Arms Race
On the first Monday of the new year, Napoleon delivered his State of the Nation Address. Napoleon declared that France was now in a new danger due to sabotage by both internal and external enemies. However, he asserted that France remained the most powerful and wealthiest country in the world, and that he and his government would surely overcome the current temporary difficulties and ensure France's continued greatness.
Napoleon then submitted a new fiscal year budget to the Council of State. In this budget, Napoleon proposed adopting an active fiscal policy to actively expand domestic demand in order to revive the France economy. The most prominent manifestation of "expanding domestic demand" was a significant increase in France military spending.
First, France had completed the expansion of its army by 500,000 men. Of course, Napoleon emphasized that the expansion of the army was not to disrupt the peace, but to defend it. The newly expanded army would not be organized into combat units, but would be incorporated into newly formed engineering corps.
Of course, other countries don't believe this claim. They don't disbelieve that the France will form a new, massive engineering corps, but rather they understand that even if all 500,000 are engineers, they can still free up a significant number of combat troops.
However, the bulk of the increased military spending still went to the navy. In the new budget, the navy received a large sum for shipbuilding. It is said that the navy had previously proposed a shipbuilding plan that they considered quite ambitious, but after Grand Admiral Treville submitted it to Napoleon, it was quickly rejected. Napoleon even added this comment to the cover of the plan, "Petty!"
Therefore, Grand Admiral Treville made major revisions to the plan, proposing new goals, the so-called "two-strong goal": the French Navy should become the world's number one navy, and the total displacement of the French Navy's warships should reach the sum of the total displacement of the second and third largest navies in the world.
Considering the French Navy's inherent advantage in weapon quality, would the Britain still be able to compete if they also had a numerical advantage? While the Britain have long had to admit that Britain France were slightly ahead in technology, Britain still held a slight advantage in size. Furthermore, considering the British Navy's superior training and command capabilities (at least, that's what the Britain themselves believed), the British Navy remained the world's leading navy.
Especially last year, the Britain launched a steel warship named Queen Elizabeth, a more powerful vessel than the France Inbrard-class battleships. Its displacement was even slightly larger than the Inbrard-class, with a full-load displacement exceeding 10,000 tons (although its standard displacement was less than 8,000 tons, only slightly larger than the 7,000-ton Queen Elizabeth -class, though the Britain preferred to publicize its full-load displacement). It was also equipped with more and larger guns.
Queen Elizabeth was armed with six of the world's largest 10-inch breech-loading rifled guns, each shell weighing 500 pounds. In comparison, Imperator's 150mm guns were like tiny toothpicks or enoki mushrooms. Of course, the Britain were unaware that the France 150mm guns used a recoil mechanism and a semi-automatic loading system, achieving a rate of fire of five to six rounds per minute. The Britain 10-pounder guns, on the other hand, were lucky to fire one round every five or six minutes.
In addition, the Britain claimed that their warships had thicker and stronger armor. This was true, but the price Britain paid for it was not mentioned: the ship was nicknamed "Iron Turtle" by Britain Royal Navy sailors. As a ship roughly the same size as the Imperator, it had more and heavier guns and thicker Imperator, leaving insufficient displacement for the propulsion system. This displacement had to be balanced between the size of the coal bunkers and the size of the steam engine; a larger steam engine would guarantee speed, but the range would be tragically reduced. Therefore, the ship ultimately had to compromise, reducing its top speed to 12 knots.
The decrease in speed would certainly cause various problems in combat, but the launch of this ship still greatly excited the Britain, who felt that they had finally caught up with the France in naval technology.
However, when France unveiled its new and ambitious shipbuilding plans, the Britain suddenly felt like they couldn't breathe.
The France were planning to begin building a new type of warship called the "Augustus-class battleship." This warship would have a standard displacement of 11,000 tons, firepower far exceeding that of the "Imperialo-class," and further enhanced armor, while maintaining a speed similar to the Imperialo-class. The France intended to build six large dry docks specifically for this purpose, and planned to produce eighteen "Augustus-class battleship" over the next six years.
