Jean Baptiste Auguste Verchere de Reffye

Jean-Baptiste Verchère de Reffye (30 July 1821 – 6 December 1880) was a French artillery general of the 19th century, and superintendent of the works at

Meudon Meudon () is a municipality in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is in the département of Hauts-de-Seine. It is located from the center of Paris. The city is known for many historic monuments and some extraordinary trees. One of t ...

. He was a former ordnance officer for

Napoleon III Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A neph ...

. He also established the gun manufacture in

Tarbes Tarbes (; Gascon: ''Tarba'') is a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Occitanie region of southwestern France. It is the capital of Bigorre and of the Hautes-Pyrénées. It has been a commune since 1790. It was known as ''Turb ...

Reffye mitrailleuse

De Reffye developed in 1866 the

Reffye mitrailleuse A mitrailleuse (; from French ''mitraille'', " grapeshot") is a type of volley gun with barrels of rifle calibre that can fire either all rounds at once or in rapid succession. The earliest true mitrailleuse was invented in 1851 by Belgian Army ...

(named "Canon à balles"), one of the best early machine guns, which was used during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. It was based on the earlier Belgian

Montigny mitrailleuse The Montigny mitrailleuse was an early type of crank-operated machine-gun developed by the Belgian gun works of Joseph Montigny between 1859 and 1870. It was an improved version of the "Mitrailleuse", ( en, Grapeshot shooter) invented by Belgian C ...

of 1863.

Breech-loading cannons

Jean-Baptiste Verchère de Reffye took a key role in introducing

rifled In firearms, rifling is machining helical grooves into the internal (bore) surface of a gun's barrel for the purpose of exerting torque and thus imparting a spin to a projectile around its longitudinal axis during shooting to stabilize the ...

breech loading cannons, a marked improvement over the previous La Hitte system which had been in place since 1858. The La Hitte system used rifled weapons, but they were muzzle-loading, which had the advantage of structural strength, but the disadvantage of slowness in loading. In 1870, de Reffye developed the Reffye 85mm cannon, an 85 mm (3.35-inch) rifled

breech-loading 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 b ...

cannon, equipped with a breech screw, initially made of bronze. The cannon used shell cartridges for ammunition.''Age of Great Guns: Cannon Kings and Cannoneers'' page 30 by Frank E. Comparat

/ref> De Reffye also developed the

Reffye 75mm cannon The Reffye 75mm cannon (French: ''Canon de campagne de 5 de Reffye modèle 1873'') was a French artillery piece of the 19th century, developed by the French artillery General Jean-Baptiste Verchère de Reffye, superintendent of the works at Me ...

in 1873. His cannons would be soon superseded by the

Lahitolle 95mm cannon The Lahitolle 95 mm cannon (Mle 1875) was a French cannon of the 19th century, developed in 1875 by the artillery commander de Lahitolle. The Lahitolle 90 mm was the first French field cannon made of steel, and one of the first to be e ...

and especially the

De Bange 90mm cannon The de Bange 90 mm cannon (Mle 1877) was a type of field artillery piece developed in France by Colonel Charles Ragon de Bange in 1877, and adopted by the French Army that same year. It superseded the earlier Reffye cannon (1870/73) and the ...

Notes

French generals 1821 births 1880 deaths Military personnel from Strasbourg Deaths by horse-riding accident in France {{france-mil-bio-stub