Empire Rise: Spain

Chapter 119: Development Of The Arms Factory

Although Prime Minister Primó and Grand Duke Serrano did not say it explicitly, their attitudes have already indicated their support for the royal arsenal.

On the surface, the government is encouraging civilian arms enterprises to grow bigger and stronger, but in reality, it also hopes to have a larger-scale armory to serve as a front for Spain.

No matter whose enterprise this armory belongs to, as long as it can research and develop more advanced weapons for Spain, and continuously manufacture these weapons to provide to the Spanish Army, that will be sufficient.

Spain does indeed need a leading military industry enterprise. What a large arsenal can do is more than what dozens of small arsenals can do. Currently, Spain does indeed need an extremely large-scale armory to fill the facade.

This is the same for all countries. Just like the Krupp armory of the German Empire and Austria’s future Skoda armory.

Only such military industry giants can open up the arms market. Relying on small and medium-sized arsenals to expand arms trade is better off expecting foreign weapons to sell a bit cheaper.

Currently in Spain’s military industry, only the royal arsenal’s scale and capital qualify it to become a military industry giant.

After all, there are no particularly advanced weapons in this era. Rifles and cannons are already the most commonly used light and heavy weapons.

Spain has quite a number of military industry enterprises. Adding up large and small factories and private workshops, there are also several hundred.

But most of these military industry enterprises produce outdated hunting rifles, pistols, and the like, with no technical content, and even unable to guarantee the quality of firearms. Even armories that can produce muzzle-loading rifles and cannons are destined to be unable to compare with the royal arsenal in researching breech-loading rifles and manufacturing more advanced cannons.

The current attitude of the Spanish Government towards these military industry enterprises is to provide as much help as possible to other medium-sized arsenals while focusing on supporting the royal arsenal.

If multiple can flourish, that is naturally better. But if these medium-sized arsenals cannot shoulder heavy responsibilities, ultimately all efforts must be concentrated to make the royal arsenal Spain’s leading military industry enterprise.

Of course, those small and medium-sized military industry enterprises will not be eliminated. After all, those hunting rifles and pistols also have a market. For these low-profit weapons with fewer orders, the royal arsenal naturally cannot steal orders.

After receiving orders from the military and the Guard, the royal arsenal entered a relatively busy state.

Although it is only an enterprise established a few years ago, the royal arsenal’s scale is among the top in all of Spain’s military industry enterprises.

But compared to Europe’s larger arsenals, the royal arsenal is still relatively small in scale currently.

The total number of employees in the entire royal arsenal is less than a thousand, and weapon output does not have an exact number. But based on the current production capacity of the royal arsenal, it can basically produce at least 500 rifles, 10 cannons, 75,000 bullets, and 1,200 cannonballs each month.

Of course, this is when dabbling in everything. If concentrating efforts on producing rifles and bullets, the monthly capacity should be able to increase to 1,000 rifles and over 150,000 bullets.

From this aspect, the current scale of the Royal arsenal can also be seen; it is indeed too small for Spain.

Not to mention the more than 100,000-strong Spanish army, it would take at least eight years to fully equip them with the latest Vitalli M1872 rifle, even with the Royal arsenal working overtime.

This also means that the Royal Arsenal’s biggest future task is to expand its scale, increase its employee numbers to at least 10,000, and boost its annual weapon output to over 50,000 rifles.

Now, the production capacity of the Royal Arsenal cannot even meet the domestic needs of Spain, let alone develop Spain’s arms trade market and earn a continuous stream of foreign exchange income by trading arms with other countries.

Good news is that with the technical experts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the helm, the expansion of the Royal arsenal will also proceed much more smoothly. New employees entering the Royal arsenal can master certain skills under the short-term training of these technical experts, making it no problem to invest in weapon production.

Previously, the large-scale expansion of the Royal Arsenal had not been approved. One reason was that there was still no progress on the breech-loading rifles being developed; even if the arsenal were expanded, it would not be able to produce weapons.

