Leaving the Academy of Sciences, Lavoisier did not go home, but took a carriage and went out of Paris toward one of the estates of the Duke of Orleans. A few days before, he had borrowed a place from the Duke for a new scientific experiment.
Perhaps it was because for a long time His Majesty had been unable to produce a son. (Queen Marie Antoinette gave birth to her first son eleven years after her marriage to him.) Many of the country's great nobles, who were close relatives of the king, had the idea that the king might become heirless and that the crown might fall on their heads. The House of Orléans, a close relative of the king, was not necessarily free from similar thoughts. A few years ago, after the king underwent an operation, down the line he finally became pregnant and gave birth to two princes in succession. But ambition is something that, once it arises, is difficult to extinguish naturally. It's like Macbeth, who, because of the witches' prophecy, became ambitious for the Scottish crown. Although the old king made it clear that his crown would be given to his son, not Macbeth, Macbeth's ambition for the crown was not extinguished, but became more intense. and eventually drove him down the path of regicide and seizure of the throne. And some of the great nobles, including the Orleans family, also shared Macbeth's ambition, which was not extinguished by the prince's birth. In addition, the king's character was weak, while the queen, although her character was much stronger, but as a woman, she did not receive much education in politics, and was quite naive in politics. This made the nobles feel that they could replace the king.
In order to replace them, the great nobles, including the Orleans family, had been working hard to make the king unable to do anything, both secretly and openly. At the same time, they intentionally created public opinion to discredit the royal family. Of course they wouldn't point the finger directly at the king - it would be too direct and too easy to expose their own ambitions. So they all coincidentally targeted Queen Mary. Queen Mary had a strong character but lacked political wisdom, plus she was vain and had no concept of money, so they easily let themselves into the trap. On the one hand, they flattered Queen Mary, induced her to hold various balls, and cheated her out of millions of francs of "gifts" every year; on the other hand, they denigrated her as "wasteful" in the society, and even gave her a nickname of "Mrs. Deficit". "Mrs. Deficit". Recently, the Queen's reputation has been tarnished by the bizarre necklace incident. (A female liar, even after directing such a big drama that has trapped the queen, can still go away from the high-security prison. Whether there's a problem here or not, that's really God knows.)
Of course, the nobles still have a sense of propriety, and their propaganda has always insisted on one thing: the king is a good man, but he is just too soft-spoken and too afraid of his wife, that's why ... In a word, "The current emperor is extremely holy and wise, but he was only caught by a few treacherous ministers ... ...No, just being led by the nose by a woman".
This kind of propaganda, on the surface, seems to be excusing the king, but in terms of its effect, it is actually better than directly attacking the king's greed and brutality. Because a greedy and brutal king is certainly people hate, but also let people fear; but a by their wives under the jurisdiction of the good and weak "good old man", but will be scorned.
According to Machiavelli, the weakest and most easily overthrown king was not the tyrant whom everyone hated, but the king who was universally despised by his subjects. By such propaganda, the great nobles directed the hatred of the people toward the queen, while leaving the most terrible thing of all - contempt - to the king.
If Louis XVI had been a majordomo, no, he need not even have been a majordomo, but only a tyrant. He, too, could have ruthlessly quelled these murmurs by stormy means, or at least turned the contempt for him into hatred and fear. The crown of a feared tyrant is, comparatively speaking, more securely worn than that of a despised king.
Louis XVI, however, was a man of weak character, too hesitant to make up his mind to have the heads of the great nobles rolled off his shoulders. His concession, however, made the great nobles, including the Orléans family, feel that the crown of France should naturally be placed on their own heads.
Machiavelli also suggested in his theory of kings that kings should also make the people grateful and expectant of them by a little bit of favor-giving. So while giving the king all sorts of trip wires, the great aristocrats competed to present themselves as "friends of the people," "enlightened gentlemen," and "pioneers of democracy. In the words of a later great teacher, "In order to draw the people in, the nobles waved the begging bag of the proletariat as a flag." Of course, the end result of this for the great aristocrats must have been that "whenever the people followed them, they found them with the old feudal coat of arms on their hips, and they laughed and dispersed." But for the time being, at least, these tactics will keep the people behind them.
