Rise of Empires: Spain.

Chapter 309 Smokeless Gunpowder
After Spain successfully gained colonial rule over Cameroon, other European countries were not to be outdone and accelerated their pace of colonizing Africa.

Unlike Spain, which focused on West Africa, European powers led by Britain, France and Germany looked at the whole of Africa.

This also led to the fact that after the Germans failed to colonize Cameroon, they immediately turned to other parts of Africa without any hesitation.

After all, there is still a lot of land in the vast Africa that has not been colonized by European powers. Although Germany is powerful, there is no need for it to fight a life-and-death battle with Spain over the land of Cameroon.

It’s true that the Germans have their eyes on many places.

Besides Cameroon, they are also interested in the Gold Coast and East Africa.

Of course, the Gold Coast here is not the Spanish Gold Coast colony, but the coastal area collectively referred to as the Gold Coast by European countries.

The place the Germans were really targeting was the area east of the Spanish Gold Coast, which was later called Togo.

The mineral resources here are also quite rich, but unlike the Gold Coast occupied by Spain, the mineral resources in Togo are mainly phosphate, limestone, barite, quartz sand, manganese and other ores.

Although these minerals do not sound as attractive as gold, silver and diamonds, nor can they directly promote industrial progress like coal and iron mines.

But these minerals also play a huge role, especially phosphates, which are the main raw materials for producing agricultural fertilizers and can effectively increase food production in barren lands.

Spain still needs various agricultural fertilizers to increase food production, which also means that the minerals in the Togo region are also very important to Spain.

It is for this reason that, almost at the same time as Jyoti occupied the Kingdom of Bam, the Gold Coast was also sending troops to invade the Yoruba land.

The land occupied by the Yoruba people was Togo in later generations, which was sandwiched between Spain's Gold Coast and Ouidah colonies.

Because it is located on the connecting line from the Gold Coast to the Congo territory planned by Spain, Spain cannot give this land to the Germans under any circumstances.

The good news is that the Portuguese had set foot on Yoruba land hundreds of years ago.

Of course, a small number of Spanish explorers and colonists also reached this land, but the area that Spain finally colonized was the Guinea Colony in the Gulf of Guinea.

However, the descendants of these Portuguese colonists can still make use of it. Spain has acquired several colonies in West Africa from Portugal, and these Portuguese who have completely immigrated to Africa can only obey Spanish rule.

With the influence of the Portuguese's long-term colonization in this land, Spain could occupy the Yoruba land more quickly and prevent the Germans from catching up and forcibly inserting themselves between Spain's Gold Coast colony and the Congo territory.

Because European colonists accelerated the pace of colonization in Africa, local wars broke out in various regions of Europe.

Many countries are following Germany's actions, changing their previous method of economic colonization and choosing to use force to quickly achieve their own colonial domination.

What can be clearly seen is that during this period, various countries placed large orders for weapons and equipment to lay a solid foundation for their colonization of Africa.

Speaking of which, Spain's standard rifle has not changed for more than ten years since the birth of the breech-loading rifle.

Since its birth, the Vitali M1872 rifle has been the standard equipment of the Spanish Royal Army and Guards, and is also equipped in large quantities to Spain's colonial army.

In the 19s, the design of this rifle was quite advanced, and it also ensured that the combat effectiveness of the Spanish Army remained at the first-class level in Europe.

But it is undeniable that as time goes by, the Vitali M1872 rifle has gradually fallen behind the times. This firearm, which is based on the earliest breech-loading Swiss Vitali rifle, is about to step down.

More importantly, 1884 was also a rather special year.

For the military industry of various countries, a great invention will be born in 1884, that is, smokeless gunpowder that will change the history of firearms in various countries.

In fact, the discovery of smokeless gunpowder can be traced back to a routine experiment by Swiss chemist Schönbein in 1845.

On an ordinary day in 1845, Schönbein accidentally knocked over a bottle of mixed solution of nitric acid and sulfuric acid while doing an experiment. When the solution splashed onto the table, he picked up a cotton apron to wipe it, and then dried the apron with fire.

What he didn't expect was that when the apron was close to the stove, there was a "puff" sound, and the apron disappeared instantly like magic, without producing any smoke.

Schonbein immediately realized that this was a great invention. He recalled the entire process of the experiment and successfully discovered a new compound for making gunpowder, which he called guncotton.

