The Great Era is Here

There was not much gunpowder 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 wasting a little was nothing. So they decided, braving the bullets of the defenders, to push the cannons close enough to the Bastille, that it would take as much skill to send the shells flying as it would for a Chinese soccer striker to make a successful clearance from the opposing team's goal line before opening fire and collapsing the "citadel of tyranny".

However, ideals are plentiful, but reality is always tough. The cannon had only pushed forward two steps when it attracted the attention of the defenders. Some of the defenders were Swiss hillbillies. They were armed with the usual rifles and the line-bore rifles they usually hunted with.

As a matter of fact, the wire-bore gun appeared quite early in Europe, and the advantages of the wire-bore gun's high shooting accuracy were widely known, but because the wire-bore gun's rate of fire was so slow, it had a hard time finding its place in the army. (In the era of lined-up shooting, the soldiers had a thick battlefield fog in front of them after the first round of flanking fire. At this point, they either rushed up to spar with their bayonets or hurriedly loaded their bullets for another round of probable fire. In the first case, not much range is used; in the second case, the rate of fire is more important than accuracy)

That's why these types of weapons, in general, only come in handy in places where accuracy is required but the rate of fire isn't too high - like when hunting. As a result, the military rifles of this era were basically smoothbore rather than the higher-end hunting rifles, which tended to be wirebore.

Switzerland is full of forests and mountains, so wire rifles are quite common with the Swiss. Swiss mercenaries tend to arm themselves, so Swiss mercenaries are instead often armed with wired-bore hunting rifles. 

A few Swiss soldiers with wire-bore hunting rifles immediately opened fire toward the militiamen who were struggling to propel the cannons. To say that the Swiss mercenaries of this era are pretty good militarily. Their shooting was quite effective, knocking down three or four more militiamen at once. It's just that wire rifles of this era are really slow to load. They shoot much slower than a regular smoothbore. So, while the Swiss were loading, the militiamen pushed the cannon forward a little further. Then the guns went off again, and several more men were knocked to the ground.

The militia showed true fearlessness. They then set up their cannons and loaded their powder and shells under Swiss fire. In the hands of trained artillerymen, cannons can fire at a considerably higher rate than wire rifles; in the hands of trained British Royal Navy brutes, they might even fire faster than smoothbore rifles.

However, the Parisian militia, who had never once played with cannons, now controlled them. The vast majority of them had never touched a cannon once in their lives before that. So naturally, they loaded their cannons very slowly, so slowly that the line guns on the opposite side of the line fired three rounds and killed a dozen or more men in all the time it took them to load a round. They just sort of finished loading.

The gun blew up while firing toward the Bastille - they had stuffed the barrel with a double dose of gunpowder 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 come forward! France needs you to contribute!"

Yet, no one stepped forward. Among the tens of thousands of militiamen who besieged the Bastille, no men had been artillerymen.

The situation was again stalemated. The militiamen continued to rely on the cover of the houses, shooting indiscriminately toward the Bastille, while the guards on the side of the Bastille were a bit more composed; they seldom returned fire, but the effect of the return fire was very good. In the counterfire, it was the militia that got hit. The defenders' side had been virtually unharmed until now.

...

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

"The Bastille wasn't really that hard to break into. The point is that the militia lacked qualified artillery. It only takes a few shells hitting the exact same spot at the base of the wall to cause it to collapse. Once there's no protection from the walls, what can a hundred or so defenders do? Too bad the militia don't have good gunners." A fat shopkeeper-looking man said.

"There are good gunners among the militia, of course, but not among that group of hooligans," Charles said. Although everyone is theoretically the "third estate", the people in this neighborhood, including Charles, do not hide their contempt for the militia now laying siege to the Bastille.

Joseph knew what Charles meant; the militia had good gunners. The gunners, who had been members of the French royal army a few days before, had been suddenly discharged for various things in the last two days and had joined the militia at once. But while they were also militia, (just as Charles and the others were third estate) they were not the same militia that was laying siege to the Bastille - they were the more organized National Guard.

