Gao Hongsheng, who was disturbed by the news from Spain, completely lost his enthusiasm for having a good time during the Lunar New Year, and he threw the rest directly to Hong Jincai and they continued to operate, while he was locked in the room, anxiously spending his first Spring Festival in this world.

No one can be calm about this matter, mainly because whether this thing is successful or not has a great impact on his future plans.

Leased to the southern Philippines, there is also a forward base for plotting the Philippines in the future, and in the near future, if you want to fill the blockage for the Americans and make them bleed more, you must have a safe weapons sales point.

After the Austro-Constitutional Empire leased it from Spain to the southern Philippines, Gao Hongsheng could unscrupulously and justifiably transport all kinds of weapons and ammunition to any location in the southern Philippines, and then sell those weapons and ammunition to the "free warriors" of Luzon at a high price, whether openly or secretly, of course, if the Americans with deep pockets also want to buy them, he will also welcome them very much, so that the cost of leasing the southern Philippines will not be long before they flow back into his wallet.

The most important thing is that Gao Hongsheng's small arms and legs are really a little thin, and when facing those powers, he must let Austria-Hungary stand in front, otherwise he will not have to pay so much protection money.

Don't think about Hainan there, it is the territory of the Qing Dynasty, if you want to develop Hainan, you must build your own navy, and it is also a navy that can resist the world's naval forces, otherwise look at the Beiyang Naval Division that was abolished by the British, and the Russian Navy that was crippled will understand, otherwise when you develop it, those powers who are eyeing each other will take a look, oops! How can there be such a good place in the Great Qing Kingdom, rob it! Then it would be too late to cry.

The development of the southern Philippines is not so troublesome, in any case, nominally it is the territory of Austria-Hungary, and if you want to do something there, you have to ponder whether Austria-Hungary agrees or not, and you don't have to go with the Qing Dynasty.

Gao Hongsheng, who had been waiting in the room for a whole day, did not wait until the evening, when Ferdinand and the Spanish minister happily brought good news, which made him feel a little better.

The Spanish regent promised to sign a secret treaty on the condition that the original agreement would continue, but this was only an overt agreement, and there was a secret fund of 1 million pounds for the Spanish royal family, and Austria-Hungary would help the Spanish crown in case of threat.

It was true that the Spanish royal family was too powerless in the country of Spain, far from reaching the power that several other imperial royal families of this period should have.

In this way, Gao Hongsheng's cost of purchasing the southern Philippines has risen to more than 7 million pounds, but since 5 million pounds is paid in the form of weapons and ammunition, and at the same time, 5 million pounds of weapons and ammunition can be supplied in batches, so that the time can be delayed for a year and a half, otherwise he would have to continue to seek loans from the Bank of Vienna.

It's just that the weapons and ammunition originally planned to be shipped to South Africa must be immediately shipped to Cuba and the Philippines, and the Boer War of the British will not begin for a while, and now the British blockade has not yet begun, and it is still possible to wait, but Cuba and the Philippines are more urgent, and even if they are loaded immediately, it will take nearly half a month to sail to reach their destination. If you count the dragging Spanish logistics system, the miserable soldiers in Spain don't know how long they will have to wait to equip themselves with new weapons.

Fortunately, the first batch of weapons and ammunition provided to them was only a small part of it, except for a small number of rifles, most of them were Madson light machine guns, which were not available in Spain, and the Maxim heavy machine gun, which was extremely poorly equipped, and the Maxim heavy machine gun MG08, which was extremely poorly equipped.

As for the mortars and 75mm rapid-fire guns that Spain has always wanted, they are limited to the pitiful manufacturing capacity of the current Skoda Arsenal, and now even the number of people Gao Hongsheng wants to bring back to China to train bandits is not enough, and those colonial soldiers in Spain have to wait and talk.

In terms of transportation, Gao Hongsheng doesn't have to worry about it, Ferdinand took this thorny problem over, he was really a little embarrassed, Austria-Hungary only needs to pay a little bit of fame, and then turn around, Gao Hongsheng needs to pay Austria-Hungary nearly four million pounds in cash in order to sublease it from Austria-Hungary to the southern Philippines, which is too easy to make.

But people! You can't be rich, especially if a person who originally had no money suddenly won the jackpot and became rich, he would generally burn the bag, and Archduke Ferdinand was such a person.

Early the next morning, Archduke Ferdinand sent Popper (Si**fried

After the Austro-Hungarian chief ship designer was summoned, Gao Hongsheng, the person who gave him the grand prize, almost fell into a collapse.

