next month, not that he is going to become a regular and fully preside over the work, but because the throne under his ass that has not yet been covered was snatched away by others, and he has not been able to compete with Shao Yaoguang, the commissioner of the Baoding District Administration with a deep background, so he can only continue to be under others, which is why he has been such an ugly expression of his dead father and mother recently.

And speaking of this Zhou Bo beside him, he is also an unlucky ghost! Previously, because he single-handedly planned and carried out the assassination of Father Ramos, he was judged by his superiors to be unorganized and undocumented, and his methods were too cruel and rude, so he was assigned to the Australian colony to guide the local conquest of the natives.

However, this guy refused to go to that place in Australia to "waste his life", so he seized the short time before setting off to drill around and beg grandpa to tell grandma, and finally was changed to the new Huaxia area, which can be regarded as luck. But when he came, Peng Zhicheng might be leaving, and the reason was very simple, he didn't want to work in New Huaxia Island anymore. For his own future, he plans to move and go to Australia, where Zhou Bo is reluctant to go, to take office, to be the captain of the pioneer team and the main party. If the conditions are difficult, it will be more difficult, and the administrative level will go up at a better level, which is more real than anything else.

As for the gap left after he left, if there is no accident, it will be replaced by Yang Jie, who used to live in Quansheng Island. That guy lived on that deserted island with green eyes, and really didn't want to continue to be a "wild man", after making countless reports over the years, he finally moved Tianzun and lowered his blessings, so that he suddenly jumped to Xinhuaxia Island, took over Lao Peng's position, and took on the heavy responsibility of the entire east coast.

These series of transfers have basically settled now, and there is no suspense. Peng Zhicheng estimated that in the middle of this year (1681), the official appointment would come down, and then he could pat himself on the back and go to Australia to continue to expand the country's territory.

He wanted to spend the last half a year quietly. But who wants the natives to give no face, and actually wants to recapture Lake Alautra, a land that has been sold to the people of the east coast, this is worth it! At the end of last year, after sending an envoy to negotiate with the Melina people on the Central Plateau to no avail, Peng Yuanzhi resolutely mobilized troops and mobilized the Xinhua Infantry Battalion, which was experienced in tropical warfare, and at the same time negotiated with the navy to transfer the Xinhua County Security Regiment into an organized system, intending to launch a thunderous blow against the Melina people who invaded this place, and strive for 20 years of peace in the First World War.

The Xinhua Infantry Battalion and the Xinhua County Security Regiment remembered that there were more than 2,000 troops, and the well-equipped ones were naturally devastating against these natives. You must know that the Melina people of the Central Plateau were unable to even deal with the Sakalava people at the beginning, so they had to purchase weapons from the people on the east coast (this is how the plains around Lake Arautra were sold to the people on the east coast at that time), and at the same time meet to flank them, which completely lifted the half-century-long behavior of the Sakalava people on the Central Plateau.

Therefore, these Melina people were properly inferior to the Sakarava people, and their equipment was extremely primitive because of the lack of trade objects in the inland plateau, and although there was no shortage of iron weapons, muskets and cannons were never produced by themselves, so how could they fight with the people on the east coast? I don't know which tendon they made a mistake this time, could it be that because of their repeated victories in the internal wars in the Central Plateau, their hearts are inflated? It's a little incredible to think about.

However, since the enemy has officially bullied the east bank, invaded Lake Alautra and the surrounding plains, and killed and wounded more than 20 pioneers on the east bank, then there is nothing to say, just fight directly! Not only to fight, but also to fight hard, to beat them painfully, as the so-called war of twenty years of peace, so that the people of the east coast can digest the coastal zone with peace of mind, and then encroach on the central plateau from all sides, and catch turtles in an urn against the people of Melina.

At this time, the war has come to an end, and the east coast army with the new Chinese infantry battalion as the main force is unstoppable, even if it will be the rainy season, and the sky is raining rain, which is not conducive to the musket and artillery of the east coast people, but even if they are well-trained to launch a white-edged assault with bayonets, it is not something that those Melinas can compete with - these ignorant natives have lost two battles around Lake Alautra, and today should be the last battle, more than 1,000 officers and soldiers on the east coast have broken more than 3,000 Melina in the field, Then they were driven directly into Lake Alautra, throwing themselves into the water and trampling on each other and killing countless people, and the others were directly stabbed to the ground one by one by the ruthless soldiers on the east coast, and the scene was unspeakably miserable.