If it were merely a problem with the Augustus- class battleships, it wouldn't be so bad. What's more critical is that the France shipbuilding program was comprehensive. It also included the 2,000-ton Agile-class unprotected fast cruisers, the 4,000-ton Virgil- class armored cruisers, and the 7,000-ton Hermes- class super cruisers, which were the next generation of the Free Trade-class super cruisers.
Among these warships, the 2,000-ton Agile-class unprotected cruisers were primarily used as colonial vessels, emphasizing speed and range, with only average firepower and protection, posing a limited threat to Britain. However, the 4,000-ton Virgil -class armored cruisers posed a much greater threat. Britain 4,000-ton displacement made them a well-balanced warship; while their firepower was relatively weak, it was more than sufficient to deal with merchant ships and the existing 2,000-ton steel-hulled, wooden-hulled steam cruisers in Britain possession. Their larger tonnage also gave them considerable endurance. These warships could easily cross the Atlantic Ocean, and with speeds reaching up to 18 knots, they were virtually impossible for the Britain to catch or escape. Their threat to Britain sea lanes was deadly. And the France planned to build fifty of these deadly vessels!
There was also the Hermes- class supercruiser, whose firepower was comparable to the Inbrard-class, but whose speed reached 20 knots. Although its defense was slightly inferior, it was still inferior to the Inbrard-class battleships, and better than any Britain warship except for the Queen Elizabeth.
The Britain were now in a huge predicament. If they focused their efforts on building successors to the Queen Elizabeth, they would be unable to cope with the challenges posed by the HMS Virgil and Hermes. On the other hand, if they concentrated on producing escort ships to counter the latter two, they would have to consider the possibility that the France might one day use the Augustus- class battleships to cover French Army landing in Britain.
Both of these outcomes were intolerable to the Britain, so even with the current poor economic situation and the Britain government's financial difficulties, the Britain had to immediately adjust their budget to meet the challenge from France.
The British Parliament convened an emergency meeting, and Pitt Jr. was re-elected as Prime Minister. He quickly passed a comprehensive shipbuilding plan. The Britain boasted that for every ton of warship launched by the France, the Britain would launch 1.5 tons. To support this massive shipbuilding program, the Britain issued a large amount of national debt and mandated that citizens purchase it. This naturally generated widespread opposition within Britain.
Given that patriotism is an equal right for every Britain, all Britain should be treated equally when it comes to purchasing government bonds. Therefore, there should be no discrimination based on a person's wealth, nor should their share of government bonds be reduced. Every Britain, from the King to factory workers, should equally purchase a share of government bonds. What? Workers don't have savings to buy them? No problem, factory owners will use the corresponding amount of their wages to purchase government bonds in advance, and then distribute the bonds to them.
This isn't plunder, it's for their own good! You know, these penniless people always like to squander money and don't understand the importance of saving. Hmm, the interest rate on government bonds is even higher than that of savings.
Of course, there's always a reason why the poor remain poor—it's either greed or laziness. For example, now that they've received those government bonds, they actually want to buy them and exchange them for cash just to buy something to eat. Naturally, the helpful "philanthropists" extend their enthusiastic hands to them, buying the government bonds at a discount of up to 80%.
These poor wretches, with no planning whatsoever, quickly squandered the national debt. Then they began to starve. This starvation was entirely their own fault for being careless, incapable of managing money, and both greedy and lazy. Yet, instead of reflecting on their actions and obediently returning to their dilapidated huts to await God's call, they acted like those foolish mantises trying to stop a chariot, causing chaos.
This was a different time than before. In the past, Britain worried about foreign interference, but now the France were too busy taking care of themselves to do much, and could only make empty threats. So the Britain directly used their army to suppress them.
But suppression is like trying to hold down ten gourds in water with one pair of hands; as soon as one is submerged, another floats up. First, there was a strike by London workers, then rebels in Scotland started a fight for independence, then things became somewhat unstable in Wales, and then the London Police Department was suddenly attacked with Grenade... In short, the Britain government will probably need to issue more national debt to cover the expenses of maintaining stability at home.