East Africa had not been stingy in setting the stage for the Russians this time. It had sent Afghanistan enough arms in dribs and drabs to equip thirty thousand men. This was no small sum, because Britain currently had only thirty to forty thousand troops stationed in Afghanistan. Some had been withdrawn after the Afghan authorities surrendered, but a little over thirty thousand remained.
Those thirty thousand did not include the Indian auxiliary troops. They were the British Army's own beloved sons. Though these sons seemed to have little standing at home, the British were never miserly toward their own people.
The British Army usually looked pitiful, but that depended on what it was compared with. Against its own Royal Navy, its funding was naturally but a drop in the ocean. Yet compared with the armies of other nations, the British Army still had plenty of grandeur. At the very least, its weapons and equipment stood on the same level as those of several top powers. So even when the British Army cried poverty, it was still the foolish son of a wealthy landlord. The treatment enjoyed by other nations' armies might truly not have matched Britain's.
Thus, though the British Army was mocked for being incompetent, it could still join hands with France and wrestle with the Russian Army in Crimea. It had no trouble playing support, so long as it was not taking the lead, as it had in the Boer War and the Afghan War of his previous life, when it had lost all face.
Because of East Africa, the First Boer War that should originally have occurred had not happened. Ernst did not know whether the British and the Boers would have another clash. For now, the Orange Free State, which had only recently been incorporated