Empire Rise: Spain

Chapter 216: Renewed Cooperation With Western Italy

After chatting with his father Vittorio Emanuele II for a while, Carlo’s two brothers, Crown Prince Umberto and Prince Amadeo, also arrived at the manor.

Before Vittorio Emanuele II was on the verge of death, Prince Amadeo had always resided in Turin. But due to his father’s serious illness, Prince Amadeo also came to Rome.

Speaking of Carlo’s two brothers, Crown Prince Umberto and Prince Amadeo were completely different in personality.

Crown Prince Umberto’s desire for power was visible to the naked eye, while Prince Amadeo completely lost his desire for power after missing the opportunity to become King of Spain.

Especially after Prince Amadeo’s wife, Duchess Maria, passed away, Prince Amadeo became Italy’s infamous playboy, spending his days only on pleasure and showing no concern for Italy’s political affairs.

Of course, perhaps such a Prince Amadeo was the brother who posed the least threat to Crown Prince Umberto.

And precisely because Prince Amadeo showed no threatening behavior, the relationship between Crown Prince Umberto and Prince Amadeo remained quite friendly.

The two arrived together, and Carlo also stood up to greet his two brothers.

“Carlo, long time no see.” Crown Prince Umberto and Prince Amadeo stepped forward, first exchanging greetings with Carlo, then greeting Carlo’s wife, Queen Sophie.

Although Crown Prince Umberto and Prince Amadeo were only princes, while Carlo was a higher-ranking king. But after all, the two were Carlo’s brothers, and given the current private meeting, there was no need for overly formal salutes.

Vittorio Emanuele II looked at the three harmonious brothers and nodded in satisfaction.

Although many of his children had died young, one thing that satisfied Vittorio Emanuele II was that the relationship between these three surviving sons was still very good.

Brotherly harmony was also an important guarantee for the family lineage to continue; internal strife would only benefit others.

Through his conversation with Crown Prince Umberto, Carlo finally understood Vittorio Emanuele II’s physical condition.

This era lacked advanced diagnostic methods, and doctors could only estimate that Vittorio Emanuele II’s time was running out based on his condition.

As for exactly when the end would come, the doctors were completely unclear.

Carlo could only nod helplessly; this was the backward state of medical technology in this era.

Whether ordinary people or a country’s king, in the final stage of life, doctors would be powerless.

Of course, if one had to suggest a method, some doctors might still recommend trying bloodletting therapy. But bloodletting only accelerated death; this was the experience gained from countless Europeans dying after bloodletting therapy.

Carlo’s family was arranged to stay at a nearby manor. Although it was relatively far from downtown Rome, the advantage was that it was closer to Vittorio Emanuele II’s residence, with more beautiful scenery and no disturbances from people.

This would be the residence for Carlo’s family during their brief stay in Italy. The Italian Government dispatched over a hundred soldiers to patrol and guard the surroundings, and Carlo also stationed most of his brought guards near the manor.

In addition, whether Carlo or Queen Sophie went out, several guards would accompany them for protection to ensure safety.

This was to prevent assassination attempts by some assassins. Although Europe was the most developed region of this era, life for most European people was not very good.

This also led to frequent assassinations in Europe; Carlo placed great importance on his personal safety.

The good news was that, compared to other countries, Italy tended toward stability. The newly unified Italy did not have as many problems as thought, and public dissatisfaction with this new country had not accumulated to the limit.

With the protection of the Italian Government, as long as Carlo did not court death, he had no need to worry about his life safety at all.

Accompanying Carlo to Italy this time, besides Garibaldi’s second son Giuseppe, there were also some officials from the Spanish Government.

The purpose of these officials coming to Italy was to finalize the next steps of cooperation with the Italian Government.

In the previous cooperation between the Spanish and Italian Governments, there were mainly some financial loans, industrial mutual assistance, and collaborative research and development in military industry.

With Italy’s help, Spain possessed the Vitali M1872 rifle, which was currently the standard rifle of the Spanish Army and very important for Spain.

Italy still had very good research and development capabilities in industry and military industry, so Spain could deepen cooperation with Italy, allowing closer collaboration on rifle, cannon, and warship design and research and development, jointly researching and manufacturing more powerful weapons.

From historical experience, Italy did indeed have this capability. Although Italy’s current navy scale was not strong, in the decades to come, Italy forcefully built a quite powerful navy.

It was worth mentioning that the major expansions of the Italian Army and Navy both occurred during Umberto’s rule.

After Umberto became king, he promoted Italy’s participation in the arms race, expanding the Italian Army from 10 corps to 12 corps, a full 420,000 men, and making the Italian Navy grow at an extremely fast pace.

