Chapter 440

Although the British army has surrendered, cleaning up the battlefield is not an easy thing. Because the Portuguese Republican government fled first, it led to an unimaginable collapse of the Portuguese Republican army.

This also means that the front-line battlefield still remains with many Portuguese Republican armies. Although their morale has vanished, if they are careless about this, these enemies hiding in the dark are likely to give the soldiers a fatal blow.

It is precisely because of this that Lieutenant General Kaman specifically instructed all soldiers not to be polite to any enemy wearing the Portuguese Republican government's military uniform when cleaning up the battlefield.

If they take the initiative to abandon their weapons and surrender, it would be fine; this can still give them a chance. If they continue to hold weapons, they must fire first to ensure that they have no threat.

In the eyes of Lieutenant General Kaman, the lives of Spanish soldiers are very precious. Even if the casualty ratio between Spanish and Portuguese soldiers in this war reached an exaggerated 1:4, Lieutenant General Kaman still felt that Spain suffered heavy losses.

In order to reduce the casualties of the Spanish army, Lieutenant General Kaman also effectively utilized the Portuguese army of the Iberian Party. The remaining large-scale British and Portuguese armies on the front-line battlefield were solved by the Spanish army, and those small groups of Republican Party armies fleeing to various cities or mountainous areas were solved by the Portuguese army of the Iberian Party.

I think there is no big problem; after all, the Portuguese Republican government to which the Republican Party army was loyal has already perished. The government is gone, and these armies should not continue to resist.

The Spanish army spent several days thoroughly clearing the remaining enemy troops on the battlefield, and then after a long count, they reported a relatively complete post-war summary to the country.

When Gao Da received this telegram, he read the report on the casualties of the Spanish army in the telegram in detail, and then breathed a sigh of relief.

The total troop strength invested by Spain in this war reached nearly 200,000. As of the day Gao Da received the telegram, the total casualties of the Spanish army exceeded 50,000, including 16,000 soldiers killed and nearly 35,000 soldiers injured.

In this war, the 12 infantry divisions, 5 cavalry divisions, and 4 artillery divisions of the Spanish Royal Army participated in the fighting one after another, and each army had not small gains.

Although the losses of some infantry divisions were relatively heavy, after the baptism of war, the remaining soldiers were also able to successfully grow into a qualified elite soldier.

Compared with Spain, the losses of the British army appeared to be relatively heavy.

The total number of troops sent by the UK to Portugal also exceeded 200,000, including about 110,000 mainland troops and about 90,000 colonial army troops.

The casualties of the British mainland army were more than half, the number of deaths reached nearly 20,000, and the number of injured reached about 40,000.

The casualties of the colonial army were more miserable than those of the mainland, totaling 90,000 colonial soldiers, and the number of deaths reached nearly half.

The total casualties of the British army were 65,000 deaths, hundreds of missing people on the battlefield, and the remaining 100,000+ soldiers, including the wounded and sick, were all captured by Spain, which also allowed the UK to create the record for the most captured soldiers since the 20th century.

If the casualties of the British army can be considered heavy, then for Portugal, the main battlefield of the civil war, the casualty figures can only be described as tragic.

The impact of this civil war on Portugal is difficult to count. Just the casualties of the armies of both sides have reached nearly 200,000, and there are nearly 100,000 Portuguese soldiers who died on the battlefield.

Because the scale of this war was relatively large, many Portuguese civilians were also affected, with light ones suffering property damage, and heavy ones unable to even save their small lives.

What is certain is that because of the impact of this civil war, Portugal's economic and industrial development was directly pressed the reverse button, and it will completely become one of the most backward countries in Europe in the next few decades.

The death of a large number of adult men will also lead to a significant decrease in the population birth rate. Before the outbreak of the war, Portugal's net population growth per year was only tens of thousands.

From this aspect, it can also be seen how serious the impact of this civil war on Portugal's population growth is. Perhaps in the next few years, Portugal's domestic population will show a trend of negative growth.

This does not count the population outflow caused by the war. Since the outbreak of the Portuguese civil war, the number of Portuguese who chose to immigrate abroad is countless, and a considerable number of Portuguese chose to immigrate to neighboring Spain.

According to the statistics of the Spanish government, since 1904, the number of Portuguese immigrants received by Spain throughout the year has reached nearly 100,000, which is a quite high proportion for Portugal, which has a population of only over 5 million.

When Spain and the Portuguese Democratic Republic were counting their respective casualties and gains, the news of the British army's surrender and the end of the Portuguese civil war had become the hottest news in Europe, spreading rapidly to all parts of Europe.

The UK was defeated just like that; this is something many European countries did not expect at all. According to the news released by the Spanish side, at least 100,000 British soldiers were captured by Spain.

How exaggerated is this? To put it bluntly, Spain has mastered the initiative in subsequent negotiations, and the British government has fallen completely behind on the battlefield and the negotiation table. It is inevitable that this war will suffer heavy losses.

No country can ignore the opinions of the families of 100,000 soldiers, and the British government is naturally no exception.

If the British government cannot rescue these 100,000 soldiers, even without waiting for the end of the peace talks, the families of these angry soldiers are enough to overthrow the British government.

This actually also means that with the surrender of the British army, what ended was not just the Portuguese civil war, but also the war between Spain and the UK.

And the final result of this war is Spain's victory. Such a war result is bound to have an extremely significant impact on the future European situation.

Of course, such news is definitely good news for countries along the Mediterranean coast.

Before the outbreak of this war, the two exits of the Mediterranean were controlled by the UK, and coastal countries wanting to enter the ocean had to look at the faces of the British.

But with Spain recovering Gibraltar and winning this war, the Strait of Gibraltar, the western exit of the Mediterranean, fell into the hands of the Spanish.

The Strait of Gibraltar is the passage to the Atlantic Ocean and northern Europe, and its importance is not inferior to the Suyishiyunhe at all.

Especially for those countries that do not have any colonies in Asia and the east coast of Africa, the importance of the Suyishiyunhe is not as good as the Strait of Gibraltar.

After all, Europe is currently the most prosperous region in the world, and their import and export trade is mostly conducted with European countries.

While European countries are worried about the future development of the European situation, in Spain, Gao Da is already doing the aftermath work of the war.

Let alone anything else, the distribution of pensions for those 16,000 soldiers killed in battle needs to be effectively executed in a short period of time to ensure that their families can receive this pension.

Spain's pension system for the army is relatively strict, and the relevant pension amount is also formulated by Gao Da personally, uniformly based on Spain's per capita annual income of that year, divided into two parts: one-time pension and annual relief payment.

The standard for one-time pension is to issue different proportions of pensions according to the standard of Spain's per capita annual income of that year, according to different specific situations (injury or death). The highest soldiers killed in battle can receive a pension of five times the annual income standard of that year, and the lowest lightly injured soldiers can also receive a pension of the annual income standard of that year.

One-time pension is the same as its literal meaning, and it needs to be issued to soldiers within 12 months after the end of the war, and the full pension must be issued at one time, and it must not be delayed except for special circumstances.

Because the annual relief payment is issued every year, what it corresponds to is not the per capita annual income situation after the end of the war, but the annual income situation of the year when the relief payment is issued.

Same as the pension, the issuance of relief payments will also issue different years and proportions according to the different situations of the wounded and sick and the soldiers killed in battle.