The Great Era Has Arrived

The militiamen did not have much gunpowder, so they could not afford to waste it like this. However, they had an abundance of hot-blooded lives, so wasting a few was of no consequence. Thus, they decided to brave the defenders' bullets and push their cannon close enough to the Bastille—close enough that, to miss the target, one would need the world-class skill of a Chinese national football striker attempting a clearance while standing on the opponent's goal line—before opening fire to collapse this "fortress of tyranny."

However, while the ideal was plump, reality was always skeletal. The cannon had only been pushed forward two steps when it drew the attention of the defenders. Among the defenders were some Swiss mountaineers. Besides their standard muskets, they also carried the rifled hunting guns they used back home.

In fact, rifled guns had appeared in Europe quite early, and their high accuracy was well known. Yet, because their rate of fire was so slow, it was difficult for them to find a place in the military. (In the era of line infantry volleys, after the first round, the soldiers were shrouded in thick battlefield fog. At that point, they either charged with bayonets or scrambled to reload for another round of probabilistic shooting. In the first case, long range was unnecessary; in the second, rate of fire was far more important than accuracy.)

Therefore, such weapons were generally only useful where high precision was required but high rate of fire was not—such as when hunting. Consequently, the military muskets of this era were basically smoothbores, while the higher-end hunting rifles were often rifled.

Switzerland was full of forests and mountains, so rifled guns were quite common among the Swiss. Swiss mercenaries often provided their own weapons, so they were frequently equipped with rifled hunting guns.

Several Swiss soldiers with rifled guns immediately opened fire on the militiamen struggling to push the cannon. It must be said that the military quality of the Swiss mercenaries of this era was truly impressive. Their shooting was quite effective, knocking down three or four militiamen in an instant. However, the loading process for rifled guns of this era was truly sluggish. Compared to ordinary smoothbore muskets, their rate of fire was much slower. Thus, taking advantage of the time the Swiss spent reloading, the militiamen pushed the cannon forward a bit more. Then, the guns rang out again, and several more men were struck down.

The militiamen displayed a truly fearless spirit. Under the Swiss fire, they positioned the cannon and loaded the powder and shot. Under the operation of trained artillerymen, the firing rate of a cannon was actually much higher than that of a rifled gun; in the hands of the well-drilled brutes of the British Royal Navy, their firing rate could even exceed that of a smoothbore musket.

However, those controlling the cannon now were Paris militiamen who had never played with a cannon in their lives. The vast majority of them had never even touched a cannon before. Naturally, their loading speed was extremely slow—so slow that the rifled guns opposite them fired three rounds and killed over a dozen men in the time it took them to load a single shell. Only then did they finish loading.

Then, as the cannon fired toward the Bastille, it exploded—to knock down the wall in one shot, they had stuffed a double charge of gunpowder into the barrel.

"We need real artillerymen, real artillerymen!" a cry went up from the militia side. "Is there anyone among you who has served as an artilleryman? Please step forward! France needs you to contribute your strength!"

Yet, no one stepped forward. Among the tens of thousands of militiamen besieging the Bastille, there was not a single person who had served as an artilleryman.

The situation reached a stalemate again. The militiamen continued to fire wildly at the Bastille from the cover of houses, while the guards on the Bastille side were more composed. They rarely returned fire, but when they did, the results were excellent. In the exchange of fire, it was always the militiamen who were hit; the defenders had remained almost completely unscathed until now.

The National Guard in the district where Joseph resided did not participate in the siege of the Bastille but instead strengthened their guard, while several leaders of the National Guard closely monitored the progress of the battle.

"The Bastille is actually not hard to capture. The key is that the militiamen lack qualified artillerymen. As long as a few shells hit the same spot at the base of the wall accurately, it could cause the wall to collapse. Once the protection of the wall is gone, what can a hundred or so defenders do? It is a pity the militiamen have no good gunners," said a man who looked like a chubby shopkeeper.

"There are certainly good gunners among the militia, but they are not among that mob," Charles said. Although in theory everyone was "Third Estate," in reality, the people in this district, including Charles, made no secret of their contempt for the militiamen currently besieging the Bastille.