In order to pretend to be "friends of the people," "enlightened gentlemen," and "pioneers of democracy," the great aristocrats acted as if they loved science, their country, and their people. The more support for academic research and academic freedom has become the thing that these great nobles compete to boast. And support has become the pride of France Lavoisier's research, naturally, is also a "friend of the people", "enlightened gentleman", "pioneer of democracy" should do things.
His Royal Highness, the Duke of Phillips, was waiting for Lavoisier as he had nothing else to do. He was also very interested in Lavoisier's experiments, so he asked Lavoisier about the content of his experiments.
"You know, Master, I don't mean anything else, I'm just simply curious. Can you tell me what kind of experiment you are going to do here?" Duke Phillips had asked this when he lent out the grounds.
"Oh, Joseph wrote me a letter. In the letter, he mentioned that he used concentrated nitric acid and concentrated sulfuric acid in a special way and carefully treated glycerin to get a very powerful liquid gunpowder. Well, perhaps it should not be called gunpowder, as Joseph said, but dynamite. There was a lot more to this liquid explosive, it's just that Joseph is busy with math stuff right now, and he's not particularly well versed in this sort of thing, so he told me about it after only preliminary experiments. I tried it, and it was indeed, as he said, very powerful. Power-wise it's at least several dozens to a hundred times more powerful than brown gunpowder."
"That powerful?" Duke Phillips was taken aback.
"Isn't it?" Lavoisier said, "You know, Joseph spoke of the power of that stuff as if it were the thunder of Zeus. He suggested that when I tested it myself, I experiment with no more than a gram at a time. Then I got a gram and tried it, and it really exploded. And the power was far beyond my expectations. Well, Mr. Duke, this stuff is quite dangerous. To conduct a full-scale test, that's definitely not something that can be done in the city of Paris."
"It seems like something like this should be researched by the military, right?" Duke Phillips said.
"Ah, Your Highness the Duke, you may not know that although this thing is powerful, it really isn't suitable for the military, at least not at the moment." Lavoisier looked at Duke Phillips and said, "You may not know that this thing is very unstable. A little bit of vibration, or light, or a little bit of heat, and this thing will explode. Your Highness, if you think about it, if it is used for military purposes, when this stuff is in transit, as long as the wheels of the wagon bumps a little bit inside a small pit, the whole wagon of explosives will explode with a bang, and the power is equivalent to more than a hundred wagons of gunpowder exploding together."
"My God!" Duke Phillips said, "If this is so dangerous, how can this thing be used?"
"Military is out of the question." Lavoisier said, "It's not good for transportation, and many times it needs to be modulated at the site of use. For the military, how can it be modulated on the battlefield? On the contrary, for civilian use, such as for mining, we can directly prepare this stuff at the site of mining and use it immediately, so it's relatively safer. Lord Duke, this stuff is actually very useful. For example, it can be used in mining and canal digging projects, and many times it can even bring about revolutionary changes. And the cost of the raw materials used isn't too high, so if the problem of preparation can be solved, this thing should be able to make a lot of money. Is His Highness the Duke interested?"
"If the problem of preparation can be solved? My master, so there are still problems with the preparation of this thing?" Duke Phillips asked.
"Yes, it can still only be prepared in the laboratory, and the amount that can be prepared at a time is quite limited. If it's going to be applied on a large scale, the way it's prepared will definitely have to change somewhat. And this stuff is quite dangerous even when prepared. For large-scale preparation, the environment is again different from the lab, so it still needs to be studied meticulously." Lavoisier explained.
"Then, Mr. Lavoisier, can I participate in this research?" Duke Phillips asked.
"Of course you can, I very much welcome your participation. In the future you can also name this product, in addition. In the future, you will also be able to sign your name as the author of the paper." Lavoisier said.
The Duke laughed, "Ah, that won't do, people will say that I'm unashamedly pursuing my own honor that doesn't belong to me. That's why my name must not be included in the position of author of the thesis. But if you can mention in the paper that I have provided a little insignificant help to this research, then I would be very happy."
"That's not a problem." Lavoisier laughed, "Also, this research has a certain degree of danger. So although you can participate, Your Highness the Duke, please keep a safe distance when performing some dangerous maneuvers."