The Montigny mitrailleuse was an early type of crank-operated

machine-gun A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) ar ...

developed by the Belgian gun works of

Joseph Montigny Joseph Montigny was a Belgian gunsmith, from Fontaine l'Evèque near Brussels, and the developer of the Montigny mitrailleuse, an early European machine gun, in 1863. The design was based on the early 1850s prototype of a volley gun by the Belgia ...

between 1859 and 1870. It was an improved version of the "

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 cap ...

", ( en,

Grapeshot Grapeshot is a type of artillery round invented by a British Officer during the Napoleonic Wars. It was used mainly as an anti infantry round, but had other uses in naval combat. In artillery, a grapeshot is a type of ammunition that consists of ...

shooter) invented by Belgian Captain

Fafschamps Toussaint-Henry-Joseph Fafchamps (1783-1868), sometimes spelled Fafschamps, was a Belgian Army captain. In 1851, with the Belgian gunsmith Joseph Montigny and the Fusnot company, he developed what is sometimes considered the first machine gun in ...

in 1851 which was a fixed 50-barrelled

volley gun A volley gun is a gun with multiple single-shot gun barrel, barrels that shoot projectiles in volley fire, either simultaneously or in succession. Although capable of unleashing intense firepower, volley guns differ from modern machine guns in ...

.''Machine Guns'' by James H. Willbanks p.35
/ref> The Montigny mitrailleuse was designed to defend narrow defensive positions such as the moats of fortresses. The Belgian army initially purchased Fafschamps volley guns. Only later did they acquire Montigny mitrailleuses. Joseph Montigny also promoted and sold the weapon for offensive field use by placing the weapon on an artillery carriage.

Specifications

The weapon consisted of 37 barrels of 11 mm inside a cylindrical protective casing. Loading was performed with a loading plate containing 37 cartridges. It was inserted against the breech in one stroke and locked in with a hinged loading lever attached to the rear of the gun. The ammunition had a brass head and thin rolled brass foil body and was fired by needle pins. With the rotation of a crank, all shots were fired simultaneously, although later improvements used a

cam Calmodulin (CaM) (an abbreviation for calcium-modulated protein) is a multifunctional intermediate calcium-binding messenger protein expressed in all eukaryotic cells. It is an intracellular target of the secondary messenger Ca2+, and the bind ...

which permitted the progressive firing of the 37 shots. Around 150–250 shots per minute could be fired depending on the skills of the operators. The whole weapon was very heavy, weighing . The Montigny Mitrailleuse was built in numbers and used mostly to defend Belgian forts and other defensive positions.

Development of the Reffye mitrailleuse

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 nephew ...

showed personal interest in the mitrailleuse. Montigny had approached the French army for the purpose of a sale. Experiments to evaluate the weapon began in 1863 in a French facility near Paris but the decision was made to build a similar weapon by sole French means. Manufacture began 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 ...

in 1866 under the direction of

Verchères de Reffye Verchères is an off-island suburbs, off-island suburb of Montreal, in Montérégie, Quebec, located on the south bank of the Saint Lawrence River. The population as of the Canada 2011 Census was 5,692. History In the 17th century, the settleme ...

and the undisclosed assistance of Montigny. Hence the weapon is usually known as the " Reffye mitrailleuse". Altogether 215 mitrailleuses were manufactured for the

French Army The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (french: Armée de Terre, ), is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces. It is responsible to the Government of France, along with the other components of the Armed For ...

before the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. They were of the 13mm, 25-barrels type, and used elongated shotgun shell style cartridges instead of foil cartridges as in the Montigny mitrailleuse. The weapon, which was on an artillery carriage, was deployed in six gun batteries and manned by artillery personnel. Most of the time, they were used quite ineffectively to engage distant targets. When the weapon was engaged at the

Battle of Gravelotte The Battle of Gravelotte (or Battle of Gravelotte–St. Privat) on 18 August 1870 was the largest battle of the Franco-Prussian War. Named after Gravelotte, a village in Lorraine, it was fought about west of Metz, where on the previous day, ha ...

in 1870, in an infantry support role and at shorter distances, it produced devastating effects.''The Social History of the Machine Gun'', page 64, by John Ellis

External links

Victorian Ship Models: Montigny mitrailleuse with animationfilm

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Montigny Mitrailleuse Machine guns of Belgium Early machine guns Multi-barrel machine guns

Specifications

Development of the Reffye mitrailleuse

See also

External links

Notes