Chapter 429: , Arms race

On the first Monday after the new year, Napoleon delivered a new year's State of the Union address. Napoleon declared that France is now in new danger due to the destruction of some internal and external enemies. But France is still the most powerful and wealthy country in the world. He and his government will surely overcome the current temporary difficulties and let France continue to be great.
Napoleon then proposed a new fiscal year budget to the State Council. In this budget, Napoleon proposed to adopt a proactive fiscal policy and actively expand domestic demand to restore the French economy. The concentrated manifestation of "expansion of domestic demand" is France's substantial increase in military spending.
First of all, France has completed an army expansion of 500,000. Of course, Napoleon emphasized that the expansion of the army was not to destroy the peace, but to defend it. The newly expanded army will not be organized into combat units, but will be incorporated into newly formed engineering units.
Of course, other countries do not believe this statement. What they didn't believe was not that they did not believe that the French would newly form an ever-large engineering contingent, but they all understood that even if the 500,000 were really engineering corps, at least they could liberate a lot of combat troops.
However, the bulk of the increase in military expenditures has increased to the navy. In the new budget, the Navy received a large sum of shipbuilding costs. It is said that the Navy had previously proposed a shipbuilding plan that it considered to be very scary. After Marshal Treville reported the plan to Napoleon, he was quickly beaten back. Napoleon added it on the cover of his plan. Such a comment: "Small!"
So Admiral Trewell made major changes to the plan. Put forward a new goal, the so-called two-power goal: the French Navy must become the world's No. 1 Navy, and the total displacement of the French Navy's warships must reach the sum of the total displacements of the world's second and third navies. .
Considering that the French navy has an inherent advantage in the quality of weapons, if there is such a quantitative advantage, will the British people still live? Although the British have had to admit that the French are a little bit ahead of the British in technology, the British still have a little advantage in terms of scale. Considering that the British navy is more well-trained and has a higher command level (at least, the British themselves think so), therefore, the British navy is still the world's first navy.
Especially last year, the British also launched a steel battleship named "Queen Elizabeth". This battleship is a more powerful warship with the French "Inbredo" class battleship. Its displacement is even greater than that of the "British White". The "Rado" class battleship is even larger. The full load displacement of the "Queen Elizabeth" has exceeded 10,000 tons. (In fact, the standard discharge is less than 8,000 tons, which is higher than the standard discharge of the 7,000 tons "Inbred. "It can only be said to be slightly larger. But the British prefer to advertise its full-load displacement) equipped with more artillery.
"Queen Elizabeth" is equipped with six of the world's largest 10-inch rear-mounted rifled guns. Each shell weighs 500 pounds. In contrast, the 150-mm guns of "Inberardo" are simply small toothpicks and enoki mushrooms. Of course, the British did not know that the French 150 guns used a tube retreat mechanism and a semi-automatic loading system, and the rate of fire of each gun was as high as five to six rounds per minute. As for the British 10-pounder, one shot in five or six minutes is good.
In addition, the British also claimed that their warships had thicker and stronger armor. This is also true, but the British did not mention the price paid for this. That is, the ship was dubbed the "Iron Turtle" by the soldiers of the British Royal Navy. As a ship that is actually about the same size as the "Inbrado", it has more and heavier guns and thicker armor than the "Inbrado", so the displacement left for the power system is a bit Not enough. And these displacements have to be weighed between the size of the coal bunker and the size of the steam engine. If the steam engine is installed large, the speed is guaranteed, but the voyage will be tragic. So, in the end, the ship had to compromise and lower the maximum speed to 12 knots.
The drop in speed will of course bring about various problems in combat, but the launch of this ship still made the British very excited. They felt that they had finally caught up with the French in naval technology.
However, when the French announced their new ambitious shipbuilding plan, the British immediately felt that I could not breathe.
In the French shipbuilding plan, the construction of a new type of warship called the "Augustus-class battleship" was started. The standard displacement of this kind of warship will reach 11 thousand tons, and the firepower of the equipment will far exceed the "Inbredo Class", the armor will be further strengthened, and the speed will continue to be maintained at the Inbreder. Level of the level. The French intend to build six large docks specifically for this purpose. It plans to produce 18 "Augustus-class battleships" in the next six years.
