While Cadil Bruno worked himself to the bone for Carlo's orders, Carlo, far away in Madrid, also ended his leisurely life.
After a long wait, Carlo's Royal Armory had finally taken shape. It had recruited some workers from Spanish weapons workshops and heavily poached rifle design experts from countries such as France and Italy.
Starting this year, rifles would enter a brand-new era: the era of bolt-action rifles.
The prosperity of bolt-action rifles would continue all the way until World War II, when they would be replaced by semi-automatic and fully automatic rifles.
As the Spanish Army's primary equipment for nearly the next century, Carlo attached immense importance to the development of bolt-action rifles.
In fact, as early as last year, the Swiss had developed the first practical bolt-action rifle, named the Vitarri rifle.
Not only had this rifle been purchased in large quantities by the Swiss military, but it had also been exported to Italy. That was all Carlo currently knew.
Besides Italy, other countries were also constantly experimenting with bolt-action rifle research. Over the next few years and the coming decade, a great many famous firearms would emerge and prove their worth in numerous wars.
The first task Carlo assigned to the Royal Armory was to purchase a batch of Vitarri rifles from Switzerland, then design Spain's first bolt-action rifle based on the Vitarri rifle's strengths.
For the current Royal Armory, independently developing a bolt-action rifle was still quite difficult. It was not that they could not develop one, but that any bolt-action rifle they developed would have many flaws, with its safety and reliability impossible to guarantee.
A rifle was a soldier's most important weapon. If its safety and reliability could not be guaranteed, how could soldiers confidently carry such a weapon onto the battlefield?
Therefore, before