[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-rise-of-the-empire-spain":3,"chapter-rise-of-the-empire-spain-rise-of-the-empire-spain-chapter-440":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","Rise of the Empire: Spain",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2365368,4632,"Chapter 440: Pensions and Peace Talks","rise-of-the-empire-spain-chapter-440",440,"\u003Cp>Although the British army had already surrendered, cleaning up the battlefield was by no means an easy task. Because the Portuguese Republican government had fled first, it led to an unimaginable and crushing defeat for the Portuguese Republican army.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This also meant that many Portuguese Republican troops remained on the main battlefield; although their morale had vanished completely, if one were careless about this, these enemies hiding in the shadows could very likely deal a fatal blow to the soldiers.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was precisely because of this that Lieutenant General Kaman specifically instructed all soldiers not to be lenient toward any enemy wearing the uniform of the Portuguese Republican government while cleaning up the battlefield.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If they voluntarily abandoned their weapons and surrendered, that would be fine, as they could still be given a chance. If they continued to hold weapons, one must fire first to ensure there was no threat to oneself.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In Lieutenant General Kaman's view, the lives of Spanish soldiers were extremely precious. Even though the casualty ratio between Spanish and Portuguese soldiers in this war reached an exaggerated 1:4, Lieutenant General Kaman still felt that Spain had suffered heavy losses.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>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 forces on the main battlefield were left to the Spanish army to resolve, while those small groups of Republican troops fleeing to various cities or mountainous areas were left to the Portuguese army of the Iberian Party to handle.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was thought that there would not be much of a problem; after all, the Portuguese Republican government to which the Republican troops were loyal had already perished. With the government gone, these troops likely would not continue to resist.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Spanish army spent several days thoroughly mopping up the remaining enemy forces on the battlefield, and only after a long and arduous count did they report a relatively complete post-war summary to the country.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When Carlo received this telegram, he read the report on the Spanish army's casualties in detail and then breathed a sigh of relief.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The total force Spain committed to this war was nearly 200,000 men. As of the day Carlo received the telegram, the total casualties of the Spanish army exceeded 50,000, including 16,000 soldiers killed in action and nearly 35,000 soldiers wounded.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In this war, the 12 infantry divisions, 5 cavalry divisions, and 4 artillery divisions of the Spanish Royal Army all participated in the fighting in succession, and each unit had significant gains.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Although some infantry divisions suffered relatively heavy losses, after experiencing the baptism of war, the remaining soldiers were all able to successfully grow into qualified elite soldiers.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Compared to Spain, the losses of the British army appeared relatively heavy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The total number of troops Britain dispatched to Portugal also exceeded 200,000, with about 110,000 from the home country and about 90,000 from various colonial legions.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The casualties of the British home army exceeded half, with the number of deaths already approaching 20,000 and the number of wounded reaching as high as about 40,000.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The casualties of the colonial legions were even more miserable than those of the home army; out of a total of 90,000 colonial soldiers, the number of deaths had already approached half.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The total casualties of the British army were 65,000 dead, several hundred missing in action, and the remaining 100,000-plus soldiers, including the wounded and sick, were all captured by Spain, which also allowed Britain to set the record for the most soldiers captured since the 20th century.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If the British army's casualties could be considered heavy, then for Portugal, the home of the civil war, the casualty figures could only be described as tragic.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The impact of this civil war on Portugal was impossible to calculate; the casualties of both armies alone were nearly 200,000, and nearly 100,000 Portuguese soldiers died on the battlefield.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Because of the large scale of this war, many Portuguese civilians were also affected; the lucky ones suffered property damage, while the unlucky ones could not even save their own lives.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What is certain is that due to the influence of this civil war, Portugal's economic and industrial development was directly pressed onto the reverse gear, and it would completely degenerate into one of the most backward countries in Europe in the coming decades.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The death of a large number of adult males would also lead to a significant decrease in the birth rate. Before the outbreak of the war, the net annual population growth of Portugal was only a few tens of thousands.