Joseph was indeed immersed in the laboratory with a new toy, a new toy that he was going to hand over to Napoleon for him to use in Italy: the Mini rifle.

In this era, there were already rifled rifles. But these rifled guns, because the reloading speed is too low, are almost useless except for hunting. (Originally, rifled guns had bullets that were slightly thicker than the barrel, so the bearer had to use a hammer and a push rod to push the bullet into the barrel with great difficulty.) This process is so time-consuming and laborious that often ordinary smoothbore guns have already fired seven or eight shots, while rifled guns can only shoot once)

But the advent of the Mini bomb changed all that.

In its original history, this bullet was invented around 1849 by French Captain Claude Edirne Migne and Captain Henri-Gustav de Vicgene.

This bullet is slightly smaller than the caliber of the rifle, so it solves the embarrassing situation of the old rifle's frontloading bullet because the bullet is too large to fit the barrel or block the barrel. Mini bullets can be easily pushed into the chamber with a ram lever. Thus significantly increasing the rate of fire.

The bullet is threaded around the body to match the rifling, and the middle of the thread is lubricated with animal oil. (Later, the British also learned this technique and brought it to India.) But they didn't want the Indian soldiers to refuse to use the bullets because they were smeared with lard or butter. And with this as the fuse, it triggered a great national uprising in India. ）

The bottom of the bullet uses a cork material. When fired, gunpowder gases hit the cork, and the cork was hit by an instantaneous impact, and then the bullet was violently propped up. Because the bullet is stretched, the bullet itself can be relied on to complete the sealing of the chamber at the moment of firing without leaking gunpowder gases and causing the kinetic energy of the bullet to be lost. In this way, the problem of sealing the chamber of the old front-loading gun was solved, and the rate of fire, firing range and safety of the gun were greatly enhanced (a good seal did not easily lead to the residue of gunpowder residue blocking the barrel and causing the chamber to explode).

This kind of bullet, although it was invented decades later, at this time, it was not at all difficult to implement it technically. The tactical advantage it brings is huge.

First of all, it made the rifled gun completely catch up with the smoothbore gun in terms of reload speed, so that the smoothbore gun as a weapon was almost the only advantage of being cheaper.

Ordinary smoothbore rifles do not have an effective range of more than 100 yards, but rifled rifles that use Mini rounds can effectively shoot at targets up to 500 yards away. This made the rifle in the hands of the infantry many times longer.

Before the use of such bullets, both the British, and the Russians, believed that "the bullet is a fool, and the bayonet is a hero." They are accustomed to advancing to the nearest distance with the opponent's bullets on the battlefield, and after another salvo, charging with bayonets to solve the problem. But if their opponents were using Minnie rounds that could fire effectively from a distance of five hundred yards, then the bravery of both the British and the Russian troops would have become a joke. The status of white-knuckle warfare has also declined dramatically.

In the era of smoothbore guns, because of the threat of cavalry, the infantry had to line up in a tight formation to fight (of course, in addition to this reason, the morale of the army is also a big reason, if the morale is not enough, the stragglers or something will really disappear on the battlefield as soon as they disperse. But with Mini bullets, the cavalry charged the infantry again, and it was simply a death. As a result, the status of the cavalry was greatly reduced.

In addition to this, the tactics of artillery were greatly affected. In the era of smoothbore guns, the effective range of artillery when using shotguns or grapeshot was greater than that of rifles in the hands of infantry. So artillery can be used as an offensive weapon in the field, pushed to the front of the queue.

However, the appearance of mini shells made the range of infantry weapons suddenly exceed the range of artillery shotguns or grape shells. Although the range of the solid shells used in the cannon is much longer than that of the Minnie bullets, due to the accuracy problem, it is too inefficient to fight the loose stragglers. So if you have to push the cannon in front at this time, use it for attack. Then the gunner will become a living target for the opposing infantry. As a result, artillery also had to retreat and be used only as a support weapon in large logarithms.

Even the little melon, which has now changed the course of history, will return to the position of a secondary weapon from its current position of almost becoming the main weapon due to the problem of throwing distance.

However, there is still a huge flaw in this weapon, that is, its technical threshold is so low that it is easy to understand what it is all about at a glance. Therefore, this weapon, once used, will not be long before the relevant technology will definitely be acquired by others. These people could be enemies of France, or they could be enemies of the Bonapartes in business.