After some introduction, after driving away the other people in the room, the most disadvantaged Poper was treated as a servant, with two beards and a face full of grievances, he took out a drawing from the long paper tube he brought over, carefully cleaned up a place on Gao Hongsheng's messy big desk, unfolded the drawings little by little, and carefully pressed the four corners of the drawings with the things on the table, and then stood respectfully in the corner of the desk, suppressed the anger in his heart and whispered: "Mr. Gao, You can come and see, here are the drawings of my new design of the new warship, Archduke Ferdinand said, you must get your approval before it can be delivered to the shipyard for manufacturing. ”

Gao Hongsheng flicked the ash on the modern filter cigarette in his mouth into the ashtray, smiled apologetically at Poper, turned his head and frowned at the smiling Ferdinand and asked, "What's the situation?" I don't know much about ship design, so I don't want to read it. ”

"No, no, we've been secretly working on that since you gave us those new technologies, but there's not much progress at the moment, but the slipway can't be empty, we have to produce something! The design work on this battleship began long before the construction of the Monarch-class battleships, and now that three Monarch-class battleships have been built, the slipway has long been vacated, and if it continues to drag on without the construction of new ships, the shareholders of those shipyards, well! You know, I'm not going to talk about that. Take a look for us and give us some more opinions. ”

"Slipway, won't an empty slipway make a ship? Merchant ships are not low in profits, right? ”

"That, high, we have to produce warships, Italy's new warships are about to be built in the shipyard, according to the information we have obtained, it is a big guy with a standard displacement of more than 13,000 tons, and we only have three monarch-class battleships of more than 5,000 tons in our hands, we can't wait until the Italians' new ships are launched, we can't start building our new ships, you know, Italy has not been very friendly with us.

"Don't mention your monarch-class battleship, that broken thing can only be regarded as a coastal defense battleship in the future, a small monster with multiple turrets, weak firepower, poor sailing performance makes people speechless, and the design of waterproof mines and torpedoes is simply the same, a broken thing sent to the bottom of the sea with a torpedo, you better find a way to sell that thing, it is useless at all, a garbage ship, a particularly special garbage ship. Well! It's not garbage yet, but it's going to be scrap metal in less than ten years. Gao Hongsheng pouted and said.

The Sovereign class here is not the Habsburg-class and the "Karlduke"-class dreadnoughts, let alone the familiar world's first combined-force battleship equipped with triple turrets, but the battleship Vienna, which began construction in 1893 and was launched in 1895 and completed until 1897, and the two subsequent battleships "Sovereign" and "Budapest", which were completed in May 1898.

Although the monarch-class battleship is claimed to be a battleship, the standard displacement is only 5547 tons, and the full load displacement is only 5785 tons.

The power of the Vienna is provided by a reciprocating steam engine (the kind used by the Titanic) propelled by 12 coal-fired Belleville boilers, the thrusters use twin-shaft twin-rudder propellers, with a total power of 8,500 horsepower, a standard speed of 8 knots, a cruising range of 2,200 nautical miles at 12 knots, and a continuous voyage of 3,500 nautical miles at 9 knots. Six 150mmL-40 single-mounted turrets are secondary guns with three on each deck on each side, 10 47mm rapid-fire guns are arranged on the upper floor, and four 47mm rapid-fire guns are arranged in the middle of the two masts on the upper floor, which is a multi-turret monster.

Speaking of which, the former dreadnought-class battleships are multi-turret monsters, the basic appearance is that there is a twin-mounted turret on the front and rear decks that can rotate, and the middle of the ship is a chimney and several secondary guns symmetrically distributed on both sides of the ship's side on the same deck, followed by the wheelhouse and the command tower on the upper floor, and a few rapid-fire guns are arranged before and after, and finally a small platform is made in the middle of the two masts before and after, and many ships are also arranged with several rapid-fire guns, giving people the feeling that it is a steel monster covered with hedgehogs and sticking out of the barrels everywhere.

The reason for this arrangement is mainly because the firing rate of the main gun at that time was too low, and the hit rate was even less pitiful, and it was too difficult to rely on the main gun to destroy the enemy's ships that were also equipped with armored steel, so I had to find another shortcut to equip some more secondary guns, and use the high firing rate of the secondary guns to increase the number of shells thrown per unit time to increase the hit rate.

Ferdinand and Poper both blushed and did not say a word, looking at Gao Hongsheng with vicious eyes like a complaining little daughter-in-law, mainly because Gao Hongsheng This guy is too shocking, he finally scraped together some money to build a few ships, and he was called a garbage boat when he was launched or even before he was launched, but what Gao Hongsheng said was not wrong at all, this is really incomparable, the British monarchy. The former dreadnought battleship Empress of India, started construction in 1889, launched in 1891, and completed in 1893, so many years earlier than his own ship, but look at others, the standard displacement is more than 14,000 tons, the caliber of the main gun is 343 mm, and the secondary gun is equipped with ten 4mm rapid-fire guns, how can this be compared with others, not to mention the majestic class former dreadnought battleship that was commissioned in 1895 two years earlier than himself, with a full load of 16,000 tons, twin 305 mm guns, 12 152 mm secondary guns, 16 76mm rapid-fire guns, the use of Harvey steel armor plate to obtain sufficient protection with less weight, the most frustrating is that the main gun is smokeless gunpowder to shoot armor-piercing shells, the penetration performance has been greatly improved compared with the previous 5-inch gun, and the weight has been greatly reduced, Austria-Hungary is still using the old maroon gunpowder as a propellant, the power of this gun is a big difference with others.