The Podewils gun was a 13.9mm calibre

rifle A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting, with a barrel that has a helical pattern of grooves ( rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus on accuracy, rifles are typically designed to be held with ...

used in the

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

n army since 1858. It was the most common infantry weapon of the Bavarian army in the

Austro-Prussian war The Austro-Prussian War, also by many variant names such as Seven Weeks' War, German Civil War, Brothers War or Fraternal War, known in Germany as ("German War"), (; "German war of brothers") and by a variety of other names, was fought in 186 ...

of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/71.

Theodor Fontane Theodor Fontane (; 30 December 1819 – 20 September 1898) was a German novelist and poet, regarded by many as the most important 19th-century German-language realist author. He published the first of his novels, for which he is best known toda ...

called it an "excellent" weapon of the Austro-Prussian war due to its long range. Originally a

muzzleloader A muzzleloader is any firearm into which the projectile and the propellant charge is loaded from the muzzle of the gun (i.e., from the forward, open end of the gun's barrel). This is distinct from the modern (higher tech and harder to make) design ...

, it was converted to

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 breec ...

in 1867, the so-called Lindner conversion. In 1869 the Bavarian army started to replace it with the Werder breechloader, but due to budgetary constrains by 1870 most Bavarian troops still used the Podewils while only four infantry battalions had received the Werder (primarily '' Jäger'' units). Even the Lindner conversion was inferior to both the Prussian Dreyse needle gun and the French Chassepot.

References

* ''CAPPING BREECH-LOADER THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PODWEWILS & WERDER RIFLES OF THE BAVARIAN ARMY. FEATURING THE PODEWILS-LINDNER-BRAUMUHL MODEL 58/66. THE WERDER MODEL 69 & THE MAUSER MODEL 71 PATRONE''.

External links

* {{Citation , title=Shooting Podewils Lindner featuring some accessories.avi , url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAxwfyeSPqQ , access-date=2023-03-19 , language=en,

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video Early rifles

See also

References

External links