The militia did not have much gunpowder in their hands, and it was impossible to waste it like this. But on their side, there are a lot of bloody lives, and wasting a little bit is nothing. So they decided to risk the bullets of the defenders and push the cannon close enough to the Bastille, so close that it would take super-notaneous skill to make the cannonball fly, just like the Chinese men's football team's striker successfully cleared the opponent's goal on the opponent's goal line, and then opened fire to destroy this "fortress of tyranny".

However, the ideal is plump, but the reality is always skinny. The cannon had only been pushed forward two steps before it caught the attention of the defenders. Some of the defenders were Swiss mountain people. In addition to their regular rifles, they also carried rifled shotguns that they usually used for hunting.

In fact, rifled guns appeared quite early in Europe, and the advantages of high firing accuracy of rifled guns were well known, but because the rate of fire of rifled guns was too slow, it was difficult to find their place in the army. (In the era of the queue to shoot, after the first salvo, the soldiers were in front of a thick battlefield fog, and at this time, they either rushed up to fight the bayonets, or hurriedly loaded the bullets and fired another round of probabilistic shooting.) In the first case, not too far a range is used; In the second case, the rate of fire is more important than the accuracy)

Therefore, this type of weapon is generally only useful in places that require high accuracy, but do not require too high a rate of fire - such as hunting. Therefore, the military rifles of this era were basically smoothbore guns, but high-end shotguns were often rifled guns.

Switzerland is full of forests and mountains, so rifled guns are common among the Swiss. Swiss mercenaries tend to bring their own weapons, so Swiss mercenaries are often armed with rifled shotguns.

A few Swiss soldiers armed with rifled shotguns immediately opened fire on the militiamen, who were laboriously pushing the cannons. To say that the military qualities of the Swiss mercenaries of this era are really good. Their shooting was quite effective, knocking out three or four more militiamen at once. It's just that rifled guns in this era were too slow to reload. Compared to ordinary smoothbore guns, their rate of fire is much slower. So while the Swiss were reloading, the militiamen pushed the cannon forward a little more. Then, the gun went off again, and several more people were knocked to the ground.

The militia showed true fearlessness. They set up the cannons under the fire of the Swiss, loaded them with gunpowder and shells. Under the operation of trained artillerymen, the rate of fire of the cannon is actually much higher than that of rifled guns; If it were in the hands of those cattle of the well-trained British Royal Navy, they could shoot faster than even smoothbore guns.

However, it is the Parisian militia who have never played the cannon once who control the cannon today. The vast majority of them, before that, have not touched a cannon once in their lives. So they naturally loaded the cannon very slowly, so slow that the rifled guns on the opposite side fired three rounds and killed more than a dozen people during the time they loaded one shell. They're done reloading.

The cannon then blew up as it fired at the Bastille—they stuffed the barrel with double gunpowder in order to knock down the walls in one shot.

"We need real artillery, real artillery!" From the militia, there was a shout, "Which of you has ever been an artilleryman before?" Please stand up! France needs your help! ”

However, no one came forward. Of the tens of thousands of militia besieging the Bastille, there were no artillerymen.

The situation was stalemate again, and the militia continued to rely on the cover of the houses to fire their guns indiscriminately at the Bastille, and the guards on the Bastille side were more composed, and they rarely returned fire, but the effect of the return fire was very good. In the counter-fire, all the militia were hit, and the defenders were almost unscathed until now.

……

The National Guard in Joseph's neighborhood did not take part in the siege of the Bastille, but strengthened its vigilance, while several leaders of the National Guard were closely monitoring the progress of the fighting.

"The Bastille wasn't hard to overcome. The point is that the militias lack qualified artillery. All it takes is a few shells that hit the same spot at the base of the wall, which can cause the wall to collapse. Once there is no protection of the city wall, what can a hundred or so defenders do? It's a pity that the militia didn't have good gunners. A chubby shopkeeper said.

"Of course there are good gunners in the militia, but not in that group." Charles said. Although everyone is theoretically a "third estate", in reality, the people of this neighborhood, including the Charles, make no secret of their contempt for the militia that is now besieging the Bastille.

