Chapter 214: Secret Colonial Expansion

In May 1877, Carlo had just moved his eyes away from the hot bullfighting competition and soon turned his attention to the railway construction in Spain.

Since Carlo was crowned as the King of Spain, a wave of railway construction has erupted in Spain, and the railway mileage has been increasing.

According to the statistics of the current transportation department, the existing railway mileage in Spain has officially exceeded 9,100 kilometers, and it is expected to achieve the goal of 9,500 kilometers this year.

Compared with the more than 5,000 kilometers when Carlo was just crowned, the total railway mileage has almost doubled.

It took Carlo less than ten years to achieve this goal, which is definitely a huge change compared to the reign of Queen Isabel.

The changes brought to Spain by the construction of railways are not only the increase in railway mileage, but also the development of industry and the increase in economy.

So far, the scale of Spanish industry has increased by more than 60% compared to the period when Carlo was just crowned. In less than ten years, thousands of companies have sprung up, and hundreds of them have developed into famous factories and construction companies in Spain. This data is quite exaggerated.

The number of workers in Spain has also grown from a small number of people when Carlo was crowned to nearly one million people now. Workers have become an extremely important group in Spain and are also the target that Carlo wants to win over.

It seems incredible that the king is trying to win over workers, but it is a goal that Carlo has already achieved.

On the premise that the royal enterprises guarantee the interests and income of workers, the newspapers controlled by Carlo vigorously publicize the welfare of workers for royal enterprises and Carlo's protection of workers' interests, which successfully allows the Spanish workers to maintain an attitude of love and recognition for the royal family.

What the workers hate are the capitalists, to be precise, those evil capitalists who exploit workers' interests and deduct workers' wages.

And official capital like Carlo is not among them. After all, official capital in Spain still has certain protection for workers, at least much better than the income and various treatment of workers in capitalist factories.

Speaking of Spain's current railway construction, the results are still quite good.

Picking up the entire Spanish railway route map, it looks more like a tilted letter Y. The intersection of the three lines is Madrid, the capital of Spain, which has one of the busiest train stations in Spain.

The three edges of the letter Y are Santiago de Compostela, the capital of Galicia, Barcelona, ​​the capital of Catalonia, and Seville, the capital of Andalusia.

In addition to the above three regions, the three main railway lines that form the letter Y also pass through Valladolid, the capital of León, Zaragoza, the capital of Aragon, and Toledo, the capital of La Mancha.

The branch lines extending from these three main railway lines pass through more regions and more cities.

These railways are connected to form the railway network of Spain, but the busiest ones are still the three main lines that form the letter Y.

If we talk about the busiest railway, it is definitely the railway between Madrid and Barcelona. Madrid and Barcelona are the two largest cities in Spain, and Zaragoza, which passes through them, is also one of the big cities in Spain.

Madrid and Barcelona are also the two largest industrial cities in Spain, and the industrial output of the two cities accounts for more than half of the total industrial output of Spain.

The reason why Carlo is concerned about the construction of Spanish railways is naturally a good news from the transportation department, that is, the railway from Madrid to Extremadura has been successfully opened to traffic.

Extremadura is a border region of Spain, and to the west is the territory of Portugal.

The reason why Carlo is concerned about the completion of this railway is mainly because to the west of Extremadura is the Portuguese Portalegre region, and to the west are Santarém and Lisbon, and Lisbon is the capital of Portugal.

Spain has previously reached a cooperation with the Portuguese government on railway connection. The main purpose of this railway from Madrid to Merida, the capital of Extremadura, is to connect with the Portuguese railway and directly connect to Lisbon, the capital of Portugal.

The connection of the railways between Spain and Portugal is a big deal for both countries.

Excluding Andorra, a small country without sovereignty, there are only two countries on the Iberian Peninsula, namely Spain and Portugal.

France, the only country bordering Iberia, has a huge gap in railway track width with Iberian countries, which makes economic exchanges between the Iberian Peninsula and the European continent extremely difficult, and most of the time it can only be solved by sea transportation.

In the Iberian Peninsula, there is also a gap in the width of railway tracks between Portugal and Spain. If it weren't for the rich foundation of shipbuilding in the two Iberian countries, the impact of economic incompatibility alone would have hindered the development of the two countries.

After the railway between Spain and Portugal is connected, the economic development of both countries can be accelerated. For Spain, which has a larger population, the benefits will definitely be greater.

If the Portuguese government does not control it, more Portuguese people will definitely flow into Spain.

After all, there is not much difference between the two sides in language and culture, and Spain is in the process of rapid development, and there are many job opportunities that Portuguese people cannot refuse.

