The Deadlock
May 7, 1429 — Noon
The Bridgehead opposite Les Tourelles
The English were not surrendering.
Captain Molyns, the successor to the slain Glasdale, had barricaded the massive fortress of Les Tourelles. He had raised the drawbridge, sealed the sally ports with rubble, and lined the parapets with every crossbow he had left.
It was a stone island in the river, a turtle that had pulled its head into an unbreakable shell.
"We can take that bridge," Dunois said, jaw tight. "Give me the knights, Sire. Give me Gamaches. We will put our banner on that gate by nightfall."
"Yes," Napoleon replied, slicing a segment of orange. "On top of five hundred French corpses."
He tapped the plan of Les Tourelles spread out on a drumhead.
"Stone that thick does not care how brave you are, Cousin. I won't spend the Shield of France battering his head against a wall I can burn instead."
"Burn?" Dunois frowned. "It is stone, Sire."
"It is a stone box filled with wood," Napoleon corrected. "Floors. Support beams. Roofing. A hundred years of dry timber."
He turned to Jean Bureau. "Jean, build the furnaces."
The Forge of Hell
02:00 PM — The Ruins of Les Augustins
The cannons had been moved. They were no longer on the distant ridge. They were now entrenched in the smoking rubble of the Augustins Monastery, captured only yesterday.
Napoleon walked the line. He looked across the narrow channel of the Loire. The walls of Les Tourelles were only three hundred yards away—close enough to see the faces of the English archers.
"Perfect," Napoleon muttered, patting the stone wall of the ruined monastery. "Geometry wins wars. From here, the angle is flat. The distance is short. The heat will hold."
The engineers built three brick ovens behind the artillery line. Inside, charcoal burned white-hot. Bellows pumped air until the heat shimmered like a mirage, distorting the air above the French lines.
But the gunners stood back, terrified.
"It cannot be done," an old master gunner whispered, crossing himself. "Put a red-hot iron ball into a tube with gunpowder? It will explode in our faces! It is suicide!"
The mutiny of fear spread. No one wanted to load the "Devil's Shot."
Jean Bureau looked at his men, helpless. He wiped sweat from his forehead with a shaking hand. He knew the math worked—if you used a wet wad of straw between the powder and the ball—but he couldn't force their hands.
Then, a shadow fell over the crate of ammunition.
A massive hand, scarred and calloused, picked up the long iron tongs. It was Gaspard Bureau, Jean's younger brother. A man of few words and immense strength, built like a blacksmith's anvil.
"Jean says it works," Gaspard grunted. "So it works."
He shoved a 12-pound iron ball into the heart of the furnace. He waited. The iron turned grey, then dull red, then a bright, angry Cherry Red.
"Wet wads!" Gaspard shouted.
He pulled the glowing sphere from the fire. The heat was so intense it singed the hair on his arms. He walked steadily to the cannon, smoke trailing from the ball like a comet's tail.
"Load!"
He rammed the wet straw down. Then he tipped the glowing ball into the muzzle.
Hiss. Steam erupted from the barrel.
"FIRE!"
BOOM.
The cannon did not explode. The ball flew across the river. It slammed into a wooden watchtower on the English perimeter.
The Test
At first, nothing happened. The ball buried itself in the wood.
On the English walls, soldiers pointed and laughed.
"A dud!" Captain Molyns jeered, leaning over the battlements. "The French are throwing hot rocks! Are they cold over there?"
The laughter rippled through the garrison. They felt safe behind their stone.
Napoleon didn't react. He watched the tower, counting in his head.
One. Two. Three...
The heat was transferring. The cherry-red iron was cooking the dry timber from the inside out.
Then, a wisp of black smoke curled from the hole. Then a spark.
Then—WHOOSH.
The watchtower didn't just burn; it erupted. The superheated iron inside the wood ignited the timber instantly. In seconds, the tower was a torch.
The English laughter died in their throats. They watched in horror as the structure was consumed. It wasn't a normal fire. It was a voracious, unnatural inferno.