This new compound was later called nitrocellulose, and it was an important raw material for making smokeless gunpowder.

However, the nitrocellulose at that time was not stable. As long as the temperature exceeded 40 degrees Celsius, the nitrocellulose would automatically decompose and spontaneously combust.

This also brought bad luck to chemists who tried to study this new compound. In the nearly 40 years since then, there have been many news reports of laboratory fires or even explosions caused by research on nitrocellulose.

The Royal Academy of Sciences of Spain would definitely not let go of the smokeless gunpowder that had already been discovered.

With Carlo's strong investment, the Royal Academy of Sciences established a research and development project on smokeless gunpowder more than ten years ago, and recruited a large number of chemists from Spain and abroad to join the project.

After more than ten years of research, Spain's smokeless gunpowder finally achieved certain results.

As for the biggest problem of nitrocellulose's instability, Spanish chemists discovered that the originally unstable nitrocellulose can be stabilized by simply dissolving it in a solution made of ether and ethanol, and then adding stabilizers and some special treatments.

It was also with this method that Spain was able to produce true smokeless gunpowder.

Although smokeless gunpowder had been invented, Carlo was not complacent. Carlo understood that European countries were investing a lot of resources in the research and development of smokeless gunpowder, and Spain might not be the first country to develop smokeless gunpowder.

Even if Spain was the first to successfully conquer nitrocellulose, other countries would surely follow suit and produce smokeless gunpowder.

The current smokeless gunpowder is also called single-base gunpowder because it only has one raw material, nitrocellulose, and there is still a lot of room for improvement.

However, compared with the black powder used in large quantities in bullets and artillery shells by European countries, even single-base gunpowder can be far ahead in all data.

As early as after the successful invention of smokeless gunpowder in Spain, Carlo had received a detailed report from the Royal Academy of Sciences.

The two most important changes of smokeless gunpowder compared to black powder are: first, the power of gunpowder is greatly improved; second, as the name suggests, smokeless gunpowder does not produce much smoke when it explodes, which plays an extremely important role in war.

The current rifles that use black powder will produce a lot of smoke every time they are fired, which makes the front battlefield look smoky and also exposes the position of the army.

Especially in the era of line-up executions, the artillerymen only needed to see where there was more smoke, close their eyes and shoot towards the smoke, and they would be able to hit the enemy no matter what.

The production of a large amount of smoke will also affect our vision. How can the soldiers aim at the enemies outside the smoke when they are in the smoke?

As for smokeless gunpowder, the biggest flaw on the battlefield will be completely improved. The enemy will not be able to discover their whereabouts so easily, and they will not have to worry about their vision being affected by smoke.

In addition, smokeless gunpowder has greater energy, which makes the rifle have a longer range and greater power, and also has a revolutionary impact on weapons and equipment.

The smokeless powder research and development team provided a batch of smokeless powder to the Royal Ordnance Factory, which produced a batch of rifle bullets made of smokeless powder.

According to tests conducted by the Royal Arsenal, for the same rifle with different bullets, the rifle bullet using smokeless powder not only has a faster rate of fire and greater power, but also has a much greater range than the black powder bullet.

You should know that the effective shooting distance of the current breech-loading rifle using black powder bullets is only about 100 to 200 meters. It is impossible to hit a person beyond 200 meters, unless it is those unlucky people who have teeth stuck even when drinking cold water.

Generally, the distance between military engagements will be kept at around 100 meters, because this will ensure that their soldiers can hit the target.

Obviously, the advent of smokeless gunpowder could completely change this phenomenon.

With the bullet and cartridge case unchanged and only the gunpowder changed, the new bullet's firing speed has rapidly increased from the original 400 meters per second to 650 meters per second. This increase is not an exaggeration.

Not only the firing rate is improved, but also the effective shooting distance of the rifle.

According to tests conducted by the Royal Arsenal, the effective shooting distance of the Vitali M1872 rifle can be increased from less than 200 meters to more than 400 meters when using smokeless powder rifle bullets, and the bullets have sufficient killing power even within 600 meters.

However, after exceeding 400 meters, according to the current design of rifles, it is difficult to guarantee the hit rate of the bullet.

After all, the Vitali M1872 rifle was designed for close-range combat, and the designers at the time did not expect that today's bullets could be fired at distances exceeding 600 meters.

This also brought about a new problem, that is, the Spanish rifles had to be improved before they could be adapted to rifle bullets using smokeless gunpowder.

