Theo: Wait, toward the enemy? That's the exact opposite of where he needs to go.
Ada: The winds carried them northeast instead of southwest, right over the Prussian field camps near Saint-Denis and Creil. And then the balloon sank into a pocket of stagnant air.
Theo: Sank how low?
Ada: Somewhere around six to eight hundred meters. Low enough that the Prussian infantry below could see exactly what was floating over them, and low enough to shoot at.
Theo: They opened fire on a balloon?
Ada: Whole regiments, with needle rifles and field guns. You could hear the bullets whistling through the cordage and the canvas. Some German batteries even lofted incendiary rockets, trying to set the coal gas alight.
Theo: One spark in that envelope and it's over.
Ada: Instantly. The pilot Trichet starts heaving everything overboard, sandbags, clothing, any ballast he can grab, to climb out of range. And here's the part that became legend: Gambetta, peering over the wicker rim, is said to have been grazed on the hand by a Prussian rifle ball.
Theo: Said to have been? You're hedging.
Ada: Deliberately. French newspapers and government communiques trumpeted a Prussian bullet drawing the minister's blood. Later skeptics shrugged that he probably just scratched his hand on the basket or a branch on landing. Accounts differ, and we honestly can't settle it.
Theo: I've also heard the Prussians had special anti-balloon cannon. Krupp guns?
Ada: Contemporary French accounts claimed Krupp horse-mounted guns engaged them. But military historians dispute whether any prototype balloon-defense cannon were even near his flight path that day. What's not in doubt is that ordinary rifle fire was more than enough danger.
Theo: So how do they escape it?
Ada: They climb, they drift, and then the gas slowly cools. The envelope sags, the lift bleeds away, and the Armand-Barbes loses gas and plunges toward the woods of the Oise.