The commander of the fort, Lieutenant Colonel Antoine de Villefort, was a tall man in his forties. He appeared pleased with Joseph's visit.
"Ah, Mr. Bonaparte, I thought it would be a few days before you came." Commander Villefort said, "I didn't expect you to arrive so soon. Uh, do you need a break?"
"Thanks, but no need." Joseph said, "Actually I arrived last night. It was just that it was late when I arrived, so I spent the night resting in the hotel. So I don't need any more rest."
"Being young is enviable." Commander Villefort laughed, "When I was your age, I too was never tired no matter how busy I was. Since you don't need to rest, we can start the work related to the expansion of the fort. Well, Captain Cissé, you take Mr. Bonaparte and get him settled, then take him to the library to review the information and take him on a field trip. Ah, Mr. Bonaparte, you can also speak directly to Cissé if you need anything."
"Thank you for your care." Joseph replied.
When he emerged from the small building, Cissé asked, "Mr. Bonaparte, where do you keep your luggage?"
"Still in the hotel." Joseph replied.
"Which hotel?" Cissé said, "I can send two men to bring your luggage. Well, we'll put you in the officers' quarters over there. The conditions here can't be compared to Paris, so I'll have to give you a bit of a break."
"It's a little hotel called 'Claude's Inn'." Joseph replied, "Also, you can just call me Joseph."
"Ah, 'Claude's Inn'?" Cissé laughed, "Joseph, you must have stayed there because it's close to the harbor and it looks nice and affordable on the outside, right? Well, you must not have slept well last night. They're notorious for getting bedbugs in their hotel beds!" As if afraid that Joseph would think he was mocking him, Cissé added: "Well, I've fallen for their tricks before. That owner, Claude, was a capable guy, except that his mind was not at all focused on how to run the hotel. Well, let me take you to the officers' quarters first ..."
It would be fair to say that the officers' quarters at Fort Calais were actually in slightly better condition than the teachers' quarters at the École Militaire in Paris, where the price of land and other things was quite a bit cheaper than in Paris.
Once settled, it was already noon. Cissé then took Joseph to the officers' mess hall for lunch. Calais is located near the sea, and all kinds of fish are much more abundant and cheaper than in Paris.
"If you ask me, your life here is much better than in Paris. The money we get in Paris is no different from yours, but the prices in Paris are so much more expensive than here." Joseph said vaguely as he stuffed a piece of fish into his mouth.
"But Paris is Paris after all." Cissé, however, said, "It's true that Paris is more expensive, but most people here still prefer to go to Paris. Well, these places in the provinces are actually better for retirement, but not particularly for young people, who should go to Paris if they want to make something of themselves. If I could go to Paris, I'd rather put up with higher prices. If it's just about the money, what about going overseas for more money. It's just that it's not easy to get to Paris for people like us who don't have much access."
Indeed, Paris has more opportunities for the ambitious than any provincial city.
"Maybe, uh, Cissé, you're a captain of artillery, aren't you?" Joseph snapped.
"Yes? What's it about?" Cissé asked.
"I'm going to have to ask you for some more advice about the fort, after all, I'm just a math student, and there are a lot of things about cannons that I don't really know." Joseph explained.
"Oh, I thought you knew some way to get me to Paris." Cissé joked.
"Well, as far as I know, the Paris École Militaire has actually been lacking a marine expert. If you're up to the task ...," Joseph said with a sense of humor as well.
"Hell, I get seasick!" Cissé said, "Isn't there anywhere else that's short of people?"
"I haven't heard anything for a while." Joseph shook his head, "Aren't you in the Navy? How come you're seasick?"
Cissé's face reddened slightly: "It's not like the ... Navy is all about ships, and it's the Navy that guards the harbor batteries. I served in a harbor battery and didn't have to get on a ship. I'm a good gunner. You won't find many better gunners than me in the whole Navy. If it weren't for the seasickness ... that said, wouldn't your school need a gunnery instructor?"
"I really haven't heard about this one for a while." Joseph said, "And you know that even if there was a need, an Army officer would more than likely be selected for this position."
Unlike Britain across the sea, France has always been what is known as a land power. The French army's land forces were more important and influential than the Navy.
"That's right." Cissé was a little disappointed, but he said, "Joseph, you're in Paris, you know a lot of information, and I'd like you to remember me if you know of any doorways."
"I'm sure I remember." Joseph said.