"He is a demon," a soldier whispered, backing away from the wall. "He breathes fire."
The Recognition
The wooden tower collapsed in a fountain of sparks. The experiment was a success.
Napoleon turned to Gaspard Bureau. The big man was sweating rivers, his eyebrows singed off, his leather apron smoking from the heat. He was shaking—not from fear, but from the adrenaline of surviving the impossible.
Napoleon walked up to him. He knew he had to reward this man. But the war chest was for the mercenaries, and titles were for the nobles. He needed something else. Something permanent.
"Lucas!" Napoleon called out, not looking back.
Lucas de Cousinot stepped out from the shadow of an ammunition wagon. He was already holding a pot of white lead paint and a brush. The young secretary didn't look surprised. He had been watching the King's eyes. Gold was gone; titles were spent. So His Majesty paid in the one currency that never ran out.
Glory.
Lucas handed the brush to Napoleon. Their eyes met for a split second—a silent acknowledgement between the Master and the Administrator.
Napoleon took the brush. He turned to the terrified gunners who were watching. He pointed the iron tongs at the glowing brick oven.
"From this day forth," Napoleon shouted over the roar of the fire, "in the rolls of the King's army, this is not a furnace."
He dipped the brush into the paint. With quick, bold strokes, he wrote a name on the hot bricks. The paint hissed as it dried instantly against the heat:
LE GASPARD
He turned back to the younger Bureau. "It is The Gaspard."
Gaspard stared at his name sizzling on the brick. His chest swelled. To have a weapon named after you... it was better than a knighthood. It was legendary. It was a story his grandchildren would tell.
Napoleon leaned in, his voice low and intense, so only the brothers could hear. "You risked your life on a theory. You bet your skin on my orders."
Napoleon placed a hand on Gaspard's massive shoulder. "The Treasury of France may be empty, but my memory is full. I never default on a debt of bravery."
He looked at Jean Bureau. "Your brother has the brain," Napoleon tapped his own temple. Then he poked Gaspard in the chest. "You have the heart."
"Now," Napoleon handed the tongs back to the newly christened hero. "Feed The Gaspard. I want to serve dinner hot."
Gaspard straightened, pride burning hotter than the charcoal. He didn't just hold tongs anymore; he held a scepter.
"Yes, Sire!"
Lucas watched from the side, saying nothing.
Transaction complete, he thought. Cost: one pot of paint. Profit: a hero willing to die.
The Last Warning
03:00 PM
The furnaces were roaring now. Dozens of balls were heating. The air smelled of ozone and burning charcoal.
Joan of Arc watched the preparations. She saw the malice in the red iron. She knew what would happen when those balls hit a fortress packed with men. It wouldn't be a battle; it would be an oven.
She rode her horse to the very edge of the riverbank, stopping just outside bowshot. The burned-out watchtower still spat orange embers behind her like a warning from hell.
She lifted her banner and drew a breath that seemed to come from the soles of her feet.
"ENGLISHMEN!" her voice cracked across the water, clear as a bell. "Before the rain of fire falls again, leave this place!"
The men on the walls shifted, some ducking instinctively as if the fire might already be in the air.
"In the name of God," Joan shouted, "I offer you a road home. Lay down your arms. Walk away. I will let you live."
For a heartbeat, the fortress wavered. Then Captain Molyns seized a crossbow from a man beside him.
"We do not parley with witches!" he snarled, loosing the bolt.
The quarrel hissed across the gap, tearing a strip from Joan's banner.
"Burn her!" someone howled from the ramparts. "Burn the witch!"
Napoleon rode up beside her, grabbing her reins and pulling her back.
"You tried, General," he said softly. "You offered them a door. They chose the wall. Now we offer them heat."
The Judgment of Fire
03:30 PM
"Grand Battery! Fire!"
Twelve guns roared. Twelve cherry-red meteors streaked across the grey sky.
They smashed into the roof of the keep. They punched through the floorboards. They rolled into the cellars where the English slept.