If it's just the issue of the "Augustus class" battleship, what's worse, the French shipbuilding plan is fully rolled out. It also includes the 2,000-ton "Smart-class" unprotected fast cruiser, the 4,000-ton "Virgil-class" armored cruiser, and the 7,000-ton Hull, which is the next generation product of the "Free Trade Class" super cruiser. Moss class" super cruiser.
Among these warships, the two thousand-ton "Alert-class" unprotected cruisers were mainly used as colonial warships, highlighting the speed and endurance capabilities. The firepower and protection were only average, and the threat to Britain was limited. However, the four thousand-ton "Virgil-class" armored cruiser poses a greater threat to the United Kingdom. The four thousand-ton displacement makes it a fairly balanced warship. It has weak firepower, but it is used to deal with merchant ships and The steel-framed wooden steam cruisers with a displacement of about two thousand tons in the hands of the British are more than enough, and the larger tonnage makes them quite self-sustaining. These warships can easily cross the Atlantic Ocean, and coupled with a speed of up to 18 knots, the British can't catch up or run away. They are deadly threats to British sea lanes. And this kind of terrible thing, in the French plan, one guy will make fifty!
There is also the "Hermes-class" super cruiser. Its firepower is equivalent to that of the "Inbredo-class", but its speed is as high as 20 knots. Although the defense is a little bit worse, it is also inferior to the "Inbredo-class" battleship. One point, it is better than any British warship except the "Queen Elizabeth".
Now the British are in a huge trouble. If they concentrate on building the follow-up ship of the "Queen Elizabeth", then they will not have the power to deal with the challenges from "Virgil" and "Hermes". And if they concentrate on producing ships against the latter two, they must consider whether one day the French will directly use the
Augustus
battleship to cover the French army’s landing in the UK.
These two results are unbearable by the British, so even if the current economic situation is very bad, even if the British government is short of money, the British must immediately adjust their budgets to meet the challenges from France.
The British Parliament met in an emergency, and Pete was elected Prime Minister again and quickly passed a package of shipbuilding plans. The British threatened that for every ton of warships launched by the French, the British would launch 1.5 tons of warships. In order to support this huge shipbuilding plan, the British issued a large number of national debt and forced their citizens to purchase it. And this naturally caused a blockbuster opposition in the UK.
Considering that patriotism is an equal right of every British person, all British people should be equal when buying national debt. Therefore, we must not reduce the amount of national debt that they should buy by adopting a discriminatory attitude towards them just because they have little wealth. All British people, from the king to the workers in the factories, should buy a national debt equally. what? Workers have no savings to buy? It doesn't matter, when the factory owners pay their wages, they will directly buy the treasury bonds with the corresponding wages in advance, and then issue them to them.
This is not plunder, this is for their good! You must know that these paupers always like to spend money randomly. They don’t know the importance of saving. Well, the interest rate of national debt is a little higher than that of saving~EbookFREE.me~ Of course, the poor always have a reason to become poor, not gluttonous. , Is laziness. For example, now that they have obtained those national debts, in order to buy a bite to eat, they actually want to buy them into money. Of course, the helpful "great people" naturally stretched out their enthusiastic hands and bought the national debt in their hands with a discount of up to 20%.
These poor ghosts had no plans at all, and soon ran out of national debt. Then they began to starve. This starvation is entirely caused by their own mischief, lack of financial management, and gluttony and laziness. However, they not only did not reflect on themselves, and then honestly waited for God's call in their small broken house, but they were like those praying praying mantises who blocked the car.
This time is not before. The UK used to worry about foreign interference or something. Now the French are too busy to take care of themselves, at most they can speak out, what else can they do? So the British directly used the army to suppress it.
But the suppression is like holding ten gourds with one hand in the water, pressing down this one, and floating the other one. First, the workers in London went on strike, then there were rebels on the Scottish side who clamored for independence, and then there was some unrest on the Welsh side, and then the London police station was suddenly attacked by a grenade... In short, the British government may need to issue a little more. National debt is used to maintain domestic stability.