Chapter 472: Preparing for War

Although Spain did not announce its super Dreadnought construction plan, this did not prevent other European countries from also starting to build battleships with larger tonnage.

The British government even stated many times that it was willing to spend the last pound of the government's finance on the construction of warships, and was willing to pay any price to maintain the strength of the British Navy.

Compared to Spain's somewhat sneaky behavior of building new-style battleships, Britain's construction of new-style battleships was clearly open and aboveboard.

This was not to say that the British did not want to keep the super Dreadnought secret; it was mainly because the failure of the previous naval battle had greatly damaged the reputation of the British Navy, and the British government also needed to make public a part of the naval construction plan, letting the public restore hope in the British Navy.

Britain's new-style battleship was named the Orion-class battleship, and it was expected to build at least four battleships in the three years from 1909 to 1911 to cope with Spain's pressure.

According to news investigated by Spain's intelligence department, Britain's so-called Orion-class battleship had a standard displacement of at least 22,000 tons, and a full-load displacement between 25,000 tons and 26,000 tons.

Judging from the tonnage, Britain's Orion-class battleship and Spain's Victory-class battleship were at the same level.

However, Gao Da still had quite a lot of confidence in Spain's Victory-class battleship; even if Britain possessed battleships of the same level, Spain absolutely had the ability to compete with Britain.

Apart from Britain choosing to follow up on super Dreadnoughts, Germany and France also successively announced their super Dreadnought construction plans.

Originally, the battleships built by Germany and France were still around 20,000 tons, but as Spain and Britain successively chose to build battleships with larger tonnage, Germany and France could only modify their naval construction plans, placing a part of their attention on super Dreadnoughts with larger tonnage.

Although tonnage did not represent everything, the battleships that could make Spain and Britain go to such great lengths to build certainly had improvements that were not just in tonnage compared to ordinary Dreadnoughts.

If one fell behind in the construction of super Dreadnoughts, it was equivalent to losing the first opportunity in the naval arms race, which was completely unacceptable to Germany.

Although Spain and Britain were currently not Germany's enemies, for the sake of its own strength, Germany still chose to compete with these two countries in the navy, ensuring that it possessed sufficient naval advantage compared to France.

And France chose to build super Dreadnoughts simply to compete and confront Germany. Do not look at the fact that the French government also announced its super-large tonnage battleship construction plan, but in reality, France had only just received the first Dreadnought built for it by Spain, and building super Dreadnoughts was still a long way off for France.

Apart from the four super Great Powers of Britain, France, Germany, and Spain, the remaining European Great Powers very tacitly chose to give up the development of super Dreadnoughts and instead focused their gaze on the expansion of the army.

There was no help for it; with the birth of Dreadnoughts and the research of super Dreadnoughts, the cost of building a main battleship at present had already reached nearly 2 million pounds, which was several times that of the ironclad ship era.

The speed at which major Great Powers built Dreadnoughts was very fast; Spain could build 1.5 Dreadnoughts on average each year, and the British could build two Dreadnoughts each year.

This also represented that Spain and Britain already had an expenditure close to 3 million pounds, which was 75 million pesetas, in building warships each year.

Do not look at this fund as not having as much as imagined, but this was only the cost of building main battleships. Adding the construction costs of other small warships and the maintenance costs of other warships, the navy expenditure alone was close to 150 million pesetas, which was not something other small countries could afford.

Let alone small countries, even Great Powers with relatively weak strength like Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire could not maintain such huge military expenditure for a long time.

Italy had just invested a large sum of money in Dreadnoughts, and they had no ability to continue to follow up on the construction of super Dreadnoughts.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire naturally did not need to be mentioned; starting from the beginning of the 20th century, it had basically given up the development of the navy and instead constantly expanded the scale of its army.

The German government perhaps was also clear about the fiscal ability of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy, and it completely undertook the obligation of the naval construction of the Allied Powers, letting its two allies place all their energy on the expansion of the army.

With the support of the German government, the armies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy ushered in a new round of expansion.

The standing army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which originally only had over 400,000 people, had already exceeded 550,000 at the beginning of 1909, and planned to further expand to over 700,000 in the next two years.

The number of troops in Italy also climbed steadily, declaring a breakthrough of 400,000 at the beginning of 1909, and was expected to expand to over 500,000 in the next two years.

This also represented that in about 1911, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy alone could provide nearly 1.2 million troops for the Allied Powers; the sum of the troops of these two countries would exceed the number of standing army troops of Russia.

If the armies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy could drag down Russia's army, this would represent that the European front line would become a one-on-one between Germany and France.

Germany was happy to see this scene. They also announced an expansion of 150,000 people before, and the current number of German standing army troops had exceeded 750,000, and was constantly moving towards the goal of 800,000.

And on the French army side, although it had long reached the scale of 750,000, the French government seemed to have no idea of further expanding the scale of the army.

An army of 750,000 was already a huge military expenditure for the French government, plus the French government also needed to help its ally Russia, which also led to the funds that the French government could use actually being stretched.

Germany would not care about that much; the German government wished that the scale of the French army would always be limited to about 750,000. Once Germany obtained the advantage in terms of numbers, it would quickly end this war.

No one would doubt the combat effectiveness of the German army, just as no one would doubt the combat effectiveness of the Spanish Navy at present.

In order to make its own advantage even greater, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire also won over Bulgaria, which had failed in the Balkan Wars, promising various benefits, letting Bulgaria also join the Allied Powers.

Although Bulgaria's scale was far from being comparable to the other three Great Powers of the Allied Powers, Bulgaria had an advantage that neither the Austro-Hungarian Empire nor Italy possessed, and that was the powerful combat effectiveness of the army.

For the two Balkan Wars, the German government had deep experience. The performance of the Bulgarian army in the two Balkan Wars could only be described as excellent; the name "Prussia of the Balkans" given to them was very appropriate.

It was precisely because of this that the German government had the idea of winning over Bulgaria. Do not look at the fact that Bulgaria could only mobilize ten or twenty thousand troops; the combat effectiveness of these ten or twenty thousand troops could at least compare to the Austro-Hungarian army of over 300,000 and the Italian army of over 500,000.

The German government's purpose in winning over Bulgaria was not to let the Bulgarian army support the front line, but to hope to control the Balkan Peninsula through supporting Bulgaria, connecting with the Ottoman Empire, which was on good terms with Germany, forming a supply line spanning Europe and Asia. ===== CHAPTER 473 =====