[{"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-472":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},2365400,4632,"Chapter 472: Preparing for War","rise-of-the-empire-spain-chapter-472",472,"\u003Cp>Although Spain did not announce its own super-dreadnought construction plan, this did not prevent other European countries from also beginning to build battleships of greater tonnage.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The British government even stated multiple times that it was willing to spend the last pound of the government's treasury on the construction of warships, and was willing to pay any price to maintain the strength of the British Navy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Compared to Spain's somewhat secretive behavior in building new-style battleships, Britain's construction of new-style battleships was clearly open and aboveboard.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This is not to say that the British did not want to keep the super-dreadnoughts secret; it was mainly because the previous naval defeat had severely damaged the reputation of the British Navy, and the British government also needed to make part of its naval construction plan public to let the public regain hope in the British Navy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Britain's new-style battleships were named the Orion-class battleships, and it was expected that at least four battleships would be built in the three years from 1909 to 1911 to cope with the pressure from Spain.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>According to information gathered by Spanish intelligence agencies, the standard displacement of Britain's so-called Orion-class battleships was at least as high as 22,000 tons, with a full-load displacement between 25,000 and 26,000 tons.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>From the perspective of tonnage, Britain's Orion-class battleships and Spain's Victor-class battleships were in the same class.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>However, Ka Luo still had great confidence in Spain's Victor-class battleships; even if Britain possessed battleships of the same class, Spain absolutely had the ability to compete with Britain.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In addition to Britain choosing to follow up with super-dreadnoughts, Germany and France also successively announced their own super-dreadnought construction plans.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Originally, the battleships built by Germany and France were still around 20,000 tons, but as Spain and Britain successively chose to build battleships of larger tonnage, Germany and France could only modify their own naval construction plans and focus part of their attention on super-dreadnoughts of larger tonnage.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Although tonnage does not represent everything, the battleships that could make Spain and Britain build them with such great fanfare must certainly have improved more than just tonnage compared to ordinary dreadnoughts.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If one were to fall a step behind in the construction of super-dreadnoughts, it would be equivalent to having already lost the initiative in the naval arms race, which was completely unacceptable to Germany.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Although neither Spain nor Britain was currently an enemy of Germany, for the sake of its own strength, Germany still chose to compete with these two countries in naval affairs to ensure that it possessed sufficient naval superiority compared to France.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As for France choosing to build super-dreadnoughts, it was purely to compete and confront Germany. Don't look at the fact that the French government also announced its own super-large tonnage battleship construction plan; 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.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Apart from the four major super-powers of Britain, France, Germany, and Spain, the remaining European powers very tacitly chose to abandon the development of super-dreadnoughts and instead focused their attention on the expansion of their armies.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>There was no help for it; with the birth of the dreadnought and the research and development of the super-dreadnought, the cost of building a main battleship currently approached 2 million pounds, several times that of the original ironclad era.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Currently, the speed at which the major powers built dreadnoughts was very fast; Spain could build an average of 1.5 dreadnoughts per year, and the British could build two dreadnoughts per year.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This also meant that Spain and Britain were already spending nearly 3 million pounds, or 75 million pesetas, on building warships each year.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Don't look at this sum of money as if it were not as much as imagined, but this was only the cost of building main battleships. Adding in the construction costs of other small warships and the maintenance costs of other warships, the naval expenditure alone approached 150 million pesetas, which was not something other small countries could afford.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Let alone small countries, even powers with relatively weaker strength like Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire could not maintain such huge military expenditures for a long time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>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.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Austro-Hungarian Empire naturally goes without saying; from the beginning of the 20th century, it had basically abandoned the development of its navy and turned to continuously expanding the scale of its army.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The German government was perhaps also clear about the financial capabilities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy, so they completely undertook the obligations of the Alliance's naval construction, allowing their two allies to put all their energy into the expansion of their armies.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Under the support of the German government, the armies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy ushered in a new round of expansion.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The standing army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which originally had just over 400,000 men, had already exceeded 550,000 by the beginning of 1909, and it planned to further expand to over 700,000 in the next two years.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The number of troops in the Italian army also climbed steadily, announcing a breakthrough of 400,000 at the beginning of 1909, and it was expected to expand to over 500,000 within the next two years.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This also meant that around 1911, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy alone could provide the Alliance with nearly 1.2 million troops; the combined strength of these two countries would exceed the number of Russia's standing army.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>If the armies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy could drag down the Russian army, this would mean that the European front line would become a one-on-one match between Germany and France.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Germany was happy to see this scene. They had previously announced an expansion of 150,000 troops; currently, the number of Germany's standing army had exceeded 750,000 and was still constantly moving toward the goal of 800,000.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As for the French army, although it had long reached the scale of 750,000, the French government did not seem to have any thoughts of further expanding the scale of its army.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>An army of 750,000 was already a huge military expenditure for the French government, and coupled with the fact that the French government also needed to provide relief to its ally Russia, this resulted in the funds actually available to the French government being stretched thin.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Germany would not care about that much; the German government wished that the scale of the French army would always be limited to around 750,000. Once Germany gained a numerical advantage, it would quickly end this war.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>No one would doubt the combat effectiveness of the German army, just as no one currently would doubt the combat effectiveness of the Spanish Navy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In order to make its advantage even greater, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire also won over Bulgaria, which had failed in the Balkan Wars, promising all kinds of benefits to make Bulgaria join the Alliance as well.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Although Bulgaria's size was far inferior to the other three powers of the Alliance, Bulgaria had one advantage that neither the Austro-Hungarian Empire nor Italy possessed, which was the strength of its army's combat effectiveness.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Regarding the two Balkan Wars, the German government had a deep understanding. The performance of the Bulgarian army in the two Balkan Wars could only be described as excellent; the title of \"Prussia of the Balkans\" was very appropriate for them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>It was precisely because of this that the German government had the idea of winning over Bulgaria. Don't look at the fact that Bulgaria could only mobilize one or two hundred thousand troops; the combat effectiveness of these one or two hundred thousand troops could at least rival over 300,000 Austro-Hungarian troops and over 500,000 Italian troops.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The German government's purpose in winning over Bulgaria was not to have the Bulgarian army support the front line, but to hope that by supporting Bulgaria to control the Balkan Peninsula, it could connect with the Ottoman Empire, which was on good terms with Germany, to form a supply line spanning Europe and Asia.\u003C\u002Fp>",1374,"2026-06-25T09:27:15.200Z",1,"Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite","9866751cea3c85114d92dd30a6e58c5dc60c7c85a73b3d9d5ea567ef8a76e5a8","rise-of-the-empire-spain-chapter-473","rise-of-the-empire-spain-chapter-471",493,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Frise-of-the-empire-spain-cover.jpg"]