Empire Rise: Spain

Chapter 65: Military Industry Relies On Copying

While Cadillac Bruno was bowing and exerting himself for Carlo’s orders, Carlo, far away in Madrid, had also ended his leisurely life.

After a long period of waiting, Carlo’s Royal Arsenal finally took shape, recruiting some workers from Spanish weapon workshops and extensively digging up rifle design experts from countries like France and Italy.

Starting this year, rifles would enter a brand new era, namely the era of bolt-action rifles.

The prosperity of bolt-action rifles would continue all the way to World War II, then be replaced by semi-automatic and fully automatic rifles.

As the main equipment for the Spanish Army for nearly the next century, Carlo attached great importance to the research and development of bolt-action rifles.

In fact, as early as last year, the Swiss had already developed the first practical bolt-action rifle, named the Vitali rifle.

This rifle was not only purchased in large quantities by the Swiss Army but also exported to Italy; this was all the information Carlo currently knew.

Besides Italy, research on bolt-action rifles in other countries was also constantly being attempted. In the coming years and decades, a large number of famous guns would continuously emerge and demonstrate their role in multiple wars.

The first task Carlo gave to the Royal Arsenal was to go to Switzerland to procure a batch of Vitali rifles and, based on the advantages of the Vitali rifle, design Spain’s first bolt-action rifle.

It was still very difficult for the current Royal Arsenal to independently develop a bolt-action rifle. It was not that they couldn’t develop it, but that the developed bolt-action rifle would have many shortcomings, and safety and stability could not be guaranteed. The rifle is the soldier’s most important weapon; if safety and stability cannot be guaranteed, how could the soldiers feel at ease taking such a weapon to the battlefield?

Therefore, before independently developing their own bolt-action rifle, it was very necessary to learn from the ideas of foreign armories regarding bolt-action rifles and absorb their advantages.

At the very least, the Swiss rifle had already received double affirmation from Switzerland and Italy, with some guarantee in terms of safety and stability.

Since he had come to the Royal arsenal, Carlo naturally would not only deal with issues related to rifles.

Currently, the two most important weapons in the army were rifles as light weapons and cannons as heavy weapons.

The good news was that after the Franco-Prussian War ended, Germany and France had decommissioned a large number of cannons.

It was not that these cannons had problems, but that Germany and France in peacetime did not need to arm so many cannons.

How to handle these second-hand cannons that had only been used in the Franco-Prussian War? Of course, sell them to other European countries at lower prices, reducing the large amounts of funds the country had invested in the war.

Compared to French cannons, Carlo actually wanted to purchase Prussian Krupp cannons more.

The reason was none other than that the Germans had given the French a lesson with Krupp cannons during the Franco-Prussian War; in terms of cannons currently, the Germans were undoubtedly leading.

France’s cannons were certainly also at an excellent European level, but compared to the even more excellent Krupp cannons, they were slightly inferior.

The current Royal Arsenal was divided into a rifle design group and a cannon design group.

Carlo also gave a new task to the cannon design group: to go to Germany to procure a batch of Krupp cannons and imitate them as much as possible, ensuring that Spain possessed the technology to produce Krupp cannons.

Producing them oneself would be more cost-effective than purchasing from Germany. Although Krupp Company’s production volume was larger and production cost might be lower.

But exporting such heavy firepower weapons came with a significant markup and would not be more cost-effective than Spain producing them itself.

Moreover, cannon technology was also quite important.

Cannons, besides being used in the Army as important firepower to support infantry, could also be installed on warships, becoming the main firepower output method for current warships.

Current cannon technology could only be considered just starting out; learning German cannon technology would at least ensure that Spain would not fall behind other great powers in terms of cannons.

Purchasing a batch of weapons and equipment from countries with excellent designs, then continuously researching and imitating through these purchased weapons and equipment—that was the task of the entire Royal Arsenal currently.

This was also unavoidable. Although Carlo had invested quite a bit in the armory, as a newly established armory, it was hard to have the ability for perfect independent weapon research and development.

Compared to independently developing and producing weapons, purchasing excellent weapons and imitating them would be more cost-effective and more reliable.

Moreover, imitating weapons was not shameful, because other countries did the same.

Even in posterity, it was like this; when exporting one’s own weapons, one had to be prepared for the exported weapons to be extensively researched and imitated by other countries.

This was also why there was a saying in weapon research about decommissioning one generation, exporting one generation, equipping one generation, and developing one generation.

Generally, relatively advanced weapons would not be exported; what could be exported were those products that were almost about to be decommissioned domestically, with the purpose of exchanging for certain income to pave the way for researching more powerful weapons.

After investing a new budget into the Royal Arsenal, Carlo could only look forward to the armory quickly grasping the technology and achieving imitation after purchasing the new rifles and cannons.

This might take a few years, but it was definitely more beneficial than harmful. However, this was just the first step goal; for the Royal Arsenal, the tasks remained arduous.

Independently producing weapons and equipment was nothing for great powers; what the future Royal Arsenal needed to achieve was to continuously research new weapons and equipment and always keep its weapon level at world-class.

Among all of Carlo’s current industries, the armory was the most money-burning industry.

If it weren’t for acquiring more than ten factories, just relying on the income from those newspaper offices would be fundamentally unable to support the armory.

After all, those who could buy newspapers were not illiterate; they had to be able to read the content of the newspapers first.

And Spain’s illiteracy rate was as high as seventy percent, which was also one of the reasons why newspaper offices could not develop currently.

Fortunately, there were many nobles around Madrid, plus factory owners, middle class, and some skilled workers with higher incomes, which allowed Carlo’s Sun Newspaper to have stable daily sales.

Compared to the newspaper offices that had already hit a bottleneck, what undoubtedly made more money were Carlo’s several steel mills.

Whether for the expansion of Spanish industry or to make his wallet bulge, Carlo issued orders to the steel mills, requiring them to continuously expand scale in the coming years and increase steel production volume.

Anyway, with the Royal United Bank as a funds guarantee, the expansion of these industries, as long as not too aggressive, would basically have no major problems.

Expanding industry in current Spain would fundamentally not lose money, because Spain’s future development plan would carry out a large amount of infrastructure construction; just the railway item alone ensured that steel mills would not lose money.

Second update, seeking support!