On the first Monday after the New Year, Napoleon delivered his State of the Union address for the new year. Napoleon declared that France was now in a new danger because of the destruction of some internal and external enemies. But France is still the most powerful and wealthy country in the world, and he and his government will surely overcome the current temporary difficulties and keep France great.

Napoleon then presented the State Council with a budget for the new fiscal year. In this budget, Napoleon proposed to adopt an active fiscal policy and actively expand domestic demand in order to restore the French economy. As a concentrated embodiment of the "expansion of domestic demand", France has greatly increased its military spending.

First of all, France has completed the expansion of its army by 500,000. Of course, Napoleon emphasized that the expansion of the army was not aimed at destroying the peace, but to defend it. The newly expanded army will not be organized into combat units, but will be integrated into the newly formed engineering units.

Of course, other countries do not believe this statement. What they don't believe is not that they don't believe that the French will form a new and large engineering corps, but that they all understand that even if these 500,000 are really engineers, at least they can liberate a lot of combat troops.

However, the bulk of the increase in military spending has been increased to the head of the navy. In the new budget, the Navy received a large amount of money for building ships. It is said that the Navy had previously proposed a plan to build a ship that he thought was very scary, and then Marshal Tréville reported the plan to Napoleon, but it was quickly sent back, and Napoleon added this comment on the cover of his plan: "Little family! ”

So Marshal Trevier made a major revision of the plan. A new goal was proposed, the so-called "two great powers": the French Navy was to become the world's first navy, and the total displacement of the French Navy's warships was to be equal to the sum of the total displacement of the ships of the world's second and third navies.

Considering that the French Navy already had an advantage in the quality of weapons, if there was such a quantitative superiority, would the British have to live? All along, although the British have had to admit that the French are slightly ahead of the British in technology, but in terms of scale, the British still have a slight advantage. Considering that the British Navy is more well-trained and has a higher level of command, (at least, the British themselves think so), the British Navy is still the world's number one navy.

Especially last year, the British also launched a steel battleship called "Queen Elizabeth", this battleship is a more powerful warship than the French "Imperator" class battleship, its displacement is even larger than the "Imperator" class battleship, the full load displacement of the "Queen Elizabeth" has exceeded 10,000 tons, (in fact, the standard row is less than 8,000 tons, which can only be said to be slightly larger than the standard row of 7,000 tons. But the British prefer to advertise its full load displacement) Armament is also more and larger.

The Queen Elizabeth was armed with six of the world's largest 10-inch breech-loading rifled guns, each weighing 500 pounds, and the 150mm guns of the Imberado were nothing more than toothpicks and enoki mushrooms. Of course, the British did not know that the 150 guns of the French had a tube retraction mechanism and a semi-automatic reloading system, and the rate of fire of each gun was up to five to six rounds per minute. As for the 10-pounder guns of the British, it would be good to be able to fire one shot in five or six minutes.

In addition to this, the British claimed that their warships had thicker and stronger armor. This is also true, but the British did not mention the price paid for it, that is, the ship was nicknamed the "Iron Turtle" by the soldiers of the British Royal Navy. As a ship about the size of the Imperator, it has more and heavier guns and thicker armor than the Imperator, so the displacement left for the power system is a bit insufficient. And these displacements have to be weighed between the size of the coal tank and the size of the steam engine, if the steam engine is large, the speed is guaranteed, but the range will be tragic. So, in the end, the ship had to compromise and reduce the top speed to 12 knots.

The drop in speed certainly caused all sorts of problems in the battle, but the launch of the ship still excited the British, who felt that they had finally caught up with the French in naval technology.

However, when the French made public their new ambitious plans to build ships, the British immediately sensed that I could not breathe.

The French intend to begin construction of a new type of warship called the Augustus-class battleship, in their shipbuilding program. The standard displacement of such warships will reach 11,000 tons, and the firepower of the equipment will far exceed that of the "Imbrado class", and the armor will be further strengthened, and the speed will continue to be maintained at the level of the Imbrado. The French intended to build six large docks specifically for this purpose for the construction of such warships. And it is planned that in the next six years, eighteen "Augustus-class battleships" will be produced.

