After waking up, Cortez hated Marin very much and kept scolding Marin. In fact, Cortez blamed Marin wrongly, because Marin was not intentionally trying to deceive the Spanish, but the description of the African part in the history textbooks of previous lives was very inaccurate. Therefore, he was not clear about the specific age of the ancient Zimbabwe Empire.
In fact, the ancient Zimbabwe Empire ran out of gold as early as 1430. Then, around 1450, the ancient Zimbabwe Empire abandoned the Great Zimbabwe City and moved it to the upper valley of the Zambezi River more than 350 kilometers northeast. The new capital was named Zvoongombe. The ancient Zimbabwe Empire was also renamed the Mutapa Kingdom.
The distance of more than 350 kilometers is far, not far, not far. Although there are no horses in the southern Africans in this era, the black buddies are also very good at walking. Haven’t you seen the marathon champions in later generations all black buddies? So, 350 kilometers is nothing, it’s just 8 marathons…
After scolding Marin, Cortez began to dig Stone City, trying to find the remaining gold. During this period, he dug out a lot of stone sculptures, and even some ancient porcelain. However, the gold was not dug. But he didn't give up and continued to dig...
Just when Cortez and his men were digging three feet into the stone city to find gold, more than 350 kilometers away, Zvoongombe, Xindu Zvoongombe, had long been good at footing, and reported the news that the stone city of the capital was attacked by foreign enemies to the current king Chikuyo. King Chikuyo was shocked by the attack on the capital, especially when he learned that the invaders had actually dug three feet into the stone city of the capital, he was immediately angry. After all, the capital buried many remains of his ancestors and could not be desecrated.
Therefore, King Chikuyo beat the war drum and summoned all the standing troops near the royal capital...
The standing army of the Mutapa Kingdom is organized into combat regiments, with each combat regiment of about 500 to 1,000, and there are also less than 500.
At this time, there were 8 combat regiments near the capital of the Mutapa Kingdom, totaling 5,600 people. After King Chikuyo gathered all 8 combat regiments, he recruited more than 2,000 tribal warriors from the nearby tribes, gathered up 8,000 people, and killed the abandoned old capital, Dazibabwe Stone City.
More than 10 days later, when the army of Mutapa Kingdom arrived, the two soldiers of Cortez from the square formation were still happily digging graves...
Fortunately, Cortez arranged a guard. After discovering a large group of people coming from the northeast, the guard immediately blew the whistle and warned. Cortez hurriedly summoned all the soldiers and carried out a hasty resistance.
However, the army of the Mutapa Kingdom was too unsatisfactory. Although the number of people was absolutely superior, they suddenly attacked, and they should have the advantage. However, after a hurry battle, the army of the Mutapa Kingdom, which had the advantage in numbers, was actually defeated...
How did they lose? Come on, let’s talk about the fighting methods of the warriors in the Kingdom of Mutapa…
The main body of the population of the Mutapa Kingdom is the Kalanga people, a member of the Shona people. The traditional fighting method of the Shona people is to use a light short spear as a javelin.
During the battle, the Kalanga took turns to fight in battle groups, throwing short spears and javelins at the enemy's formation at a distance of 40 or 50 yards...
The hit rate of the javelin is very touching, which is similar to the hit rate after the smoothbore gun exceeds 70 yards. The Shona people, including the later Zulu people, used this "fate" javelin tactic to fight each other. If one side is unlucky and too many people win the javelin, it will collapse first and then flee. But if one side loses its weapons and flees, the other side cannot chase after it as usual. Then, the defeated tribe will send people to express surrender. Or, leave the original territory and the entire tribe will go into exile to another place...
...
When the war started, King Chikuyo sent a combat group to go forward and threw javelins at the enemy formation. But at this time, the muskets of Cortez's two square formations also rang...
Moreover, although the smoothbore musket concentrates the enemy on God's blessing after more than 100 yards. However, at the distance between forty or fifty yards of the enemy throwing the javelin, the smoothbore musket's hit rate is still very high, exceeding 50%!
