PS. Present today's update, by the way, pull a vote for the "starting point" 515 fan festival, everyone has 8 votes, and the vote will also give the starting point coin, kneel and beg everyone to support and appreciate!

The number of standing armies (including front-line field troops, local garrisons, and guards) of the empire that implements the policy of the Continental Army is close to one million, which is comparable to the total number of troops participating in the two countries in the early stage of the Franco-Prussian War.

You must know that during the American Civil War, both the North and the South of the United States, with a population of 30 million, were able to arm an army with a total of more than 2 million, not to mention an empire with a preliminary industrial scale and a huge population.

How to say it, if you play the navy, the imperial navy can only shout the slogan of catching up with the British and French naval powers and implement strategic defense, but the army, since the day the Chinese empire was founded, has not been afraid of anyone.

With such a powerful army, there is nothing else that can stop the advance of the Imperial Army except for distance.

The empire has been established for many years, and although the naval expansion seems to be lively, and several warships can be launched every year, in fact, the overall strategic core of the empire is still the strategy of the Continental Army.

A strong army is the foundation of the empire, which is the core view of Lin Zhe and even most people in China.

This can be seen from the Empire's central expenditure budget, which in 1870 totaled about 667 million yen, an increase of nine percentage points from 1869.

Among them, military expenditure reached 133.45 million yuan, accounting for 20 percent of fiscal expenditure.

This is a huge military spending. The navy occupies only a very small part, about 20 million yen. Most of the rest is occupied by the army system.

In the last five or six years, the empire's military spending has been relatively stable on the whole. It remains at about 130 million a year, of course, in a specific year, it will be less, sometimes more, because the total amount of military expenditure has rarely increased substantially, and at the same time the fiscal revenue is steadily increasing, so the proportion of military expenditure in the empire's financial expenditure has been declining year by year, from 40 to 30 percent in the early sixties, and finally 20 percent now.

And if there are no surprises. That is, without the outbreak of a large-scale war or a severe external threat, it is still impossible for the empire's military expenditure to increase significantly, so as the empire's economy continues to develop, the proportion of military expenditure in fiscal expenditure will continue to decline.

The goal of the cabinet in the past two years is to reduce military spending to about 15 percent of fiscal expenditures in the struggle for hegemony, and of course this reduction does not mean that military spending will be cut directly, because this is unrealistic, and the empire has a million army troops. The salaries of personnel alone are a huge amount.

What the cabinet wants is not to directly reduce military spending, but to curb the total amount of military spending, that is, to nail the total military expenditure to 130 million, and no longer increase with the increase in the empire's fiscal revenue.

An army of one million is maintained by hundreds of millions of military expenditures every year. This is where the confidence of the empire against the great powers of various countries lies!

Relatively speaking, confidence in the navy is not so sufficient, although in 1870 it was also invested in the navy military expenditure of more than 20 million. That's about £5.5 million in pounds, and the Royal Navy's military expenditure in 1870 was just over £9 million.

The money was spent. But the Imperial Navy will definitely not be able to get half the strength of the British Royal Navy!

Because the navy is a branch of the military that eats its old roots, what is needed is not a year or two of investment. Rather, it is an investment that lasts for decades, and a few million pounds a year may seem like a lot, but it will cost about the same to build a few warships.

And then the cost of maintaining a fleet is actually more expensive than building ships.

In addition to the warships and the fleet itself, the investment in various facilities is also very huge, and the navy has basically needed several million yuan every year to build major naval bases in the past ten years, which is more than the purchase of battleships.

In addition, although the Imperial Navy has a lot of funds, but in fact there are many places to spend money, first of all, the Empire's preferential military policy, resulting in the treatment of soldiers is generally high, whether it is an officer or a soldier, the salary of its personnel is very high.

For the navy and army of the empire, in fact, the most expensive thing is not the purchase of guns, artillery, warships, etc., but the salary of soldiers.

The expenditure of personnel salaries has always been the largest expenditure of the Empire's navy and army!

In addition, in order to support the development of new technologies by national defense enterprises, the military often places orders with major enterprises in the form of research and development contracts, and then allocates payments to support enterprises to upgrade their technologies.

In other words, the military has taken the risk of developing new weapons and equipment instead of enterprises, and research and development technology is very expensive.

