Rise of Empires: Spain.

Chapter 224 Machine Gun Orders and Reserve Program
The testing of the Maxim machine gun went quite smoothly. After all the tests were completed, the next step was naturally for the military to discuss the purchase quantity.

What can be confirmed at present is that the Maxim machine gun possesses extremely powerful firepower on the battlefield, which is something that current rifles simply do not have.

The firepower of artillery is certainly very strong, but this kind of heavy firepower is more used to deal with enemy fortresses and strongholds, especially large-scale siege warfare.

Machine guns can play a huge role in both offensive and defensive battles, and can cause great damage to the enemy's manpower, which is something that artillery does not have.

Therefore, for the Spanish military, there is only the question of how many machine guns to purchase, not the question of whether to purchase machine guns.

"Mr. Maxim, how much is the cost for a machine gun like this?" Before discussing the specific order quantity with the military, Carlo first called Maxim and asked about the actual cost of such a machine gun.

"Your Majesty, the machine gun you are looking at now costs about 7280 pesetas, which is about 280 pounds. But because this is an experimental sample gun, the cost of manufacturing it separately will be higher.

If it could be mass-produced, the cost of the machine gun could be reduced to around 200 pounds, or 5200 pesetas," Maxim said.

This prototype gun was specially used for experiments, so it was natural that it was expensive. Because there was no special production line, almost all the parts of the machine gun were made by hand by these gun experts.

This also makes the cost of this machine gun as high as 7280 pesetas, and this is the cost of building a machine gun without bullets.

Carlo was relieved to hear that the cost of the machine gun could be reduced to around 5200 pesetas after mass production.

It has to be admitted that machine guns are indeed much more expensive than rifles.

Spain's standard rifle, the Vitali M1872, cost only 60 pesetas, and was sold to the Spanish military for only 75 pesetas, which was basically hard-earned money.

It was the arms trade that made the Royal Arsenal a lot of money by exporting weapons to Russia and the Ottoman Empire. The price of each rifle sold by the Royal Arsenal to Russia was 95 pesetas, and the price of each rifle sold to the Ottoman Empire was 102 pesetas.

The reason why the rifles sold to the Ottoman Empire were more expensive than those sold to Russia was that the Ottoman Empire had the support of Britain and was not short of money to purchase weapons and equipment.

On the contrary, if the unit price given to Russia is too high, Russia will turn around and rely on its own weapons and directly abandon the Spanish order.

Although Russia has strengthened its industrial and economic strength through reforms, its economy is still relatively bad.

War requires a huge amount of financial expenditure. For Russia, it will of course save as much as possible on weapons procurement.

According to the cost of the Vitali M1872 rifle, the cost of one Maxim machine gun is approximately the cost of 83 Vitali M1872 rifles.

It takes 83 soldiers to operate 83 rifles, while only 5 to 8 people are needed to operate a machine gun to exert its maximum firepower. This also means that machine guns can save Spain's manpower to the greatest extent.

In some defensive battles, Spain only needed to deploy a dozen machine guns, and let these machine guns fire in turns to form a firepower network and easily complete the defensive mission.

The strength of a dozen machine guns is only a few dozen or a hundred people. If the defense task is completed by relying solely on these hundreds of infantrymen, it will not only be extremely difficult, but may even lead to mission failure.

Carlo looked at several senior military leaders, waiting for the defense department to decide on the number of machine guns to be purchased.

The machine gun cost as much as 200 pounds, and the selling price must be more than 200 pounds. Even though the Royal Arsenal was Carlo's own business, he could not make no profit when cooperating with the Spanish military.

According to the previous cooperation between the Royal Arsenal and the Spanish military, the cost of a machine gun is 200 pounds, and the price sold to the Spanish military is between 220 and 250 pounds. The specific amount depends on the negotiations between the arsenal and the Ministry of Defense. In short, it is an internal price and is relatively cheap.

When sold to the armies of other countries, the price of machine guns will increase to around 270 to 300 pounds. For some countries, the price will even be as high as 300 to 350 pounds or more. This is also the main source of income for military factories, and making money from foreigners is the bottom line.

After all, only when the Royal Arsenal earns enough money can the various research projects of the Arsenal have enough budget. And the weapons experts of the Arsenal can get enough dividends, so that they will be more motivated to work for the Arsenal and Carlo.

Several high-ranking generals in the Ministry of Defense were obviously very interested in the machine gun. Even though they knew that the machine gun cost thousands of pesetas, they were still not discouraged from buying it.

Finally, after lengthy negotiations, Maxim officially set the internal selling price of the machine gun at 5980 pesetas, or about 230 pounds.

