Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 88 Accident
After successfully capturing the second line of defense, the attacking Chinese soldiers rested for half an hour and then launched an attack on the Bolivian third line of defense.

The third line of defense was near the mountain city of El Alto, and the number of Bolivian soldiers defending the city reached 800.

The attacking Chinese Independence Army soldiers cooperated with each other and used the tactics from the morning to gradually reduce the number of Bolivian soldiers. After an hour of fighting, the Bolivian troops suffered 200 casualties and were forced to withdraw from the defense line and retreat into the city in order to preserve their strength.

The Chinese Independence Army's rapid offensive capability of taking down three lines of defense in one day shocked Melgarejo who had just arrived in La Paz. He personally ordered the commander of El Alto to strictly guard the mountain city and not to leave the city to fight with the Chinese Independence Army.

After the initial defeat, the weaker party often took the initiative to attack the enemy by night raid. However, after receiving strict orders from Melgarejo, the commander of the El Alto city defense gave up the plan to leave the city at night to retake the defense line. He mobilized the young and middle-aged Bolivians in the city to assist in the defense of the mountain city and repelled the subsequent attack launched by the Chinese Independence Army.

For two consecutive days, the two sides fought more than a dozen battles of varying sizes around El Alto, but made no progress and the situation entered a stalemate.

As the storming attack failed, Li Mingyuan gave up the plan to capture El Alto in a short period of time and dispatched troops to block the passage between La Paz and El Alto. At the same time, he sent out reconnaissance cavalry to find out the movements around La Paz.

It was a dark night with a cold moon hanging high in the sky. Two figures sneaked out of the woods and headed towards the mountain road leading to the city of La Paz.

"Dengdengdeng," the sound of rapid horse hooves came from far away and surrounded the two men in a moment.

"You're sneaking around in the middle of the night. You must be spies delivering information to La Paz. Tell me the truth. Who sent you here?"

The leading Chinese cavalryman pointed his saber at the two men and shouted loudly in Chinese, regardless of whether they could understand or not.

The Chinese Independence Army had been attacking La Paz for several days. Small units under the orders of Melgarejo had been continuously advancing towards the city of La Paz. In the past two days, soldiers from the reconnaissance battalion had discovered seven Bolivian units coming to support. The number of troops ranged from four to five hundred to one to two thousand. However, they were all annihilated by the Chinese units deployed on the periphery. Apart from adding to the military merits of the various peripheral Chinese units, the supporting Bolivian units failed to provide any useful help to Melgarejo in the city of La Paz.

"No, we are not the president's men. We were sent by General Adolfo to cooperate with your army."

To the cavalry officer's surprise, the surrounded Bolivians could actually understand what he said.

"Sergeant, they wouldn't lie to us in order to save their lives, right?" a cavalryman asked uncertainly.

The cavalry officer nodded, thinking that what his men said made sense.
He rode up to the two Bolivians on horseback and raised his whip to teach them a lesson.

"No, I didn't lie. I really am the messenger sent by General Adolfo." Seeing that the whip was about to hit him, the Bolivian hurriedly explained.

"Who is General Adolfo? Why should he cooperate with us?" the cavalry officer asked, putting down his whip.

"I can't tell you. I can only tell you when I see your leader."

Fearing that the news would leak out, Adolfo waited until four days after Melgarejo left Sucre before uniting his subordinates in the army to launch a rebellion and fight against the remaining troops loyal to Melgarejo.

Melgarejo supported the city of La Paz and took away most of Sucre's troops. Later, the war went badly and Melgarejo continued to withdraw troops from Sucre, resulting in insufficient strength for the Sucre garrison. Adolfo suddenly launched a rebellion and succeeded.
Adolfo captured Sucre in one day, and he had spread the news that Melgarejo had signed a traitorous treaty in Sucre in advance. Therefore, he did not encounter much resistance when launching the rebellion, and was able to quickly quell the counterattack by Melgarejo's forces in the city.