Joseph knew what Charles meant. There were indeed good gunners among the militia. Those gunners had been members of the French Royal Army just days ago, were suddenly discharged for various reasons over the last two days, and immediately joined the militia. But while they were also militiamen (just as Charles and his peers were also Third Estate), they were not the militiamen currently besieging the Bastille—they were the more organized National Guard.

Joseph also knew who these gunners actually obeyed. That big shot with considerable influence in the army controlled these truly capable "National Guards." In history, when the attack on the Bastille reached a stalemate, it was his men who dragged a cannon to the scene and used continuous, precise shelling to force the defenders to surrender. It was precisely because of this decisive move that this big shot became the Commander-in-Chief of the Paris National Guard and briefly became a pivotal figure in the early days of the revolution.

This big shot was the Marquis de Lafayette.

However, whether the Marquis de Lafayette can get his wish this time is not certain. Because even without his support, the Duke of Orleans has other ways, Joseph thought.

The Duke of Orleans and the Marquis de Lafayette were both high-ranking nobles who supported a constitutional monarchy. But this did not mean they were allies. The Duke of Orleans was a member of the royal family, and the suitable candidate for the monarch in the constitutional monarchy he envisioned was himself; however, the suitable candidate in the heart of the Marquis de Lafayette was not him. Perhaps the Marquis de Lafayette did not particularly appreciate that locksmith (Louis XVI had a hobby of making various high-difficulty locks), but to him, any member of the royal family was more suitable to wear the French crown than the Duke of Orleans. Because if the Duke of Orleans became king, given his power and influence, he would never be content to be a rubber stamp.

Therefore, the Marquis de Lafayette had always regarded the Duke of Orleans as the "greatest threat to democracy." In the original history, after the Marquis de Lafayette took power, he immediately used coercion and inducement to send the Duke of Orleans to England.

But now, unlike in history, although the Duke of Orleans did not have artillerymen, he had something he did not have in the original history—high explosives.

With Joseph's help, Lavoisier used diatomaceous earth mixed with nitroglycerin to obtain a relatively safe explosive. (Of course, it could not be compared to those highly insensitive things from later generations that wouldn't even explode if shot with a gun.) With this, one could create the simplest and most violent weapon for dealing with various fortifications—the explosive satchel.

The rate of fire of guns in this era was very limited, and the number of defenders in the Bastille was also quite limited. Relying solely on such firepower was not enough to stop the militiamen from approaching the walls of the Bastille. It was just that ordinary militiamen with only muskets, even if they rushed to the foot of the wall, could do nothing about this 30-meter-high, 3-meter-thick wall. But the men of the Duke of Orleans were different; they had a lethal weapon capable of destroying this wall in one blow—explosive satchels.

At this moment, a team of National Guards dragged a cannon past the barricade in the district where Joseph was located. From the very neat equipment of this team of National Guards, their very neat pace, and the well-fed horses dragging the cannon, it was clear that this was a well-trained unit, not to be compared with those true, mob-like militiamen.

The Marquis de Lafayette has already begun to act, Joseph thought. The men of the Duke of Orleans should be about to take action.

Just then, a loud bang suddenly rang out. It was so loud that the surrounding window glass rattled.

"Did a gunpowder magazine explode somewhere?" someone asked in a panic.

"It seems to be from the Bastille side. Could they have really blown up all the gunpowder?" Charles frowned.

Legend had it that there were hundreds of thousands of pounds of gunpowder in the Bastille. This was, of course, a rumor; the Bastille did not have that much gunpowder at all. But earlier, when the governor of the Bastille, de Launay, was pleading for peace with the militiamen besieging the Bastille, he had threatened to ignite hundreds of thousands of pounds of gunpowder and perish with everyone. So now, everyone believed that there was a large amount of gunpowder stored in the Bastille.

"It shouldn't be," Joseph looked toward the east, then shook his head and said, "If a gunpowder magazine had exploded, we should be able to see a large plume of thick smoke now. The smoke we see is not enough."

The gunpowder of this era was black powder, and it would produce a large amount of thick smoke after an explosion. Therefore, it was certainly not a gunpowder magazine that had exploded.

There wasn't much smoke after the explosion, yet it was enough to make houses this far away shake. This must be the high explosives used by the Duke of Orleans' men. It seems the Marquis de Lafayette's team arrived too late. Speaking of which, with such a large tremor, how much explosive did they pack into those satchels? Joseph thought.