Empire Rise: Spain

Chapter 226: Army Training And Machine Gun Company

Obviously, the Spaniards’ supportive attitude toward the reserve force and their enthusiasm for joining it are directly proportional.

From the official formation of the reserve force at the end of August to early September, in just two and a half weeks, the number of people signing up for the reserve force had already exceeded 50,

This was only data submitted from larger cities like Madrid, Barcelona, and Zaragoza. The announcement of the reserve force formation had only spread throughout Spain in these two and a half weeks, and it might take some more time for all Spaniards to learn about it.

This is the disadvantage of not having the internet or even telephones: the blockage of news.

Even with newspapers and government announcements, it would take at least half a month or even more than a month to inform most Spaniards about the formation of the reserve force.

However, based on the current signup situations at recruitment offices in various cities, it would be simple for the final number of signups to exceed 150,

Upon learning this good news, Minister of Defense Grand Duke Serrano immediately excitedly found Carlo and reported this good news.

Carlo had actually already learned this news through the Royal Security Intelligence Bureau, but facing Grand Duke Serrano’s formal report at this moment, Carlo was still quite excited.

Once the 150,000 reserve force is fully formed, Spain’s military strength will rank just behind the five great powers of Europe, and it can even claim to be the world’s sixth.

Italy, also a great power, is inferior to Spain in both army scale and navy scale, which actually also represents that Spain’s revival has been achieved to a certain extent. Of course, this depends on what Spain’s revival exactly means. If it’s just to become a great power in Europe again, it has already been fully achieved at this moment.

But if it wants to become a superpower on the level of the five great powers, to become a player rather than a pawn on the European continent, Spain is still far from it.

Fortunately, for Spain, this is not an unattainable dream; it is even a reality that can be seen in the future.

The strength of the five great powers is also relative; they are not invincible. The Austro-Hungarian Empire has a multitude of ethnic groups domestically, and the dominant ethnic group, the Austrians, or Southern Teutons, do not hold an advantage. The Kingdom of Hungary, a component of the dual empire, has a large population and developed agriculture, which is also an destabilizing factor for the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Russia naturally goes without saying. Alexander II’s reforms were not thorough, and the problem of Russian serfs being oppressed has not been solved.

Even the relatively stronger Britain, France, and Germany are not perfect. Spain currently has almost no hope of becoming the world hegemon, but there is still some hope of becoming a country on the level of Europe’s five great powers, or even in the world’s top three.

Carlo’s goal is precisely this: as long as Spain can be built into a world great power sitting at fifth and eyeing third, Spain’s revival can actually be achieved.

As long as it can take advantage of opportunities like the Boer War or World War, Spain, even just in the world’s top five, still has hope of recapturing Gibraltar.

As long as Gibraltar can be recaptured, Carlo will be one of Spain’s greatest monarchs, and even, through public opinion propaganda, the “one of” can be removed.

“As long as reserve force soldiers pass the screening, they can immediately start training,” Carlo instructed the smiling Grand Duke Serrano.

According to the reserve force plan, the training time for reserve force soldiers is April, May, and September each year.

It is now September, which is the training time for reserve force soldiers.

Although starting training directly after just being selected into the reserve force is a bit rushed, these youths who joined the reserve force first are precisely those who support the country the most and support the reserve force the most.

Letting them immediately start training will not only not dampen their enthusiasm but will also cater to their wishes.

After all, for any hot-blooded male, who wouldn’t want to experience the Spanish military’s standard rifle?

Although guns are not banned domestically in Spain, selling the Spanish Army’s standard rifles to civilians is also prohibited.

The firearms legally held by civilians are hunting rifles, whose shooting distance and power are far inferior to the army’s rifles.

If girls are naturally fond of beautiful things, then boys are naturally fond of firearms and sticks and such.

Although starting training directly is a bit rushed for these reserve force soldiers, they can also come into contact with and use guns during training, which is what they look forward to.

Grand Duke Serrano nodded.

The reason the reserve force training time is April, May, and September is actually considering the planting and harvesting times of Spanish crops.

Spain’s two main grain crops are wheat and rice. Wheat is harvested from May to July, rice from October to November, and the reserve force training does not affect the harvesting of either crop.

Olives are harvested from October to December, grapes are picked from August to October, and they are also basically unaffected.

After all, most of Spain’s population are farmers, so the reserve force training time still needs to consider the harvesting time of Spanish crops.

Even though most of the public supports the reserve force, minimizing the burden on the public is also the responsibility of the Spanish Government.

With Carlo’s order, the first 20,000 reserve force soldiers who passed the selection quickly assembled around major cities.

Because the reserve force recruitment is distributed across various regions and cities, the training for these reserve forces will also be concentrated around various cities.

Among them, the main training points are the largest Madrid training camp, the Zaragoza training camp closest to the military academy, the northernmost Galicia training camp, and the southernmost Seville training camp.

Most of the first 20,000 soldiers recruited come from around Madrid and Barcelona, so the Madrid and Zaragoza training camps are the first to be put into use.