In the battleship era, that is, the pre-dreadnought era, the Italian Navy had built the best battleship at the time and possessed the world’s fourth-ranked 242,000 tons of naval tonnage in

It must be known that Italy at the time was not considered a very powerful country and still ranked at the bottom among the great powers.

Being able to arm an army of over 400,000 and the world’s fourth-ranked navy already proved Umberto’s ambition and that Italian military technology research and development capabilities were indeed quite excellent.

At least in terms of the navy, Spain could learn a lot from Italy. If cooperation with Italy could be deepened, by the pre-dreadnought era, Spain and Italy could quickly become countries possessing battleships.

Although Spain and Italy alone did not seem that powerful, if the two countries united, their naval strength would also be sufficient to threaten the United Kingdom.

Of course, this could only happen if Italy built up its navy on a large scale as in history, and Spain maintained its current naval status.

Considering that Spain’s comprehensive national strength was continuously rising, such a situation was very likely to occur. With Spain and Italy united, the danger posed by their navy alone would be enough to make the United Kingdom pay more attention to the two countries.

With both Crown Prince Umberto and Prime Minister Agosti showing intent to strengthen cooperation with Spain, the discussions between the Spanish and Italian Governments proceeded extremely smoothly.

In just one day, the two sides finalized close cooperation on military technology, with the focus placed on warships.

Currently still in the ironclad ship era, the purpose of Spain and Italy’s collaborative development was precisely to research and develop the next generation of more advanced ironclad ships, to serve as the capital ships of both countries’ navies.

Of course, the developed products could only serve as reference templates, with both countries then making further improvements based on this reference template and their own needs to build derivative products of the reference template.

For example, strengthening firepower, strengthening propulsion, and strengthening armor protection capability, etc.; these were the three most critical factors for warships.

On the basis of collaborative warship research and development, Spain and Italy also signed cooperation agreements in other areas, such as joint research and development of naval guns on warships, warship propulsion units, and armor materials.

Armor materials were still very important for warships. Good materials could make armor thinner and lighter while maintaining protective power, thereby improving the warship’s propulsion.

Even simply enhancing protective power was a huge improvement for warships. Enhancing any one of firepower, speed, or protection was a huge improvement for warships; if all three could be enhanced simultaneously, the warship could undergo a complete transformation.

The upgrade from ironclad ships to pre-dreadnoughts, and from pre-dreadnoughts to dreadnoughts, was all like this—a comprehensive qualitative change driven by technology, resulting in huge breakthroughs in warship firepower, speed, and armor protection capability.

Of course, besides technology, changes also included the ideas and habits of various countries in warship design.

Ironclad ships to pre-dreadnoughts to dreadnoughts were three completely different products, entirely different in appearance, structure, and technologies used.

Carlo did not know much about shipbuilding, so this aspect could only be improved through cooperation with Italy, by Spanish and Italian warship designers together.

Since Italy historically possessed the capability to design the most advanced battleships, cooperation between Spain and Italy would not result in losses.

Moreover, Spain’s capabilities in warship design were also not weak. The combined warship design capabilities of the two countries, even if not matching the British, would absolutely not be inferior to other great power countries when compared, and could even maintain a slight lead.

Besides collaborative research and development in military technology, Spain also signed some other cooperation agreements with the Italian Government.

The most important one among them was the agreement on introducing Italian population.

As early as the previous cooperation agreement signed by the two governments, population introduction was already a quite important aspect.

It was just that Spain was not that stable at the time, and Carlo was not in a hurry to introduce population from Italy.

In recent years, the total Italian population introduced to Spain had not exceeded 100,000, with an average of no more than 10,000 Italians going to Spain per year.

With Spain’s population continuously growing, and Spain domestically now stabilized, it was time to raise this limit.

In this cooperation agreement with Italy, the two governments reached a unified opinion on introducing Italian population.

Spain could independently recruit a portion of immigrants in Italy, but the number of immigrants must not exceed 20,000 per year.

All expenses for the immigrants would be borne by the Spanish Government; for every Italian choosing to go to Spain, the Spanish Government should pay Italy 50 pesetas as compensation.

For the Italian Government, immigrants not exceeding 20,000 per year were not painful. Due to Southern Italy’s relative backwardness, large numbers of people chose to leave Italy each year for other European countries or even the United States and more distant regions.

Rather than letting these populations go to other countries for nothing, it was better to let Spain introduce some. For every Italian immigrant going to Spain, gaining 50 pesetas in compensation was also extra income for the Italian Government.