After the railway was connected, it became much more convenient for the Portuguese to travel to Spain. The straight-line distance from Lisbon to Madrid is only over 500 kilometers. If you take the current faster train, even if you add the time required for border crossing procedures, it will definitely not take 24 hours.

This will be very difficult for the Portuguese government. If these outflows are not controlled, the population of Portugal will become smaller and smaller.

But if control is carried out, what reason should be used to stop the outflow of these people? If it causes dissatisfaction among these people, it is likely to cause the Portuguese to hate the government more, which will cause bigger problems.

Carlo certainly knows that doing so will bring many problems to the Portuguese government, but who cares?

Spain has so many neighboring countries on the road, and it can't always focus on Britain and France.

In addition to Britain and France, the only country that Spain can think about is neighboring Portugal. It is related to national interests, and this cannot be stopped by some relatives.

What's more, Carlo is not thinking about annexing Portugal at present, but only introducing a part of Portugal's population through railway handover, and using Portugal to promote Spain's development.

As time entered May 1877, another important news also changed the situation in the Balkans, that is, the statement of Germany, another participant in the Three Emperors' Alliance.

For Germany, the choice in this Balkan War was very difficult. Germany's ally Russia was one of the participants in the war, and the other ally was Russia's opponent.

If Germany made a choice easily, it would obviously offend the other ally.

The two allies, Russia and Austria-Hungary, were both great powers, and they were also important executors of the policy of isolating France formulated by Prime Minister Bismarck.

For Germany, choosing any ally would undermine Germany's own diplomatic plan. Therefore, the best choice is to remain neutral, not express your own attitude, and avoid losing any of the two allies.

But as the situation in the Balkans developed, Germany eventually had to choose one of the two allies.

The relationship between allies is not just talk, but to provide their own help at critical moments. If the allies cannot provide help for themselves, then why conclude this alliance?

Before declaring war on the Ottoman Empire, Tsar Alexander II personally sent a telegram to Kaiser Wilhelm I to win the support of the Germans.

For Russia, Germany's support is very important. First of all, Germany's support can ensure that Austria-Hungary will not move, and Austria-Hungary relies on Germany's support to defeat the Russians.

Secondly, with the support of the Germans, Russia will not have any worries during the entire war.

The vast Russian territory will continuously transport supplies to the front line, and Russia has enough confidence to win this war with the Ottoman Empire.

In the end, the Germans chose Russia between Russia and Austria-Hungary.

Speaking of the relationship between the Three Emperors' Alliance, Germany and Russia are pure allies, and Austria-Hungary is more like a licking dog.

Austria-Hungary took the initiative to approach Germany, and before Austria-Hungary took the initiative to show weakness, the relationship between Germany and Austria was still in a hostile state.

Compared with Austria, which had fought a war a few years ago, the Germans obviously believed in Russia, which had no interest threats.

At least in the strategy of isolating France formulated by Prime Minister Bismarck, Russia's role was more important than that of Austria-Hungary.

At present, the Germans are most worried about the hatred between France and Russia. There is not much conflict of interest between them and Russia, which is why Germany finally chose Russia.

With the support of the Germans, the next thing will be easy.

Without the support of Russia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not have the courage to start a war with Russia, which also meant that Russia had the hope of keeping the Austro-Hungarian Empire completely neutral in this war through diplomacy alone.

Russia did it. The Austro-Hungarian Empire did not have the courage to start a war with Russia alone, even if the British had the probability to support the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

With Russia's promise to let the Austro-Hungarian Empire annex Bosnia and Serbia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire finally chose to remain neutral in this war and gave up the idea of ​​interfering in this war.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire's voluntary abandonment also made the British see a greater crisis.

Without the interference of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia only needs to concentrate on dealing with the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire is no longer Russia's opponent. If Russia is allowed to attack the Ottoman Empire at will, perhaps Constantinople will become Russia's next year.

In order to help the Ottoman Empire resist the Russian attack, Hobart, a British who claimed to have converted to Islam, led the Turkish fleet to blockade the Black Sea to prevent the Russians from transporting supplies to the front line by sea.

Speaking of Hobart, he served in the British Royal Navy in his early years and retired with the rank of British naval captain more than ten years ago.

After retiring, Hobart went to the Ottoman Empire and converted to Islam, and was awarded the title of Pasha by the Ottoman Empire.

Pasha was previously called Bessho, which generally refers to senior officials in the administrative system of the Ottoman Empire, such as governors, generals or senior officials.

After a long period of development, the title of Pasha has evolved into an honorary title, similar to the lord in the British title.

