The assassination of Prime Minister Prim also alerted Carlo to the necessity of having a loyal intelligence organization to gather information for him.
Whether it was monitoring domestic affairs in Spain, infiltrating the Republican and opposition parties, or gathering intelligence on the movements and news of foreign countries, it was all very necessary.
To ensure the loyalty of the intelligence department, Carlo decided to start training intelligence personnel from a young age.
In an era when the average lifespan was not long, the number of orphans was still considerable, and Carlo's target was these Spanish orphans.
Orphans generally had tragic childhoods, and Carlo only needed to provide them with a standard of living comparable to that of ordinary people to make them feel grateful.
Once these orphans grew into qualified intelligence agents, their loyalty to Carlo would be higher than that of ordinary people.
However, the drawback was that it would take a long time to train them, with the time cost being at least over ten years, and even more than ten or twenty years in some cases.
Fortunately, Carlo was not old at this time and had ample time to wait for these orphans to grow into excellent intelligence agents.
However, considering that some intelligence personnel were needed immediately while waiting for these orphans to grow, a group of more ordinary intelligence personnel could be trained first to make do.
The large-scale search for assassins had begun on Prime Minister Prim's side.
However, finding clues in the vast city of Madrid was difficult, at least impossible in the short term.
But, were clues really that important?
This assassination was actually an opportunity for Carlo and Prim to have sufficient reason to purge the government's opposition.
Assassinating the prime minister was a severe crime. Attaching this crime to anyone would easily allow for a large-scale purge against them.
With the Carlos faction already eliminated, who else could oppose the increasingly stable Spanish government?
The day after the assassination, Prim requested an audience with Carlo and proposed using the assassination incident as an opportunity to settle accounts with the Church in one fell swoop.
Who the mastermind was no longer mattered; what was important now was to use this opportunity to settle accounts with the Church and take over the vast tracts of land it owned.
It should be known that much of the Church's land was tax-exempt, and the Church collected taxes on this land, with the collected tax revenue going into the Church's own pockets.
If this land could be taken over, it would not only increase agricultural tax revenue for the government but also allow the land to be rented to commoners at low prices, increasing the per capita cultivated area.
The reasons for the low income of Spanish farmers, besides the previously high agricultural taxes and the burden of harsh heavy taxes like the tithe, included another important factor: the continuous decrease in per capita cultivated area.
Although Spain's land area was not inferior compared to major powers, a considerable portion of it was in the hands of nobles and the Church.
Spain had a population of just over 16 million, and theoretically, the per capita cultivated area should be ahead of major powers with less land and more people.
But in reality, Spain's per capita cultivated area was only at a medium level compared to European major powers. Farmers did not have enough cultivated land to plant, so naturally, they would not have high agricultural income.
Carlo naturally had no objections. Solving the problem of the Church, which opposed reform, was a good thing for both the Spanish government and Carlo.
The next day, the Spanish government publicly reported on the assassination of Prime Minister Prim and announced the re-imposition of a state of emergency in Madrid, allowing people in but not out until the assassination incident was thoroughly investigated.
Soon, the streets and alleys of Madrid were filled with police who had been dispatched en masse. Initially, the police's actions were focused on collecting clues about the assassination, but within a few days, it turned into arrests of Church forces.
Although the scope of arrests was not limited to the Church, the largest number of people arrested were from the Church.
This also caught the attention of the Spanish Church, which immediately began negotiations with the Spanish government.
To Pedro, the Chief Archbishop of Spain, the government's actions seemed to show too little regard for the Church.
Although the government did produce some evidence, it was clearly insufficient to send some members of the Church to prison.
Anyone with a discerning eye could see that the government was using this opportunity to settle accounts with the Church, which also caused dissatisfaction and anger among many bishops within the Spanish Church.
"Archbishop Pedro, we cannot sit idly by. If we continue to wait, perhaps we will be the ones arrested tomorrow," said one of the Church's bishops.
"God, is Prim crazy? Arresting Church members so wildly, doesn't he fear our retaliation?" Archbishop Pedro was also stunned at this moment.
He had originally thought that relying on the Church's high prestige and status in Spain would ensure its survival during Spain's reforms.
But unexpectedly, a mere assassination incident caused Prim to turn the butcher's knife on the Church, and many members of the unprepared Church had already been arrested.
"Bishops, are we just going to let the government arrest us like this? This assassination clearly has nothing to do with us, why is the government arresting us without any evidence?"
The bishops within the Church were also filled with indignation. It was no exaggeration to say that everyone present was at risk of being arrested at this time.
Before, they were esteemed bishops, but now they had become targets that the government wanted to arrest and hunt down. Wasn't this trampling on the Church's authority?
Archbishop Pedro's expression looked calm, but his heart was not at peace. To be honest, Archbishop Pedro had no confidence in confronting the government with the Church's strength alone.
The fate of the Carlos faction was still fresh in memory, and the current Church was clearly unable to compete with the government, after all, this was not the era when everyone fanatically believed in the Church and God.
The tithe alone had made farmers very dissatisfied with the Church. Even if the Church incited rebellion at this time, it would likely only attract those fanatical believers in God.
"For now, do not act rashly. I will seek an audience with His Majesty to explain the situation." After careful consideration for a moment, Archbishop Pedro decided not to take the risk.
If resisting the government succeeded, it would be fine, but if it failed, the fate of these bishops might not be good.
At worst, he would lose some of his own interests, but as long as he could maintain his position as archbishop, he could still obtain donations from those fanatical believers through various means.
"You should also thoroughly investigate whether the people under your command have any connection to this assassination. If so, deal with it as soon as possible and do not implicate the Church." Looking at the bishops with varying expressions, Archbishop Pedro finally instructed.
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