Chapter 48: Rumors and the National Guard (4)

Char couldn't find a reason to object to this suggestion. Although Joseph wasn't a command instructor, but when instructing everyone on the construction of the barricades, everyone still felt that an instructor who taught at a military academy was far from being able to compare to a layman like himself in terms of military capabilities.

　　"Of course there is no problem, as long as Mr. Bonaparte is willing, we are naturally beyond welcome." Char smiled, "I wonder if Mr. Bonaparte is willing to help us."

　　"As a member of the community, I am naturally duty bound. However, as you all know, I am an active duty soldier, so if there are military orders dispatched from above, then I must prioritize military orders. As long as it doesn't go against military orders, I am willing to do my part." Joseph replied.

　　"Then, let us all express our gratitude to Mr. Bonaparte!" Char said.

　　With that, Joseph became the military advisor to the National Guard of the neighborhood. It was then agreed that tomorrow they would begin to convert the neighborhood militia into the National Self-Defense Forces and begin their military training.

　　But this intention almost immediately came to naught. For at noon that very day, a new rumor appeared.

　　This rumor stated that cannons from the heights of Montmartre and the Bastille had been aimed at the city of Paris. An army loyal to the king was about to launch an attack on Paris.

　　It was a rumor, of course, but the vast majority of Parisian citizens believed it. And there's no way to dispel such rumors. This is not only because "rumor mongers talk, rumor mongers talk", but also because at this point in time, it would be politically incorrect to dispel a rumor. Anyone who tries to dispel rumors will be regarded by the angry public as "the tyrant's lackey". They will not hesitate to hang these people on streetlight poles.

　　Since no one dared to refute the rumors, they naturally became more and more believable. No one dared to mention the loopholes that were already in the rumor, and even in the midst of spreading it, it was filled up again without a word. In short, the rumor made almost all the citizens of Paris believe it.

　　The citizens of Paris had armed themselves partly in these days, especially after the capture of the undefended Yard of Honor, from which more than thirty thousand rifles, and a dozen cannons had been obtained. Only the Rongjun Yard contained only these guns and artillery, but not enough gunpowder.

　　So a new rumor arose, based on the previous one, that there was a large amount of gunpowder in the Bastille. This rumor was "reasonable", because if the king intended to use the Bastille's cannons to suppress the revolt in Paris, they would naturally have to stockpile enough gunpowder in the Bastille.

　　Attacking the heavily fortified heights of Montmartre would have been beyond the reach of the Parisian militia. But the Bastille seemed to be much more manageable in comparison.

　　The Bastille was built during the Hundred Years' War between Britain and France, and was originally built as a fortress outside the gates of the city for the defense of Paris. It has eight towers of about 30 meters high, the towers are connected by a wall of 30 meters high and 3 meters wide, and later, 15 cannons on the wall; the castle is surrounded by a 26-meter-wide and 8-meter-deep trench, the trench and the Seine River is connected to the outside world with only a drawbridge. It was a fortified castle.

　　But later, with the expansion of the city of Paris, originally outside the city gates of the Bastille fortress into the city's internal buildings, its military role in defending Paris was weakened. So the Bastille as a military fortress died and was replaced by the Bastille as a bastion of royal power.

　　In the late 14th century, the fortress was converted into a royal prison for the most important "prisoners". Many of these prisoners were political prisoners. Therefore, in the minds of the French, this prison is almost a symbol of the French autocracy.

　　The Bastille garrison consisted of eighty-two men, and at the beginning of July, thirty-two Swiss mercenaries were transferred to the Bastille to strengthen the defense. But in terms of the number of defenders alone, it could not be compared to the heights of Montmartre. And because of lack of maintenance, the trenches next to the Bastille are now dry. This has further reduced the defense capability of this past fortress. This made the militiamen feel even more that they should be able to take down this fort.

　　So, early the next morning, a large (no one knew exactly how many) and disorganized armed populace began to approach the Bastille. Naturally, this event also forced Char's intention to reorganize the neighborhood's national self-defense forces to be postponed.

　　The Bastille was surrounded by tens of thousands of armed Parisian citizens, but these armed citizens with only rifles didn't really have much of a chance against the Bastille. The walls of this fortress were too high, and the trenches around it, though no longer watered, were still too wide and deep to climb over.

　　But de Lornay, the commander who guarded the Bastille, thought otherwise. For the seemingly tall, sturdy and impregnable Bastille was, after all, only a fourteenth-century fortress. Many of its designs and concepts are so far behind the times that one could even say, "My lord, times have changed."