Second, the military’s orders were not confirmed. If the arsenal expanded to a sufficient scale but there were no continuous orders, wouldn’t it only lead to depleting resources and a waste of the Royal Family’s funds.

With continuous orders in hand, the Royal arsenal is guaranteed to have income for the next few years. As for the source of orders after this batch is completed, attention can also be turned to the Americas across the Atlantic Ocean.

European breech-loading rifles were just starting out, so naturally, Latin American countries couldn’t master such technology. With the help of technical experts from Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Spain’s breech-loading rifle technology could be considered first-class in Europe.

The standard rifles, which Spain also equipped on a large scale, naturally had a certain market in Latin America.

Countries in America, such as Argentina and Mexico, were once Spanish colonies. Although they gained independence from Spain, the sole conflict with the Spanish government was resolved.

In theory, Argentinians and Mexicans are of the same origin as Spaniards. Although this connection has been distanced through long periods of colonization and intermingling, compared to other countries, these people naturally feel closer to Spain.

As long as there are no quality issues with the weapons from the royal arsenal, it is easy to obtain an order from these countries. Although they might not be large-scale orders, as long as they can sustain the royal arsenal, it is not a problem.

These Latin American countries combined can come up with tens of thousands of rifle orders, plus the expansion and consumption of the Spanish army, and a small number of orders from other regions, the Royal arsenal will not be short of weapon orders for the next five years.

Besides, even if rifles lack orders, cannons can be produced preferentially. Moreover, bullets and cannonballs are consumables, so there will be a continuous flow of orders.

The future Spanish Army will place greater emphasis on infantry marksmanship training and artillery training, with a continuous consumption of bullets and cannonballs.

These orders combined are enough to sustain a Royal arsenal of over ten thousand people. Even if it were operating at a loss, as long as it wasn’t too severe, Carlo would find it acceptable.

After all, there are still many wars that these European great powers will face next. As long as Spain’s weapons and equipment are not too backward, they will be able to secure some orders.

The subsequent opening up of African colonies will also involve military actions, and Carlo has no worries about the development of the Royal arsenal.

However, the expansion of arsenals cannot be blindly carried out. The expansion of these factories is always a chain reaction, and behind the expansion of one enterprise lies the simultaneous development of many industries.

Take the arsenal for example. The production of rifles and cannons both require large amounts of steel. The first step is to expand steel mills to meet the steel demand after the expansion of the arsenal.

This is not over. A production line for rifles or cannons requires a lot of mechanical manufacturing equipment, which can also help the development of machinery manufacturing plants.

The expansion of the Royal arsenal not only creates tens of thousands of visible jobs, but also creates thousands or even tens of thousands of invisible jobs.

This has played a huge role in the economic development of Spain, and it is a good thing for both the Spanish government and the public.

Let’s not talk about anything else, the taxes paid by a large factory with a scale of over ten thousand people annually are a huge sum. Calculated at the current Spanish per capita income of about 97 pesetas, the salaries that need to be paid to these workers annually exceed one million pesetas.

After the workers obtained this income, no matter which industry they consumed it in, it would continuously drive the economic development of Spain.

The government also obtains continuous tax revenue from these consumption links, thereby achieving a triple win for armories, the public, and the government.

Of course, perhaps the biggest beneficiary was Carlo’s royal family.

The armories are the Royal Family’s industry, and the salaries the armories issue to the workers will make the workers grateful to Carlo.

It should be known that the salaries and various welfare policies provided to workers by the Royal Family’s industry are basically at the most top-tier level among all factories in Spain.

The ten-hour workday, monthly leave, and overtime pay for holidays, etc., made Spaniards have a very optimistic attitude towards working for the Royal Family’s industry.

By all rights, Carlo is currently also a big capitalist. Carlo’s capital even far exceeds that of all capitalists in Spain, and his property is already comparable to that of some top nobles in Spain.

If the Bourbon royal family’s original land had not been seized by the government, they would probably be the wealthiest family in Spain at this time.

However, this is also a good thing. After the public learned that the Bourbon royal family’s land had been seized by the government and distributed to the people through various means, their goodwill towards the royal family naturally increased.