These reserve force soldiers will undergo half a month of military training at the training camps, followed by at least two shooting training sessions as September’s training nears its end.

Because the armory is rushing production for orders from Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the rifles used by reserve force soldiers can only be selected from rifles previously retired by the Spanish Army.

This is unavoidable, after all, trading with Russia and the Ottoman Empire first to earn substantial profits is still the most important thing.

Spain domestically does not need such a large stockpile of rifles either; equipping 150,000 reserve force members with rifles would alone be a considerable expenditure.

Reserve force training will not provide one rifle per person; instead, a batch of rifles will be distributed at each training camp for these reserve force soldiers to use in rotation.

This approach both reduces the demand for rifles and allows every reserve force soldier to experience target shooting training, making it the most suitable choice.

On the day training began at the Madrid training camp, the Ministry of Defense was also urgently selecting usable rifles from the armory.

The Vitali M1872 rifle is of course in stock at the Ministry of Defense; before these stocks are consumed, the rifles used by reserve force soldiers will also be the Vitali M1872 rifle.

It can also be seen as a reward for these earliest reserve force soldiers who joined. As for soldiers joining the reserve force later, if Vitali M1872 rifle stocks are insufficient, they can only use those previously retired old rifles.

In addition to issuing salaries to these reserve force soldiers during the training camp phase, the soldier with the best performance in each squad during training will also receive extra rewards.

In addition, the reserve force will compete at the company level. The top three soldiers with the best performance in each company will gain more opportunities, including but not limited to opportunities to join regular troops, be recommended to the military academy, and become reserve force junior officers.

Although it is just the reserve force, the training camp is also conducted with troop formations. The reserve force officers in the first year are all elite soldiers and some junior officers from the Spanish Royal Army; these veterans will serve as squad leaders or even platoon leaders for each squad, helping these reserve force soldiers adapt to army life faster.

After the first year of reserve force training ends, the most junior positions like squad leader will be handed over to reserve force soldiers.

As long as they perform relatively well in the training camp, soldiers have hope of becoming reserve force squad leaders.

And those extremely excellent soldiers will also gain opportunities to serve as company or platoon leaders. Although they are just reserve force officer positions, they are still good training for these soldiers.

As the saying goes, a soldier who doesn’t want to be a general is not a good soldier; even in reserve force troops, these soldiers surely still have ideas of becoming big officials.

Carlo had long anticipated this. As long as reserve force soldiers perform excellently in training, Carlo will give them opportunities and promote them in various ways.

After reserve force soldiers complete their three-year service period, relatively excellent soldiers can directly join the army for service.

Currently, the service term for Spain’s regular troops is 5-7 years, and special talents can be extended to 11 years. In addition to the salary earned during service, soldiers who meet the service term and retire normally can also choose to receive a bonus or a job opportunity.

This point is still quite important. These soldiers who serve long-term in the army cannot master excellent work abilities; after entering society, it is hard for them to find relatively good jobs.

Precisely because of this, the loyalty of these serving and retired soldiers to Carlo is extremely high.

The income they earn during service is 3 times that of ordinary Spaniards, and after retirement, they can still get job arrangements or an extra bonus; they can be said to have received the royal family’s full favor.

If previously the ones with the highest influence in the army were Prime Minister Primó and Grand Duke Serrano, then currently the one with the highest influence in the army has become Carlo.

However, this influence does not show in peacetime, so to most Spaniards, Spain is still a democratic constitutional monarchy government, and Carlo is still that king of the constitutional monarchy who cares for the public.

On the day training began at the Madrid training camp and Zaragoza training camp, Carlo also arrived at the two training camps, encouraged these soldiers who had just joined the reserve force, and gave a speech.

From these reserve force soldiers’ attitudes toward Carlo, it can be seen that they are loyal to Carlo, support the reserve force, and love the country.

Carlo did not pay much attention to the subsequent training; after all, the military has ample army training experience, while Carlo is an outsider.

Even though Carlo graduated from the Turin Royal Military Academy, he has not been involved much in military work since then.

Compared to reserve force training, what Carlo actually pays more attention to is the matter of Spain forming machine gun units.

After procuring machine guns from the royal arsenal, the Spanish military will definitely form machine gun units. But machine guns are quite powerful weapons, and current Carlo and the Spanish military do not plan to expose them.

This also means Spain will not equip machine guns in existing troops but will form a secret unit for machine gun training, equipping machine guns to various troops only when necessary.

Machine guns are mostly used for defensive battles and do not require sophisticated tactics. They just need to unleash full firepower during defense to suppress the enemy’s attack.

This also means that when these machine gunners are later dispersed to various troops, they will not affect the troops’ combat effectiveness.

On the contrary, each troop will increase its own firepower due to the addition of machine guns, thereby improving the army’s overall combat effectiveness.

Of course, the defense department can only manage the Royal Army; they cannot manage Carlo’s Guard.

