chapter 49 - the great age has come

　There was not much powder in the hands of the militia, and it was impossible to waste it in this way. On their side, however, there were so many hot-blooded lives that it was nothing to waste a little. So they decided, braving the bullets of the defenders, to push the cannons close enough to the Bastille, so close that to let the cannonballs fly would require the same superb skill as a Chinese soccer striker's successful clearance of the opposing team's goal on the goal line, and then open fire to bring down this "fortress of tyranny".

　　However, the ideal is rich, but the reality is always very bone. The cannon had only taken two steps forward when it attracted the attention of the defenders. Some of the defenders were Swiss mountain men. In addition to being equipped with ordinary rifles, they also carried the wire-bore shotguns they usually used for hunting.

　　As a matter of fact, the wire-bore gun appeared quite early in Europe, and the advantages of the wire-bore gun's high accuracy of shooting were widely known, but because the wire-bore gun's rate of fire was too slow, it had a hard time finding its place in the army. (In the era of lining up to shoot, after the first round of flush fire, the soldiers are in front of a thick fog of the battlefield, at this time, they either rush up to fight bayonets, or rush to load another round of probability shooting. (In the first case, not much range is used; in the second case, the rate of fire is more important than accuracy)

　　So this type of weapon, in general, only comes in handy in those places where accuracy is required but the rate of fire is not too demanding - such as when hunting. As a result, military rifles of this era are basically smoothbore, while higher-end hunting rifles, on the contrary, tend to be wirebore.

　　Switzerland is full of forests and mountains, so the smoothbore rifle is quite common among the Swiss. Swiss mercenaries tend to carry their own weapons, so Swiss mercenaries are often equipped with smoothbore shotguns.

　　A few Swiss soldiers with wire rifled shotguns immediately opened fire towards the militiamen who were struggling to push the cannons. To say that the Swiss mercenaries of this era had a really good military quality. Their shooting was quite effective, knocking down three or four more militiamen at once. It's just that the wire rifles of this era are really slow to load. Compared to ordinary smoothbore rifles, their rate of fire was even much slower. So taking advantage of the time those Swiss were loading, those militiamen pushed the cannon forward a bit more. Then the guns went off again, and several more men were knocked to the ground.

　　The militiamen showed real fearlessness. They then set up the cannon under Swiss fire and loaded the powder and shells. In the hands of trained artillerymen, the cannons actually fired at a considerably higher rate than the liners; and in the hands of those trained Royal Navy animals, they might have fired even faster than the smooth-bore guns.

　　Yet it was the Parisian militia, who had never once played with cannons, who controlled them today. The vast majority of them had never touched a cannon once in their lives before this. So their speed of loading the cannon was naturally very slow, so slow that the opposite side's wire rifles fired three rounds and killed more than a dozen people during the time it took them to load a single shell. Only then were they considered to have finished loading.

　　The gun then blew up while firing toward the Bastille - they had stuffed double the powder into the barrel in order to bring down the walls in one shot.

　　"We need real artillery, real artillery!" On the militia side, there was a shout, "Any of you who have been artillerymen before? Please step forward! France needs your contribution!"

　　Yet no one stepped forward. Among the tens of thousands of militiamen besieging the Bastille, there was no one who had been an artilleryman.

　　The situation was again stalemated, the militiamen were still relying on the cover of the houses and firing indiscriminately towards the Bastille, the guards on the Bastille side were a bit more composed, they rarely returned fire, but the return fire was very effective. In the counterfire, those who were hit were all militia, the guard side was almost unhurt until now.

　　...

　　The National Guard in Joseph's neighborhood did not participate in the siege of the Bastille, but instead stepped up their guard, while several of the National Guard's leaders were keeping a close eye on the progress of the battle.

　　"The Bastille is actually not difficult to capture. The key is the militia's lack of qualified artillery. It only takes a few artillery shells to accurately hit the same spot at the base of the city wall to cause it to collapse. Once there was no protection from the walls, what could the hundred or so defenders, do? It's a pity that the militia don't have good gunners." A fat shopkeeper-like man said.

　　"Of course there are good gunners among the militia, but not among that group of hooligans." Char said. Although theoretically we were all "third class", in fact, the people in this neighborhood, including Char, did not hide their contempt for the militia that was now laying siege to the Bastille.

