Moreau could swear that Marne was the most beautiful, most comfortable, and most prosperous northern province he had ever seen. The brothers of the Breton 1st Volunteer Battalion thought the same. After all, the battalion had originally been assigned to General Dillon’s Army of the North, but that haughty aristocratic general loathed Lieutenant Colonel Moreau’s unruly “gangster” background, and with a single transfer order kicked the Breton 1st Volunteer Battalion over to the Central Army Group at Metz. Thus, Moreau and his men had only heard of Marne’s splendour and beauty from the mouths of the Ardennes National Guard; today, they were finally seeing it with their own eyes.

  And the beauty was not merely the scenery along the road, but the beauty of people. Here one could not find the sallow, skeletal, battered refugees so common in Moselle—those faces of despair were simply absent.

  Whether in the countryside or town, people came out openly, bathing in April’s warm sunlight, laughing and chatting at leisure. When uniformed troops passed, the men raised their arms and shouted “Long live!” The mayors received Commander André with the courtesies once reserved for a king; women screamed and tossed flowers; and as for the bolder Champagne girls—those bright, daring country daughters—they would even follow handsome soldier-boys in secret, all the way back to the camp…

  Moreau’s good brother Decon had more than once confessed to him in private: when the war ended, he wanted to stay on this gentle, peaceful land, find that dark-haired woman called “Maria,” and marry her, to have children with her. Moreau only smiled, noncommittal. In truth, many of the men held the same dream.

  Food, in particular, was paradise. The moment they crossed into Marne, the soldiers were able to eat fresh meat at every meal, instead of monotonous tins or thin stew—and there was even a bottle of proper champagne. None of it was free: the village committees settled in cash with the accompanying gendarmerie. In towns, tax officials took part in verification, and the expense would be credited against taxation. Plainly, the government’s reputation in Marne was excellent; no one feared they would not be paid.

  Often, on the highway, those pure, sweet-tongued farm girls would keep stuffing bread, fruit, and drink into soldiers’ arms, then turn away grinning to claim reimbursement from the gendarmes. It became so absurd that the gendarmerie had to issue a notice to the entire 1st Volunteer Battalion: henceforth, no one was to accept private goods from civilians—violators would pay out of their own pockets. These comic incidents occurred again and again, only easing once they reached the departmental capital, Chalons-en-Champagne.

  From Chalons onward, the Bretons encountered many novel things. One was the black asphalt road leading to Reims. Built from natural bitumen, slag, and crushed stone, this new kind of road was extraordinarily convenient. Moreau tested it himself: on such a flat, hardened surface, soldiers could march 50 kilometres a day under load, in any weather. On ordinary gravel roads the figure was 35 kilometres—and once rain came, especially heavy rain, the road was easily damaged, often rendering marching and manoeuvre impossible.

  From the gendarmes, Moreau learned that the raw materials for asphalt roads were still too costly; at present, they were used mainly within cities, and the only intercity asphalt road was the one beneath their feet—the Reims–Chalons road.

  The second novelty was the semaphore—those arm-and-panel signal machines standing on hilltops and slopes. Moreau did not really know the awkward proper name; he only knew it was yet another “high-tech” product of the Académie des Sciences’ Reims branch. For this reason, Commander André had ordered the creation of a Telegraph Transmission Bureau under the gendarmerie department. Since last November, the bureau had been responsible for erecting these windmill-like mechanical signal stations between the camps, towns, and border posts of Marne and Ardennes.

  At a dinner, in good spirits, Commander André explained what the semaphore meant. With tall semaphore arms mounted at hill stations, mechanical arms replaced human arms in flag signals, sending and receiving military and civic information. By day, different arm positions conveyed signals; by night, different colours of light displayed them—though due to technical defects, night transmission still relied on a primitive method of flashing lamps.