Because the Guard’s loyalty is higher, and due to the Guard’s longer service time, Carlo plans to directly equip machine guns to the Guard for training instead of forming a machine gun unit.

Because machine guns require 5 to 8 people to operate, machine guns will not be assigned to squad-level units but to each company.

As long as each company is ensured to have one machine gun, it can effectively increase the Royal Guard’s combat effectiveness.

Moreover, besides infantry, cavalry can also be equipped with machine guns. Through horse transportation, machine guns can achieve faster transfers and have better logistics transport capacity.

The downside is that cavalry loses combat effectiveness during charges. However, all things considered, equipping cavalry units with machine guns is still very necessary.

Compared to the Royal Army’s large demand for machine guns, the Guard, due to having only 15,000 people, does not have a great demand for machine guns.

If machine guns are equipped to every infantry company and cavalry company, the entire Royal Guard would only need 89 machine guns to complete the equipping.

But considering the excellent firepower of machine guns, Carlo decided to establish a machine gun company in every infantry regiment, with each machine gun company equipped with 9 machine guns, each machine gun assigned a primary and secondary gunner, 1 loader, 2 machine gun transport soldiers, 3 bullet carriers, and 1 orderly, totaling 9 soldiers.

In a defensive battle, just one machine gun company can block thousands of enemies. And one Guard division has 4 infantry regiments, that is, 4 machine gun companies; just these 4 machine gun companies can block tens of thousands of enemies.

Of course, this is under the premise that the machine guns have sufficient bullet supply and do not malfunction due to continuous firing.

However, machine gun companies will definitely not be used alone; when machine guns need to stop firing to cool down or replace parts, ordinary infantry troops can fill the firepower gap to ensure the defense line is not breached.

Just this configuration of 4 machine gun companies adds a demand for 36 more machine guns on top of the 89 machine guns for the Guard division.

Carlo did not equip machine gun companies in cavalry regiments, as cavalry’s main tasks are charging and cutting enemy troops, not defending positions and fortresses like infantry.

The entire Royal Guard has a total demand for 125 machine guns; Carlo waved his hand and directly procured 150 machine guns from the royal arsenal.

For Carlo, the Guard procuring from the royal arsenal is just money going from left pocket to right pocket.

Most shares of the royal arsenal belong to Carlo and the royal family; this money is still Carlo’s in the end.

Including the procurement order from the Spanish Ministry of Defense, the royal arsenal suddenly had orders for over 500 machine guns.

For Maxim, this is a happy worry. Before the machine gun was born, he was busy almost all day, just to see the true automatic firearm in his mind as soon as possible.

But after the machine gun was born, he had to become busy again because there were numerous orders for machine guns to deliver.

Fortunately, the machine gun already has a complete finished product; just building a complete production line would allow mass production of machine guns.

These tasks can also be completed by other experts in the machine gun research and development team; after all, these experts participated throughout the machine gun design and are quite familiar with the machine gun’s structure and principles.

Even before these firearms design experts joined the machine gun project team, they had signed an agreement with the royal arsenal.

After joining the machine gun project team, regardless of whether the machine gun research succeeds, they must not go abroad for ten years or disclose machine gun research-related information and materials to outsiders.

Of course, salary and benefits during employment will be issued at the level of European firearms experts, not only without any harshness but also with extra rewards for firearms experts with merit.

Most of these experts are native Spanish experts; with sufficiently high income, they naturally will not choose to immigrate abroad.

And those experts from Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire who can join the machine gun project team are ones who have already chosen to immigrate to Spain.

For these foreign experts who have already obtained Spanish nationality, Carlo is quite reassured.

They are basically immigrants who brought their families to Spain; it is impossible for them to inexplicably bring their families to immigrate abroad again.

Immigration conditions in various countries are actually not harsh, but the difficulty is the journey to the immigration destination. Ocean voyage tickets in this era are quite expensive and come with risks.

For most people, as long as their lives are relatively stable, they basically will not choose to immigrate.

For these weapon experts in the machine gun research and development team, the Royal Security Intelligence Bureau also conducts some surveillance. Of course, this will not affect their lives, and they may not even notice.

But if someone wants to exchange machine gun information for benefits, Carlo will let them understand how cruel the Royal Security Intelligence Bureau’s interrogations are.

Fortunately, based on the investigation information from the Royal Security Intelligence Bureau so far, the many firearms experts in the machine gun research and development team have a relatively high recognition of Spain, or rather, they are quite satisfied with the salary treatment Carlo offers them.

Plus, with the protection of the Royal Security Intelligence Bureau, they naturally will not have ideas of selling weapon information for benefits.

After all, to sell weapon information, they need to contact foreign spies first; currently, various countries do not have large-scale intelligence organizations, and intelligence operations are mostly targeted at relatively dangerous countries, like those powerful great powers and such.

Intelligence operations targeting Spain are not many, after all, Spain’s threat at this time is not great.

5200-word two-in-one chapter, seeking support!