The field hospital outside Lille smelled of gangrene and sawed bone.
I stood in the mud, watching a surgeon amputate a dragoon's leg. The soldier bit down on a leather strap, his scream muffled to a guttural whine.
Napoleon stood beside me. He didn't look at the leg. He was looking at the soldier's musket, which was leaning against the tent pole.
He picked it up. He checked the lock.
It rattled. The flint was worn down to a nub. The barrel was pitted with rust.
"Junk," Napoleon spat. He tossed the weapon onto a pile of similar scrap. "This is a Model 1763. It's older than the boy holding it."
I looked at the pile. Hundreds of muskets. All broken. All useless.
"We are losing the war, Sire," Napoleon said, his voice low and angry. "Not because the Austrians are better. But because we can't shoot back. I have regiments fighting with pikes. I have men throwing rocks."
"I sent the order to the Royal Arsenal," I said. "They promised five hundred guns a week."
"They delivered fifty," Napoleon snapped. "And half of them misfire."
He pointed to the horizon, where the smoke of the Austrian lines stained the sky.
"I need fifty thousand muskets, Louis. Yesterday. Or you can start learning German."
I turned away from the tent. The screams were getting to me.
I was the King. I was the CEO of France. And my supply chain was broken.
"Get the carriage," I told Jean. "We're going to the Arsenal."
The Royal Arsenal in Paris was a monument to inefficiency.
It was a vast, dim warehouse filled with smoke and the clang of hammers.
I walked down the main aisle.
At every workbench, a Master Gunsmith was working. Slowly. Methodically.
One man was filing a trigger mechanism. He paused to hold it up to the light, squinting. He filed it again. Then he polished it.
It took him twenty minutes.
I watched him. I felt my blood pressure rising.
"Who is in charge here?" I demanded.
A portly man in a leather apron waddled over. He wiped his hands on a rag.
"Master Dubois, Your Majesty. Chief Armorer."
"Dubois," I said, pointing to the man filing the trigger. "How many muskets does that man make in a week?"
Dubois puffed out his chest. "Ah, Pierre is an artist, Sire. He produces one musket every six days. A masterpiece of craftsmanship."
"One," I repeated.
"Quality takes time, Sire. Each lock is hand-fitted to the barrel. Each screw is custom-threaded."
I looked at the rows of workmen. Maybe fifty of them.
Fifty guns a week.
Meanwhile, the Austrians had factories churning out thousands.
I grabbed a finished musket from a rack. I grabbed another one from the next rack.
I pulled the lock off the first one. I tried to fit it onto the second one.
It didn't fit. The screw holes were a millimeter off.
"They aren't interchangeable," I said, staring at Dubois.
"Of course not," Dubois scoffed. "Every gun is unique. Like a snowflake."
I threw the musket on the floor. It clattered loudly.
"I don't need snowflakes!" I shouted. "I need blizzards! I need fifty thousand guns that all work the same way!"
Dubois recoiled. "Sire, mass production is... vulgar. It lacks soul."
"Soul doesn't kill Austrians," I said. "Lead does."
I turned to Napoleon.
"Fire him."
"What?" Dubois gasped. "You can't fire me! I have a Royal Charter!"
"Charter revoked," I said. "Get out."
Napoleon signaled two grenadiers. They grabbed Dubois and dragged him toward the door. He sputtered and kicked, shouting about tradition.
I climbed onto a workbench. I kicked a vice onto the floor to clear a space.
"Listen to me!" I roared to the room.
The hammering stopped. Every face turned to me.
"From today, this is not an artisan's workshop," I announced. "It is a factory."
I grabbed a piece of chalk from a bench. I drew a line on the floor.
"You," I pointed to the man who had been filing the trigger. "You make triggers. Only triggers. All day. Every day."
I pointed to the next man.
"You make barrels. Only barrels."
I pointed to the next.
"You assemble them. If the parts don't fit, you don't file them. You melt them down and cast them again until they do."
"But Sire," a brave smith spoke up. "That is unskilled labor. We are Masters."
"Then master the assembly line," I said. "Because if you don't produce five hundred guns a day by next week, I will draft every single one of you and send you to the front with a pike. Then you can see how much 'soul' matters when a dragoon is charging you."
I jumped down.
"Standardization," I told Napoleon. "I want measurements. Tolerances. Go to the convents we closed. Turn them into machine shops. Rip out the pews. Put in lathes."
"Yes, Sire," Napoleon said, grinning. He understood the math of it.
"Now," I said, wiping chalk dust from my hands. "We have guns. What about cannons?"
Napoleon's grin faded.
"That is harder," he said. "We have the iron for the barrels. But we lack bronze. We need copper and tin for the touchholes and the field pieces. The mines are empty."