Les Tourelles became a chimney.
The dry timber beams, aged for a hundred years, caught fire instantly. The heat inside the stone walls rose to blast-furnace levels within minutes.
It was a horror show.
From the French lines, the screams coming out of Les Tourelles no longer sounded human. They were the shrieks of metal and meat cooking together. English knights in full plate armor found themselves trapped in a convection oven. Their armor heated up. They tried to unbuckle their straps, but the leather burned their fingers. The iron cooked them in their own shells.
Joan could not watch.
She slid from her saddle and fell to her knees, banner laid across her arms like a shroud. The glow of the burning fortress painted her armor blood-red.
"Lord," she whispered, fingers knotting around the wood of the staff, "have mercy. On them as on us. They are stubborn and blind, but they are still Your children. Take their souls quickly. Do not leave them long in this fire."
Her lips moved faster, tripping over Latin and country French, a desperate torrent of prayer for men who would have gladly seen her hanged.
The Misunderstanding
On the far wall, through heat shimmer and black smoke, an English archer saw only a lone figure in white, kneeling with arms raised before a tower of flame.
His mouth went dry.
"She's calling it," he croaked. "By God, she's calling the fire."
Around him, men began to cross themselves with shaking hands, torn between shooting at her and hiding from her.
They didn't see a saint praying for mercy. They saw a Sorceress commanding the elements. They saw the fire answering her call.
The Collapse
05:00 PM
The heat inside Les Tourelles was intense enough to crack stone.
The surviving English garrison, maddened by the heat, tried to flee across the wooden drawbridge that connected the fort to the north bank.
On the French bank, a few young knights spurred forward on instinct, faces white, as if sheer courage could carry them through flame to chase the fleeing enemy.
Raoul de Gamaches rode across their path, his wounded leg making his seat stiff but his voice like iron.
"Hold the line!" he barked. "You ride into that, you die for nothing. Let the guns work."
One of the hot-blooded squires met his eye, swallowed, and reined back. The blue line of the King's Compagnie did not break.
"Target the chains!" Napoleon ordered.
Gaspard took a fresh cherry-red ball from Le Gaspard and walked steadily to the cannon—Saint Peter—smoke trailing from the iron like a comet's tail.
BOOM.
A red-hot shot struck the main support beam of the escape bridge. The wood, already smoking, shattered.
The bridge collapsed. Hundreds of English soldiers, heavy with armor and panic, slid into the Loire River.
HISS.
The sound of hundreds of superheated breastplates hitting the cold water was like a giant serpent exhaling. Steam rose in a massive white cloud.
They didn't swim. They sank like stones. There was no blood. Just bubbles, steam, and silence.
The Messenger of Doom
Not all the English died in the fire or the river.
On the far bank, a narrow postern gate—half-choked with rubble—burst open. A handful of men stumbled out, armor blackened, faces blistered, eyes wild.
One of them, a sergeant from Kent whose name no one in Orléans would ever know, ran until his lungs were knives. He scrambled up the muddy bank and ran west, away from the river, away from the fire.
He ran until his lungs were knives, driven by sheer terror. He didn't stop until he saw the banners of the main English camp.
The Fortress of Saint-Laurent.
He burst into the command tent, collapsing at the feet of William de la Pole, the Earl of Suffolk.
Suffolk was pacing. He had seen the smoke rising from the bridge. He had heard the thunder. But he didn't know the truth.
"Speak, man!" Suffolk barked, grabbing the sergeant by his scorched tunic. "Where is Glasdale? Where is the bridge?"
"Gone, my lord," the sergeant gasped. "All gone. Melted."
"Melted? By what? Cannons?"
"No..." The sergeant's eyes widened, seeing the memory again. "She called it. The Maid. She knelt in the mud, and the sky answered. Fire, from nowhere. Men burned in their armor like snails in a pot."
Suffolk went very still. He looked at his captains. They were crossing themselves.
"A woman who commands fire," a chaplain whispered from the corner. "That is not the work of saints. That is the Devil."
