The Chassepot (pronounced ''SHAS-poh''), officially known as ''Fusil modèle 1866'', was a
bolt-action
Bolt-action is a type of manual firearm action that is operated by ''directly'' manipulating the bolt via a bolt handle, which is most commonly placed on the right-hand side of the weapon (as most users are right-handed).
Most bolt-action ...
military
breechloading
A breechloader is a firearm in which the user loads the ammunition (cartridge or shell) via the rear (breech) end of its barrel, as opposed to a muzzleloader, which loads ammunition via the front ( muzzle).
Modern firearms are generally bre ...
rifle. It is famous for having been the arm of the French forces in the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. It replaced an assortment of
Minié muzzleloading rifles, many of which were converted in 1864 to breech loading (the
Tabatière rifle
The Tabatière rifle was a breech-loading rifle of the French Army.
The Tabatière system was developed from 1864 as a way to convert numerous muzzle-loading weapons (usually Minié rifles) into breech-loading ones, in a process similar to that ...
s). An improvement to existing military rifles in 1866, the Chassepot marked the commencement of the era of modern bolt action, breech-loading military rifles. The
Gras rifle
The Fusil Modèle 1874 or Gras was the French Army's primary service rifle from 1874 to 1886. Designed by Colonel Basile Gras, the Gras was a metallic cartridge adaptation of the single-shot, breech-loading, black powder Chassepot rifle. It was ...
was an adaption of the Chassepot designed to fire metallic cartridges introduced in 1874.
It was manufactured by ''
Manufacture d'armes de Saint-Étienne
The ''Manufacture d'Armes de Saint-Étienne'', often abbreviated to MAS ("Saint-Étienne Weapons Factory" in English) was a French state-owned weapons manufacturer in the town of Saint-Étienne, Loire. Founded in 1764, it was merged into the ...
'' (MAS), ''
Manufacture d'Armes de Châtellerault
The ''Manufacture d'Armes de Châtellerault'' ("Châtellerault Weapons Factory"), often abbreviated to MAC, was a French state-owned weapons manufacturer in the town of Châtellerault, Vienne. It was created by a royal decree of 14 July 1819 ...
'' (MAC), ''Manufacture d'Armes de Tulle'' (MAT) and, until 1870, in the ''Manufacture d'Armes de Mutzig'' in the former
Château des Rohan. Many were also manufactured under contract in England (the "Potts et Hunts" Chassepots delivered to the
French Navy
The French Navy (french: Marine nationale, lit=National Navy), informally , is the maritime arm of the French Armed Forces and one of the five military service branches of France. It is among the largest and most powerful naval forces in t ...
), in
Belgium
Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to th ...
(Liege), and in
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...
at Brescia (by ''Glisenti''). The approximate number of Chassepot rifles available to the French Army in July 1870 was 1,037,555 units. Additionally, state manufacturies could deliver 30,000 new rifles monthly. Gun manufacturers in
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
and
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
also produced Chassepot rifles to support the French war effort. The
Steyr armory in Austria delivered 12,000 Chassepot carbines and 100,000 parts to France in 1871. Manufacturing of the Chassepot rifle ended in February 1875, four years after the end of the Franco-Prussian War, with approximately 700,000 more Chassepot rifles made between September 1871 and July 1874.
History
The Chassepot was named after its inventor,
Antoine Alphonse Chassepot
Antoine Alphonse Chassepot (1833–1905) was a French inventor and gunsmith. Born in 1833 in the town of Mutzig in Alsace, he is best known for inventing the breech-loading, center-fire needle gun rifle named after him: the Chassepot. Officially k ...
(1833–1905), who, from the mid-1850s onwards, had constructed various experimental forms of breech loaders. The first two models of the Chassepot still used percussion cap ignition. The third model, using a similar system to the Prussian
Dreyse needle gun Dreyse may refer to:
* Johann Nicolaus von Dreyse (1787–1867), German firearms inventor
* Hitch Dreyse, a fictional character in ''Attack on Titan'' (''Shingeki no Kyojin'') series who serves in the military police.
* Dreyse needle gun, a German ...