Carlo was very generous. With a wave of his hand, he asked the Spanish Defense Department to issue a tender for the new rifle to all military factories in the country. Although the Royal Military Factory was the largest military enterprise in Spain, Carlo would not hang himself on a tree when it came to researching new rifles.

All Spanish military factories can participate in the rifle bidding. For some excellent design products, even if they are not finally selected by the defense department, certain rewards will be issued to help these excellent military factories go further.

The reason why we only consider bidding in Spain is that there is no such thing as aiding the enemy in today's military factories.

For orders from military factories, even competing countries can reach cooperation.

Carlo didn't want Spain's newly developed rifles to be purchased in large quantities by other countries, and at the same time expose the powerful weapon such as smokeless gunpowder to other countries.

Although Carlo knew that other countries were also conducting research on smokeless gunpowder, he even knew that the French would develop smokeless gunpowder this year.

But there is definitely a difference between Spain's voluntary disclosure and other countries' independent research and development. Before other countries develop smokeless gunpowder, what should be kept secret must be kept secret.

Soon, more than a dozen military factories of all sizes in Spain received rifle tender notices from the defense department.

The defense department clearly defined the requirements for the new rifle in the tender, hoping that it would be faster, more stable and more accurate than Spain's existing Vitali M1872 rifle.

The defense department also specifically requested that the new rifles designed by various military factories should increase the effective range to between 400 and 600 meters, and maintain a certain accuracy within a shooting distance of 400 meters.

This requirement is also the strangest and most troublesome for major military factories.

The requirements for faster firing rate and greater stability can actually be solved by referring to the advantages and disadvantages of the Vitali M1872 rifle, inheriting the advantages and improving the disadvantages.

The only thing that is not so easy to modify is the shooting distance. The shooting distance of the Vitali M1872 rifle is less than 200 meters, but the Ministry of Defense requires the shooting distance of the new rifle to reach 400 to 600 meters. Isn't this difficult?
What good person can increase the shooting distance by changing the design of the rifle without changing the bullet? Moreover, the shooting distance is increased by two or three times, which is simply impossible for humans to do.

Just when some small military factories were about to give up bidding due to the strict requirements of the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Defense issued an explanatory document to these military factories.

This explanatory document introduced the improvement in shooting distance brought by Spain's newly developed smokeless gunpowder. This also made military factories of all sizes suddenly realize why the Ministry of Defense had such stringent requirements for the shooting distance of the new rifles. It turned out that they were well prepared.

Of course, before opening this explanatory document, officials from the Ministry of Defense have clearly stated that anyone who has access to this document must sign a confidentiality agreement and promise not to disclose any information in the document within the next five years, including Spain's newly developed smokeless gunpowder.

Why does it take five years?

Because after five years, smokeless gunpowder will be common in Europe. By then, rifles in European countries will be equipped with smokeless gunpowder rifle bullets, so there is no need to keep the information about smokeless gunpowder secret.

In addition to this confidentiality agreement, these military factories were also told that if their rifle designs were adopted by the Ministry of Defense, any order they signed with any foreign company or country in the next five years would require the approval of the Spanish government and the Ministry of Defense.

Although most Spaniards are very patriotic, Carlo and the Spanish government dare not bet on the patriotism of the capitalists.

Such a treaty can ensure that Spain's new rifles will not be so easily obtained by foreign countries, and naturally it will also delay the invention of smokeless gunpowder by various countries by a few years.

The same logic applies. Five years later, smokeless powder-related firearms and bullets will be everywhere, and Spain will not prevent these military factories from selling related rifles and bullets.

Of course, if the designs of these military factories can be adopted by the Ministry of Defense, they will not have to worry about orders in the next five years.

The Spanish army will definitely replace all its equipment with new rifles. Coupled with the large number of colonial troops, even the royal arsenal will take a long time to produce to meet the needs of the Spanish military.

Not to mention these small and medium-sized military factories. Even if they were asked to produce at full capacity, they might not be able to complete production within five years.

This is also the reason why these small and medium-sized military factories quickly agreed to the two requirements of the military. After all, although the two requirements of the military seem harsh, they actually do not have much impact on them.

The need for the approval of the Spanish government and defense department before selling weapons and ammunition to other countries seems to be an unfair clause, but it also depends on whether the production capacity of these small and medium-sized military factories can keep up.