Joseph knew what Charles meant, and there were good gunners in the militia. The gunners, who had been members of the French royal army a few days earlier, were suddenly expelled for various things in the past two days, and immediately joined the militia. But they were militias, though they were also militias (like the Shire, they were also the Third Estate) not the militias that were besieging the Bastille – they were the more organized National Guard.

Joseph also knew to whom these gunners were actually subordinate. The influential man in the army, who controlled these truly combat-ready "National Guards", was the man who, in history, when the storming of the Bastille reached a stalemate, dragged a cannon to the scene, and then forced the defenders to surrender with continuous and precise shelling. It was because of this decisive move that he became commander-in-chief of the National Guard in Paris, and for a time became a major figure in the early days of the revolution.

This big man was none other than the Marquis de Lafayette.

"But this time, whether the Marquis de Lafayette can still get his wish is not certain. Because even without his support, the Duke of Orleans had other options. Joseph thought.

The Duke of Orleans and the Marquis de Lafayette were both great nobles who supported a constitutional monarchy. But that doesn't mean they're allies. The Duke of Orleans was a royal family, and the right man for the monarch he hoped for in the constitutional monarchy was himself; But it was not him that the Marquis de Lafayette had in mind. The Marquis de Lafayette may not have particularly admired the locksmith (Louis XVI had a hobby of making all sorts of difficult locks), but for him any member of the royal family was better suited to carry the crown of France than the Duke of Orleans. Because if the Duke of Orleans becomes king, with his power and influence, he will never be willing to become a rubber stamp.

For this reason, the Marquis de Lafayette has always regarded the Duke of Orleans as "the greatest threat to democracy". In the original history, after the Marquis Lafayette took power, he immediately used coercion and inducement to throw the Duke of Orleans into England.

But now, unlike in history, the Duke of Orleans did not have artillery in his hands, but he did have something that 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 can't be compared with the high-blunt things of later generations, which can't be blown up with a gun.) With this thing, it is possible to create the simplest and most violent weapon against all kinds of fortifications - explosive packs.

The guns of this era had a limited rate of fire, and the Bastille defense was quite limited in number, and such firepower alone was not enough to prevent the militia from approaching the walls of the Bastille. It's just that the ordinary militia with only muskets, even if they rush under the city wall, there is nothing they can do with this 30-meter-high and 3-meter-thick wall, but the people of the Duke of Orleans are different, they have a deadly weapon enough to destroy this wall at once - explosive packs.

At this time, a detachment of National Guardsmen dragged a cannon past the barricades in Joseph's neighborhood. It can be seen from the very neat equipment of this National Revolutionary Army, the very neat pace, and the few well-fed horses dragging that cannon that this is a well-trained contingent, and by no means comparable to those real, gangster-like militiamen.

"The Marquis de Lafayette has already made the move." Joseph thought, "The men of the Duke of Orleans must have to take action." ”

Just then, there was a sudden loud noise. The surrounding windows and panes rattled.

"Where is this powder magazine exploding?" Someone asked in a panic.

"It seems like the Bastille, did they really blow up all the gunpowder?" Charles frowned.

Legend has it that in the Bastille, there were hundreds of thousands of pounds of gunpowder. This is, of course, a rumor, that the Bastille simply did not have so much gunpowder. But earlier, when the warden of the Bastille, de Lonay, sued the siege militia of the Bastille for peace, he threatened to kill everyone by igniting hundreds of thousands of pounds of gunpowder. So it is now believed that the Bastille contained a large amount of gunpowder.

"Probably not." Joseph looked to the east, then shook his head and said, "If the powder magazine had exploded, we should have been able to see a large puff of smoke by now, but now we don't see enough smoke." ”

The gunpowder of this era was all black powder, which produced a large amount of smoke after an explosion. Therefore, it was certainly not a powder keg that exploded.

"There wasn't much smoke after the explosion, but it could make the house so far away shake with it, and it must have been the Duke of Orleans' men who used high explosives. It seems that the Marquis de Lafayette's party is late. Anyway, this shock is so big, how much explosives did they put in the explosives bag? Joseph thought.