  If fighting broke out on the Ardennes frontier, within two hours André at the Bacourt camp north of Reims could grasp the situation clearly and accurately, and within one hour issue orders to the garrisons across Marne, rapidly assembling troops and dispatching them to the front for counterattack.

  Not without pride, André told Moreau that the semaphore’s efficiency changed everything: from the outbreak of war on the border to Marne’s reinforcements arriving by forced march at a battlefield 100 kilometres away took only 12 to 15 hours. Before, that process had taken at least 30 hours.

  There was also a further implication André did not state outright, but which Moreau understood on his own: within André’s jurisdiction, when faced with multiple enemy incursions, the speed of information meant a commander could gather scattered forces swiftly and form a concentration of superiority—many against few—at a chosen battlefield.

  In truth, along the route, Moreau and his men encountered countless other oddities, large and small. For example, when they reached the outskirts of Reims, many saw and heard a thunderous roar coming from within two boats at the Vesle River shipyard. Gendarmes guarded the area and refused anyone without a permit.

  Soon, a tall American ran from the shipyard to André’s carriage. Why did Moreau say “American”? Because the well-dressed man’s mouth produced rural English slang, and Moreau knew at once—Brittany had many ports, and American merchants were common. Only after an hour, when lamps were lit at dusk, did the American step down from the carriage, brimming with excitement, and return to the heavily guarded shipyard.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  And Lieutenant Colonel Moreau’s 1st Volunteer Battalion continued escorting General André northward. All along the way, these “Breton bumpkins” (as the people of Reims called them) gaped in astonishment as they stared at the city: on both sides of the streets, tall, bright gas lamps guided them all the way to the end of their journey—the Bacourt camp north of Reims.

  In this specialized military camp, the officers and men of the Breton 1st Volunteer Battalion would undergo the Champagne Composite Brigade’s pre-battle training once more—focused on live-fire shooting under battlefield conditions; platoon- and squad-level bayonet assaults; hollow-square drills for infantry defence against cavalry; and so on.

  Before leaving, André told Moreau and the battalion’s officers: if, after the two-week intensive course, the instructor cadre awarded them an “excellent” rating, then the 1st Volunteer Battalion would be expanded into a 2,000-man infantry regiment—the Breton–Champagne Independent Regiment. Naturally, all officers’ posts and ranks would rise accordingly…

  That night, André wrote to General Berthier in Sedan, who was directing affairs there, telling him that survey parties could be dispatched to strengthen hydrogeological reconnaissance along the Meuse between Sedan and Namur.

  For Fulton claimed he had successfully installed a steam engine on a riverboat, conducted more than ten launch tests, and achieved results better than expected. The steamboat, powered by its own drive, could run 30 kilometres without obstruction; after half an hour of maintenance, its range was 50 kilometres. André set a higher target: the uninterrupted distance must be 50 kilometres, and after simple maintenance it should run 80 to 100 kilometres…

  Like all French rivers, the Meuse was a shy, quiet young woman (the French habitually likened rivers to girls, not mothers). Most of the time the current was slow. In autumn and winter, when water was low, the whole river looked almost motionless. Below Sedan, though the geography permitted navigation, the Meuse channel was narrow and ill-suited to sailing vessels tacking back and forth with the wind; and the banks were lined with rugged primeval forest, making towpaths with mules or manpower impractical.

  In the Metz camp, one important reason André advised Lafayette not to attack the Prince-Bishopric of Liège and the Duchy of Luxembourg (nowadays’ Luxembourg) was the difficulty of supply along the route. Now, with Fulton’s steamboat (propeller-driven, not paddle-wheels), logistical transport would no longer be the great constraint on an advance through the Ardennes—so long as the army did not stray far from the Meuse. Yet this weapon, so far ahead of its time, André did not intend to share with the central army group’s supreme commander. It had to be reserved for his own use.

  The good news did not end there. At Bacourt, the artillery Colonel Senarmont told André that the Reims arsenal had successfully produced a prototype of a new 12-pound field gun André had mentioned back in 1790. Now that the 12-pounder bore the code name: the “André cannon.”