Then, the combat group that took the lead in bidding for the javelin was in trouble and was directly killed and injured by muskets...
Moreover, the huge gunfire sound shocked the soldiers of the unknown Mutapa Kingdom. They had never seen such a strange way of killing...
Then, the living people who were first sent out were frightened and turned around and ran away...
King Chikuyo was also shocked, but he was in the rear and was not deeply moved by the casualties. So he chose to send another combat regiment to bid for the javelin. As a result, the second combat regiment still had more than 200 casualties, and he was so scared that he collapsed and ran away...
Then, several other regiments in the Mutapa Kingdom dared not step forward...
Cortez was an adventurous guy. When he saw the enemy timid, he quickly let the army advance. In front of the enemy, he asked the musketeers to shoot three rounds of volleys at the guards battle group where the king's ceremonial guard was located, killing five or six hundred people.
At this time, Chikuyo was finally scared. Then, he turned around and ran away first, and several other combat groups also fled... The warriors of the Mutapa Kingdom who threw the javelins to harm the enemy by fate finally lost to the more professional Spanish army. What's more, they were colonial troops using the Spanish phalanx.
Cortez won a great victory, and then led his army to pursue him. After half a month, he chased him to Zvoongombe, the capital of the Mutapa Kingdom. Zvoongombe is not the Great Zimbabwe Stone City, but just a clerk in a river valley.
After being conquered by Cortez at the valley mouth, King Chikuyo directly led his army to protect the royal family and ministers, and fled into the mountains from another direction.
Cortez didn't have the intention to chase him, but led his troops directly into the palace of the Mutapa Kingdom, which was like a large copycat. Then, Cortez was blinded by the gold in the copycat palace...
In the humble palace, Cortez seized more than 150,000 ounces of gold, equivalent to 4.25 tons or 9,375 pounds.
Cortez was very confused - didn't it mean that the gold in Stone City had been mined? Why did there be so much gold in the capital?
I found a Karanga Prophet Elder who knew Arabic and didn't have time to run away. After asking an Arabic translator, I found out that although the super gold mine near Stone City in Great Zimbabwe has dried up, there are still many small and medium-sized gold mines all over the country in the Mutapa Kingdom!
The Kingdom of Mutapa relied on force to impose half of the gold tax on small tribes that discovered gold mines across the country as a tribute tax. It is estimated that the gold tax collected by the Kingdom of Mutapa from tribes that produced gold from all over the country is estimated to be about 35,000 ounces, equivalent to one ton. At this time, the Portuguese engaged in sand trade on the coast of West Africa, and the annual gold income was only half a ton... In other words, the annual gold income of the Kingdom of Mutapa was twice that of the Kingdom of Portugal and West Africa...
The 150,000 ounces of gold found in the royal palace treasury was the savings of the fiscal revenue of the Mutapa Kingdom in recent years. Of course, if it was a few months later, the kingdom might have to spend tens of thousands of ounces of gold. After all, the Mutapa Kingdom would cost a lot of money just to support those thousands of standing troops.
...
After getting so much gold, Cortez was not in a hurry to hunt down the king of Mutapa Kingdom and his party. Because his army was not familiar with the local terrain. Moreover, despite the victory in the previous battle, the Spaniards also lost more than 200 people under the attack of the African buddies' "fate-in-law enforcement" tactic.
In addition, because of the inadequacy of the local climate, many soldiers have begun to get sick. Fortunately, these soldiers can adapt to the tropical climate, otherwise, it will be even worse.
Seeing that things were not done, Cortez led people to search Zvoongombe's entire city, and found more than 20,000 ounces of gold from the temple and the homes of the powerful.
He divided the more than 20,000 gold with his soldiers, and then took the 150,000 ounces of gold collected from the treasury and carried the mules he brought back to Mozambique happily along the original route.
Chapter completed!