　　The towering walls of the Bastille would have been virtually unconquerable in a fourteenth-century setting. But such towering, vertical walls have become a glaring weakness in the present day. the Battle of Constantinople in 1453 had proved that tall, vertical walls are very susceptible to massive collapse under artillery fire. So the walls of the fortresses thereafter gradually became lower and thicker, and the walls became more and more inwardly sloping. This prevented the walls from collapsing massively under artillery fire. But these improvements could not be seen on the Bastille.

　　The walls of the Bastille were too high, up to 30 meters high and completely vertical, yet only 3 meters thick. Such walls could not withstand the bombardment of artillery. And because there was no longer a requirement to clear the firing line after it was changed to a prison, various buildings were also built into the neighborhood of the Bastille, which made the line of sight of the guards on the Bastille quite obscured.

　　So de Lornay wasn't at all sure about being able to hold this ancient fortress.

　　So when the citizens began to close in on the Bastille, de Lornay forbade the soldiers to shoot at the approaching citizens and offered them peace talks.

　　It took a lot of time for the citizens, in a chaotic manner, to elect a group of representatives to enter the Bastille to negotiate with the defenders. However it was during the negotiations that a new rumor began to spread amongst the citizens due to miscommunication and the fact that the negotiations consumed so much time.

　　This rumor claimed that the delegates to the Bastille had been killed by the "tyrant's dogs" in a brutal and merciless manner. This rumor immediately enraged the tens of thousands of "armed mobs" gathered outside. The crowd began to approach the Bastille, shouting:

　　"Down with the Bastille, kill the bad guys!"

　　"Kill them all! Kill them all!"

　　"Charge up! Go on!"

　　Someone took the lead and sang the Slave War Song, one or two at first, then more, which came together to form a rushing river toward the Bastille. Tens of thousands of militiamen, with rifles in their hands, sang "The old world is in ruins, the slaves rise up" as they approached the Bastille. Some of the fastest militiamen had even crossed the dry trench and climbed to the drawbridge, where they swung their axes and tried to cut the chains that hung from the drawbridge.

　　One of the Swiss guards, in a panic, fired a shot at the militiaman holding the axe aloft. So all peace negotiations went out the window, and the militiamen immediately fired back, and everyone crackled and fought.

　　The battle was not going in the militia's favor, though; the Bastille's predecessor was, after all, a fortress, and even if it was only a fourteenth-century fortress, it still gave the defenders more of an advantage. In a rifle firefight, the guards, who had the cover of the fortress and were high up on the ground, easily took down a good number of militiamen, and the militiamen, who lacked training and, despite their numbers, couldn't even aim effectively, and many had never even touched a gun before this, and didn't even know how to aim it (but then again, whether or not smoothbore rifles can hit or not, a lot of the time, doesn't depend on the aiming exclusively.) , after they fire, it's basically up to faith whether or not they can hit their target. So they fired their guns in disarray, crackling and popping, and although it looked like a lot of fun, the result was that they basically failed to hit any targets. (In the original history, until the surrender of the Bastille, only one of the defenders was slightly wounded.) But the defense's firepower was far more effective, quickly knocking out dozens of militiamen and silencing the rest, who would have suffered far greater losses if it weren't for the fact that there were a lot of buildings near the Bastille that could provide them with cover.

　　For some time thereafter the engagement went into a stalemate. On more than one occasion, Commander de Lornay hung out his banner in the hope of negotiating a truce with the besiegers outside, but his gesture was rejected without hesitation by the besiegers outside. What de Lornay was doing, they thought, was merely deceiving everyone, and he was no longer in a position to surrender after his men had fired on the people!

　　But it was one thing not to accept negotiations, and another to be able to fight their way in, and the militiamen used all sorts of means, including some whimsical ones. For example, it was suggested that burning linoleum cloths could be used to start fires, or even to burn down the defenders' artillery. However, after setting the linoleum cloth on fire, they realized that there was no way they could get the burning linoleum cloth over the thirty-meter-high wall.

　　Of course there were people who thought of cannons, and the militia did have cannons in their hands. But they lacked gunners, so the few shelling attempts at a safe distance were very unsuccessful. Although the Bastille was, in theory, a massive target, and it was not easy to fire at it and hit it crookedly, the militia gunners, who had never used cannons before, managed to get their shells to avoid the massive target in front of them. They fired several shots, but even one of them managed to have managed to hit the walls of the Bastille.