If their production capacity cannot keep up, they will not be able to sign arms trade orders with foreign countries, and naturally they will not violate the regulations on arms exports.

Military factories of all sizes, completely relieved by the defense department's explanation, immediately began to engage in the research and development of new rifles.

The Ministry of National Defense attaches great importance to the new rifles. In addition to cooperating with the military factory that develops the new rifles, it will also pay an additional support fund of approximately 100 million pesetas to the military factory to help the military-industrial complex expand faster and meet the production requirements of the defense department.

Don't underestimate this support fund of only 100 million pesetas.

At present, apart from the Royal Arsenal, there are only a few military factories that have been established for decades, and their overall value exceeds this share.

The total value of the remaining small military factories, including their buildings and equipment, does not even reach 100 million pesetas.

Judging from the scale of Spain's military industry, a military factory with a total valuation of 100 million pesetas can barely be considered a medium-sized military factory.

Unfortunately, there are only three medium-sized military factories in Spain, and together with the only large-scale military factory, the Royal Ordnance Factory, they are the representative enterprises that the Spanish military industry can currently boast of.

In theory, Spain's final new rifle should have been produced in the Royal Arsenal or one of the three medium-sized arsenals.

After all, larger military factories are more powerful than smaller ones in terms of equipment and technical personnel reserves.

Unless the smaller military factories can produce weapons experts who are worthy of being written in history, they are unlikely to win this weapons bidding.

The Spanish defense department also focused its attention on the Royal Arsenal and the three medium-sized military factories, hoping that they could develop standard rifles that met their requirements.

What Carlo and the Ministry of Defense did not expect was that the first to submit the rifle design was not the Royal Arsenal, but a medium-sized military factory with little fame.

Joe Montoya Machinery Manufacturing Plant. Seeing the name, Carlo almost thought it manufactured tractors.

After learning that the other party was indeed a real military factory, Carlo did not say much, but instead turned his attention to the weapon design submitted by the other party.

From the appearance, this rifle is highly similar to the original Spanish Vitali M1872 rifle, and it can even be said that the former is an improved product of the latter.

This is indeed the case in actual testing. Due to the improved sights, the new rifle can indeed shoot more accurately at a longer distance than the original Vitali M1872 rifle.

This small-scale military factory also made certain improvements to the internal components of the rifle, and indeed achieved the characteristics of longer shooting distance and faster shooting speed.

But the problem was that because it was a product improved by a small military factory, the rifle specially manufactured for testing actually had the fatal problem of exploding during testing.

The explosion occurred when testing the service life of the rifle. Fortunately, it was a new gun test, and there was no manual operation during the test. The rifle was fixed and the trigger was connected with a rope to fire.

After firing hundreds of bullets in succession, the rifle suddenly exploded and turned into a pile of parts of different sizes.

All of a sudden, the smiling face of the Defense Department official changed instantly, and the experts from this small factory were also embarrassed.

After this incident, let alone getting the defense department to adopt their designs, I’m afraid they will also carefully consider their factories in future cooperation.

Weapon stability and safety are still very important, which is what the defense department specifically required and emphasized when bidding.

Obviously, no matter how well the rifle designed by this factory performs in the previous links, as long as there are problems with stability and safety, the Ministry of Defense will not consider adopting their rifle design.

After all, it is Spanish soldiers who use the rifles, and the Ministry of Defense has to consider the Spanish soldiers.

Compared with other data of the rifle, the defense department attaches the most importance to the stability and safety of the rifle.

Carlo also hoped that the rifles produced in Spain would be used to defeat the enemy, rather than harm Spain's own soldiers in such a weird way.

However, considering that the small factory did not do it on purpose, Carlo did not blame them. Instead, he asked them to go back and improve the rifle as much as possible to extend its service life.

If it cannot be improved, it is better to abandon this rifle design as soon as possible.

After all, the design of this rifle follows the basic shape of the Vitali M1872 rifle, but with certain modifications to the internal design. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the rifle exploded.

For a small factory, being able to achieve this step is already quite good. After all, it takes a lot of cost to improve the rifle step by step, especially if you start all over again from the appearance to the internal design, the research and development funds and costs required are inestimable. This is also the reason why Carlo and the Ministry of Defense are not optimistic about the ability of small military factories to produce rifles that meet the requirements of the Ministry of Defense.

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(End of this chapter)