Southeastern Colombia.
Julian Leal gripped the sling of his Flintlock Gun tightly in both hands, nervously scanning the dense rainforest around him as he hurried past the rushing river.
"God, why would the Portuguese come to this godforsaken place..." He turned to the Lieutenant beside him. "We didn't take a wrong turn, did we, sir?" They had been marching for a week, fighting mosquitoes, mites, and poisonous plants every day, unable to find even one place where they could sleep soundly. If not for the experienced indigenous guides traveling with them, quite a few of them would already have died in this jungle.
"Of course not." The Lieutenant nodded. "Not only did they come, there may be forty or fifty thousand of them."
Leal swallowed. "Then aren't we here to die?"
The raiding party he belonged to consisted of four Infantry companies, one Skirmisher company, and a small number of cavalry—fewer than six hundred men in all.
Moreover, they had only just been recruited by the General Staff Headquarters of the New Granada National Guard and had trained for less than twenty days. Well, the General Staff Headquarters itself had only been established a little over a month ago.
Though most of them had previously been Disciplined Militia, hunters, or the like, and had some familiarity with firearms, their fighting strength was certainly far inferior to that of Portugal's regular army.
Not to mention that their numbers were merely a fraction of a fraction of the enemy's.
Yet the General Staff Headquarters had ordered them to take the initiative and attack.
The big fellow behind Leal grinned. "We're not going to fight the Portuguese head-on. Our target is their transport ships. Even if we only fire a few shots from afar and keep them from sleeping peacefully at night, that