If it was just a matter of the "Augustus-class" battleships, what was even worse was that the French shipbuilding plan was fully rolled out. It also includes the two-thousand-ton "Astute-class" unprotected fast cruisers, the four-thousand-ton "Virgil-class" armored cruisers, and the "Hermes-class" supercruisers with a displacement of seven thousand tons as the next generation of the "Free Trade-class" supercruisers.

Among these warships, the 2,000-ton "Astute-class" unprotected cruisers were mainly used as colonial warships, highlighting their speed and endurance, and their firepower and protection were mediocre, and the threat to Britain was limited. However, the 4,000-ton "Virgil-class" armored cruiser was a great threat to the British, and the displacement of 4,000 tons made it a fairly balanced warship, and it had weak firepower, but it was more than enough to deal with the merchant ships and the existing steel-boned and wood-hulled steam cruisers with a displacement of about 2,000 tons in the hands of the British, and the larger tonnage also made them quite self-sustaining. These warships could easily cross the Atlantic, and with a speed of up to 18 knots, the British could not catch up or run. They were a deadly threat to Britain's sea lanes. And this kind of damn thing, in the plans of the French, one guy will make fifty!

There is also the "Hermes-class" supercruiser, which has the same firepower as the "Imperator-class", but the speed is as high as 20 knots, and although the defense is a little worse, it is also a little worse than the "Imperator-class" battleships, and better than any British warship except the "Queen Elizabeth".

Now the British are in a huge trouble, and if they concentrate their forces on the construction of follow-up ships to the "Queen Elizabeth", then they will not have the strength to meet the challenge from "Virgil" and "Hermes". And if they concentrate on producing escort ships against the latter two, then they will have to consider whether the French will one day directly use the "Augustus-class" battleships to cover the landing of the French Army in Britain.

Both of these outcomes were unbearable for the British, so even if the economic situation was bad, even if the British government was short of money, the British had to immediately adjust their budgets to meet the challenge from France.

The British Parliament convened urgently, and Pitt Jr. was re-elected Prime Minister and quickly adopted a shipbuilding package. The British threatened that for every ton of warship launched by the French, the British would launch 1.5 tons of warship. In order to support this huge shipbuilding project, the British issued a large number of national bonds and forced them to buy them. Naturally, this has caused a lot of opposition in the UK.

Considering that patriotism is an equal right of every British, all Britons should be equal in the purchase of national debt. Therefore, a discriminatory attitude towards a person because they do not have much wealth must not be taken to reduce the amount of government bonds they should buy. All Britons, from the king down to the workers in the factories, should buy an equal share of the national debt. What the? Workers don't have the savings to buy? It doesn't matter, the factory owner will directly buy the treasury bonds in advance with the corresponding wages when the wages are paid, and then issue the treasury bonds to them.

It's not plundering, it's for their good! You must know that these poor people always like to spend money indiscriminately, and they don't know the importance of saving, well, the interest rate on government bonds is a little higher than savings.

Of course, there is always a reason why the poor become poor, either gluttony or laziness. For example, now, they have obtained those treasury bonds, and in order to buy a bite to eat, they actually want to buy the treasury bonds and exchange them for money. Of course, the helpful "great benevolent people" naturally extended a warm hand to them and bought the treasury bonds in their hands at a discount of up to two discounts.

These poor ghosts, who have no plan at all, quickly eat up the national debt. And then they began to starve. This starvation is completely caused by their own indiscretion, inability to manage money, gluttony and laziness. However, not only do they not reflect on themselves, and then they honestly go to their own little dilapidated houses to wait for God's call, but they are like those praying mantis who do not know whether to live or die and block the car, and cause chaos.

This time is not the past, in the past, Britain was still worried about foreign forces interfering or something, and now the French are too busy to take care of themselves, at most they can let off their mouths, what else can they do? So the British directly used the army to suppress it.

But repression is like holding down ten gourds with one pair of hands in the water, pressing down on one and floating that one. First there was a strike by the workers in London, then there were rebels on the Scottish side for independence, then there was some unrest on the Welsh side, and then there was a sudden grenade attack on the London police station...... In short, the British government may need to issue a little more government bonds to spend on maintaining stability at home.