Mid-April 1429 – The Training Fields of Blois
Jean Bureau knelt in the mud, grease staining his knees, measuring the axle width of a cannon carriage with a pair of calipers.
Around him, the air pulsed with a sound he had never heard before: Rhythm.
Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-a-tat-tat.
Jean paused, wiping sweat from his brow. He looked across the field. Two thousand infantrymen were moving. Not as a mob, but as a grid. Left foot. Right foot. In perfect unison.
A memory flashed through Jean's mind—his first day as an apprentice under Master Gunner Pierre at the siege of Montargis.
"How much powder, Master?" Jean had asked, trembling.
Master Pierre had spat into the wind, squinted at the sun, and shrugged. "Two scoops. Maybe three. If God wills it, it hits. If not, we run."
That afternoon, the cannon exploded. Master Pierre was buried in a shoebox.
Chaos. Guesswork. Luck. That was the old way. That was the French way.
Jean looked back at the field.
The King—this strange, terrifying King—was standing on a wooden platform, shouting numbers through a brass megaphone.
"One-two! One-two! Maintain the interval!"
Jean watched the soldiers turn. It wasn't graceful like a court dance; it was precise like a gearbox.
He is not just casting cannons, Jean realized with a jolt of engineering insight. He is casting men.
He is taking the raw ore of peasants and the volatile sulfur of mercenaries, and he is compressing them into a standard mold. He is removing the 'Windage'—the gap between intention and execution.
"Grand Master!"
Jean snapped out of his reverie. La Hire was looming over him, looking impatient.
"Stop staring at the ants and fix this wheel," the giant grunted. "The mud is eating the axles."
"It's not the mud, General," Jean said, his voice gaining a newfound confidence—the confidence of someone who knows the math. "It's the friction coefficient. I need to apply lard to the bearings, or the heat will crack the wood."
La Hire stared at him blankly. "Lard. Right. Just make it roll."
Jean turned back to his wheel, applying the grease. He felt a strange thrill. For the first time in his life, war didn't feel like a gamble. It felt like an Equation. And looking at the rhythmic lines of infantry in the distance, Jean suspected the King had already solved it.
But from the wooden platform, Napoleon did not yet see an equation. He saw a mess.
Money could buy gunpowder, and threats could secure gold, but neither could buy the Soul of an army.
The gathering at Blois did not look like the Grand Armée. It looked like a medieval music festival that had descended into a riot.
The logistics were a nightmare. Napoleon looked down at the sea of mud. He saw Gascon mercenaries arguing with Lombard bankers over exchange rates. He saw supply wagons stuck in the mire, their drivers sleeping drunk on top of grain sacks meant to feed a starving city.
The smell hit him next. Not the metallic tang of blood or the sulfur of powder, but the smell of Rot. Unwashed bodies, open latrines, and roasting meat stolen from local peasants.
"I commanded six hundred thousand men on the road to Moscow," Napoleon muttered, gripping the railing until his knuckles turned white. "I moved corps across the Alps in winter. And now? I am babysitting a circus."
Beside him stood General Joan. She looked equally horrified, though for different reasons. She was staring at the edges of the camp, where the "entertainment" was located.
"They are lost," Joan whispered, clutching her white banner. "They gamble with dice made of bone. They blaspheme the Virgin with every breath. And the women..."
She pointed to the clusters of camp followers—harlots, refugees, and destitute widows—hanging onto the soldiers' arms, trading dignity for a piece of bread.
"God will not grant victory to such filth," Joan said, her voice trembling. "We are marching to do God's work with the Devil's tools."
"God might forgive them," Napoleon replied, scanning the disorder with a cold, analytical gaze. "But the English won't. And neither will I."
He turned to La Hire, who had just walked up from the artillery park.
"General La Hire."
"Sire?"
"Joan is now the Director of Moral Welfare. Whatever she says, goes. Clear the camp. No more gambling. No more women. And tell the men that if I hear the Lord's name taken in vain, they will dig latrines for a week."
