The Sting of the Hornet
May 9, 1429 — Noon
The Royal Foundry (Requisitioned Blacksmith), Orléans
The building shook. Not from an explosion, but from the rhythm of twenty hammers striking iron at once.
Napoleon and Dunois tied their horses outside. The makeshift arsenal, formerly a large merchant smithy, was now the hottest place in Orléans. Heat radiated from the open doors like the breath of a dragon.
Before they could enter, a voice screamed from the smoke.
"I have it! Mother of God, I have it!"
A figure burst out of the darkness, nearly colliding with the King.
It was Jean Bureau.
The Master of Artillery looked like a man who had stared into a volcano. His hair was standing on end, singed at the tips. His face was a mask of soot, save for two white circles around his frantic, bloodshot eyes. He hadn't slept in thirty hours.
He stopped, realizing who he had almost knocked over. He froze, his hands trembling—not from fear, but from the fever of discovery.
"S-Sire!" Jean stammered, wiping a black smear across his forehead. "Your Majesty! I... I didn't see you. But it doesn't matter! I mean—it matters, but—I have improved the chamber! The ignition delay is gone!"
Napoleon looked at his disheveled artillery master calmly.
"Jean," Napoleon said. "You look like a miner who lost a fight with his own furnace. What are you doing?"
"A sample!" Jean waved his blackened hands towards the workshop. "I made a prototype. Based on your sketches of the swivel mechanism. But lighter! Faster!"
Napoleon gestured for him to lead the way.
Inside, amidst the roar of bellows and the clang of anvils, a strange device sat on a workbench. It was short, squat, and ugly. A bronze tube thickened at the breech, resting on a crude wooden block.
Jean patted it affectionately. "I added three inches of bronze to the breech walls. It can take a double charge. It will shatter a longboat at five hundred yards!"
Napoleon walked around the weapon. He didn't smile. He tapped the thick barrel with his knuckle. Thud.
"Jean," Napoleon said flatly. "This thing is too fat. It is not a cannon. It is a wine barrel with a hole in it."
Jean blinked, his excitement deflating. "Sire, to reduce the risk of a breach explosion—"
Napoleon raised a hand.
"War is not alchemy, Jean. You cannot solve every problem by just 'adding more metal'."
Napoleon grabbed a piece of charcoal from a nearby tray. He crouched down and began to draw on the stone floor. Dunois watched, fascinated, as the King turned geometry into a weapon.
"Look," Napoleon pointed to the trunnions (the pivot points) on Jean's prototype. "Your center of gravity is wrong. It's behind the pivot. When the ship rocks, the muzzle will point at the sky. Your gunner will spend all his strength fighting gravity, not aiming at the English."
Jean stared at the drawing. He looked at the gun, then back at the floor. He realized, with a sudden chill, that the King understood the physics better than he did.
"Gravity..." Jean whispered. "Of course. The lever arm..."
Napoleon drew three quick circles on the floor.
"There are two kinds of guns, Jean," Napoleon said, looking up. "Those that shoot straight, and those that shoot often."
He tapped the charcoal on the stone.
"I want a third kind. Accurate. Fast. And able to spin on a coin. Can you do it?"
Jean's instinct was to say Impossible. To combine the lightness of a swivel gun with the power of a field piece? It was a contradiction. But the numbers on the floor were taunting him.
"...Theoretically," Jean muttered. "Perhaps."
"Then it is not 'perhaps'," Napoleon said, his voice low and intense. "It is 'done'."
Jean grabbed the charcoal. "If I shave the muzzle... move the trunnions forward by two inches..."
He began to sketch feverishly.
BOOM.
A deafening crack silenced the workshop.
On the test bench, the prototype breech-mug (the removable chamber) had exploded. Shards of copper flew like shrapnel, pinging off the stone walls. Workmen threw themselves to the ground.
Jean stood frozen, his face pale beneath the soot.
"The seal," he groaned, his voice cracking with despair. "It's always the seal. The gas escapes... the pressure spikes... I cannot seal the breech."
Napoleon didn't flinch. He walked over to the wreckage.
Gaspard Bureau, Jean's massive brother, emerged from the smoke. He wasn't looking at the math. He picked up a jagged fragment of the exploded chamber.
"You two bookworms," Gaspard grunted. "Can you stop counting and look at this?"
He held up the shard.
"The crack didn't start in the powder chamber. It started at the rim. Here."
Jean squinted at it. His eyes widened.
"Thermal expansion..." Jean realized. "The bronze barrel and the iron wedge... they heat up at different rates. The stress tore the metal apart."
He looked defeated. "We can't change the laws of nature, Sire."