Knowing that he could not obtain these lands, Carlo naturally took the initiative to provide them to the government and advocated for various policies to ensure the public could actually benefit.

For example, a considerable portion of these lands will be rented out to the public at low prices, and with the reduction of agricultural taxes, the income of these tenant farmers will also increase significantly.

Although the government was the actual lessor of the land, Carlo, with the help of numerous public opinion institutions, naturally made the public grateful to the Royal Family and Carlo.

The government also could not come out and declare that leasing land had no relation to the Royal Family, so Carlo obtained a good reputation among the public without any cost.

Although Carlo did not make any major moves, under this cumulative influence, the Spaniards currently have a relatively high level of recognition for Carlo. They no longer have any rejection or prejudice towards this foreigner from Italy serving as king.

Compared to many previous kings of Spain, even if Carlo didn’t rank as excellent, he could at least be considered good.

With the reforms of Prime Minister Primó and the economic development of Spain, the achievements obtained by Carlo will continue to improve.

At least for now, Carlo was no longer in a hurry. He had now thoroughly secured the throne, and no one could drive him from the throne anymore.

The next step was to gradually exert influence in the government and army, then wait for the opportunity to take over power.

After he fully took over the power of the government and army, Carlo would set his goals while maintaining the rapid development of Spain’s economy and industry.

The only goal was to make Spain more powerful and once again become one of the European Powers, a player in the world chess game rather than a piece on the board.

Whether Spain became powerful or could rise had only one indicator, and that was the ownership of Gibraltar right at its doorstep.

As long as Spain could recapture Gibraltar, it would have achieved the goal of becoming powerful and rejoined the ranks of the European Powers.

But if Gibraltar right at its doorstep remained in the hands of other countries, Spain would not have completed the task of becoming powerful, and it would still be some distance from the European Powers.

The reason Gibraltar was regarded as the goal of Spain’s rise was that it was extremely important to Spain and the Spaniards.

Posterity’s Spain had never abandoned its claims to Gibraltar, but unfortunately the time when Spain could recapture Gibraltar had long passed, and the ownership of Gibraltar had always been one of the topics that concerned the Spaniards.

If he could recapture Gibraltar from the British, it would be a tremendous boost to Carlo’s prestige. It was no exaggeration to say that as long as Carlo could recapture Gibraltar from the British, he would become the greatest monarch in the hearts of all Spaniards today—even without “one of.”

This would be a tremendous boost to the army’s morale and popular support, and it would greatly increase all Spaniards’ loyalty to Carlo.

After recapturing Gibraltar, even if Carlo directly proclaimed himself emperor of the Spaniards, not a single Spaniard would oppose it.

Just the ability to rally popular support and boost army morale without limit destined Carlo to take Gibraltar.

Moreover, Gibraltar’s geographical position was very important, as it could control the Strait of Gibraltar and cut off the shipping route between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

However, it was precisely because of Gibraltar’s extremely important geographical position that the British also valued it greatly.

If Spain wanted to recapture Gibraltar, it was destined to have a war with the British. The British were not fools, and Spain could not exchange any land for Gibraltar.

So in Carlo’s heart, the British had never been Spain’s ally, were not now, and would not be in the future.

Within the whole of Europe, the only suitable allies for Spain were Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire; they were also the only countries that could actually help Spain recapture Gibraltar.

As for Italy, it was basically out of the question. First, Italy would not go to war with the British for Spain; they had no major conflict with the British.

Second, even if the Italian Government was willing to go to war with the British for Spain, Carlo did not dare to trust the Italian Government’s performance in war.

Although Carlo was also a member of the Italian Royal Family, this did not mean that the relationship between Spain and Italy would be so close.

Both countries were great powers on the Mediterranean coast, and there was competition between them. In Carlo’s heart, Italy was not necessarily more reliable than the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Carlo had never counted on Italy to help Spain.

4200 words second update, seeking support!

Forgot to request leave yesterday, very sorry. Today I wrote about fifteen hundred more words as compensation. Thank you all for your support.