  The 12-pound field gun “André cannon” had a barrel length of 1.676 metres, 14.3 calibres; a bore of 117 mm; a tube weight of about 556.57 kilograms; wheel diameter 1.45 metres; and a total weight (tube, carriage, and wheels) of 1,109 kilograms. The full system—including the gun, limber, and ammunition chest—weighed about 1,750 kilograms. This 12-pounder could fire solid shot, explosive shell, canister, and grapeshot. Because the “André cannon” tube was mainly cast in bronze, it could withstand double charges.

  At André’s insistence, the arsenal also tried manufacturing the tube in high-quality steel, hoping to reduce weight for mobile warfare. In fact the effect was achieved: a steel 12-pound “André cannon” tube weighed under 300 kilograms, and with carriage and wheels the total was under 600 kilograms.

  However, for the moment, high-grade steel was scarce and far more expensive than bronze. Plainly, before large-scale industrial steelmaking, steel could not replace bronze as the primary material for cannon.

  On the tightly guarded artillery range, Colonel Senarmont accompanied General André to test the battlefield performance of the 12-pounder named after the supreme commander. At a command, gunners tore away the camouflage from two 12-pound “André cannon,” raised their black muzzles, and waited for the final firing order.

  An artillery captain moved between the two gun positions, relaying instructions. He went to one gun and told the gun captain, “Target 1,000 metres ahead, bearing b2—load solid shot; set fuse to one-third.”

  The crew passed the task down the line. After a final correction of elevation and scale, the artillery captain gave the fire command, and a gunner struck the vent with a prepared match.

  Two seconds later, driven by the powder charge, the shot burst from the barrel, screaming across the blue sky like a fireball, carving a graceful pale arc toward the designated target—bearing b2, one kilometre away.

  “Reposition!” The crew ran in and heaved the recoiled 12-pounder back to its firing mark.

  “Swab the bore!” At the gun captain’s next command, a sponge-man dipped the long rammer with its woollen head in water, then cleaned the 12-pound bore to ensure no embers remained.

  At the other position, the roving artillery captain issued orders to the second gun captain: “Correct elevation and scale—target bearing d4 at 300 metres! Load canister; set fuse to one-fifth!”

  …

  It had to be said: the range performance was astonishing. Under an excellent crew, the 12-pound “André cannon” showed markedly improved accuracy—likely the best hit rate among all smoothbores—and could fire 6 to 7 rounds per minute (the bronze tube could bear it). In battle, however, with smoke, stress, and casualties, the practical rate would likely be cut in half.

  Even so, André remained dissatisfied—not with the “André cannon” itself, but with the ammunition’s explosive effect. He saw that the gunners’ projectiles were still the old pattern: solid shot for medium and long range, and canister for killing infantry and cavalry at close range (not grape).

  As for the legendary killer—the shrapnel shell—it did not appear in the ammunition boxes at all. Well, this was not Senarmont’s fault; André’s memory was off by a little. The true shrapnel shell was invented by the British artillery officer Henry Shrapnel in 1803—still 11 years away from the present year of 1792.

  Moreover, even after 1804, though the shrapnel shell’s power was feared, besides its high cost it carried a fatal defect: the spherical shell packed with many balls could, during firing, suffer violent friction among the balls, making premature detonation dangerously likely—bursting the gun and injuring one’s own crew.

  Thus, even when the British, French, and other European armies gradually adopted such shells, many gunners and some commanders, fearing for their lives, still refused to use them. To solve the bursting problem, European ordnance engineers took a long, crooked path: instead of first improving the shell body’s structure, they chose to develop cannon with reinforced tubes designed specifically to fire explosive shells, hoping to prevent premature detonation. Not until 1840, with the advent of conical projectiles—and only decades later with their widespread use—did that evolution truly mature.