Joseph's answer wasn't all polite; he also needed to pull a little strings in the Navy. In the next few years, the north of France's harvest was not very good. Still, the south of France was actually not a shortage of food, just because France, at this time, was still a feudal state with domestic barriers, which artificially led to the rising cost of transportation of goods. If one could get through to the Navy and get food directly from the south and then ship it to northern ports on navy warships, one could make quite a bit of money. The returns would have been even higher if they had been smuggled directly from England across the sea.
"Actually, Calais is a good place too, it's one of the most important ports in the north now. There's going to be a lot of opportunity economically as well." Joseph added, "You actually have a lot of opportunities here. Maybe there's something I need your help with as well. Anyway, we are friends, and if we have the chance in the future, we must help each other, don't you think so?"
"You're right. Then it's a deal." Cissé said.
In the days that followed, Joseph had another discussion with Michel, the designer, about plans to refurbish the battery. As commander of the artillery on the battery, Cissé was also involved.
"The first requirement of a battery is that it should be able to control the passage of ships in and out of the harbor. This battery we have today is not enough to control the entire channel. So we plan to build a new battery at this location, so that the two batteries cooperate, and the shipping lanes in and out of the harbor can all be controlled...." Michel pointed to the drawing and introduced it.
"The location should be good." Joseph looked at the drawings and said, "Is there anything I should calculate?"
"Mainly some data on artillery trajectory. There's also quite a bit on the specific design of the fortress as a whole that needs your input." Michel replied.
"Unfortunately the available artillery, and the lack of suitable high ground in this vicinity, has resulted in our cannons being too close in range, barely enough to cover the shipping lanes, but nowhere near enough to cover the fleet out of harbor in formation. In case the fleet is blocking the harbor, there's still no way to fight out of the harbor." Joseph added.
Naval combat is about getting information first. This makes it easier to bring firepower to bear for maneuvering, without their own men blocking their own shot boundaries one moment, and their own warships crashing together while maneuvering the next. There was limited space in the military harbor, and the fleet certainly could not have completed its formation in the harbor. The ship must first be taken out into the wide waters of the harbor to complete the formation. Once the enemy fleet preempted and blocked the entrance to the harbor, they naturally would not allow the warships in the harbor to sail out of the harbor and form up again. Surely, they would attack the outbound fleet before they had a chance to form up. If the guns of the harbor batteries had a sufficiently long range, it would be possible to provide protection for the fleet's formation out of the harbor.
There are generally two ways to do this. One type is the mounting of huge cannons on the turrets. One of the major advantages of a turret over a warship is its carrying capacity. The fort was built on solid ground without fear of being sunk by the cannons, so it was perfectly possible to place on it huge cannons much larger than those on warships. And bigger cannons are always more likely to have greater range.
But there are problems with this approach. The first is that giant cannons are too expensive to produce. And coming from the fact that the rate of fire of the huge guns was so low that the Turks' Urban cannons, for example, could only fire a maximum of seven shots per day. Of course, that was the fifteenth century, but with today's giant cannons, the increase in the rate of fire is still quite limited. Such a slow rate of fire would not be sufficient for the task of covering the spread of the fleet.
The second method is to mount the artillery as high as possible. This would significantly increase the range of the guns. Then consider that the cannons on the turrets were in a stable position, unlike the ones on the ship that would sway around with the ship (the ship's guns, because of the swaying, wouldn't know where the shells would go if the target were just a little bit farther away) so the effective range would naturally be greater. This would give the warships in the harbor a space to spread out in formation.
But there is no natural high ground near the harbor in Calais that is in the right place. If such an effect is to be achieved, it will be necessary to pile up an elevated area by hand. This requires more human and material resources, or to put it more bluntly, it costs more money.
"The Navy doesn't think there's going to be much of a fleet in Calais harbor that needs to be lined up in battle lines. So the batteries just need to be able to ensure that they can block the shipping lanes and stop the enemy from attacking the harbor." The designer, Michel, replied, "After all, Calais is not Toulon. There will only be one or two frigates here at most. Calais is still primarily a commercial port, with merchant ships and whatnot, and there's no need to line up a battle line. Look across to Dover, where there is naturally high ground, and it is much easier to build batteries than on this side, but even so the British have not put many warships there."
Because of the limited size of the new battery, the difficulty of the whole project was relatively low. This wasn't really a bad thing for Joseph, who was involved in this sort of thing for the first time.