The sum of various factors actually led to the fact that the efficiency of the empire's military expenditure was lower than that of the Western countries in the same period, or much lower.

Because Western countries are reluctant to ignore so much and directly spend money on purchasing weapons and fighting wars, but the responsibility of the imperial military is even heavier.

However, there are pros and cons, these military expenditures will actually end up flowing to society, and the soldiers will have to spend their salaries to support their families, and the soldiers and their families will be able to buy various industrial products only when they have money in their hands.

The military spends money on research and development of enterprises and purchases weapons and equipment from them, and this military expenditure flows to the major defense enterprises, and then to the workers of the defense enterprises and the major suppliers of the defense enterprises, and the funds in the hands of those suppliers of steel, coal, machinery, and chemical industry will flow to the workers.

Broadly speaking, the huge military spending directly provides more than one million military jobs, and through the direct procurement model, especially the defense enterprises and related enterprises provide millions of jobs, if it continues to extend to the outside, then the indirect jobs will reach millions.

After the workers in the jobs get their salaries, they will consume, and finally drive the domestic demand market, and in the economic flow of the market, they will be taxed by the government.

In this way, a complete cycle of tax collection, military spending, and jobs is formed.

In the same way, other major expenditures of the imperial central government are also waiting for this kind of economic circulation.

For an industrialized country, fiscal revenue and expenditure are not only the exploitation of ordinary people, but in fact, it is more important to assume an important part of financial circulation.

After all, for rulers or countries, money is not money, but just a financial instrument, and they are concerned with the stable development of the economic system.

For Lin Zhe, if he increased taxes and reduced the finances at the same time, he ended up hoarding a lot of silver and gold in the treasury or something, these are for him? Useful for the Empire?

It's useless!

This gold and silver cannot be eaten or drunk, and if it is not spent into the economic circulation system, its value will not be much more than a pile of loess.

With the continuous development of the empire's economy, especially the continuous development of the industrial economy, more and more taxes are collected, so the empire is spending more and more generously.

You must know that in 1870, the central government of the empire spent 100 million yuan on education and education, accounting for 15% of the total fiscal expenditure budget, surpassing the tax system in one fell swoop, becoming the second largest expenditure in the country after military spending.

The large amount of education funds invested means that a large number of government-run schools have been opened, and more students can obtain relatively cheap educational opportunities.

The empire in 1870 was in a period of prosperity, and its national strength swelled several times compared with the founding of the state in 1857.

If Europe had been on the edge of the empire at this time, it is estimated that it would have been pushed by the empire long ago.

But there is no such thing as a scenario, Europe is too far away from the Empire, so it is unlikely that you want to attack Europe or intervene militarily in the situation in Europe.

As for diplomatic interference, although the empire's domestic self-confidence is relatively large, we also know that the empire's international influence is now a little stronger than that of the United States, and even inferior to European countries such as Spain and Italy.

Outside of Asia, many countries in other regions ignored the opinions of the empire in international affairs.

It can't be helped, who made the empire so far from Europe!

And the diplomats of the empire are also self-aware, in the Americas, Africa, Europe and other regions, the diplomats of the empire generally only look at it and do not talk about it, anyway, in the end there is no direct interest relationship with the empire.

Therefore, after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, there was no major reaction from the whole empire, only the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the military successively sent diplomats and observer military attachés into Prussia and France, but the purpose was not to intervene in the Franco-Prussian War, but to collect information about the war as much as possible and provide suggestions for the subsequent strategic development of the empire

Interestingly, however, before the Imperial Military Observation Mission arrived in Europe, news came from Paris that Napoleon III had been defeated and surrendered!

After learning the news, Lin Zhe was quite speechless!

Although he knew that France would be defeated, he did not expect that France would be defeated so quickly, it was only a few months before and after, and the observation team he sent had not yet arrived in Europe, and the war was over?

That's not all, within two days, the Imperial diplomats in Paris came with news that after the news of Napoleon III's defeat and surrender reached Paris, the French directly aimed their anger at Napoleon's royal family and directly played the revolution.

The French republic is republican!

[It's about to be 515, I hope to continue to hit the 515 red envelope list, and the red envelope rain will be able to give back to readers and promotional works on May 15. A piece is also love, and it must be better! (To be continued.) )