My Italian: Chapter 358 army ambitions

In the 1896 Italian government budget, the Ministry of Education was the big winner. Of course, apart from the Ministry of Education, other departments have their own gains.

In any case, the Italian budget reached a new high in 1896, totaling 1.756 billion lire. Among them, military expenditure is still the largest category, and the cost of 371 million lire is the largest category of the budget.

Of course, in this first category, naval funding has also hit a new high, and the cost of 179 million lire is very good. Of course, this cost also includes the appropriation for the first year of the five-year shipbuilding plan. Even after deducting it, the Navy still has 115 million lire.

For these expenses, the cost of living wages of naval personnel needs 47.1 million lire. Then there is the cost of training and maintenance, in which the navy spends 34.1 million lire. Then there are the three phases of equipment purchase cost, engineering construction cost and scientific research funding, and the total cost is 33.8 million lire.

Among them, engineering construction costs and scientific research funds account for the bulk of it. Equipment procurement costs, also due to the impact of the shipbuilding plan, are mainly for the update of warship equipment. As for the procurement of new warships, they are directly incorporated into the five-year shipbuilding plan. up.

Well, in fact, compared with the active navy in all aspects, the army still spends most of its military expenditure.

However, don't look too much at the army's funding, but it can still only be considered as a hand.

First of all, the army has more personnel. Even if the army's salary is very low, it is still an expensive expense. The annual living salary of 63.1 million lire is not less than a penny.

In addition to this personnel cost, its training and maintenance costs are also 52.4 million lire. Then there are three items: equipment purchase cost, engineering construction cost and scientific research funding.

However, compared with the navy, the army's equipment procurement costs are the absolute bulk, accounting for as much as 51.2 million of the 76.5 million lire.

Such a high procurement cost of the Army is also necessary, according to the 1895 Italian Army Organization Plan formulated by the Chief of General Staff, Admiral Simeone. Each Italian army division needs to have 72 tube artillery pieces of various types. At present, the 24 divisions of the Italian Army need 1,700 artillery pieces. In addition, the army currently has six independent heavy artillery regiments, each equipped with 24-52 large-caliber artillery pieces. This is more than 200 large-caliber artillery pieces. .

If you add the fixed artillery of the fortress and checkpoint, then the actual artillery demand of the Italian Army is more than 2,400.

So does Italy currently have 2,400 artillery pieces?

In fact, there are, and not only but also exceeded the standard.

However, the number of artillery that exceeds the standard of the Italian Army is actually more artillery that does not meet the requirements.

At present, the era of rapid-fire guns has entered, and the armies of various countries are scrambling to replace the rapid-fire guns with tubes and tubes. As a member of the great powers, the Italian Army is of course unwilling to lag behind. The Italian Army is also replacing artillery.

And this artillery is expensive, and it will not be possible to replace it in a short while.

Moreover, the Italian Army has other thoughts in it, and the replacement of this gun is even slower.

In recent years, the Italian Army has had frequent exchanges with Germany and Austria, and the scale of the confrontation exercises has become larger and larger, and there are already military-level confrontations.

The Italian Army has benefited a lot from the exercise and confrontation, and corrected many problems found. However, there is one problem that requires a lot of work, and that is the problem of artillery.

In many exercises, the Italian Army's small and medium-sized artillery was completely crushed by the German large-caliber artillery.

Regardless of power or range, most of the artillery equipped by the Italian Army is slightly inferior.

This is indeed the case. At present, the Italian Army's division-level artillery is mainly equipped with 76mm mountain field artillery, and there are also a small number of 80mm and 57mm artillery. At the division level of the German army, there are 77mm field guns and 105mm howitzers. At the division level, the quality of Italian artillery is completely defeated. As for the gap between Italy at the first level of the army, the 105mm howitzer and 120mm cannon are equally difficult to match the German 150mm and 120mm artillery.

Considering that the main imaginary enemy of the German army is the French army, the Italian Army, which has the same goal, must make some changes.

The General Staff led by Admiral Simeone did have this idea. In view of the fact that the large number of artillery calibers in the army is not conducive to logistical considerations, they first determined the requirement for a unified artillery caliber. 37mm, 57mm, 76mm, 105mm, 120mm, 150mm, 210mm, 240mm, these calibers will serve as the unified standard for Italian Army artillery.

As for artillery of other calibers in the army, in principle, try to replace them as much as possible. These replaced artillery can be sold to other countries for use.

Of course, the goal of unifying the caliber is to enhance the combat effectiveness of the army. Therefore, in Admiral Simeone’s plan, the army needs to eliminate 57mm artillery for divisions and increase the demand for a battalion of 18 105mm howitzers. In addition, at the army level, 105mm artillery can be delegated to divisions and 150mm artillery can be added.

Of course, in addition to the enhanced artillery, Simeone and the others considered the current military needs and believed that more defensive weapons such as the Maxim machine gun needed to be equipped, so it was very reasonable for a battalion to have 4 guns. In addition, taking into account the pressure on logistics from the enhancement of technical weapons such as artillery, the number of logistics personnel has also been increased by certain personnel and animal-drawn vehicles.

And this kind of division with enhanced firepower and logistics personnel is the 1895 establishment division identified by Simeone.

However, to complete the refitting of all divisions and corps in Italy, the army's military expenditure is simply not enough.

My family knows my own affairs, so the General Staff and the Ministry of the Army plan to use 2-3 armies and their subordinate divisions as pilots to test the combat effectiveness of this Italian army with heavy firepower standards.

Of course, the cost of such troops will not be too low. After all, the factory cost of a 105mm rapid-fire howitzer is as high as 150,000 lire, not to mention that the artillery is not cheap. A 105mm high-explosive shell costs 206 lire. The purchase fee can't buy much.

But no matter what, this also represents a change in the Italian Army. It is no longer satisfied with the conservative thinking based on homeland defense, and wants to pursue the idea of ​​​​defending the enemy outside the country.

Of course, the development of the Italian Army is a good thing.

In addition to the second-ranked education budget and the first-ranked military budget, the Ministry of Transport can rank third. As the department mainly responsible for the planning and construction of Italian transportation, it has received a budget of 268 million lire.

Although Italy's shipping is relatively developed due to the terrain ~www.mtlnovel.com~, it will not forget the road construction on land. At present, the Italian Ministry of Transport has repaired the railways to all major regions.

But in addition to railways, ordinary roads also need to be repaired and maintained. Examples include cobblestone roads connecting towns, and compacted cinder and asphalt roads connecting cities. Of course, these are not enough, and the expansion of various ports is also included. At present, the Italian economy is developing very well, so the demand for terminal throughput is relatively high. Therefore, many terminals in Italy have been expanded to meet the increasing cargo throughput.

In addition, there are many things that the Ministry of Transport needs to pay attention to, such as the maintenance of the Libyan iron ore railway, and the maintenance of the Kosovo coal railway. These two heavy freight railways are very important to the Italian steel industry, and the transport department needs to pay more attention.

The Italian Ministry of Transport has a large amount of funds, as well as other departments, such as the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Industry, and the Department of Trade, etc. The expenditures of these departments constituted the composition of the Italian government budget in 1896.

Of course, the government needs to refer to the fiscal revenue of the previous year when designing the budget. So what was the total fiscal revenue of Italy in 1895?

Please remember the first domain name of this book: . :