Calais Battery (2)

Lieutenant Colonel Antoine de Villefort, the fortress commander, was a tall man in his forties. He seemed delighted by Joseph's visit.

"Ah, Mr. Bonaparte, I thought it would be several more days before you arrived," Commander Villefort said. "I didn't expect you to come so soon. Well, do you need to rest?"

"Thank you, but there's no need," Joseph said. "In fact, I arrived last night. It was already very late when I got here, so I spent the night resting at an inn. I don't need any more rest."

"Ah, to be young again," Commander Villefort said with a laugh. "When I was your age, no matter how busy I was, I never felt tired either. Since you don't need to rest, we can get started on the work related to expanding the battery. Captain Cissé, please take Mr. Bonaparte to settle in, then bring him to the library to look over the relevant materials and show him around the site. Ah, Mr. Bonaparte, if you need anything, you can speak directly to Cissé."

"Thank you for your help," Joseph replied.

Once they had left the building, Cissé asked, "Mr. Bonaparte, where is your luggage?"

"It's still at the inn," Joseph replied.

"Which inn?" Cissé asked. "I can send two men to fetch your luggage. Well, we'll put you up in the officers' quarters over there. The accommodations here can't compare with Paris, so I'm afraid you'll have to make do."

"It's a small place called the Claude Inn," Joseph replied. "And you can just call me Joseph."

"Ah, the Claude Inn?" Cissé laughed. "Joseph, I bet you stayed there because it was close to the harbor, looked decent from the outside, and had reasonable prices, right? Well, you must have slept badly last night. Their beds are infamous for being crawling with bedbugs!" As if worried Joseph might think he was making fun of him, Cissé added, "Well, I've been taken in by them before too. The owner, Claude, is a capable fellow, but he puts absolutely no thought into running the inn. Well, let me show you the officers' quarters first..."

The officers' quarters at the Calais fortress were actually a little better than the teachers' quarters at the Paris Military Academy. After all, land and other things were considerably cheaper here than in Paris.

By the time Joseph had settled in, it was already noon. Cissé took him to the officers' mess for lunch. As Calais was by the sea, there was a far greater variety of fish here than in Paris, and it was much cheaper, too.

"If you ask me, your life is a lot better than ours in Paris. We get paid about the same, but prices in Paris are far higher than they are here." Joseph stuffed a piece of fish into his mouth and said indistinctly.

"But Paris is Paris," Cissé replied. "Prices there are indeed higher, but most people here would still rather go to Paris. Well, these places outside the capital are actually better suited to retirement. They're not so great for young people. If you want to make something of yourself, you should go to Paris. If I could go, I'd put up with the higher prices. If it were just about the money, you'd make more overseas. But for people like us, without connections, getting to Paris isn't easy."

It was true: Paris offered more opportunities. For anyone with ambition, no provincial city could compare.

"Maybe. Well, Cissé, you're an artillery captain, right?" Joseph suddenly asked.

"Yes? Why do you ask?" Cissé said.

"I'll need to ask you about a few things concerning the battery," Joseph explained. "I only studied mathematics, after all, and I don't know a lot about artillery."

"Oh, I thought you knew someone who could help me get to Paris," Cissé joked.

"Well, as far as I know, the Paris Military Academy has always been short of a naval expert. If you could fill the position..." Joseph said, joking as well.

"Damn it, I get seasick!" Cissé said. "Are there no other places looking for someone?"

"I haven't heard of any," Joseph replied, shaking his head. "Aren't you in the navy? How can you get seasick?"

Cissé's face reddened slightly. "The navy... not everyone in the navy has to go to sea. Those who man harbor batteries are sailors too. I serve at a harbor battery, so I never have to board a ship. I'm an excellent gunner—you'd be hard-pressed to find many better in the entire navy. If it weren't for the seasickness... Anyway, doesn't your academy need an artillery instructor?"

"I haven't heard anything about that," Joseph said. "And you know that even if they did need one, they'd probably choose an army officer."

Unlike Britain across the sea, France had always been what people called a land power. In the French military, the army outranked the navy and wielded more influence.

