The Reffye 85 mm cannon (French: "Canon de campagne de 7 de Reffye modèle 1870") was a French artillery piece of the 19th century, developed by the French artillery General

Jean-Baptiste Verchère 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. He was a former Ammunition#Ordnance ammunition, ordnance officer for Napoleon III. H ...

, 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 ...

. The weapon was adopted by 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 Force ...

from 1870. It was an 85 mm (3.35-inch) rifled breech-loading cannon, equipped with a breech screw, initially made of bronze. The sliding breech block, and the interrupted screw used for sealing were advanced features, but the perfect sealing of the breech would only be achieved two years later with the invention of the de Bange obturator. The cannon used shell cartridges for ammunition. It would be soon superseded by the Lahitolle 95 mm cannon (1875) and especially the

De Bange 90 mm 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 It superseded the earlier Reffye cannon (1870/73) and the L ...

(1877). Reffye also developed the Reffye 75 mm cannon in 1873. Reffye also developed in 1866 a

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 ca ...

(named "Canon à balles"), one of the best early machine guns, which was used during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.''The New Cambridge Modern History'' by G. N. Clark p.307
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Artillery of France 85 mm artillery {{France-mil-stub