"Why accept their surrender? These natives, who are afraid of power but not virtuous, must first give them an impressive lesson before they can honestly sit down and negotiate with you. Xiao Zhou, you are also a person who has planned big things, not like the kind of man who is a mother-in-law and mother-in-law, you shouldn't ask this question. Peng Yuanzhi retracted his gaze looking into the distance, turned his head, shook his head and said with a smile: "Moreover, from another point of view, we are now ruthless, so that these Merina people know that they are powerful, and if they know that they are afraid, they will not resist us too fiercely in the future." And if their resistance is light, our invincible army will naturally not make more killings, after all, these are all ready-made labor, they are all wealth, and it is a pity to kill them. So, from this point of view, it is not necessarily a bad thing for us to be harsh on them now, and to continue their entire race. Xiao Zhou, do you think that's the truth? ”

Zhou Bo was a little speechless for a while. For it was a little incomprehensible that some people had ordered that no prisoners should be taken and that the natives who had become scattered should be exterminated, and that I was doing this for your own good. It can only be said that Peng Yuanzhi has been an official in the colony for so long, and he can still climb to a high position step by step, which really has his own merits, at least this thick-hearted black face is something he can't match. Perhaps, this is the main reason why people are rising step by step, and they are still struggling.

"What should I do after this battle? What is the charter of Lake Alautra after that? Will it be developed in a big way? Seeing that half of the lake was almost stained red with blood, Zhou Bo asked silently.

"Of course the development will be developed, of course it will not be a large-scale development, but the investment will not be small. As you know, there are more and more people growing bananas, vanilla, coffee, cocoa, sisal, tobacco, sugarcane, spices, cotton and other cash crops on New Huaxia Island, which has led to a large reduction in the sown area of food crops, and people have abandoned traditional agricultural farming methods and turned to planting crops that can bring them more economic benefits. As a result, the island is not even self-sufficient in food, and we have to import grain from the Portuguese plantations in the Zambezi valley and the riverine region of South Africa at the same time to meet the island's needs. In my opinion, this is really a bit unusual. Peng Yuanzhi took a few puffs of cigarettes, frowned and said: "This place of Alautra Lake, everyone who has been here knows that this is a good anointed land, the soil is fertile, the drainage is smooth, the land is flat, and the environment is more refreshing than the coast. We can't afford to turn a blind eye to such a place, especially when food cultivation is already quite inadequate. ”

"But now that the income from growing food is so low, will enough people be recruited to come and reclaim the wasteland?" Zhou Bo asked with some concern.

"Of course, the normal way is difficult, but we can move forward with this work by setting up state farms. Prisoners of war, exiled prisoners, and even foreign laborers were sent to work on these farms, creating farms along the lake and fishing in the lake, where it is said that no one had caught fish for thousands of years, and the number of fish was staggering. Peng Yuanzhi said.

Peng Yuanzhi had read the survey report of the geology and agriculture departments on the shores of Lake Alautra and learned that the marshland around the lake was very fertile, and if it was properly managed, the harvest would be very good. This can be seen from the grain harvest planted by the local natives: according to the investigation and collation of the East Coast expedition, the local natives "engaged in a crude rice cultivation industry" on the shores of Lake Alautra, and the seeds were brought from the East Indies by them centuries ago, which cannot be called excellent, and their farming skills are also very low, neither irrigation nor rice planting, so that they can actually obtain an average of about two tons of rice per hectare, which is also an anomaly. Agricultural experts on Xinhuaxia Island unanimously believe that if the marshland on the shore of Lake Arautra is properly cleaned up and drained smoothly, then with the seed breeding technology and rice cultivation technology of the people on the east coast, it is easy to harvest more than five tons of rice per hectare, and this can solve the grain problem of Xinhuaxia Island to a great extent.

In the case of Madagascar, the shores of Lake Alautra were the only mechanized rice producing areas in the Great Plains, and the average yield of 2 tons/hectare was achieved in the original and backward rice cultivation methods of the local people. After the French company Somarak remediated the swampy wasteland here, the grain production increased to 3.5-4 tons, more than half of which was exported abroad, and because of its unique taste, it was exported to France, the former suzerain, as a "high-grade rice", in exchange for a large number of much-needed materials. At the same time, the value of the land that had been reclaimed by Somalak increased from 15,000 Malagasy francs to 60,000 horsefrancs.

"The coastal swamps can be planted with spices and oil palms, and the inland swamps can be planted with rice and fish. Peng Yuanzhi said.

In his plan, the railway from Lake Alautra to Tacheng Port should be built anyway, that is, the so-called Tadong Railway is also. With the completion of the railway, grain from the shores of Lake Arautra can be transported to the coast and sold to local factories, logging camps and plantations. You must know that Peng Yuanzhi just resettled the thousands of Ming immigrants he intercepted to the eastern coastal area a while ago, and began to develop the large coastal swamps there. Most of the swamps are eroded ground that has been or is being submerged by seawater, and the drainage is not good, and the vegetation is dominated by the meadow grassland, and the soil is often peat.

After the Ming immigrants arrived here, each person received 50 acres of land, two pigs, and then cultivated oil palm under the guidance of agricultural technicians to improve the local environment, known as the "oil palm action", which is said to produce about 0.8 tons of oil per mu if it works well, which can provide raw materials for the edible oil and soap industries.

It is foreseeable that there will be no grain output for a long time in the future, so the operation to develop the granary of Lake Alautra is already on the bow and has to be sent!