"I see." Cissé looked a little disappointed, but he went on, "Joseph, you're in Paris and hear more news than I do. If you hear of any way I could get there, I hope you'll remember me."

"I certainly will," Joseph said.

Joseph's reply wasn't entirely out of politeness. He also needed to build some connections in the navy. Over the next few years, harvests in northern France would remain poor, but the south actually had plenty of grain. The trouble was that France was still a feudal country, riddled with internal checkpoints that artificially drove up the cost of transporting goods. If he could make use of his naval connections to obtain grain directly from the south and have navy ships carry it to northern ports, he could make a substantial profit. Smuggling it directly from Britain across the sea would bring in even more.

"Calais is a good place too. It's one of the most important ports in the north, and there are plenty of economic opportunities here," Joseph added. "You have a lot of opportunities here too. I might need your help with something someday. Anyway, we're friends, so if we get the chance, we should help each other out. What do you say?"

"You're right. Then it's a promise," Cissé said.

Over the next few days, Joseph discussed the plan to renovate the battery with the designer, Michel. Cissé, as the artillery commander at the battery, took part as well.

"The battery's first priority is to control the channel leading into and out of the harbor. Our current battery isn't enough to control the whole channel. So we plan to build a new battery here. The two batteries working together will let us control the entire approach to the harbor..." Michel pointed to the plans as he explained.

"This looks like a good spot," Joseph said after studying the plans. "What do you need me to calculate?"

"Mainly some data on the guns' trajectories. And there are many aspects of the fortress's overall design where we need your input," Michel replied.

"It's a pity we have to make do with the guns we have, and there are no suitable high grounds nearby. Our guns don't have enough range. They can just about cover the channel, but that's nowhere near enough to cover a fleet as it sails out and forms up. If an enemy fleet blocks the harbor, our ships still won't be able to get out and fight," Joseph added.

In a naval battle, ships first needed to form up in formation. That allowed them to maneuver and bring their firepower to bear, rather than blocking one another's line of fire or crashing into one another while maneuvering. There was limited space inside a naval harbor, so a fleet couldn't form up there. To do so, the ships first had to sail out into the open waters beyond the harbor. But if an enemy fleet got to the harbor entrance first and blocked it, they certainly wouldn't let the ships inside sail out and form up. They would attack before the departing fleet had time to take formation. If the harbor batteries had enough range, they might be able to protect the fleet while it sailed out and formed up.

There were generally two ways to achieve this. One was to install giant guns on the battery. A battery's great advantage over a warship was its carrying capacity. Built on solid ground, it didn't have to worry about being sunk by the weight of its guns, so it could mount giant guns far larger than those on a warship. And larger guns could more easily achieve greater range.

But this approach had its problems, too. First, giant guns were far too expensive to produce. Second, they had a very low rate of fire. The Ottoman Empire's Urban Cannon, for instance, could fire at most seven shots a day. Of course, that was a weapon from the fifteenth century, but even modern giant guns had seen only limited improvements in their rate of fire. Firing that slowly was not enough to protect a fleet as it formed up.

The second method was to position the guns as high as possible. This could greatly increase their range. And since guns on a battery were stable, unlike those on a ship, which lurched about with the waves, their effective range was naturally greater. This could give ships in the harbor enough space to form up.

But there were no naturally elevated sites in the right place near Calais Harbor. To achieve this, they would have to pile up earth by hand to create an artificial rise. That would consume more labor and materials—or, to put it more plainly, cost more money.

"The navy doesn't think there'll be any fleet in Calais Harbor that needs to form a line of battle," designer Michel replied. "So the battery only needs to block the channel and prevent enemy ships from attacking the harbor. Calais isn't Toulon, after all. At most, we might have one or two frigates here. Calais is mainly a commercial port, and merchant ships don't need to form a line of battle. Look at Dover across the way. It has naturally elevated ground, so building batteries there is much easier than here. Even so, the British haven't stationed many warships there."

Since the new battery would be relatively small, the whole project would be less challenging. For Joseph, who was tackling this kind of work for the first time, that wasn't a bad thing.