After initially taking control of Sucre, Adolfo sent out three groups of messengers to contact the Chinese Independence Army, and the two Bolivians the cavalry encountered were among the first to set out.

The cavalry officer questioned the Bolivians again, and when he could not get any useful information out of them, he handed them over to his superiors for disposal.

Melgarejo could not hide the fact that Adolfo had captured Sucre. After receiving the news, Melgarejo immediately called his generals to an emergency meeting. "Adolfo and Frias launched a rebellion. General Sama was caught off guard and ambushed by the rebels. The remaining troops were wiped out. Sucre has now fallen into the hands of the rebels. What should we do?"

Melgarejo finished his words and stared at the dozen or so Bolivian generals in the hall.

The news of the fall of Sucre came so suddenly that if Melgarejo hadn't announced it himself, they would have thought it was a prank.

"President, General Sama has two thousand soldiers under his command and one thousand security forces to assist him. How could he be defeated by Adolfo!" said a fat man with a fat face angrily.

"Humph, Sama is a fool. Half of his 2,000 soldiers were instigated to rebel by Adolfo. He was shot dead by a hidden gun from behind when he was leading his troops to suppress the rebellion." Melgarejo said angrily.

Sama's death was so miserable that none of the Bolivian generals present sympathized with him. They all blamed him for the fall of Sucre and cursed Sama for being a fool who couldn't even control his own subordinates.

"President, the rebels have just occupied Sucre. We should take advantage of the rebels' unstable foothold and quickly send troops to retake Sucre to minimize the impact of this incident."

As Melgarejo's younger brother, Balivian owes his current status and power to Melgarejo. Therefore, when other generals were still arguing, he was the first to put forward his suggestions.

It is necessary to go back and quell the rebellion. The key is how to deal with the defense of La Paz after taking the army away.

Bolivia's military is insufficient in number. The previous president reformed the economy and laid off a large number of troops. After Melgarejo came to power, he has been busy appeasing generals from various factions in the country and has not had time to expand the army, which has led to the current dilemma of insufficient military force.

Melgarejo glanced at the Bolivian generals in front of him and frowned even deeper.

Among the thirteen generals, except for his younger brother and three trusted generals, the others looked angry but sat firmly in their seats.

Melgarejo understood what they were thinking. After all, they were all powerful warlords, and whoever came to power had to win them over. Otherwise, without their support, neither Melgarejo nor Adolfo would be able to sit firmly on the presidential throne.

Melgarejo hated these fence-sitters, but he himself was the spokesperson chosen by these Corrodis.
If he offended them, he would be immediately driven out of power by their coalition without Adolfo's attack. Therefore, although he was dissatisfied with them, Melgarejo did not dare to get angry.

Brothers are like brothers in war, this saying applies everywhere. It is unlikely to expect the warlords who are firmly in their respective positions to help him fight against Adolfo. Moreover, if he takes these warlords to the battlefield, Melgarejo is also worried that they will betray him and shoot him in the back, resulting in the same fate as Sama.

After much deliberation, Melgarejo decided to dispatch 3,000 soldiers under Balivian and 2,000 of his own men to counterattack Sucre and put down the rebellion launched by Adolfo.

"Everyone, the situation is urgent. I have decided to take 5,000 troops to quell the rebellion, and the rest of the troops will defend La Paz and El Alto. The specific matters will be discussed and decided by Medellin and the generals."

La Paz was an important base of Melgarejo. After transferring Balivian away, a trusted subordinate had to be left behind to guard La Paz. Therefore, Melgarejo left his trusted subordinate Medellin behind to lead his troops in La Paz.

The transfer of 5,000 troops had some impact on the defense of the city of La Paz, but after mobilizing the residents in the city to assist in the defense, the troop gap was completely filled, so the generals present nodded in agreement with Melgarejo's arrangement.

The matter was of great importance. After Balivian selected 3,000 soldiers and handed over the rest of his troops to Medellin,
He met up with Melgarejo and headed for Sucre overnight.

(End of this chapter)