Reincarnated as Napoleon II-Chapter 29: Eleven Years of Progress

The date was March 11th, 1829.

Today is the date of Napoleon II’s eighteenth birthday. It was to be held in the Palace of Versailles where he would officially live! Just as promised by his father, Napoleon I.

He was on his way to the Palace of Versailles. He was in an ornate carriage with windows allowing him to look outside the progress of the city.

The city modernization plan, based on Haussmann projects, was already underway nine years ago.

The cramped and dirty streets of Paris were turning into something else entirely.

Wide avenues cut through districts that had once been a maze of alleys. Stone façades stood in clean, continuous lines instead of leaning into one another like conspirators. Sunlight reached the ground now. Air moved. Carts no longer jammed themselves into dead ends meant for pedestrians and livestock.

Napoleon II watched it pass from behind the carriage glass.

Work was everywhere.

Steam-driven pile drivers hammered foundations with a rhythm that carried down the streets. Mobile steam engines sat on reinforced platforms, belts spinning as they powered saws, stone cutters, and lifting cranes that would have taken a hundred men only a decade earlier. Iron frames rose faster than masonry ever had, hoisted into place by machines that did not tire.

Workers moved in organized teams. Surveyors marked distances with precision instruments. Foremen shouted over the hiss of steam and the clank of iron rather than the chaos of improvisation. Materials arrived in steady flows—stone, timber, iron—no longer delayed by broken roads or unreliable barges.

The carriage rolled past a broad intersection where an entire block had been cleared. At its center stood a skeletal structure of iron and stone.

A station.

One of many.

Gares were rising across the city, each tied into the same expanding network. Some were already operational, others still wrapped in scaffolding and canvas. Gare du Nord loomed massive and unfinished, its roof framework stretching wide enough to swallow entire streets. Tracks extended outward like spokes, pointing toward Lille, Amiens, Calais. Others branched south and east, toward Lyon, Strasbourg, Marseille.

Paris was no longer the end of the road.

It was the center of a web.

Napoleon II knew how these projects had been paid for.

Not by emptying the treasury alone.

French bankers had stepped forward early, enticed by guaranteed returns backed by imperial authority. Investment houses pooled capital. Bonds were issued, tied directly to freight volume and passenger tariffs. Insurance firms calculated risk with new precision now that rail schedules replaced guesswork.

Even the marshals had joined in.

Men who had once made their fortunes marching across Europe now invested in canals, bridges, foundries, rolling stock. War had taught them logistics. Industry rewarded it. They understood choke points, supply lines, control of terrain. Only now the terrain was economic.

Factories followed the rails.

Workshops clustered near stations. Warehouses replaced open markets. Coal yards fed boilers instead of hearths. Entire districts shifted purpose within a few years, reshaped by access and output rather than tradition. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Along the sidewalks, tall iron posts had been set at regular intervals.

Streetlights.

Wires ran discreetly along building edges and underground conduits. Junction boxes sat sealed and guarded.

They would be turned on later.

For eleven years now, France had pushed forward without pause. State funds laid the groundwork. Private capital multiplied it. And what’s more? He was earning a lot of money from the royalties alone.

Since he was the inventor of all the technologies, the flow of money never touched him directly.

That had been the point.

Royalties moved through state accounts. Licensing fees fed infrastructure funds. Patents were registered under imperial authority, administered by clerks and courts.

He had read the reports.

The sums were staggering.

Every engine built. Every locomotive assembled. Every sanctioned machine exported beyond France’s borders returned value back into the system. Not in a single dramatic surge, but in steady accumulation. Predictable. Sustainable. Boring in the best way possible.

France was no longer bleeding money to import expertise.

It was exporting it.

The carriage passed a stretch of river where barges moved in clean formation, guided by standardized locks and reinforced embankments. Steam tugs assisted upstream traffic now, reducing delays that once took weeks to resolve. Warehouses stood taller and closer together, cranes swinging cargo with practiced ease.

Napoleon II noted it without comment.

This was what planning looked like when it was allowed to run uninterrupted.

He shifted his gaze farther ahead, where the city thinned and the road widened. Paris gave way to open stretches lined with trees planted years earlier, and there was no sight of horse dung along the road. How? Well, electric-powered trams had taken their place.

Tracks ran flush with the stone, laid straight and even. Tramcars moved along them at steady intervals, drawing power from overhead lines supported by slim iron poles.

Napoleon II watched one pass.

It moved with a controlled hum, wheels gliding instead of rattling. Passengers boarded from fixed platforms. Goods were transferred cleanly at designated stops. Traffic flowed because it was timed, not argued through.

The road itself reflected the change.

Drainage channels ran beneath the paving, mapped and graded years earlier. Rainwater disappeared instead of pooling. Waste was carried away instead of crushed into the street. What had once been tolerated as unavoidable had simply been designed out.

He remembered how Paris used to smell.

He did not miss it.

The carriage continued westward. Buildings thinned. Workshops gave way to estates, then to long stretches of managed greenery. Trams still ran here, fewer in number, connecting outer districts to the city proper. Steam service vehicles moved alongside them, hauling materials marked for suburban expansion and satellite towns already planned along the lines.

Versailles rose in the distance. His new home.

To think that he would get to live in one of the most beautiful palaces on Earth was unthinkable. After all, he was just a genius inventor and engineer from his past life. And that experience led him to where he was now.

"Eleven years huh?" Napoleon II muttered under his breath.

It has been a decade of progress. Good thing no wars happened during that period. Sure it made the neighbors uneasy with the unprecedented rise of the Empire of France in terms of economy, but it was a peaceful decade.

"Now, the real story starts from here."