Empire Rise: Spain

Chapter 118: Vitali M1872 Rifle

Since it has already been decided to carry out military reform, naturally the sooner the better.

No matter how the European situation changes, having a powerful army unit will always make Spain feel secure.

Currently, Spain is unable to develop the navy, and even if it could, it certainly wouldn’t succeed. After all, there’s the navy-first British Empire constantly stirring up trouble nearby. Unless one wants to compete comprehensively with the United Kingdom, it’s better to abandon navy development.

To avoid attracting the attention of the British, the navy’s scale must be kept below the level of the great powers, and capital ships cannot threaten the British Royal Fleet.

Additionally, due to the navy’s extreme expense, Carlo currently has no intention of developing the navy. Spain’s fleet consists of just a few not-very-large ironclad ships, which look quite shabby.

Since the navy won’t be developed, the army has become Spain’s only hope for strengthening its military power. On this point, Carlo, Prime Minister Primó, and Grand Duke Serrano share a considerable tacit understanding.

Army reform must also be accompanied by reform in weapon technology.

Spain’s current standard rifle is relatively complex, including outdated muzzle-loading rifles and paper cartridge bullets, as well as more advanced breech-loading rifles and metallic cartridge bullets.

Since a large-scale reform of the army is to be carried out, naturally the rifles equipped by the Spanish Army must also be comprehensively upgraded at the same time.

The good news is that after more than a year of effort, Spain has made progress in breech-loading rifles. With technologies from Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Spain only needs to integrate these two technologies with the help of Austro-Hungarian Empire technical experts to improve and create its own standard rifle.

In this situation, based on the new model improved from the Italian Vitali rifle, the Spanish Vitali M1872 rifle was successfully born.

The Vitali rifle is the first generation of breech-loading rifle developed by the Swiss. The Italians improved upon it, and Spain further improved upon the Italian version, basically remedying the rifle’s shortcomings.

This rifle has a caliber of 35 mm and uniformly uses 35×47 mm black powder bullets.

Smokeless powder has not yet been developed, and bullets in all countries of the world use black powder bullets, which have significant shortcomings in power and accuracy.

Carlo’s armory is currently also engaged in research and development of smokeless powder. Once smokeless powder shows promise, Spain’s weapons will all be refitted with smokeless powder bullets.

The rifle weighs 6 kg overall, has an overall length of 1350 mm, and a muzzle velocity of 415 meters per second.

Italy retained the basic appearance of the Swiss Vitali rifle but changed the loading method from tubular magazine to single shot feeding.

The Spanish armory improved upon this basis by adding a magazine that can hold four bullets.

The Spanish Vitali M1872 rifle and the Italian Vitali rifle use the same caliber, which also facilitates logistics and supply.

If Spain’s ammunition production capacity is insufficient in the future, bullets can be easily procured from Italy, as the ammunition is interchangeable.

Similarly, if Italy lacks rifles or bullets, bullets produced in Spain can also be loaded into Italian rifles, which is a huge help for the logistics supply of both countries.

Standardizing the army’s weapon series can greatly facilitate the army’s logistics and supply. After all, if soldiers use the same standard rifle, only one type of bullet needs to be transported and supplied.

But if several kinds of rifles are used, especially those with different calibers, it becomes a huge trouble for logistics and supply.

The frontline finally receives a large batch of logistics, but if none of the bullets match their rifles, that batch of supplies is completely useless to the army.

Carlo understands this point well, so during the development of this rifle, he specified that the caliber must be consistent with Italy’s rifles.

When smokeless powder is successfully developed in the future, the rifle’s caliber can be changed then. For now, since they are all black powder bullets, it’s best to keep them consistent to facilitate rear logistics and supply.

Since it has been decided to reform the army, Carlo ordered the royal arsenal to conduct the final test of the Vitali M1872 rifle. As soon as the military approves, it can be mass-produced and equipped to the army at any time.

Hearing that Carlo had even prepared the army’s standard rifle, Prime Minister Primó and Grand Duke Serrano were naturally very curious and expressed their willingness to go together to watch the rifle test.

Carlo had no objection. Prime Minister Primó is in charge of the Ministry of Finance, and Grand Duke Serrano is in charge of the Ministry of Defense. As long as he gains their approval, it can basically be confirmed that the Spanish Army will procure the Vitali M1872 rifle.

Carlo has no selfish motives in this. Mainly, the current Vitali M1872 rifle is indeed Spain’s most advanced rifle, and even one of the most advanced rifles in Europe at present.

Even the technical experts from the Austro-Hungarian Empire praise this rifle design, let alone Spain, where military industry technology is not very developed.

If this rifle can be equipped on a large scale, it will definitely improve the combat effectiveness of the Spanish Army. Coupled with the Spanish Army’s reform, the combat effectiveness of the reformed Spanish Army in the future will improve significantly, which is also what Carlo hopes to see.