Hobart, who was awarded the title of Pasha, has a lofty status in the Ottoman Navy and will even be awarded the rank of naval marshal in the future.

Of course, Hobart's current status and position are also not low. As the actual commander of the Ottoman Navy, he has 22 armored ships, 82 non-armored ships and 763 naval guns, totaling more than 15,000 naval officers and soldiers.

In terms of naval size, the Ottoman Empire's Black Sea Fleet has more advantages than the Black Sea Fleet established by Russia.

Why can the Ottoman Empire have such a large navy? In addition to a small part of the empire's heritage, most of it comes from the help of the British.

In order to prevent Russia from occupying the Strait of Constantinople, the British did everything they could. The Ottoman Empire's Black Sea Fleet also successfully blocked the Black Sea, leaving Russia with only land transportation to transport supplies to the front line.

Although this hindered the offensive on the front line, fortunately the problem was not too big. Although it was at a disadvantage in the navy, the Russian army also had a great advantage over the Ottoman Empire's army.

Since the Black Sea has been blocked, the Russians have completely abandoned the sea transportation routes on the Black Sea and placed all their hopes for the offensive on the army.

The Russian army lived up to expectations and quickly advanced the front line with more victories than losses in the battle with the Ottoman Empire.

It was called advancement, but in fact it was just barely recovering the Romanian territory occupied by the Ottoman Empire.

Because of the flooding of the Danube River and the blockade of the Black Sea, it was difficult for the Russian army to cross the Danube to fight the Ottoman Empire.

For most of May, the Russian army and the Ottoman Empire exchanged fire by bombarding each other, and occasionally firing a few more shots to prove that the war was still going on.

In addition to the consumption of bullets and shells, the casualties of soldiers on both sides have been reduced to a minimum.

Originally, the Russian army had a leading advantage in the number of artillery, but after the consumption in April, the supply of artillery shells on the front line was insufficient.

A correct version in the 16-9 book bar!

This also caused the firepower of Russia and the firepower of the Ottoman Empire to almost drop to the same level, and the army was blocked by the Danube and could not advance an inch on the land of Romania.

The suspension of the offensive made the Russian government begin to become a little anxious.

The front line wastes a lot of bullets and shells every day, and the Russian government's fiscal expenditure is also growing.

If the stalemate continues, it is hard to say whether the government's finances can support it. The supply of bullets and shells on the front line will not be able to hold on anyway.

The front line has a full 3,000 artillery pieces, and each artillery piece fires ten shells a day, which adds up to 30,000 shells consumed.

In a month, the number of shells consumed is close to one million, which is something that Russia's current military production capacity cannot make up for.

Not to mention that during the more tense time of the war, the artillery on the front line will also fire a lot. The consumption of shells and logistics supply issues alone are enough to give the Russian government a headache.

Not to mention that the consumption of bullets on the front line is the biggest. The number of bullets consumed by hundreds of thousands of troops every day is countless. If they cannot be replenished in time, the front-line troops will be demoralized due to lack of logistics supplies. Not only will they be unable to continue to launch attacks, but even defense will be difficult.

We can't let these soldiers fight with the enemy with bayonets without bullets. Let's not talk about whether the Russian soldiers have the courage to fight with the enemy with bayonets. Even if they do, the enemy will not be stupid enough to not fight with bayonets with rifles.

In this case, bayonet fighting is either carried out when the enemy has already entered the trenches, or when the enemy's weapons and equipment are in the lead, or when the ammunition and food are exhausted.

In other cases, especially when the Ottoman Empire's weapons and equipment remain ahead, it is better to suppress with firepower.

Seeing that the blockade of the Black Sea is very effective, the British finally breathed a sigh of relief.

Although such a strategy may not help the Ottoman Empire win the war, it can at least delay Russia for a longer time.

Britain also has more time to prepare. Whether it is joining the war to help the Ottoman Empire, or ensuring that the Ottoman Empire will not lose more interests after the war, especially ensuring that Russia will not expand its sphere of influence to the vicinity of the Strait of Constantinople, it is a direction that Britain can choose.

Although the Austro-Hungarian Empire remained neutral due to various pressures, the British did not believe that the Austro-Hungarian Empire would remain neutral when the Russian sphere of influence annexed the Balkan Peninsula.

To put it bluntly, Russia has not yet won the war, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire has to admit defeat under pressure.

When Russia really threatens the Austro-Hungarian Empire's layout in the Balkans, the Austro-Hungarian Empire will certainly not remain indifferent even if it faces threats.

While the war in the Balkans attracted the attention of major European powers, Spain accelerated its expansion into African colonies and Southeast Asian colonies.

In Africa, Spain has two main directions of expansion.