So this kind of thing can only be put into use before Napoleon enters Italy. The Bonapartes relied on the victories and support brought by this weapon to rise to high political positions and use this position to suppress and crush their enemies in business.

Of course, Joseph, as a traverser, naturally knew that this weapon would eventually be replaced by a rear-loading bolt-action rifle. He didn't mean to squeeze the toothpaste. It's just that some of the front-facing technologies of the rear-loading bolt-action rifle are still difficult to achieve today. For example, bolt-action rifles must use steel, not wrought iron, but in this day and age, the world's most advanced steelmaking is crucible steelmaking. Its output and efficiency simply do not meet the requirements.

The experiment with bullets was actually successful very early, but the design of the rifle was a little delayed. Mini requires gunpowder gas to prop up the bullet, which means it needs to use gunpowder that burns faster. It's not difficult to achieve just faster combustion, but faster burning brings two problems. One is that the chamber pressure rises too fast, and the other is that the chamber pressure drops too fast. The former results in a high peak in chamber pressure and is prone to exploding, while the latter results in an average chamber pressure that is not high enough and the bullet is not fast enough.

In order to avoid exploding, the barrel must be thickened, which makes the rifle too heavy and consumes too much metal, increasing the cost. For this reason, Joseph designed the barrel to be a round table shape with a thick back and a thin front, but how thick the thick places should be, and how thin the thin places can be, can only be slowly solved by experiments. So, these things, which are not difficult at all in principle, occupy a lot of Joseph's time. So much so that the number of words in the letters he wrote to Fanny was reduced.

However, no matter how busy you are, you must pay attention to the combination of work and rest. At least, intellectual workers must. So Joseph stipulated that researchers should have one day off every ten years and work no more than 12 hours a day. As for himself and senior researchers like Lavoisier, they had two days off every ten months and worked no more than six hours a day. As for the manual laborers, they were all over the streets, and Joseph did not have time to care for them unless they were so skilled that they were difficult to replace.

Today was not a break time, but Joseph received a letter from Lucien saying that there was a millionaire who wanted to negotiate a big deal with him. Joseph then handed over the matter of the institute to Lavoisier and hurried back to Marseille. and met with Stephen Girard at his estate in Marseille.

Joseph only knows a rough idea of history, and in his previous life, he didn't even know who St. Just was, so naturally he wouldn't know that this bald man with a Bordeaux taste of French in front of him was a legendary figure in American history. Stephen Girard, who started his career by smuggling arms to the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, was the North American shipping tycoon and the first billionaire in American history to have personal assets of more than $10 million. However, this is all later. At this time, it was just when his hegemony had just taken off.

Stephen Girard was a sailor by training, and had a special interest in ships of all kinds. When he first saw the "Black Pearl" in the harbor of New York, he was intrigued by it. After a little more understanding of the performance of the "Black Pearl", he immediately calculated that if the carrying capacity of such a ship could reach 500 tons, it would be far more efficient than ordinary sailing ships. So, the French-American with a keen sense of smell followed the "Black Pearl" back to France.

Over the next two days, Joseph and Steven Girard engaged in arduous negotiations, crying to each other, pouring chicken soup on each other, saying that "the negotiations have enhanced mutual understanding" and finally reaching a strategic partnership.

According to the final agreement, Stephen Girard will place a one-time order for seven 500-ton clippers from the shipyard affiliated with the Bonaparte Institute, and will prepay the full purchase price of five of them. The remainder is to be paid at the time of delivery of the vessel.

The Bonaparte Affiliated Shipyard was required to transfer to Stephen Girard the full transfer of the technology involved in the construction of such clippers, and to ensure that Stephen Girard would send technical instructors to Stéphane Girard's shipyard in New York, provided that Stephen Girard provided a salary not less than 1.5 times the salary of his French counterpart, and that the Girard shipyard in New York would be able to master the technology of building clippers within two years.

Stephen Girard pledged that for the next fifteen years, for every clipper ship produced by the Girard shipyard, the Bonaparte Institute would pay a technical royalty of one dollar per tonne deadweight.

For its part, the Institut Bonaparte pledged not to sell the technology to other manufacturers during this period. When selling clippers to other companies in North America, Steven Girard had to be compensated $1.50 per ton of deadweight.