Napoleon looked at the shattered metal. He remembered a vineyard in Italy, centuries in the future.
"No," Napoleon said. "But we can cushion them."
He turned to Jean.
"Soft copper gaskets. And hemp rope soaked in oil."
Jean looked confused. "Oil? Rope?"
"I saw it in... the south," Napoleon lied smoothly. "Merchants use it to seal olive oil drums under high heat. If it holds hot oil, it will hold hot gas."
Jean's eyes lit up. The engineer in him instantly grasped the concept.
"A thermal buffer..." Jean whispered. "The soft copper expands to fill the gap... the hemp absorbs the vibration... My God. It could work. It could take twenty shots without cooling!"
Napoleon smiled.
"Theoretically twenty? Then I want thirty."
"I will try," Jean said, already running to the anvil.
Gaspard laughed aloud. He snapped Jean's charcoal stick in half and handed him a hammer.
"Come on!" Gaspard roared. "My brother is going to write magic again!"
Three Hours Later
The sun was high now. The workshop was littered with failed attempts. Several bare bronze tubes, cast in the last days from recycled English metal, lay cooling on racks, waiting for their final fitting.
But in the center of the room, clamped to a test stand, stood a new weapon.
It was elegant. It was no longer a fat barrel. It was sleek, tapered like a predator. It rested on a steel U-shaped yoke that allowed it to spin freely.
Gaspard grabbed the long, curved handle at the rear—the "Monkey Tail"—and swung the gun around. It moved smoothly, light and deadly.
"Look at it," Gaspard grinned, aiming at an anvil. "Like a nasty little insect. Stings you and flies away."
Napoleon stepped closer. He ran his hand along the bronze curve.
"Like a hornet," Napoleon murmured. "It needs a name."
Jean looked at the King. "Le Frelon," he tested the word. "The Hornet."
Napoleon's expression hardened into his signature cold smirk.
"Let's see if it stings."
The Test Range
The brothers loaded the new breech mug. They wrapped the joint with the oil-soaked hemp and locked it in with the copper gasket.
Gaspard gripped the Monkey Tail, aiming at a row of wooden shields fifty yards away. Napoleon nodded. "Fire."
Gaspard touched the linstock to the vent.
CRACK-HISS.
It wasn't the deep, rolling thunder of a cannon. It was a sharp, vicious snap—like a whip cracking the sky.
The wooden shields disintegrated. The grape-shot shredded them into splinters.
Jean rushed forward to check the seal. "It held!" Jean shouted, pointing to the breech. "No leaks! No cracks!"
Napoleon nodded, satisfied. "Twelve," he ordered. "I want twelve more by sunset."
He turned to Dunois, who was staring at the shredded wood. The Bastard of Orléans walked up to the smoking little gun, running a gloved hand over the hot bronze.
"Sire," Dunois said, a slow, greedy grin splitting his scarred face. "I confess. When I asked to borrow from you this morning, I only had eyes for your Twelve Apostles."
He gestured to the heavy field guns in the corner. "I thought I needed sledgehammers to crack the stone walls of Beaugency."
He looked back at the Frelon.
"But now..." Dunois laughed, the sound of a man who had gone to the market for bread and found wine. "I came for a hammer, and you give me a swarm of stinging devils as well."
"The Apostles break the walls," Napoleon said calmly. "The Hornets kill the men. Why choose, Cousin? Take them all."
Dunois patted the barrel of the Hornet.
"Indeed," Dunois murmured. "Hammer and Sting. The English won't know whether to hide behind their walls or run from them."
Napoleon turned to leave.
"The swarm gets bigger. And your patience is running out. Go, Dunois. Load the boats."
The Mosquito Fleet
May 9, 1429 — 02:00 PM
The Fishermen's Wharf, Orléans
Napoleon stood at the edge of the quay, looking down at the river. The water was brown and sluggish.
Beside him, Dunois and Jacques Cœur looked at the same thing, but their expressions were grim.
"It is a mess, Sire," Dunois admitted.
There were no warships. There were no heavy transports. The English blockade at Beaugency had trapped all the large vessels downstream.
All that remained in Orléans were the leftovers: flat-bottomed sand barges, smelling of wet earth; narrow fishing punts, smelling of gut and scale; and a few rotting ferries used to move sheep across the water.
"We cannot mount the Apostles on these," Dunois said, kicking a rotting plank. "The recoil of a twelve-pounder would snap the keel in half. We'll sink before we reach the enemy."
Ambroise de Loré, the commander of the Alençon reinforcements, stood a few paces back, holding a scented handkerchief to his nose.