One is the expansion of the South Moroccan colony to the Western Sahara Desert. Although the Western Sahara Desert is a barren land with a small population, its economic value is still very high.

After all, it is a coastal area. The coast of the Western Sahara region has extremely rich fishery resources, and the small population here is generally dominated by fishery and animal husbandry.

In addition to these common fishery resources, the Western Sahara also has extremely rich phosphate deposits, with reserves of 1.7 billion tons in Bukhara alone.

Phosphate mines have many uses and can be widely used in agriculture, chemicals, medicine and handicrafts.

The most important function is to make phosphate fertilizer, which can provide extremely important phosphorus elements for crops. Phosphate fertilizer is also one of the most important fertilizers.

For Spain, which has insufficient soil fertility, large-scale phosphate mines can provide Spain with a large amount of phosphate fertilizer.

These phosphate fertilizers can improve the fertility of Spanish land, help crops to produce, increase the yield of Spanish crops, and make Spain's agricultural development stronger.

For Spain, it is not difficult to occupy the Western Sahara region.

It is not an exaggeration to say that after Spain established the South Morocco colony, all countries have tacitly accepted Spain's occupation of the Western Sahara region.

Why do you say that? This land was originally controlled by Morocco, but there was no actual management, just within Morocco's sphere of influence.

European colonists also came to this land, but they were not interested in this sparsely populated desert area.

Within a few hundred kilometers of Western Sahara, there are no other colonists' colonies except Spain's South Morocco colony.

Even if Spain does not establish a colony in Western Sahara, no other powers will establish a colony there.

Unless the powers have already divided Africa, it will be very difficult to completely divide Africa in the next ten years.

After all, the reason why the major powers did not go deep into Africa is not that they did not want to, but that the cost of going deep into Africa is too high. At present, no country has the strength to develop the interior of Africa, so there is naturally no need to go deep into the interior of Africa to establish a colony.

Although the Congo territory established by Spain will also arouse the envy of some powerful countries, most countries will regard it as good luck.

After all, the process of Spain's exploration of the Congo territory is full of too many coincidences. If it were not for good luck, Spain would probably not be able to discover such a large territory in the Congo territory.

In the eyes of other European powers, the process of Spain establishing the Congo territory is unrepeatable. If it were to explore the interior of Africa like Spain, there would probably be no other effect except spending a lot of money to set up an expedition team.

It is better to focus on the expansion along the coast of Africa. The land along the coast of Africa has not been divided up by the powers either. This is where the powers focus their attention.

In addition to expanding in the Sahara Desert, Spain also has another expansion direction in Africa, which is to expand the Congo Territory downstream along the Congo River.

According to Carlo's plan, the Congo River Territory will be connected to the Guinea colony and the port downstream of the Congo River by rail.

At present, the Congo and the territory have completed the railway connection with the Guinea colony, but the plan to build a railway along the Congo River has not yet been officially implemented.

The main reason is that there is a long-standing indigenous country in the lower reaches of the Congo River, that is, the Kingdom of Congo.

Most of the land of the Kingdom of Congo is currently controlled by Portugal, and Portugal has also established its own African colony on the land of the Kingdom of Congo.

If Spain wants to continue to expand the Congo Territory in the lower reaches of the Congo River, it will definitely break out a new round of conflict with Portugal.

Portugal did tolerate Spain's establishment of the Congo Territory in the upper reaches of the Congo River, but if Spain also extended its hand to the lower reaches of the Congo River, I am afraid that the Portuguese will not retreat so easily.

After all, the Portuguese expansion in the Kingdom of Congo has lasted for more than ten years. How could they give up these established colonies because of Spain's colonial competition?

Fortunately, the main competitor in the Congo River Basin is only Portugal, and Spain is not afraid of the threat from Portugal.

While the British, Portugal's backer, are focusing on the Balkan Peninsula War, Carlo decided to speed up the expansion of the land in the lower reaches of the Congo River and try to control the Kingdom of Congo in the hands of Spain before the Portuguese.

The Kingdom of Congo has a large indigenous population, which can be used to develop the Congo territory.

Completing the expansion of the lower reaches of the Congo River can also form a triangle between Guinea and the Congo River Basin, and the land in the triangle may be controlled by Spain.

Before there are other foreign competitors in this land, it is very beneficial to take the lead in controlling these lands. Even if it cannot be developed in the future, it can be exchanged from other powerful countries to the colonies that Spain wants more through colonial exchange.

Even if colonial exchange cannot be carried out, this piece of connected colonies is easier to control, and only a certain size of troops need to be dispatched to ensure the stability of the colonies.

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