Natalia! A Boer TL

NATALIA! A Boer TL

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Prologue 1: 25th May, 1842

English trader Dick King, slightly dazed, began to crawl beneath his now collapsed horse. Minutes ago he and his servant had just begun their journey from Port Natal to gain reinforcements for the trapped British soldiers of the island. They had hoped they wouldn't be spotted, but just to their luck they had been cut short due to Boer musketry. Stuck now in the wilderness, bullet ridden, with nothing to do but die, he looks over to his young servant of 16 years age. Odd, he thought more of him than his own family back in the port. As he slowly approached death, his thoughts became grander. What would happen to Port Natal, to the troops trapped in their tent housing. He overall felt like a failure.

Through hazed and bloodied vision, he could see people walking towards him. However, he would never get to see their intentions, as at that moment, he took and died. The Boer Militiamen would carry the bodies of the two dead men with them and threw them into the ocean. The trapped soldiers would be sent with them to the next life, one by one, in the next month. Port Natal was under Boer control. Over the days the Boers became more organized, and they were prepared to give a hell of a fight for their territory.

Word of the rout would appear in the Cape Colony weeks later. The governor of the colony ordered an immediate attempt to take back the port. Ships of reinforcements were set up, and on July 30th, they began an attempt to retake the port via an amphibious landing. The Boers, however, were well prepared for the much larger British forces. Landing troops were seemingly fired at from all sides, causing mass confusion and panic among the British ranks. They managed to get only a small foothold, one that costed many casualties, before order collapsed. They were unprepared for the number of Boers there, and had not prepared for the type of fighting that ensued. The Boer victory was a major embarrassment, and It wouldn't be the last to come.
 
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Chapter 1: Natalia Rising

It was nothing short of a miracle that had saved Natalia from the British invasion. Oh, they would be back. They would be back and everyone knew it. But as the months went by, nothing. The Boer militiamen went back to their agrarian way of life. The Prime Minister, Andries Pretorius, realized that the Zulu's as their friend and associate would be instrumental to the Boer republic. Earlier he had helped Mpande rise to the Zulu throne, and Andries had no intention of letting this relationship slip away. But the most important thing, however, was fixing the government. So he began his efforts of centralization. het publiek meetings were cancelled, putting more of the power in the hands of the Volksraad. A small police force was created. Andries openly championed vootrekkers to come to Natalia. Small Boer communities inland were added to this new-found confederation (around OTL Transvaal). International Recognition of Natalia came from all over, including from the United States, Prussia, Portugal, and the Netherlands. The Orange River Boers, however, refused this gesture and formed their own governance that would become known as the Orange Free State.

In the Cape Colony, Napier was removed from his position for incompetence and replaced with former cricketer and governor of Nova Scotia. Not even a year into his position, Xhosa tribesman and settlers resume their decades long state of warfare. British troops took 5 years hunting down Xhosa in a long war of attrition. it would not be the last time this war would occur, but by the end the Xhosa had been driven out of the Cape Colony's territories and the raids ceased. To make things worse, a drought would strike the same year.

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British-Xhosa conflict in the Amatola Mountains

As 1848 rolled around, while multiple nations in Europe were facing popular revolutions, and the Mexican-American war in the Americas came to a close, Sir Harry S Smith becomes the new Cape Colony governor. He moves quickly to annex a territory west of the Orange Free State, known as Transorangia, and creates the Orange River Sovereignty. Boers there and in the Orange Free State erupt in furor, and war erupts between the Boers of the Orange Free State and the Cape Colony. By the 1850's, the Orange Free State is under full British control. Andries Pretorious is dismayed at the British act of imperialism but is also grateful that a potential rival, one that had even resorted to exiling his supporters, had been defeated.

In 1853, the Crimean War erupted in Europe. Natalia entered a brief conflict with the Basotho people over a land dispute, that ended with few casualties on either side and general resolution. One year later, however, Pretorious would die. His son Marthinus would take over
 
Interlude 1

We loaded everything up we could. Most of our stuff had been ransacked anyways. Our line was used to moving, further and further from the English, yet they always came back. Now our people were divided into three. There were those who stayed content under colonial and imperialistic rule. There were those that aim to stay and hold an insurrection, using tactics adopted from the Xhosa and the boers at Port Natal. Then there were us, moving again, still holding on to hope. Some were moving north, into a place that they called Bechuanaland. We were going to Natalia. It was already established. Maybe if our leaders didn't have such petty quarrels with the Pretorious family, we would still be in our settlement.

Our caravan passes dead bodies littered on the "path". They were days old and already bloated and in decay. This was the site of an Xhosa raid, frequent in these parts. The aborigines here didn't trust the Brits or the Afrikaner. The rotting, baking bodies produced an unfathomably foul stench. For the first time in my life I felt truly without god

My son of eight years, a cheery and usually optimistic boy, looked desolate and blank. Not only the war bout the drought and summer heat was taking its tool. He said

"Father, where are we going?" He asked another time to many.

"Natalia" I said flatly

"And how long before the Brits burn down that place to?"

I was speechless, in part because of the utter hopelessness in his voice, but because I had thought those same thoughts myself

My whole family was tired, but the combination of fear sorrow and the swarm of bugs in the humid air kept most awake. Everyone had their gun loaded. The next savage we see would get an early trip to see Satan.

We past some uniformed soldiers. Ready for a battle, we all grabbed our gun and waited for them to make even a single move. Oddly enough, they blew right past us. I could overhear their banter, talk about a war with the Russians in a place called Crimea.

A few days later, we hit our destination. As our caravan pulled into Pietermaritzburg, I said to my wife and my kids, relieved and with somewhat childish tone in my voice

"Welcome to Natalia"
 
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