"This is a farce," Ambroise muttered loud enough to be heard. "We are knights of France. You expect us to float down to Meung in... tubs? The English will laugh us out of the water before they shoot us."
Napoleon turned slowly. He didn't look angry. He looked calculating.
"Laugh?" Napoleon repeated. "Good. Let them laugh. Laughter makes a man careless."
He walked onto the rickety gangplank of the largest sand barge. He stomped on the deck. It held.
"Dunois," Napoleon called out. "You are thinking like a general who wants to occupy a city. You want heavy ships to carry heavy men."
He pointed to the new, slender bronze guns that Jean Bureau's men were carting out of the workshop.
"I don't need to occupy the river. I need to clean it."
He turned to Jacques. "These boats draw, what? Six inches of water?"
"Perhaps less, Sire," Jacques answered. "They skim the surface."
"Perfect," Napoleon smiled. "The English have built underwater stakes to stop big barges. These will float right over them."
He turned back to Dunois.
"Requisition them all. Every fishing boat, every sand punt."
"Like a swarm of mosquitoes," Napoleon said, coining the phrase as he watched the small boats bobbing in the current. "Small, annoying, and impossible to swat. We don't need galleons, Cousin. We need a Mosquito Fleet."
"We bolt the Frelons to the prow," Napoleon demonstrated with his hands. "No heavy carriages. Just the yoke and the gun. The boat is the carriage. The river takes the recoil."
Ambroise stepped forward, bewildered. "But Sire... these boats offer no protection. A single arrow..."
"Speed is protection, Messire Ambroise," Napoleon cut him off. "We go with the current. We drift silent, then we sting, and we keep moving. By the time they aim their longbows, we are under their bridge and putting grapeshot into their bellies."
He looked at the ragtag collection of wooden hulls.
"Paint them black," Napoleon ordered. "We leave tonight."
The Assembly
May 9, 1429 — Sunset
The Riverbank
The transformation was ugly, hasty, and terrifyingly efficient.
The riverside of Orléans had turned into an assembly line. There was no heraldry here, no gold leaf, no chivalric ceremony. Just the sound of hammers and saws.
Ambroise de Loré walked along the line, watching the preparations with a mix of fascination and horror.
He saw simple fishermen sawing off the prows of their boats to bolt on the iron yokes. He saw Jean Bureau's gunners, faces still black with soot, greasing the swivel mechanisms of the new Frelons.
He saw a Gascon mercenary sharpening a boarding axe on a grindstone, while a priest blessed a bucket of pre-loaded breech chambers as if they were holy relics.
It didn't look like war as Ambroise knew it. It looked like... industry.
He stopped by a small wherry. Gaspard Bureau was bolting a Frelon to the gunwale. The gun looked absurdly small compared to the bombards of the old days.
"You trust your life to that toy?" Ambroise asked, tapping the bronze barrel with his gloved finger.
Gaspard didn't look up. He tightened a nut with a massive wrench.
"This toy spits twenty lead balls in the time it takes you to draw your sword, My Lord," Gaspard grunted. "And I have four chambers ready to swap. That's eighty balls before you can say 'Saint George'."
Ambroise pulled his hand back. He looked at the row of twelve boats, each armed with a "sting".
He realized then what he was seeing.
The English at Meung and Beaugency were waiting for a fight. They were waiting for banners, for trumpets, for honorable sieges.
Instead, they were getting this. A swarm of black, silent killers, drifting down the dark water.
Napoleon appeared at his side, watching the fleet assemble.
"You look disturbed, Ambroise," Napoleon said quietly.
"It is... unchivalrous, Sire," Ambroise admitted, his voice low. "To shoot men from the dark, with machines, without giving them a chance to cross swords?"
"Chivalry is a game for men who are winning," Napoleon replied, his eyes reflecting the torches on the water. "We are not winning yet. We are surviving."
He gestured to the fleet.
"Tonight, we change the rules. We don't trade blood for blood. We trade lead for time."
Ambroise looked at the black boats again. He had ridden a hundred campaigns under bright banners, amidst the deafening roar of trumpets and charge cries.
But none of them had frightened him as much as these silent boats.
Dunois walked up, fully armored now, but wearing a simple dark cloak over his plate.
"The swarm is ready, Sire," Dunois reported. "La Hire has the land force in position to distract the gate. The river is yours."
Napoleon nodded.
"Launch," he ordered.
One by one, the black boats pushed off from the mud. They caught the current. There were no oars splashing, no sails flapping. Just the silent drift of the dark water carrying them west.
Towards the English.
Towards the bridge.
Towards the slaughter.
Napoleon turned back to the city.
"God has nothing to do with it," he said. "It is just physics."