Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology-Chapter 744: Secret Weapon: (2/2)

Looking at the receding back of the old man, Cédric shook his head in disapproval and entered the room. As soon as he stepped foot in the room, the smell of jasmines hit his face. "Damn, the detergent is strong," he muttered. He looked around and could see the whole room spotless. "Maybe I should ask my butler to buy this specific detergent," he muttered. ’At least the old man did a good job,’ he thought in his heart.

He reached out to the weapon that was kept in the centre of the room on a custom-made wooden holder, gave a quick once over to see if it was tampered with, and after being sure that it was not, he swiftly went back to the training grounds.

Marshal General Turenne, as soon as he saw the gun, smiled and took it over, personally handing it to His Majesty, Emperor Louis XIV.

Louis curiously flipped over the gun at various angles. He even pulled the trigger a couple of times, making a constant clicking sound.

He threw the gun back to Turenne. "Let’s see it in action," he ordered.

Turenne acknowledged the request, passed the gun back to Cédric along with its ammunition, which he kept separately on himself, and gestured for him to try out the gun.

Cédric respectfully nodded and went to the shooting range.

He took the ammunition out of the box that the Marshal General had given, loaded it through the muzzle, secured it, took aim, took a deep breath, and finally pulled the trigger.

"Bang!"

With a loud bang, the clay pot 90 meters away got pierced and exploded into multiple pieces.

"Ha!" Louis XIV clapped happily. "Do a few more rounds," he ordered directly to Cédric.

Cédric respectfully nodded and continued firing.

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

"Bang!"

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The smile on Louis’s face did not drop. The French finally had a weapon that was comparable to the one made in the Bharatiya Empire.

"Tell me, Turenne, about this weapon. Isn’t it better than the one produced by the Bharatiya Empire for their military?"

"Uh," Turenne cleared his throat. "Your Highness, this weapon, as you know, is called the Charleville Musket. It has a mass of 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms), a length of 60 inches (1.5 meters), and a barrel length of 45 inches (1.1 meters). It uses a paper cartridge capable of holding a musket ball. It has a calibre of .69 (17.526 millimetres). It features a flintlock mechanism for its action, with a rate of fire of three rounds per minute. Its muzzle velocity is 350 meters per second, and its effective firing range is over 100 yards (90 meters) for fixed targets, with a field target range of 300 yards (250 meters), and a maximum range of over 1000 yards at a 60-degree firing angle. It has a muzzle-loaded field system, and its sights are front sight cast into the upper barrel band."

"As for whether it is better than the Bharatiya weaponry used by their army, as much as I would love to say that it is, it is with great regret that I have to tell the truth, Your Highness, that the Charleville Musket is not a competition to the Bharatiya rifles at all."

Louis immediately frowned. "How so?" "Isn’t it better than the weapons they are currently exporting to the Venetians and the Russians? If I am not mistaken, these guns are not the older generation products that they want to get rid of but new military issues that are currently in use in their military."

Turenne did not deny and nodded. "While you are correct, Your Highness, one small correction is that the Bharatiya Empire has already started modifying their guns with a new action system, which we have codenamed the hammer system. This mechanism has made the Bharatiya gun more reliable and faster in damp conditions. This alone makes it a better overall performing gun than any guns in the world."

"If we were marginally better than the 3rd generation rifles of the Bharatiya Empire, now we can only say that we are in the same realm."

"If the best sharpshooter in our military goes up against a normal Bharatiya soldier, we only have a 50% chance of defeating the opponent, while if you take a soldier with average skills and put them against each other, nine out of ten times it is the Bharatiya soldier that is most likely to win."

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Louis immediately cursed, "This Bharatiya Empire—how were they able to research these things so quickly? Damn!" he clenched his fist. "Hey, Turenne?" He looked at the Marshal General with sharpness in his eyes. "Can’t we replicate the hammer action you talked about?"

Turenne was immediately embarrassed. "The hammer action technology is not actually too complicated, Your Highness. We can naturally replicate it, but the problem is it involves too many delicate parts to work, and a single artisan can only produce so many of these parts. And even if we invest resources and train a lot of artisans, the problem arises where not all parts can be made uniform, which completely goes against the mass production concept we have recently adopted. For the hammer lock action to be produced with Bharatiya standards, we at least need a 4th generation machine tool."

"The third-generation machine tool we have invented cannot produce the intricate parts."

Louis immediately clicked his tongue, "Tsk!"

"Fine, I will increase my funding support to the research on machine tools. Anyway, this is still very good news since we at least have our own weapon that we can use to fight with the Spanish and the Portuguese. At least in the tools used for war, we will not fall behind those Iberian bastards."

"Oh, and step up the research work on the artillery."

Turenne agreed.

Later that day, somewhere in France, the production of the Charleville musket started in full force.

Back at the trial grounds, the limping old man quickly sketched down the specifications of the Charleville musket onto a piece of paper and stashed it into the secret compartment within the milk canister.

In fact, his work order was not false—the Marshal General did indeed order him to clean the room up, and his nephew was indeed drunk and vomited out a lot of garbage. But the whole reason behind him vomiting there was the hand of the Bharatiya Empire.

The Marshal General’s nephew was a drinker before, but not to the extent he was now. The whole reason why he had become excessive was because of the undetectable traces of narcotics and special substances that were mixed into his drink, which made him more addicted to alcohol. A special substance given to him right before he took on his guarding duty in the secret room caused him to vomit out everything he had eaten.

As for the old man, he was the only one in the entire facility who cleaned and kept it tidy, so there was no alternative for the Marshal General to ask anyone else.

What’s more, the Marshal General himself considered the manufacturing technology to be more important than the weapon’s specifications, which would be known naturally within a few months.

In such a way, through multiple channels, the spymaster Pranai Kulkarni, who was responsible for operations in France, got the detailed specifications of the Charleville Musket.

But to his surprise, when he came across his colleagues in their monthly meeting, Pranai was surprised that each and every major nation in Europe had already manufactured their own version of the Bharatiya knock-off musket.

For example, the English produced a gun which they called the Charles Type 2 musket, with a mass of 4.8 kilograms, a length of 58.5 inches, a barrel length of 45 inches, a caliber of .75, with a flintlock firing action, a rate of fire of a maximum of four rounds per minute, a muzzle velocity of 550 meters per second, an effective range of 90 meters point target and 250 meters area target, with a maximum firing range of over 1000 meters with a 60-degree firing angle, having a muzzle-loaded feed system and a single foresight which doubles as a bayonet lug.

Even reading the whole specification chart, a sense of déjà vu hit Pranai Kulkarni because all the specifications were strikingly similar to the Bharatiya 3rd generation muskets.

"The French, the Dutch, and the English—all three enemies being successful in the research of advanced rifles—cannot be a coincidence. We will have to look into it," Pranai Kulkarni put forward his speculation.

The other spy chiefs nodded in agreement, but one of them, Yathin Thakkar, spoke out, "That is true, we definitely have to look into it, but the window for communication will open up in a week and it will not last more than a few days. We should at least inform His Majesty what is happening here to make use of this brief window of communication.

If we do indeed find anything suspicious, we can update the information later."

Hearing the opinion of Yathin Thakkar, everyone felt like it made sense. "Agreed."

"Agreed."

Finally, Pranai Kulkarni also gave his vote, "Agreed!"