La Hire blinked. "Even the knights, Sire? It's... part of the culture."
"Especially the knights," Napoleon snapped. "Law and Order, General. We need Law and Order."
La Hire grunted and signaled his guards. "Alright, you lot! Out! The King wants the camp clean! Move it!"
The guards began to roughly shove the women towards the muddy road. There was screaming, crying, and soldiers shouting in protest. It was turning into a riot.
"Wait!"
Joan didn't ask for permission. She jumped down from the platform, landing in the mud with a splash. She walked straight into the chaos, her white armor shining like a beacon in the filth.
She stood between a brute of a guard and a terrified woman clutching a dented cooking pot.
"Stop," Joan said softly. The guard froze. You didn't argue with the Saint.
Joan looked at the woman. Young, perhaps twenty, but aged by hardship. Her face was painted with cheap rouge to hide the bruises.
"What is your name?" Joan asked.
"Marie, Holy Maid," the woman wept, falling to her knees. "Please, don't send us away. The countryside is full of brigands. If we leave the army, we die."
"Why do you sell your body, Marie?"
"My husband died at Verneuil. The English burned our farm. I have nowhere to go. I have to eat."
Joan turned to Napoleon, who had limped down to join her.
"Sire," Joan said firmly. "We cannot cast them out to starve. That is not the way of Christ."
Napoleon looked at the women. He didn't see souls to save; he saw a logistical problem. Refugees consume resources without output.
Unless...
He looked at Marie's hands. Rough, calloused. Worker's hands.
"I don't care about their souls, Joan," Napoleon lied (he cared a little, but he wouldn't admit it). "But I care about their Utility. An army needs support."
Joan smiled. A radiant, terrifying smile. She turned back to the women.
"Hear me!" Joan shouted. "You will not sell your bodies in this camp anymore! That life is over! The King offers you a new covenant!"
"If you wish to serve France, you will stay. Not as harlots, but as Sisters. You will wash the bandages. You will cook the stew. You will mend the tunics."
"We will feed you," Joan promised. "But you must cut your hair. You must wipe the paint from your faces. You must serve the Army of God."
The women looked at each other. Slowly, Marie wiped the rouge from her cheeks, revealing pale, honest skin.
"I can make stew," she whispered. "My father was a baker."
Napoleon watched as Joan transformed a chaotic brothel into a functioning Logistics Auxiliary Corps in five minutes.
"Free labor," Napoleon noted to La Hire. "Improved sanitation. Dedicated medical support. She's a genius, General. She just solved our support staff shortage."
La Hire watched the women cutting their hair, his eyes wide. "She's a Saint," he muttered, crossing himself. "I feel cleaner just looking at her."
But solving the women problem was easy. Solving the Knights was hard. They had everything to lose—specifically, their colossal egos.
As the drums began to beat the new rhythm Napoleon had taught them—the rapid, aggressive Rat-a-tat-tat of the 120-step minute—the mercenaries grumbled but marched.
But the Nobles did not move.
They sat on their high warhorses on the edge of the field, a wall of steel and silk, watching the infantry with open disdain.
Sire de Gamaches, a haughty nobleman with silver armor that cost more than a regiment, rode his massive destrier onto the drilling field. He cut right across the marching lines of the Scots Guard. He deliberately disrupted the rhythm.
"Stop this noise!" Gamaches shouted. "Enough! We are Knights of France, not circus ponies!"
Napoleon signaled the drummers to halt. The silence was sudden and heavy.
"Is there a problem, Gamaches?"
"The problem," Gamaches sneered, "is that I will not march in the mud. My father did not die at Agincourt so I could play foot-soldier for a boy King."
Napoleon's eyes narrowed. He mentioned his father. Good.
"Halt."
Napoleon turned to Jean Bureau, who was standing by the artillery train.
"Grand Master," Napoleon said coldly. "Targeting drill. Fifty paces. Center mass."
Bureau hesitated for a split second, then signaled his crew. The gunners swiveled the bronze beast. The dark muzzle pointed directly at Gamaches.