, became the French service weapon on 30 August 1866. In the following year it made its first appearance at the
Battle of Mentana
The Battle of Mentana was fought on November 3, 1867, near the village of Mentana, located north-east of Rome (then in the Papal States, now modern Lazio), between French-papal troops and the Italian volunteers led by Giuseppe Garibaldi, who wer ...
on 3 November 1867, where it inflicted severe losses upon
Giuseppe Garibaldi's troops. It was reported at the French Parliament that "''Les Chassepots ont fait merveille!''", ("The Chassepots have done wonderfully!") The heavy cylindrical lead bullets fired at high velocity by the Chassepot rifle inflicted wounds that were even worse than those of the
Minié rifle
The Minié rifle was an important infantry rifle of the mid-19th century. A version was adopted in 1849 following the invention of the Minié ball in 1847 by the French Army captain Claude-Étienne Minié of the Chasseurs d'Orléans and Henr ...
. By 1868, the entire French active army had been re-armed with the Chassepot.
In the
Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), the Chassepot met its Prussian counterpart, the Dreyse needle-fire rifle. The Chassepot had several advantages over the Dreyse. It featured a rubber obturator on its bolt head to provide a more efficient gas-seal. Although it fired a smaller caliber (11 mm vs. 15.4 for the Dreyse), the Chassepot ammunition had more gunpowder (5.68 grams vs 4.85 grams), resulting in higher muzzle velocity (436 meters per second, 33% over the Dreyse), a flatter trajectory and a longer range. Thus the sights on the Chassepot could be elevated up to 1,600 meters, while the maximum sight setting of the Dreyse was only 600 meters. The Chassepot had a weight of 4.1 kg versus 4.57 kg for the needle-fire rifle. It was also shorter (1310 mm vs. 1424 mm).
After the war, 20,000 captured Chassepot rifles were sold to the Shah of the Persian
Qajar dynasty.
In 1872 the
Empire of Brazil
The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories which form modern Brazil and (until 1828) Uruguay. Its government was a representative parliamentary constitutional monarchy under the rule of Emperors Dom ...
purchased 8631 Chassepots; after being faced with a possible war involving Argentine claims over Paraguay. The weapons, however, were never officially distributed to the Army, since the decision to buy the Comblain had already been made and because of issue with the cartridge's reliability. The weapons ended their career in deposit or were handed over to police forces and shooting clubs. Some of these weapons were possibly used by rebels during the
War of Canudos
The War of Canudos (, , 1895–1898) was a conflict between the First Brazilian Republic and the residents of Canudos in the northeastern state of Bahia. It was waged in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery in Brazil (1888) and the overt ...
, they may have been captured from the Bahia police after the engagement at Maceté
Surplus Chassepot were exported to
China. Some of the warriors of the
Ethiopian Empire
The Ethiopian Empire (), also formerly known by the exonym Abyssinia, or just simply known as Ethiopia (; Amharic and Tigrinya: ኢትዮጵያ , , Oromo: Itoophiyaa, Somali: Itoobiya, Afar: ''Itiyoophiyaa''), was an empire that histori ...
were equipped with Chassepot rifles during the
first Italo-Ethiopian War
The First Italo-Ethiopian War, lit. ''Abyssinian War'' was fought between Italy and Ethiopia from 1895 to 1896. It originated from the disputed Treaty of Wuchale, which the Italians claimed turned Ethiopia into an Italian protectorate. Full-sc ...
of 1896.
Technology
Bolt mechanism
![Chassepot IMG 3562](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Chassepot_IMG_3562.jpg)
The breech was closed by a bolt similar to those of more modern rifles. Amongst the technical features of interest introduced in 1866 on the Chassepot rifle was the method of
obturation
In the field of firearms and airguns, obturation denotes necessary barrel blockage or fit by a deformed soft projectile (obturation in general is closing up an opening). A bullet or pellet, made of soft material and often with a concave base, ...
of the bolt by a segmented rubber ring which expanded under gas pressure and thus sealed the breech when the shot was fired. This simple yet effective technology was successfully adapted to artillery in 1877 by Colonel
de Bange
Charles Ragon de Bange (17 October 1833 – 9 July 1914) was a French artillery officer and Polytechnician. He invented the first effective obturator system for breech-loading artillery, which remains in use. He also designed a system of field g ...
, who invented grease-impregnated asbestos pads to seal the breech of his new cannons (the De Bange system).