For comparison with the Vitali M1872 rifle, there are various rifles originally equipped by Spain, as well as the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s Werndl M1867 rifle and the Italian Vitali M1870 rifle.

Carlo is quite confident in the Vitali M1872 rifle improved by the Spanish armory. The reason for comparing it with these rifles is naturally to demonstrate the advanced nature of the M1872 rifle.

The royal arsenal naturally learned that Carlo, Prime Minister Primó, and Grand Duke Serrano were coming to observe the rifle experiment.

With His Majesty the King and two big shots from the government coming in person, the royal arsenal attached great importance to it. Before the public test, the royal arsenal also carefully inspected and tested the M1872 rifle to ensure no problems during the public test.

However, the concerns of the royal arsenal’s technical personnel were somewhat unnecessary. After all, this Vitali M1872 rifle was improved on the basis of the Italian Vitali M1870 rifle; it couldn’t possibly get worse with improvements.

And Spain’s various rifles are mostly muzzle-loading rifles. How can muzzle-loading rifles compare to breech-loading rifles?

The real competitor to the Vitali M1872 rifle is actually only the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s standard rifle, the Werndl M1867 rifle.

The Werndl M1867 rifle, full name M1867 Werndl（ Werndl）–Holub（ Holub） rifle, was developed jointly by Werndl and Holub.

The reason for developing this breech-loading rifle was naturally seeing the excellent performance of the Prussian Army’s breech-loading rifles in several wars.

Actually, it’s not just the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This period is an important time for all of Europe to transition from muzzle-loading rifles to breech-loading rifles, and from paper cartridges to metallic bullets.

In addition, it is also an important period for the transition from ordinary black powder to smokeless powder.

This also means that during this period, the weapons and equipment and military technology of European countries will usher in a period of explosive development.

In addition to these weapons and equipment for the army, the navy will also see great progress. Ironclad ships will evolve into battleships, battleships into dreadnoughts, and then to super dreadnoughts, and so on.

Although it seems to require many generations of evolution, in reality, this period is only three or four decades.

This is also the reason why Carlo vigorously builds armories. If Spain cannot catch up during this golden development phase of military technology, it will lag far behind in military technology in the future.

Although Spain currently does not plan to develop the navy, Carlo still attaches great importance to shipyards and related warship construction technology.

Italy’s level in warship construction is quite excellent, and Carlo has introduced Italy’s warship construction technology through cooperation with the Italian Government.

However, this aspect of cooperation is relatively secretive. The expansion of Spain’s Valencia shipyard is basically confidential. As long as no warships are built on a large scale, other countries basically won’t notice the changes in the shipyard.

Back to the rifle test.

Under the personal witness of Carlo, Prime Minister Primó, and Grand Duke Serrano, the Vitali M1872 rifle officially underwent competitive testing against a series of rifles.

This test will directly determine the future rifle equipment of the Spanish Army. Whichever rifle wins the test will basically become the priority procurement target of the Spanish Army.

As expected, the Vitali M1872 rifle emerged victorious.

As mentioned before, the only rifle qualified to compete with it is actually the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s Werndl M1867 rifle.

But the Werndl M1867 rifle has two fatal shortcomings.

The first is the 15×42 mm rimmed metallic cartridge it uses, with a bullet weight of less than 20 grams, resulting in insufficient killing power.

The second is the breech locking mechanism. Although many breech-loading rifles of this era used locking mechanisms, the Werndl M1867 rifle requires rotating the locking mechanism when loading, which greatly reduces the number of bullets that can be fired per minute.

The bullet power is already insufficient, and the rate of fire is not as fast as the Vitali M1872 rifle, causing the Werndl M1867 rifle to perform far behind the Vitali M1872 rifle in the test.

But from the model numbers of the two rifles, it can be seen that there is actually a five-year difference between them. Even compared to the Italian Vitali M1870 rifle, there is a three-year gap.

In this era, three years of military technology difference is already too much. The Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War were only three or four years apart（ in this world）, but the Prussian artillery went from being unable to match Austrian artillery at the beginning to overwhelming the French artillery, showing the changes in military technology over three or four years.

Since the Vitali M1872 rifle has won the final victory, there is naturally nothing more to say about the next steps. Grand Duke Serrano smiled and said he would use the Ministry of Defense’s military expenses to procure a batch of Vitali M1872 rifles.

After the army reform is completed in the future, the Vitali M1872 rifle will be fully adopted to increase the combat effectiveness of the Spanish Army.

In addition to the order from the Ministry of Defense, Carlo also placed an order for his own Guard.

The Guard could originally procure Vitali rifles from Italy for equipment. But Carlo considered that Spain was also developing breech-loading rifles, so he did not equip them with Italian Vitali rifles on a large scale.

Now that Spain has developed its own breech-loading rifle technology, it is naturally time for the Guard to equip the new Vitali M1872 rifle on a large scale.

First update of 3000 words, seeking support!

Something came up yesterday, forgot to request leave, sorry.