Fox of France

Joseph was indeed working on something new in the laboratory, a new toy he was going to hand over to Napoleon for use in Italy—the Minie rifle.

In this era, there were already rifled rifles. But these rifled guns, because the reload speed is too low, are almost useless except for hunting. (The bullets of the original rifled guns were slightly thicker than the barrel, so when loading the bullets, the gunman had to use a hammer and a push rod to forcefully insert the bullets into the barrel. This process was time-consuming and labor-intensive. As for ordinary smoothbore guns, seven or eight shots have already been fired, while rifled guns can only fire once)

But the appearance of the Mini bomb changed all that.

In the original history, this bullet was jointly invented around 1849 by the French captain Claude Edirne Meigne and captain Henri-Gustave De Vickine.

This kind of bullet is slightly smaller than the caliber of the rifle, so it solves the embarrassing situation that the bullet cannot be inserted into the barrel or the barrel is blocked due to the large bullet when loading the front bullet of the old rifle. Minie bullets can be easily pushed into the barrel with a push rod. This greatly increases 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 technology and brought it to India. But they didn’t want Indian soldiers to refuse to use it because lard or tallow was smeared on these bullets. And this was the trigger, triggering India’s national uprising.)

The bottom of the bullet uses cork material. When shooting, the gunpowder gas impacts the cork, and the cork suddenly expands the bullet after being impacted for a moment. Since 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 the gunpowder gas and causing the kinetic energy of the bullet to be lost. This solves the chamber sealing problem of the old-style muzzle-loading gun, and greatly enhances the rate of fire, range and safety of the gun (good airtightness is not easy to cause gunpowder slag residue to block the barrel and cause the chamber to explode).

Although this kind of bullet was invented decades later, at this time, it is actually not difficult to realize it technically. But the advantage it brings in tactics is very huge.

First of all, it makes the rifled gun completely catch up with the smoothbore gun in terms of reloading speed, so that the only advantage of the rifled gun as a weapon is that it is cheaper.

Ordinary smoothbore rifles have an effective range of no more than one hundred yards, but rifled rifles using Minie bullets can effectively shoot targets five hundred yards away. This lengthened the arms of the rifles in the hands of the infantry many times.

Before using this bullet, both the British and the Russians believed that the bullet is a fool, and the bayonet is a hero. They are all accustomed to advancing to the closest distance against the opponent's bullets on the battlefield, and then after another volley, charge with bayonets to solve the problem. But the heroism of both the British and Russian troops would be a joke if their opponents used the minie, which was effective at five hundred yards. The status of hand-to-hand combat has also declined sharply.

In the era of muskets, because of the threat of cavalry, the infantry had to form a strict formation to go into battle (of course, apart from this reason, the morale of the army is also a major reason. It will really disappear on the battlefield.), but with the Mini bomb, the cavalry will charge the infantry again, and it will be dead. As a result, the status of the cavalry has been greatly reduced.

In addition, artillery tactics were also greatly affected. In the era of muskets, when artillery used shotgun or grape bullets, its effective range was greater than that of rifles in the hands of infantry. Therefore, artillery can be used as an offensive weapon in a field battle, pushing it to the forefront of the queue.

But the appearance of the Minie shell made the range of infantry weapons suddenly exceed the range of cannon shot or grape shot. Although the solid shells used for cannons have a much longer range than the Mini shells, due to accuracy problems, they are not efficient when used to fight loose soldiers. So if you have to push the cannon to the front at this time, use it for attack. The gunner will become a living target for the opposing infantry. As a result, the artillery had to retreat, and it was only used as a support weapon at a large logarithm.

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

However, this weapon still has a huge flaw, that is, its technical threshold is so low that you can understand what is going on just by looking at it. Therefore, once this weapon is used, it won't take long, and the related technology will definitely be obtained by others. These men may have been enemies of France, or business enemies of the House of Bonaparte.

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

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

The bullet experiment was actually successful very early on, but the design of the rifle was a bit behind. Minie bullets require powder gases to support the bullet, which means that it needs a faster-burning powder. It is not difficult to achieve just a faster burning speed, but a faster burning speed will bring two problems. One is that the chamber pressure rises too fast, and the other is that the chamber pressure drops too fast. The former leads to a high peak value of the chamber pressure, and it is easy to explode the chamber, while the latter causes the average value of the chamber pressure to be not high enough, and the speed of the bullet is not fast enough.

In order to avoid bombing, the barrel must be thickened, and this will make the rifle too heavy, and it will consume too much metal, increasing the cost. For this reason, Joseph designed the barrel into a frustum shape with a thicker back and a thinner front. However, how thick the thick part should be and how thin the thin part can be can only be solved slowly by experiments. Therefore, these things, which are not difficult in principle, took up a lot of Joseph's time. So much so that the number of letters he wrote to Fanny has been reduced.

However, no matter how busy you are, you must pay attention to the balance between work and rest. At least, mental workers must. Therefore, Joseph stipulates that researchers have one day off every ten days and work no more than 12 hours a day. As for senior researchers like himself and Lavoisier, they would take two days off every ten days and work no more than six hours a day. As for manual laborers, they are everywhere. Unless the skills are so superb that they are irreplaceable, Joseph has no time to care for them.

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

Joseph only knew a rough idea of ​​history. He didn't even know who Saint-Just was in his previous life. Naturally, he wouldn't know that the bald man with a taste of Bordeaux French in front of him was a legendary figure in American history. During the North American War of Independence, Stephen Girard, who started his business by smuggling arms to the Continental Army, was the shipping tycoon of North America and the first rich man in American history whose personal assets exceeded $10 million. However, this is all later. At this time, it was the time when his hegemony was just taking off.

Stephen Girard was born as a sailor and was particularly interested in all kinds of ships. He was intrigued by the Black Pearl when he first saw it in the port of New York. After a little more understanding of the performance of the Black Pearl, he immediately calculated that if the load capacity of this kind of ship could reach 500 tons, then its efficiency would far exceed the conclusion of ordinary sailing ships. So, this French-American with a keen sense of smell returned to France with the Black Pearl.

In the next two days, Joseph and Stephen Girard had arduous negotiations. The two sides cried poorly to each other, poured chicken soup on each other, and said to each other that negotiations have enhanced the understanding of both parties. Finally, they reached a strategic partnership. relation.

According to the final agreement signed by the two parties, Stephen Girard will order seven clipper ships with a load of 500 tons from the shipyard affiliated to the Bonaparte Institute at one time, and prepay the full purchase price of five of them. The rest of the payment shall be paid when the ship is delivered.

The affiliated shipyard of Bonaparte needs to fully transfer the related technology of building this clipper ship to Stephen Girard, and guarantee that Stephen Girard will provide a salary not lower than 1.5 times the salary of the same industry in France , to send technical instructors to Stephen Gillard's shipyard in New York, and ensure that New York Girard Shipyard can master the manufacturing technology of flying shears within two years.

Stephen Girard guaranteed that in the next fifteen years, for every flying clipper ship produced by Girard Shipyard, he would pay the Bonaparte Institute a technical royalty at a price of one dollar per ton of deadweight.

The Bonaparte Institute guarantees that it will not sell this technology to other manufacturers within this period. When selling clipper ships to other companies in North America, Stephen Girard needs to be compensated with US$1.5 for every ton of load.