Cartridge
The Chassepot used a paper cartridge, that many refer to as being 'combustible', whereas in reality it was quite the opposite. It held an 11 mm (.43 inch) round-headed cylindro-conoidal lead bullet that was wax paper patched. An inverted standard percussion cap was at the rear of the paper cartridge and hidden inside. It was fired by the Chassepot's needle (a sharply pointed firing pin) upon pressing the trigger. While the Chassepot's ballistic performance and firing rates were excellent for the time, burnt paper residues as well as black powder fouling accumulated in the chamber and bolt mechanism after continuous firing. The bolt's rubber obturator eroded in action but was easily replaced in the field by infantrymen. The older Dreyse needle gun and its cartridge had been deliberately constructed in a way to minimize those problems but to the detriment of its ballistic properties.
To correct this problem the ''Chassepot'' was replaced in 1874 by the
Gras rifle which used a
centerfire
Two rounds of .357 Magnum, a centerfire cartridge; notice the circular primer in the center
A centerfire cartridge is a firearm metallic cartridge whose primer is located at the center of the base of its casing (i.e. "case head"). Unlike rim ...
drawn brass metallic cartridge. Otherwise, the Gras rifle was basically identical in outward appearance to the Chassepot rifle. Nearly all rifles of the older Chassepot model (Mle 1866) remaining in store were eventually converted to take the 11 mm Gras metallic cartridge ammunition (''fusil Modèle'' 1866/74). About 665,327 Chassepot rifles had been captured by the German coalition that defeated France in 1871.
Large numbers of these captured Chassepot rifles were shortened and converted to
11 mm Mauser metallic cartridge. It served with cavalry units of the
Kingdom of Saxony
The Kingdom of Saxony (german: Königreich Sachsen), lasting from 1806 to 1918, was an independent member of a number of historical confederacies in Napoleonic through post-Napoleonic Germany. The kingdom was formed from the Electorate of Saxo ...
and of the
Kingdom of Bavaria
The Kingdom of Bavaria (german: Königreich Bayern; ; spelled ''Baiern'' until 1825) was a German state that succeeded the former Electorate of Bavaria in 1805 and continued to exist until 1918. With the unification of Germany into the German ...
.
Others were disposed of "as is" with British surplus dealers. In most but not all, the French
receiver markings on these German-captured Chassepot rifles had been erased.
Gallery
File:Chassepot IMG 3574.JPG, Chassepot paper cartridge
Cartridge may refer to:
Objects
* Cartridge (firearms), a type of modern ammunition
* ROM cartridge, a removable component in an electronic device
* Cartridge (respirator), a type of filter used in respirators
Other uses
* Cartridge (surname), a ...
and boxes.
File:Soldier-chassepot.jpg, French soldier with Chassepot rifle.
File:Chassepot-Gras cart.jpg, From left: .22 Long Rifle
The .22 Long Rifle or simply .22 LR or 22 (metric designation: 5.6×15mmR) is a long-established variety of .22 caliber rimfire ammunition originating from the United States. It is used in a wide range of rifles, pistols, revolvers, smo ...
;
11mm paper cartridge for Chassepot/Fusil modèle 1866;
11mm×59.5R metallic cartridge for Fusil Gras mle 1874
The Fusil Modèle 1874 or Gras was the French Army's primary service rifle from 1874 to 1886. Designed by Colonel Basile Gras, the Gras was a metallic cartridge adaptation of the single-shot, breech-loading, black powder Chassepot rifle. It was ...
Image:Chassepot-p1000739.jpg, Close-up, with cartridge
File:Chassepot bayonet assembly.jpg, Bayonet assembly
File:Chassepot.jpg, 1867 newspaper illustration including a cross-section
File:Chassepot gun model 1866 Mutzig 1869.jpg, Chassepot gun, model 1866, Mutzig
Mutzig ( or ; german: Mützig) is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in Grand Est, in north-eastern France. The commune of Mutzig is located at the entrance of the Bruche river valley, on the Route des Vins d'Alsace.
History
Evidences of h ...
, 1869.
See also
*
Antique gun
*
Service rifle
A service rifle (or standard-issue rifle) is a rifle a military issues to regular infantry. In modern militaries, this is typically a versatile and rugged battle rifle, assault rifle, or carbine suitable for use in nearly all environments. Mos ...
Notes
References
* Ford, Roger. ''The World's Great Rifles'' London: Brown Books, 1998. .
*
Further reading
*
External links
The French Army 1600–1900Forgotten Weapons – Chassepot Needle Rifle
{{French weapons of the 19th century
Rifles of France
Early rifles
Franco-Prussian War
Second French intervention in Mexico
French Foreign Legion
Single-shot bolt-action rifles