Casimir Lefaucheux (; 26 January 1802 – 9 August 1852) was a French

gunsmith A gunsmith is a person who repairs, modifies, designs, or builds guns. The occupation differs from an armorer, who usually replaces only worn parts in standard firearms. Gunsmiths do modifications and changes to a firearm that may require a very h ...

. He was born in Bonnétable and died in Paris. Casimir Lefaucheux obtained his first patent in 1827. In 1832, he completed a drop-barrel sporting gun with paper-cased cartridges. Lefaucheux is credited with the development of one of the first efficient self-contained cartridge systems. This 1836 invention, featuring a pinfire mechanism, followed the pioneering work of

Jean Samuel Pauly Jean Samuel Pauly (1766 – c. 1821), born Samuel Johannes Pauli, was a Swiss inventor and gunsmith of the early 19th century. Parish records show that he was baptised in Vechigen near Bern, Switzerland on 13 April 1766, the son of Johann Pauli ...

in 1808-1812. The Lefaucheux cartridge had a conical

bullet A bullet is a kinetic projectile, a component of firearm ammunition that is shot from a gun barrel. Bullets are made of a variety of materials, such as copper, lead, steel, polymer, rubber and even wax. Bullets are made in various shapes and co ...

, a cardboard powder tube, and a copper base that incorporated a primer pellet. Lefaucheux thus proposed one of the first practical

breech-loading weapon 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 breec ...

s. In 1846 Benjamin Houllier improved on the Lefaucheux system by introducing an entirely metallic cartridge of copper brass. In 1858 the Lefaucheux pistolet-revolver became the first metallic-cartridge

revolver A revolver (also called a wheel gun) is a repeating handgun that has at least one barrel and uses a revolving cylinder containing multiple chambers (each holding a single cartridge) for firing. Because most revolver models hold up to six roun ...

to be adopted by a national government, becoming the standard sidearm of 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 ...

. It is thought likely that the gun with which the Dutch painter

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...

fatally shot himself in a field in 1890 was a 7 mm Lefaucheux pinfire revolver. The pistol was found, extremely corroded, in 1960 and is on display at the Van Gogh Museum in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the Capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population ...

. A 7 mm Lefaucheux revolver, used by Paul Verlaine to shoot and wound Arthur Rimbaud in 1873, sold for €435,000 at a 2016 Paris auction.

Gallery

File:Revolver Lefaucheux IMG 3108.jpg, Belgian-made Lefaucheux service revolver, c. 1860–1865 File:Pepperbox IMG 5238.jpg,

Pepper-box The pepper-box revolver or simply pepperbox (also "pepper-pot", from its resemblance to the household pepper shakers) is a multiple-barrel firearm, mostly in the form of a handgun, that has three or more gun barrels in a coaxially revolving m ...

in Lefaucheux system File:Pocket revolver Lefaucheux.jpg, Pocket revolver in Lefaucheux system

Notes

References

* Henrotin, Gerard ''Lefaucheux 7mm pinfire revolver explained'', HLebooks.com, 2013 * Henrotin, Gerard ''European percussion & pinfire shotguns explained'', HLebooks.com, 2011 {{DEFAULTSORT:Lefaucheux, Casimir Gunsmiths 1802 births 1852 deaths Burials at Montmartre Cemetery