Vicious Methods

Kols agreed with Caste's view. "In the three months we held out in Kinshasa, the entire city had only a little over six hundred armed men, while the enemy numbered four or five thousand. Yet those six hundred-odd men had stubbornly withstood the Portuguese for three whole months."

"Although this Portuguese force was a motley army mixed with large numbers of Black slaves, their firepower was a full notch above the weapons used by the Portuguese Army during the First East Portugal War."

Kols was a veteran who had fought in the First East Portugal War, so he knew the state of the Portuguese Army in that previous conflict very well.

"And this is merely the improvement in Portugal's irregular troops. Two brigades from the Portuguese homeland are stationed in Angola. They should be Angola's highest-grade military force. We still do not know where those two brigades are located, but their weapons and equipment should be able to match Europe's average level."

"As the rear area, Angola's lifeline, and the colonial capital, the exact number of troops in Luanda is not easy to determine. But in terms of defensive works and artillery, it is certainly the place with the most in all of Angola."

"So, if we are to deal with Luanda, we must ensure a certain number of artillery pieces capable of suppressing the enemy. Artillery is therefore indispensable in war."

In Kols's view, even if the Portuguese had taken the initiative to attack in the early stages, they could not possibly have committed all their main forces to the front.

After all, the safety of the capital was surely the colony's foremost priority. It was like Maputo in Mozambique; honestly, Maputo's geographical position made it utterly unsuitable as a war command center.

But centuries of Portuguese development had