March, 1429 – The Royal Ironworks of Tours
The foundry's interior was a cavern of shadows and molten breath. Heat trembled in the air like a living thing, distorting every surface—an anvil seemed to ripple, chains quivered in place, and the crucible glowed like a sun stabbed into the earth.
Jean Bureau wiped his palms against his apron for the third time. Sweat gathered at his temples, though the heat was not the cause.
The cause was the man standing across from him.
Napoleon was not speaking. He was watching—quietly, intensely—studying Jean the way a mathematician studies a mechanism whose gears are not yet aligned.
He finally broke the silence.
"Tell me," Napoleon said, voice low but cuttingly clear, "why do your cannons crack?"
Jean flinched.
There were a thousand safer answers: supply shortages, poor metal, lack of staff, the Lord's will.
But the truth sat raw in his throat.
"Because… because none of us truly understand why they fire at all, Sire," he whispered. "We follow what the masters before us did. Tradition. Guesswork. Ritual."
Napoleon did not nod. Approval was too generous a currency.
He simply stepped closer.
"And are you satisfied with that?"
Jean swallowed. "N—no."
A faint smile. "Good. Genius begins where excuses end."
Napoleon swept aside a pile of crude sketches and began drawing on the soot-darkened table with a charcoal nub. He did not draw symbols Jean recognized. No sigils of the scholars, no geometric forms from cathedral schools.
Instead, he drew motion—the bending of a curve under force, the thinning of a wall where pressure peaked, the invisible path a projectile followed long after the eye could no longer see it.
Jean stared.
It wasn't a new kind of magic.
It was clarity—as if the world, long blurred, had suddenly snapped into focus.
"I don't understand the markings," Jean admitted, voice trembling. "But I understand what they mean."
Napoleon's gaze flicked to him. "That is enough. Meaning precedes names. Centuries will give language to what you see here. We do not have centuries."
He tapped the curve representing barrel pressure.
"Bronze expands when heated. Thinner walls near the breech invite failure. Reinforce here—threefold. Narrow the bore to one standard. Stop using the Church calendar for alloy measurements." A snort. "Measure by weight, not by saints."
Jean almost laughed. Almost cried.
"I've… I've said these things, Sire. But they don't listen."
"They will listen now."
Napoleon's voice didn't rise, yet the air tightened around it. Authority, distilled.
He resumed sketching—now the grain of powder, the spacing of granulation.
"You're wasting strength with dust. Press and cut the powder into grains—uniform, firm, dry. It burns not faster but truer. Shocks the barrel less. More power, less chaos."
Jean blinked.
"You speak as if you've fired these cannons yourself."
"I've fired thousands," Napoleon said simply.
Jean didn't dare ask how.
The Emperor straightened, brushing charcoal from his fingertips.
"This kingdom," Napoleon said, pacing the foundry floor slowly, "is ruled by silk. By lineage, embroidery, and the memory of lilies. But wars are not won by lilies. They are won by men who understand fire."
He stopped in front of Jean.
"You are one of those men."
Jean froze, stunned. No lord, no master, no knight had ever called him that.
Napoleon went on:
"Silk is cheap," he said. "Genius is rare. And you—Jean Bureau—are rare."
Something broke inside Jean. Something long imprisoned. He lowered his head, fighting the sting in his eyes.
"Just tell me what you want, Sire."
"I want a revolution," Napoleon said, not loudly—but the foundry seemed to hear.
"Smaller calibers. Standard molds. Reinforced breeches. Granulated powder. I want cannon designed, not inherited."
"And above all—"
He pointed to the great crucible of molten bronze.
"—I want half the kingdom's bells melted into barrels by the month's end."
Jean inhaled sharply.
"Sire, the Church—"
"The Church will forgive misdeeds committed in the name of victory," Napoleon said. "And if not, let them pray louder."
For a heartbeat, silence.
Then he added, almost gently:
"Bronze sings twice in its lifetime. Once as a bell. Once again as a cannon.[1] Let's help it complete its journey."
That line—let's help it complete its journey—lodged itself in Jean's chest like a burning nail.
Without waiting for permission, he seized a nearby mallet and struck the cooling mold beside him with a single, decisive blow.
CLANG.[2]
The deep metallic note rolled through the foundry.
Not a bell's chime.
A war-drum's promise.
Napoleon's eyes glinted.
"There," he said softly. "A new music for France."
Jean bowed—not from fear, but for the first time in his life, from conviction.
"What shall I call these new cannons, Sire?"
Napoleon lifted his gaze toward the rafters, listening still to the fading hum of bronze.
"Call them whatever you like," he said.
"They'll speak for themselves."
[1] The most poetic declaration of war in history.
[2] The sound of the new era.