"There must be bronze somewhere in Paris," I said.
Danton, who had been leaning against a pillar eating an apple, stepped forward.
"There is," Danton said. "Tons of it."
"Where?"
Danton pointed upward. toward the sky.
"Ding dong," Danton said.
I followed his finger. Through the skylight, I saw the spire of a church.
"The bells," I whispered.
"Every church in France has two tons of high-grade bronze hanging in the tower," Danton said. "Doing nothing but annoying the neighbors on Sunday morning."
"If you take the bells," Talleyrand's voice came from the doorway. He had arrived quietly, as always. "You take the voice of God."
I turned. Talleyrand was leaning on his cane, looking amused but wary.
"The peasants love their bells, Louis," Talleyrand warned. "They mark the births, the marriages, the deaths. If you melt them down... you declare war on the culture of France."
"I am already at war with the Kings of Europe," I said. "I can handle a few angry grandmothers."
"It won't be grandmothers," Talleyrand said. "It will be the Vendée. The West is devout. If you touch their churches, they will rise."
I thought about the soldier getting his leg sawed off. I thought of the rusted muskets.
"God can speak softly," I said. "The Army needs to speak loudly."
I pulled a decree from my coat. I scribbled on the back.
Decree of Requisition: All Church bells, excepting one per parish for timekeeping, are hereby declared property of the State.
I handed it to Danton.
"Melt them," I said.
The square in front of Saint-Sulpice was crowded.
A squad of National Guardsmen had rigged a block and tackle to the bell tower. They were hoisting the great bronze bell—"Marie-Josephe"—from its cradle.
A crowd had gathered. Mostly women. Some old men.
A priest stood in the doorway of the church. He was young, thin, and fanatical.
"Sacrilege!" the priest screamed. "You are stealing from Christ!"
"We are borrowing it," the Sergeant said, spitting on the ground. "Christ wants to kill Prussians, Father."
"This is the work of the Antichrist!" the priest yelled. He grabbed the rope. "I will not let you!"
"Step aside, citizen," the Sergeant warned.
"No!"
An old woman threw a stone. It hit the Sergeant's helmet with a clack.
"Get them!" the woman shrieked.
The crowd surged forward. They weren't armed, but they were angry. They clawed at the soldiers. They tried to cut the ropes.
I watched from my carriage at the edge of the square.
"Do we intervene?" Napoleon asked, hand on his pistol.
"Let the Sergeant handle it," I said. "We need to set a precedent."
The Sergeant didn't hesitate. He swung his musket butt. It caught the priest in the jaw.
The priest went down, blood spraying.
The crowd gasped. They fell back.
"Pull!" the Sergeant ordered.
The soldiers hauled on the rope.
With a groan of metal, the great bell broke free. It swung out of the tower.
It fell.
It hit the cobblestones with a sound that wasn't a ring. It was a dead, hollow thud. The bronze cracked. A jagged fissure ran up the side of the bell.
The crowd stared at the broken voice of God.
"Load it up!" the Sergeant shouted.
They dragged the broken bell onto a wagon.
I closed the carriage curtain.
"It's done," I said.
"We have the metal," Napoleon said, satisfied.
"And we have a new enemy," Talleyrand murmured from the corner.
He was right.
The sound of that bell hitting the street hadn't been a death knell for the church. It had been a dinner bell for a civil war.
Jean rode up to the carriage window a moment later. He looked pale.
"Sire," he said. "Reports from the West."
"The Vendée?"
"They're killing the tax collectors," Jean said. "They're wearing white cockades. They're shouting 'Long Live the Church.'"
"It's started," I said.
"There's more," Jean said. "We're out of gunpowder. The blockade of the ports means no saltpeter."
I laughed. A dry, humorless sound.
I had the guns. I had the cannons. But now I had no powder.
"Saltpeter," I muttered. "Potassium nitrate."
I remembered something. A stray fact from high school chemistry, or maybe a survivalist podcast I listened to in my old life.
Saltpeter grows in damp, dark places. Cellars. Barns. Urinals.
It's just mold.
I looked at the city of Paris. Thousands of cellars. Thousands of dark, damp walls covered in white nitre.
"I know where to get it," I said.
"Where?" Napoleon asked.
"Everywhere," I said.
I opened the door.
"Issue a new decree," I told Jean. "The Tax of Dirt."
"Dirt?"
"Every citizen is ordered to scrape their cellar walls," I said. "Every ounce of white mold. Every scraping of salt. Collect it. Bring it to the Arsenal."
"You want the people to send you their dirt?"
"I want them to make the powder that saves their lives," I said.
"If we are going to fight the world," I added, looking at the cracked bell on the wagon. "Then we are going to use every inch of this country to do it. Even the mud."