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>From this aspect, one can also see how serious the impact of this civil war was on Portugal's population growth. Perhaps in the next few years, the domestic population of Portugal will show a trend of negative growth.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This does not even count the population outflow caused by the war. Since the outbreak of the Portuguese Civil War, the number of Portuguese who chose to emigrate abroad has been countless, and a considerable portion of them chose to emigrate to neighboring Spain.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>According to statistics from the Spanish government, since 1904, the number of Portuguese immigrants received by Spain throughout the year has approached 100,000, which is a quite high proportion for Portugal, which has a population of only over 5 million.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>While Spain and the Portuguese Democratic Republic were each counting their own 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 the continent.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Britain had been defeated just like that; this was something many European countries had not expected at all. According to information released by the Spanish side, at least 100,000 British soldiers were captured by Spain.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>How exaggerated is this? To put it bluntly, Spain had already grasped the initiative for subsequent negotiations. The British government had fallen completely into a disadvantage on both the battlefield and the negotiating table, and heavy losses in this war were already inevitable.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>No country could ignore the opinions of the families of 100,000 soldiers, and the British government was naturally no exception.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If the British government could not rescue these 100,000 soldiers, they would not even need to wait for the peace talks to end before the families of these angry soldiers would be enough to overthrow the British government.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This actually also meant that with the surrender of the British army, what ended was not just the Portuguese Civil War, but also the war between Spain and Britain.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Moreover, the final result of this war was Spain's victory, and such a war outcome was bound to have an extremely significant impact on the future European situation.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course, such news could certainly be considered good news for countries along the Mediterranean coast.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Before the outbreak of this war, both exits of the Mediterranean were controlled by Britain, and coastal countries had to look at the faces of the British if they wanted to enter the ocean.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But with Spain recapturing Gibraltar and winning this war, the Strait of Gibraltar, the western exit of the Mediterranean, fell into the hands of the Spanish.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Strait of Gibraltar leads to the Atlantic Ocean and northern Europe, and its importance is not inferior to the Suez Canal at all.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Especially for those countries that do not have any colonies in Asia and on the east coast of Africa, the importance of the Suez Canal is actually not as great as that of the Strait of Gibraltar.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After all, Europe is currently the most prosperous region in the world, and most of their import and export trade is conducted with European countries.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>While various European countries were worried about the future development of the European situation, within Spain, Carlo was already carrying out the aftermath of the war.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If nothing else, the distribution of pensions for the 16,000 soldiers killed in action needed to be effectively executed in a short period of time to ensure that their families could all receive this pension.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The pension system of the Spanish army was relatively strict, and the relevant pension amounts were also formulated with Carlo's personal participation. It was uniformly based on the per capita annual income of Spain that year and divided into two parts: a one-time pension payment and an annual relief payment.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The standard for the one-time pension payment was based on the per capita annual income of Spain that year, with different proportions of pensions issued according to different detailed circumstances (injury or death). The highest-ranking soldiers killed in action could receive a pension standard of five times the annual income of that year, and the lowest-ranking soldiers with minor injuries could also receive a pension standard of one year's income of that year.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The one-time pension payment, as the name implies, needed to be issued to the soldiers within 12 months after the end of the war, and the full pension amount had to be issued at once; it could not be delayed except in special circumstances.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Because the annual relief payment was issued every year, it was not compared to the per capita annual income of the year after the war ended, but rather to the annual income of the year the relief payment was issued.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Similar to the pension, the issuance of relief payments would also be based on the different circumstances of the wounded, sick, and soldiers killed in action, with different durations and proportions.\u003C\u002Fp>",1595,"2026-06-25T09:27:15.200Z",1,"Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite","1e0d47091ceeace99db6b238e7b6c15df92a48a936bc27f5444f73eae56b97c7","rise-of-the-empire-spain-chapter-441","rise-of-the-empire-spain-chapter-439",493,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Frise-of-the-empire-spain-cover.jpg"]