A Hardline Stance

As Portugal's monarch, Carlos I was bound to have no shortage of hard days ahead. Yet having East Africa draw the hatred away could solve quite a few problems instead. Still, Portugal's road ahead was unlikely to be easy. In his previous life, Portugal had suffered two government bankruptcies under Carlos I's rule.

Now that it had lost Mozambique and Angola, two vital sources of revenue, and had borrowed a huge sum from Britain to expand its army against East Africa, Portugal's finances would only grow more difficult.

Carlos I's trusted man, Prime Minister Frank, was no expert at managing the economy. Even his political skills were quite ordinary; otherwise, Carlos I and his father would not have been assassinated in the street in his previous life.

The only consolation was Frank's loyalty to the royal family. For a monarch, that mattered more than anything else.

"Your Majesty, after this war, East Africa will likely not choose to return Angola and Mozambique to us. We must prepare ourselves to lose our two most important colonies! But that may not necessarily be a bad thing for us. It would also mean casting off two burdens," Frank said, offering Carlos I his view.

To be honest, Angola and Mozambique mattered to the Portuguese Government mainly because they preserved Portugal's face as an old colonial power. In reality, they did not bring Portugal much tangible benefit, and in recent years, the two colonies had actually been operating at a loss because of the need to guard against East Africa.

Maintaining garrisons in Angola and Mozambique year after year was itself a burden Portugal found hard to sustain. If the British had not needed "cannon fodder," along with the need for a united front, East Africa would never have gotten the chance to bully