　　Joseph knew what Charles meant; there were good gunners in the militia. Those gunners had been members of the French royal army a few days ago, and in the past two days had suddenly been dismissed from the army for various things, and then immediately joined the militia. But while they were also militia, (just as Char and the others were also third class) they were not the militia that was laying siege to the Bastille - they were the more organized National Self-Defense Army.

　　Joseph also knew to whom these gunners were actually subordinate. The big man in the army, the one who controlled these real fighting "national guards", and whose men, historically, had arrived with a cannon in tow when the attack on the Bastille reached a stalemate, and then forced the defenders to surrender with a continuous and precise artillery barrage. It was because of this decisive act that this great man was able to become commander-in-chief of the National Self-Defense Forces in Paris, and for a time was the pivotal big man of the early days of the revolution.

　　This big man was the Marquis de Lafayette.

　　"This time, however, it was not certain that the Marquis de Lafayette would get what he wanted. Because even without his support, the Duke of Orleans has other methods." Joseph thought.

　　The Duke of Orleans and the Marquis de Lafayette were both great nobles who supported constitutional monarchy. But that didn't mean they were allies. The Duke of Orleans was a member of the royal family, and the suitable candidate for that monarch in a constitutional monarchy that he wanted was himself; but the suitable candidate that the Marquis de Lafayette had in mind was not him. Perhaps the Marquis de Lafayette did not particularly admire the locksmith (Louis XVI. had a hobby of making all kinds of difficult locks), but to him any member of the royal family was better fitted to carry the crown of France than the Duc d'Orléans. For if the Duc d'Orléans had become king, with all his power and influence, he would never have resigned himself to being a rubber stamp.

　　Therefore, the Marquis de Lafayette regarded the Duc d'Orléans as "the greatest threat to democracy". In the original history, the Marquis de Lafayette, after coming to power, immediately used coercion and seduction to throw the Duke of Orleans to England.

　　Now, however, unlike in history, the Duke of Orleans did not have artillery in his hands, but he did have something he did not have in his original history - high explosives.

　　With Joseph's help, Lavoisier used diatomaceous earth mixed with nitroglycerin to obtain a relatively safe explosive. (Of course, it's still no match for the highly obtuse, can't-even-blow-up-with-a-gun contraptions of later times.) With this, it was possible to build the simplest and most violent weapon against all kinds of fortifications - the dynamite packet.

　　The rate of fire of guns in this era is very limited, and the number of people on the defense side of the Bastille is also quite limited, relying on such firepower alone is not enough to stop the militia from approaching the walls of the Bastille. Only, the normal militia with only muskets, even if they rushed under the wall, they couldn't do much with the 30 meter high, 3 meter thick wall, but the Duke of Orleans' men were different, they had deadly weapons that were enough to destroy the wall at once - explosive packets.

　　At this time, a group of National Guard troops dragging a cannon passed in front of the barricade in Joseph's neighborhood. It was evident from the very neat equipment of this NRA, the very neat pace, and the few well-fed horses dragging that cannon, that this was a well-trained group, and in no way comparable to those of the real, swarming militia.

　　"The Marquis de Lafayette is already on the move yah." Joseph thought, "The Duke of Orleans' people should be taking action now."

　　Just then, there was a sudden loud bang. It shook the surrounding window panes and rattled with it.

　　"Is this an explosion in the powder magazine somewhere?" Someone asked in panic.

　　"It seems like it's over at the Bastille, did they really blow up all the gunpowder?" Char frowned.

　　Legend had it that there were hundreds of thousands of pounds of gunpowder in the Bastille. This was of course a rumor, there was simply not that much gunpowder in the Bastille. But earlier in the day, when the warden of the Bastille, de Lornay, had begged for peace from the militia besieging the Bastille, he had threatened to ignite hundreds of thousands of pounds of gunpowder and die with everyone else. So now everyone believed that there was a large amount of gunpowder in the Bastille.

　　"I don't think so." Joseph looked towards the east, then shook his head, "If the gunpowder store had exploded, we should be able to see large plumes of smoke right now, and the smoke we see today isn't big enough."

　　The gunpowder in this era was all black powder, which would all produce a large amount of thick smoke after an explosion. Therefore, this explosion was definitely not a gunpowder magazine.

　　"There wasn't much smoke after the explosion, but it made the house that was so far away vibrate with it, this must be the Duke of Orleans' men using strong explosives. It seems that Marquis Lafayette's team was late. That said, the vibration is so strong, how much explosives did they pack in the explosive bag?" Joseph thought so.