Joseph also knew to whom these gunners were actually subservient. The big man in the army, who controlled these "national guards" who were really capable of fighting and whose men, historically, when the attack on the Bastille reached a stalemate, arrived on the scene with a cannon in tow and forced the defenders to surrender with a continuous and accurate artillery bombardment, was the first to be able to take part in the attack on the Bastille. Thanks to this decisive act, this great man was able to become the commander-in-chief of the National Guard in Paris, and for a time was a major figure in the early days of the revolution.

The big man is the Marquis de La Fayette.

'This time, however, it is not certain that the Marquis de La Fayette will get what he wants. Because even without his support, the Duke of Orleans has other ways.' Joseph thought.

The Duke of Orléans and the Marquis de La Fayette were both great noblemen who supported a constitutional monarchy. But that doesn't make them allies. The Duke of Orléans was of the royal family, and the proper person for that monarch in the constitutional monarchy which he desired was himself. Still, the proper person in the mind of the Marquis de La Fayette was not he. Perhaps the Marquis de La Fayette did not particularly admire the locksmith (Louis XVI had a hobby of making all sorts of difficult locks). Still, to him, any royal family member was better suited to carry the crown of France than the Duke of Orleans.

Because if the Duke of Orleans had become king, with all his power and influence, he would never have resigned himself to being a rubber stamp.

For this reason, the Marquis de La Fayette has always regarded the Duke of Orleans as "the greatest threat to democracy". In the original history, the Marquis de La Fayette resorted to coercion immediately after coming to power to throw the Duke of Orleans to England. 

Now, unlike in history, the Duke of Orleans had no artillery in his hands, but he did have something he didn't have in his original history - high explosives.

With Joseph's help, Lavoisier obtained a relatively safe explosive using a mixture of diatomaceous earth and nitroglycerin. (Of course, it's still no match for the highly obtuse, can't-even-blow-up-with-a-gun stuff of the latter days.) With this, the simplest and most violent weapon against all kinds of fortifications can be built - the explosive packet.

The guns of this era had a very limited rate of fire, and the number of people on the defense side of the Bastille was quite limited; such firepower alone would not be enough to stop the militia from approaching the walls of the Bastille. Only the normal militia with muskets, even if they rushed under the wall, couldn't do much with the 30-meter-high, 3-meter-thick wall, but it was different with the Duke of Orleans' men, who had a deadly weapon that was enough to destroy the wall in one go - the 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 unit of the National Guard, the very neat pace, and the few well-fed horses dragging that cannon that this was a well-trained unit and in no way comparable to those of the real swarms of hooligans that were the militia.

'Marquis de La Fayette is already on the move.' 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 them.

"Did a gunpowder depot explode somewhere?" Someone asked in alarm.

"It seems to be over at the Bastille, did they really blow up all the gunpowder?" Charles frowned.

Legend has it that there were hundreds of thousands of pounds of gunpowder in the Bastille. This is, of course, a rumor. There wasn't even that much gunpowder in the Bastille. But earlier, de Launay, the governor of the Bastille, had threatened to light hundreds of thousands of pounds of gunpowder and die with everyone else when he begged for peace from the militia besieging the Bastille. That's why everyone now believes that the Bastille contained large quantities of gunpowder.

"I guess not." Joseph looked toward the east, then shook his head, "If the gunpowder depot had exploded, we would be able to see large plumes of smoke by now, and today we don't see enough smoke."

The gunpowder of this era was all black powder, and it produced a lot of smoke after the explosion. So, it certainly wasn't a gunpowder chamber that exploded.

'There wasn't much smoke from the explosion, but it shook the house with it at such a distance; it must have been the Duke of Orleans's men who used strong explosives. It seems that the Marquis de La Fayette's party went late. That said, the vibrations are so strong, how much explosives did they pack in the explosive packs?' Joseph thought so.