And for Spain, with at most no more than 20,000 immigrants per year, the maximum immigrant fees paid to the Italian Government would also be only 1 million pesetas.

For the current Spanish Government, 1 million pesetas was just a drop in the bucket; compared to the introduced Italian immigrants, it was completely negligible.

This cooperation could be said to be mutually beneficial for both sides. With Italy’s population approaching 29 million, and large immigrant outflows each year, the population still maintained quite stable growth.

20,000 immigrants per year were also negligible for Italy and would not affect Italy’s population growth data at all.

After signing the cooperation agreement on population introduction with Italy, Carlo became even more satisfied with this trip to Italy.

If 20,000 Italian immigrants could be introduced each year, Spain’s population growth would proceed at an even faster pace.

Do not forget, the Spanish and Russian Governments also had cooperation agreements in this regard. Plus immigrants from other European countries, in the ideal state, Spain could gain nearly 50,000 immigrants per year, something previous Spain dared not even dream of.

Combined with the growth rate of Spain’s current population, Spain’s annual net population growth would exceed 300,

This was already quite a good level among current European countries; after all, Spain’s population was only 66 million.

At such a population growth rate, Spain’s population breaking through 20 million would only take a few short years. As the population grew larger, annual population growth would also break new highs.

Although it could not completely solve Spain’s population shortcomings, for Spain, a bright future was indeed just around the corner.

Besides the population cooperation agreement, the cooperation agreements signed by the Spanish Government and Italian Government also included those on capital introduction.

In Spain, Carlo followed the path of state capitalism, with the royal family and government as official capital leading Spain’s industry and economy.

The benefit of doing so was that the royal family and government had sufficient funds to quickly scale up a certain industry in Spain.

Spain’s industry had also grown rapidly on this development path, with the current industrial scale already comparable to Northern Italy’s industrial scale.

But this did not mean Spain had no problems at all. Because most industries were monopolized by state capital, domestic private capital in Spain was too weak to spontaneously develop a certain industry.

In this regard, Italy’s private capital was stronger than Spain’s private capital, stronger by more than just a little.

The purpose of cooperating with Italy in this aspect was to attract some Italian capital to invest in Spain.

With more private capital driving it, Spain’s industry could develop at a faster pace. If relying solely on government and royal family funds to drive it, the time to see results would definitely be extended.

In fact, compared to Italy, Spain’s northern neighbor France had clearly even stronger private capital.

Spain and France also had some cooperation, and attracting a portion of French private capital to invest in Spain was not a problem.

It was just that the relationship between Spain and France was not that good, only mutual utilization.

After this trip to Italy ended, Carlo would also consider contacting the French Government to introduce a portion of French capital to Spain.

Compared to an inferior great power like Italy, the benefits Spain could gain from France were obviously more. France’s industrial scale and economic scale were not comparable to a country like Italy; even giving Italy decades, it would be impossible to catch up to France.

Italy’s nearly 29 million population seemed large, but France’s population had already broken through 36 million a few years ago.

Although there were no exact figures, it could be confirmed that France’s current population was at least 37 million, a population scale already twice that of Spain’s.

Such a huge population was one of the reasons for France’s strength. Besides this population, France also possessed extremely powerful industry and economy, which was why France held the position of European hegemon before the Franco-Prussian War.

Although this European hegemon failed in the Franco-Prussian War and faced the threat of Germany’s isolate France policy after the war.

But it was undeniable that a skinny camel was still bigger than a horse; in front of Italy and Spain, France remained that powerful European hegemon.

Among all European countries, the ones truly able to match France’s strength were actually only the United Kingdom and Germany.

Russia was somewhat inferior to France, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire was somewhat inferior to Russia. Besides the two that could match, the United Kingdom and Germany, and the two somewhat inferior, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the gap between the remaining great power countries and France was enormous; even the later world hegemon United States was the same.

The United States’ opportunity to rise would still have to wait until World War I and World War II, accurately speaking, after World War II, to become the world hegemon.

Before the United Kingdom, France, and Germany were substantially weakened by the two world wars, the United States was just a parvenu with no resistance against the three.

Carlo’s brought Spanish officials negotiating cooperation agreements with the Italian Government was something Vittorio Emanuele II was aware of.

Upon learning that the two governments had successfully signed cooperation agreements and achieved comprehensive close cooperation in industry, economy, agriculture, military technology, and other aspects, Vittorio Emanuele II also breathed a sigh of relief.

In his view, the Italy and Spain that achieved close cooperation would have the confidence to confront the great powers; facing any of Europe’s five traditional great powers, the two countries would have no need to fear at all.

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