Suffolk dropped the sergeant. He walked to the tent flap and looked east. The column of black smoke from Les Tourelles was blotting out the stars. He felt a cold sweat on his back. Talbot was gone. Glasdale was dead. And the French had a weapon that could melt stone.
"Scribe!" Suffolk shouted. "Write to Paris. Write to the Regent. Tell the Duke of Bedford that Orléans is lost."
Suffolk's hand trembled as he poured a cup of wine.
"And tell him... tell him the Devil is marching on Paris."
The Road Opens
Sunset
The French army stood on the banks. The blockade was broken. Orléans was free.
Napoleon watched the last of the steam drift away. The "English Turtle" was an empty, smoking shell.
Dunois stood beside him, gauntleted hands resting on the ruined stone of the bridge. The wind from the river carried the stink of wet ash and boiled meat.
"This is not how my father fought," Dunois said quietly. It was not an accusation. It was an epitaph.
"No," Napoleon agreed. "If your father had had these guns, he would have used them."
Dunois let out a breath that might have been a laugh, or a sob, and turned away to start counting the living.
Napoleon turned to Jacques Cœur, who had come to inspect his investment.
"You see, Jacques?" Napoleon pointed to the river. "That is why we need Industry. Chivalry is dead. Courage is worthless against iron that burns white."
He turned his horse away from the river. He didn't look at the celebrating city. He looked North.
He rode past Joan, who was still kneeling, broken by the cruelty of the victory. He didn't tell her to stop praying. He knew the rumors would start tomorrow. He knew the Church would come for her.
Let them come, Napoleon thought. I have the guns.
"Pack up, gentlemen," Napoleon said.
"To the city, Sire?"
"No," Napoleon smiled, cold and sharp. "To Reims."
Napoleon pointed to a wagon. "Pack the prisoner Talbot. I want him to watch me put on a hat."
"Sire," Dunois urged, his voice low. "We have taken the bridge, but the war is not over. Suffolk is still at Saint-Laurent. He has four thousand fresh men. If we march to Reims now, he will strike our rear. We must pivot and attack him before nightfall."
"No," Napoleon said calmly. "We do not attack Saint-Laurent."
"But Sire! He is a threat! He is right there!"
"He is not a threat," Napoleon turned to his cousin. His face was unreadable, his eyes dark and deep. "He is leaving."
Dunois blinked. "Leaving? How can you know that?"
Napoleon smiled. It wasn't his usual shark-like grin. It was a serene, mysterious smile—the smile of a statue in a cathedral.
He looked at Joan, who was kneeling nearby, praying for the souls of the drowned English.
Dunois swallowed. "Is this..." he hesitated, glancing at Joan, "is this a vision? Do you share the Maid's gift?"
Napoleon turned slowly in his saddle. The shadows masked his expression, making his eyes look like dark voids. He didn't answer immediately. He let the silence build.
"The Maid hears the voices of Saints, Jean," he said softly. "She looks at Heaven."
He tapped his own temple. "I look at the map."
Dunois blinked, confused.
"But," Napoleon continued, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur, "sometimes, Cousin... the map speaks."
"It tells me Suffolk is not a soldier; he is an accountant. An accountant cuts his losses. He runs."
Napoleon leaned back, looking at the first stars appearing in the sky.
"And Destiny tells me he will run out of breath at Patay."
He looked Dunois in the eye. The gaze was not manic; it was terrifyingly absolute.
"Call it a prophecy if it comforts the men. Call it calculation if it comforts you. But know this: Suffolk will be there."
Dunois felt a chill. This wasn't the religious ecstasy of Joan. This was something colder. Something inevitable.
"Patay?" Dunois repeated the name of the small village miles to the north.
"Yes. That is where we will catch them. Not here, behind their walls. But there, in the open field."
Napoleon straightened up, adjusting the brim of his hat. He looked like a man who had already read the last page of the book.
"The English lease has not just expired here, Cousin. It has expired in Heaven."