Delauney folded his arms, thinking aloud rather than challenging.
"Hmm… I find it hard to believe, Sire," he said carefully. "Steel, as we understand it, cannot be mass-produced with our current methods."
Napoleon did not interrupt.
Delaunay continued.
"Our forges rely on bloomery iron and small blast furnaces. The carbon content varies wildly from batch to batch. One ingot bends, the next shatters. Steel requires precision, control over heat, air, and impurities that we simply do not possess at scale."
He gestured toward the drawing of the converter Napoleon II had laid out earlier.
"To make steel consistently, you must remove excess carbon without ruining the metal. Right now, that is done slowly, by repeated heating, hammering, folding. A skilled smith might make a few blades in a week. That is not industry. That is craft."
He shook his head.
"Blast furnaces give us pig iron. Too brittle. Finery forges refine it, but only in small quantities. Every step depends on judgment by eye and sound. No gauges. No uniform temperatures. No way to repeat the same result twice."
Napoleon's fingers tapped once against the table.
"So your objection," he said, "is not that steel cannot be made—"
"No, Sire," Delaunay replied quickly. "It can be made. It has always been made."
"—but that it cannot be made in large quantities," Napoleon finished.
"Exactly," Delaunay said. "Not without wasting fuel, metal, and men. Not without unpredictable results. To attempt mass production now would bankrupt workshops and produce unusable stock."
Napoleon turned his gaze to his son.
"And yet," he said, "you claim otherwise."
Napoleon II did not flinch.
"Delaunay is correct," he said. "With current furnaces."
The room stilled.
"But," Napoleon II continued, stepping closer to the drawings, "the problem is not steel. It is air."
Delaunay frowned. "Air?"
"Yes," Napoleon II said. "Right now, air enters furnaces randomly. Through cracks. Through bellows operated by men who tire. Oxygen reacts when and where it wishes. That is why your results are inconsistent."
"So what are you proposing, Your Highness?" Delaunay asked.
"Basic oxygen process," Napoleon II said.
The words meant nothing to the men in the room. Delaunay's brow creased, Antoine glanced at Napoleon, and Napoleon himself waited, arms folded, letting his son speak.
Napoleon II did not rush.
"You are correct that steel fails because air is uncontrolled," he said. "But air is not the enemy. Impurities are. Carbon, sulfur, phosphorus. They are what make iron brittle or soft at random."
He pointed again to the converter sketch.
"In my method, molten pig iron is poured into a thick-walled vessel. From below, air is forced upward—continuously, powerfully. Not by bellows operated by men, but by mechanical blowers driven by waterwheels or steam engines."
Antoine inhaled sharply. "Forced air… through liquid metal?"
"Yes," Napoleon II replied. "The oxygen reacts violently with the impurities. Carbon burns first. Then silicon. Then manganese. The reactions create heat—enough that no additional fuel is required during the process."
Delaunay stared at the drawing. "The metal would glow like a furnace."
"It will," Napoleon II said. "And when the reactions finish, what remains is low-carbon steel."
"How can a child know all of this," Delaunay murmured. "How do you know this will work without the actual setup?"
"It's a theoretical concept based on science," Napoleon II said evenly. "You see that it makes sense. The reactions are predictable. The only thing left is to test it."
Napoleon glanced at Antoine. "Can you build that?"
Antoine hesitated, then nodded. "With time. And funding."
Napoleon turned back to Delaunay. "And you. Can you oversee the metallurgy?"
Delaunay looked torn. Skepticism warred with curiosity.
"I can," he said at last. "But I will not promise success."
Delaunay looked again at the drawing, then at the boy standing calmly beside the table.
"If this works," he said quietly, "it will change every forge in Europe."
Napoleon II met his eyes. "That is the point."