Gamaches went pale. "Sire! This is treason!"
"No, Gamaches," Napoleon walked down from the platform, limping through the mud until he stood right next to the knight's stirrup. "This is Geometry."
He placed a hand on the knight's armored leg.
"You mentioned your father. He died at Agincourt. Do you know why?"
"He died with honor!"
"He died because he charged a wall he couldn't break!" Napoleon snapped, his voice sharp as a whip. "He charged too soon. He blocked his own archers. He died for nothing but vanity."
Napoleon leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper that only Gamaches could hear.
"Do you want to avenge him, Raoul? Or do you want to join him in a muddy grave?"
Gamaches stiffened. The use of his first name, the mention of vengeance—it struck a nerve.
"I offer you his killers," Napoleon whispered intensely. "I offer you the English throats."
"But to get them, you must be my Sword. And a sword does not swing itself. It stays in the scabbard until the moment is perfect."
Napoleon gestured to the infantry and the cannons.
"Look at them. They are the Anvil. They will hold the English in place. They will take the arrows. They will bleed so you don't have to."
Then he pointed to the cannon aimed at Gamaches.
"And these... these are the Thunder. They will smash the English wall. They will play the opening music of the battle."
Napoleon looked up, locking eyes with the knight.
"I am not asking you to walk because you are a peasant. I am asking you to wait because you are the Executioner."
"When the Thunder stops... when the smoke clears and the English line is shattered... that is your signal. that is when you mount. That is when you ride them down and drink their blood."
Napoleon stepped back, his face hardening.
"But right now? You are blocking my aim. You are letting your pride get in the way of your vengeance. You are failing your land, and you are failing your father."
"So choose, Gamaches. Do you want to ride now and be a dead fool? Or do you want to walk with us, learn the rhythm of the kill, and become the Avenger of Agincourt?"
Gamaches sat frozen on his horse.
The cannon stared at him. The infantry watched him.
But in his mind, he saw his father dying in the mud. He saw the English laughing.
He looked at the King. This man was frail, but his mind was a weapon sharper than any lance.
He is right, Gamaches realized with a shudder. We have been fighting wrong for a hundred years.
Slowly, painfully, the silver-clad knight swung his leg over the saddle.
His steel boots hit the mud with a heavy Squelch.
He stood there, ankle-deep in the filth, looking smaller than he had on the horse, but somehow... more dangerous.
Gamaches handed his reins to a squire. He turned to Napoleon, his eyes burning with a new, cold fire.
"If I walk, Sire," Gamaches growled, "I want the Vanguard. When the Thunder stops... I want the first Englishman."
Napoleon smiled. A wolfish smile.
"Earn it," Napoleon said. "Clear the line of fire."
Gamaches turned to his knights, who were watching in shock.
"Dismount!" Gamaches bellowed. "We march!"
Fifty knights dropped into the mud.
Napoleon turned back to the platform. He glanced at Jean Bureau, who was letting out a breath he had been holding for two minutes.
"Hit it!" Napoleon signaled the drummers.
Rat-a-tat-tat.
The army moved.
In the rear, Jean Bureau watched as the artillery train began to roll, his wheels greased with lard, rolling smoothly.
In the center, the arrogant Knights of France were marching in the mud, shoulder-to-shoulder with the mercenaries, grumbling but moving in perfect time.
And at the front, the Scots Guard marched with the precision of the Imperial Guard.
Napoleon watched the machine come to life. The vibration of thousands of feet hitting the ground in unison hummed in his chest.
For a split second, the mud of Blois vanished. He saw the snow of Austerlitz. He saw the dust of Egypt. He saw the Grand Armée.
"Law and Order," he whispered to Joan, a tear almost forming in his cold eye. "It's a beautiful thing."
Joan looked at the army—her army now. She didn't see a machine. She saw a congregation.
"It is a Great Awakening," she said softly. "France is waking up."
Napoleon adjusted his bicorne hat, blocking out the sun.
"Then let's go wish the English a good morning," he said.
"To Orléans."