The Royal Arsenal received a net income of at least 780 pesetas for each machine gun sold, of which 741 pesetas went to Carlo, and the remaining 39 pesetas were distributed to all the gunsmiths in the machine gun project team.

Even though they were only given 39 pesetas for each machine gun, Spain's arms orders amounted to at least hundreds of machine guns. And this was still a small number. When machine guns were widely equipped in various countries in the future, or when a large-scale war broke out, the number of machine guns exported by military factories would rise steadily, and even tens of thousands would not be an exaggeration.

The gun experts of the machine gun project team naturally had no objection to this distribution ratio. In addition to the dividend income, they had also received rewards from Carlo. The least rewarded people could get half a year's income, and the experts with more rewards even received an additional one or two years of income. The money rewarded to them was already a lot.

The price of 5980 pesetas for the machine gun was acceptable to the military. After a brief conversation, Prime Minister Serrano personally came forward and signed a machine gun purchase agreement with Maxim.

西班牙军方将以5980比塞塔的价格购买420挺机枪，并且以50比塞塔每条的价格，购买装弹333发的帆布弹带1.26万条。

The total cost of this purchase order was 314.16 pesetas, which was a sum of money that the Ministry of Defense could squeeze out, so it did not hurt the senior military commanders.

The reason why only 420 machine guns were purchased was mainly because the military took into account the possible problems that might arise after the machine guns were equipped to the troops. Therefore, they only planned to equip them on a small scale and in small quantities, and then purchase them on a large scale after confirming that there were no problems.

The military leaders were generous with the bullets, with 1.26 bullet belts, which equaled 30 for each machine gun.

Each bullet belt holds 333 rounds of bullets, which means that each machine gun is equipped with nearly rounds of bullets, which is enough to train the Spanish machine gunners, which have not yet been formed, for a long time.

Although the machine gun's maximum rate of fire is close to 600 rounds per minute, such exaggerated firepower is not used during normal training.

Because today's machine guns are not that stable, if you shoot at high speed for a long time, not only will the barrel become hot and scrapped, but it is also prone to bullet jams and firing pin breakage.

The test machine guns were hand-made by firearms experts, and their quality was guaranteed. However, mass-produced machine guns do not have such good quality, and problems may occur within a minute while maintaining the maximum rate of fire.

Therefore, in normal training conditions, a machine gun with a firing rate of 100 to 200 rounds per minute is already quite good.

Doing so will also reduce the amount of bullets consumed by machine guns and reduce the logistical supply pressure on the Ministry of Defense.

A canvas belt with 333 bullets cost 50 pesetas, which was close to five months' income for an adult male citizen.

It only takes a machine gun half a minute to use up these bullets. The number of bullets consumed by hundreds or thousands of machine guns every day is astronomical, so we should still save some.

In fact, when Carlo learned that the machine gun had been invented, he had the idea of ​​selling such machine guns to Russia and the Ottoman Empire at a high price.

Even if it is only sold to one of these countries, the revenue from selling machine guns will never be comparable to that from selling rifles.

But after thinking about it for a while, Carlo gave up the idea. Exposing the machine gun too early was not a good thing for Spain, after all, the machine gun was the trump card that Carlo wanted to hide. Under the premise that Spain was equipped with a large number of machine guns, Carlo was not at all inferior even when facing enemies like Germany and France.

With the barrier of the Pyrenees Mountains, Carlo only needed to build solid military fortresses on both sides of the mountains to rely on machine guns and artillery to directly resist the army attack from the European continent.

The advantage of machine guns is reflected in defensive battles, especially when the enemy uses a large number of troops to charge in large groups.

If the Maxim machine gun was exposed too early, not only would other countries scramble to imitate it and equip it on a large scale, but the armies of various countries would also be on guard against machine guns.

Carlo was very clear about which one would achieve greater results, the unexpected or the anticipated, which was why Carlo gave up the idea of ​​selling machine guns.

It is obviously not a good deal to let the Spanish Army lose its advantage in the next few years just for such a small income.

The existence of machine guns will be exposed, and the Spanish army will have to take them out when facing the enemy's attack. By then, Spain can also make a fortune with its excellent machine gun technology and sell machine guns to all the major European countries at the same time.

During this period, Spain developed a more stable and powerful machine gun.

As the saying goes, show one generation, equip one generation, hide one generation, and research and develop one generation. At present, the most advanced machine gun in Spain is the Maxim machine gun in front of us. It is natural to keep it secret if it can be kept secret.

When Spain has a second generation of more advanced machine gun technology, it can consider selling this generation of outdated machine gun technology.

