(Today's writing has slowed down; it may take another half hour. Please kindly bear with me. Extremely sorry.)
France's northwest, Lille.
Outside the command center of France's Southern Netherlands Armies.
Joseph raised an Auguste 1790 Hunting Rifle, aimed at a small barrel more than a hundred paces away, held his breath, and pulled the trigger.
With a "bang," the spinning bullet flew straight toward its target.
In the next instant, fragments of wood scattered as the center of the barrel revealed a palm-sized bullet hole.
Joseph looked at the barrel in the distance with satisfaction, raised the rifle vertically, took the gunpowder pouch from Eman, poured it into the muzzle, then inserted the lead bullet and packed it tightly with a ramrod.
The reloading process was smooth; to outsiders, it appeared as if he were wielding a smoothbore gun.
However, the Auguste 1790 was definitively a rifled gun.
