De Launay lay sprawled on the ground, his head ringing. He tried to get up, but his whole body was limp and powerless. He wanted to call for help from the people nearby, but they were all sprawled on the ground too, unable to move. Besides, he couldn't even hear himself shouting.
We're finished. The powder magazine must have exploded, De Launay thought.
The powder magazine inside the Bastille, of course, didn't contain hundreds of thousands of pounds of gunpowder—enough to blow up the entire fortress. In fact, the total amount there was less than ten thousand pounds. But if all ten thousand pounds really did explode, it would still be devastating.
Damn it, I wonder if the walls collapsed, De Launay thought.
After who knew how long, De Launay finally recovered a little strength. Bracing himself against a table, he struggled to his feet and staggered up onto the ramparts.
A long crack had appeared in the wall, wide enough to fit a fist. Most of the defenders on the ramparts were still sprawled on the ground. Only one or two had managed to brace themselves against the parapet and were struggling to stand.
"What happened? What's going on?" De Launay shouted.
No one answered him. Even one soldier who had managed to get to his feet only gazed at him with a bewildered expression, as though he had no idea what De Launay was saying.
De Launay understood that he couldn't hear himself because the explosion had damaged his hearing. In fact, he couldn't even make out what he himself was saying.
De Launay staggered over to the parapet and peered down.
Not far from the moat was a huge crater, smoke slowly rising from it. Every house within thirty or forty meters of the crater had been flattened. Farther away, people lay strewn across the streets and even across the rooftops of buildings that were still standing.
"Th-this... what happened? Did a meteorite fall here?" Such a strange thought even flashed through De Launay's mind.
Of course, this wasn't the work of a meteorite. It was the result of a passionate collision between a large bomb and a bullet.
Just moments ago, someone had brought over a cart carrying what was said to be a "new type of explosive" for mining.
"We're men of the Duke of Orleans. This is the explosive we use for mining. We've packed it into bombs and fitted them with fuses. All we need is one brave man, a true hero like Oenomaus—the hero from Spartacus who sang the 'Slave War Song' on the cross—to brave the tyrant's bullets, carry this thing to the wall, and light it. Then we can blow an entire section of the wall sky-high in one go!" the man who had driven the cart shouted.
"Can this stuff really blow up the wall?" someone asked skeptically.
"With enough explosives, you can bring down even a mountain," the man with the cart replied.
Just then, a huge fellow came over. "I'll do it! I'll do it!" he shouted, reaching out to grab one of the bombs from the cart.
"This is so light?" The big fellow pursed his lips. "How much gunpowder is even in here? What good is this going to do?"
"This is an explosive, not gunpowder. It's a lot more powerful. And it's not light, either—it's got a full twelve pounds of explosives inside!" the cart driver said.
"Don't be stingy. Add more," the big fellow said. "It might take several people sacrificing themselves to get one of these over there. If it's not powerful enough, and one isn't enough, won't even more people have to die? So the more powerful, the better; the more explosives, the better. I say we just combine what's inside all these and send the entire Bastille sky-high in one go. What do you say?"
Everyone around him roared in approval.
"Exactly!"
"Send them all sky-high!"
"Let them go up there themselves and beg God for forgiveness!"
Seeing everyone support him, the big fellow grew even more enthusiastic. He simply took matters into his own hands and started dismantling the bombs.
"Hey, hey! Don't mess with those! We'll do it, we'll do it. You don't know how. You'll set them off!" the cart driver hurriedly said.
Before long, the five bombs on the cart had been combined into one.
"This thing weighs over sixty pounds. Can you carry it?" the cart driver asked.
The big fellow lifted the huge bomb with one hand and gave it a light toss in the air. The cart driver was so frightened he nearly hit the ground.
"Not bad. It's not too heavy. Someone get me another torch!" the big fellow shouted.
"Here, here!" someone yelled, thrusting a lit torch right in front of the big fellow. It nearly poked the bomb.
"Careful!" the big fellow said, taking the torch with one hand and tucking the bomb under his arm with the other. "You want to go 'boom' and send us all flying into the sky?"
"'My brothers, what have we to fear? We have nothing to fear! For what could be more painful, more terrifying, than the life we have lived?
"We have lived like pigs and been trampled into the dirt. What is there left for us to fear? What could we possibly lose? What is there left in our lives worth holding on to?
"Friends, brothers, if there is anything we can still lose in battle, it is the chains that bind us. But once we win, what we gain will be the whole world! A brand-new world where no one can oppress or enslave another!'" the man replied, quoting Spartacus.
The big fellow laughed. "All right, brother, stop reciting your lines. We all know them by heart! Now, if you've got the guts, follow me. If I fall before I reach the wall, take the bomb and torch from me and keep fighting in my place! Got a problem with that?"
"No problem!" the rather reckless fellow shouted back.
"Good! Let's go!" the big fellow said.
"Wait! Wait!" the cart driver suddenly yelled. "You can't just charge straight in like that. You need cover. Let's get some more people to charge from different directions and distract them. The rest of us can fire on the Bastille to cover you."
"Hey, that's a good idea!" everyone shouted. "Let's do it!"
"I'll charge too!"
"Give me a fake bomb! I can draw their attention too!"
The militiamen began firing at the Bastille, crack after crack, while more than a dozen people seized the opportunity to charge toward it.
The guards on the ramparts opened fire in turn. The big fellow was so large that several rifles took aim at him. But though he was a big target, he ran fast. Several bullets landed behind him and failed to hit. The rather reckless fellow running after him, however, was struck by a bullet that had been aimed at the big fellow but gone astray.
"Big fellow, keep going!" the reckless man shouted as he fell.
By then, though, the big fellow had reached the moat. He had to slow down to leap safely into it. But the moment he slowed, a rifleman took aim at him.
"Bang!" The rifle fired. To the Swiss soldier who had pulled the trigger, the big fellow looked like a huge brown bear from the Alpine forests. He expected the man to collapse just like the bears he'd shot before—perhaps even rolling over a couple of times.
But, to his surprise, the bear didn't fall and roll. Instead, it suddenly exploded.
Yes, the bullet he had fired had struck the bomb in the big fellow's arms.
The tremendous explosive force of the high-powered explosive was laid bare in that instant. A huge, visible ring of shockwave swept across the entire area. Several people near the big fellow were torn to pieces and flung away almost instantly. Then came the surrounding buildings. Struck by the shockwave, they were like card houses caught in a super typhoon. The moment the ring of force hit them, they were ripped to shreds and scattered.
The shockwave then slammed into the Bastille's walls. The towering ramparts shook violently like a small boat caught in raging waves.
The soldiers standing on the walls were nearly all knocked to the ground in an instant. Then the thunderous explosion that followed stunned them unconscious.
If another group of militiamen had charged at that moment, they could easily have cut the chains holding up the drawbridge, battered down the gate, and stormed the Bastille. But the militiamen were in even worse shape than the defenders. They were closer to the blast, and had suffered heavier casualties. Behind the few houses destroyed by the shockwave, the militiamen who had been firing in support of the attack were hiding. After the explosion, almost none of them survived.
Even the militiamen farther away were stunned unconscious by the deafening blast, so naturally they couldn't be sent into the attack. As for those even farther off, they had no idea what had happened up ahead. The militia had no clear chain of command, and they were in chaos. It never occurred to them to seize the opportunity and attack. And so, the chance slipped right through their fingers.