I believe that all European powers will be interested in this kind of high-firepower weapon. If it can be exchanged for other military technologies or other technologies and techniques that Spain needs, it will definitely be a sure win for Spain.

Currently, the two main weapons in the army's equipment are rifles and artillery. Although Spain's rifles and artillery are not at the top level, they are at least first-class in Europe.

If machine guns are included, Spain's army military technology is among the best in Europe, which is also Carlo's confidence.

If Spain can remain ahead in the future when tanks and airplanes are invented, then naturally no other country will object to Carlo's statement that Spain is a military power.

Before Spain's population increases, this is the only way to make up for the shortage of people.

The armies mobilized by other powerful countries were often in the millions or even tens of millions, while Spain could only mobilize a maximum of millions, and this was only possible under the condition of severely damaging domestic production.

Generally speaking, the number of troops that Spain can mobilize is only about 50. Although 50 is a lot, it will not play a big role in the current scale of war.

In the ongoing Russo-Turkish war in the Balkans, the number of troops deployed by both sides has exceeded one million.

The number of troops deployed by both Russia and Austria in the attack and defense of the Plev Fortress exceeded 30, and the Russian side suffered nearly 10 casualties.

Compared with this large-scale war, the number of Spanish troops was indeed insufficient, which also gave Carlo the idea of ​​reforming the Spanish military service system.

Spain's military service system is still quite backward, even inferior to that of Russia today.

Russia's military service system has been changed to a compulsory military service system, and all Russian male citizens aged 20 to 25 are obliged to participate in military service.

Spain's military service system still relies on the volunteer system, with most soldiers coming from the government's active recruitment.

The biggest drawback of both military service systems is that Spain has very few reserve forces, which also affects the number of troops that Spain can mobilize.

According to Russia's compulsory military service system, Russia maintains a regular force of up to 70 and has nearly one million reserve troops.

Although Spain's regular troops also have as many as 15 people, Spain has almost no reserves in terms of reserve forces. The troops mobilized on a large scale are all new recruits with extremely poor combat effectiveness.

Carlo took this into consideration and decided to make changes to Spain's military service system.

Of course, the main direction of change in the military service system is the reserve force, and Spain does not need too many active soldiers. After all, there will be no war in Spain in the short term.

The existence of the reserve is to ensure that Spain has enough trained soldiers in times of war. The combat effectiveness of the reserve is certainly not as good as that of regular troops, but it is much better than those hastily formed recruits.

The reserve forces only need mobilization and simple training to become a real army, while it takes at least half a year for recruits to develop combat effectiveness. If they are to be transformed into an elite army, they will need to be honed on the battlefield for a long time.

Spain currently has 15 regular troops, and Carlo's plan is to have a reserve force of around 15.

These reserve troops can do their job most of the time and are the same as ordinary Spaniards.

But they have to set aside a certain amount of time every year for military training to ensure that they have a certain level of military proficiency.

The establishment of a reserve force will certainly have a certain impact on Spain's production and construction, but because the reserve force only has 15 people, the impact will not be that great.

Compared with the role of forming a reserve force, any loss in production and construction can be ignored.

With 15 regular troops and 15 reserve troops, Spain can deploy more than 30 troops at any time, which can also ensure that Spain's military strength will not be too bad.

It is somewhat difficult for an army of 30 to conduct an offensive war, but it is still no problem to defend the Iberian Peninsula. Unless the powerful countries are willing to fight Spain to the death, Spain is still relatively safe under such circumstances.

There are also conflicts and contradictions of interests among the great powers. Carlo doesn't think that any country will choose to fight to the death with Spain.

Whether it is Britain or France, they have more threatening enemies. France is the only country that can pose a threat to Spain on land. As for another neighboring country, Portugal, it should be the country that is worried about the threat from Spain.

Thinking of this, Carlo smiled. If King Louis of Portugal knew that Spain had formed a reserve force of 15, he would probably be so nervous that he couldn't sleep for several days.

The regular troops and reserve forces together number as much as 30, which is really terrible for Portugal, which has a population of only 460 million.

Like Portugal and Spain, after losing its colonies in America, although it still retained the reputation of a colonial power, it had actually lost most of its strength.

Portugal only has 2.2 regular troops, and these troops are mainly used to guard against Spanish invasion. Of course, if the Spanish army really wants to invade, these 2.2 troops alone will obviously be of no use.

Portugal also deployed nearly 3 troops in the colonies, but these 3 troops were very insignificant, as most of them were vassal troops composed of colonial natives.

This is also the reason why Carlo smiled, because 30 Spanish soldiers were too stressful for Portugal, and even the British behind Portugal were worried about the situation on the Iberian Peninsula.

(End of this chapter)