Mitrailleuse

Rear view of 25-barrel Reffye mitrailleuse. Musée de l'Armée.

Side plan view of Reffye mitrailleuse

Several variants of the mitrailleuse concept were developed, with common elements to all of their designs. They were characterized by a number of rifled barrels clustered together and mounted on a conventional artillery chassis or (in the case of one model) a tripod. The ammunition was secured in a single block and placed into the breech, behind the open ends of the barrels. All of the barrels were loaded simultaneously by a manual closing lever or large horizontal screw. A second lever could be worked rapidly (or in some models, a crank could be turned) to fire each barrel in succession. This earned the weapon its French nickname of moulin à café (coffee grinder). (A very similar name was earned by the hand-cranked, mechanically loaded, continuous-firing, "coffee mill gun" in America during the American Civil War.)

The ammunition plate or block had to be removed by hand before another loaded plate could be inserted. Unlike in the Gatling gun and later rapid-firing automatic weapons, the entire loading and firing process was manual. The mitrailleuse's major innovation was that it greatly increased the speed of these processes when compared to standard infantry rifles of the era.[4]

The different variants of the mitrailleuse concept were distinguished by their number of barrels and their different calibers, as the following table summarizes.

Most variants of the mitrailleuse were mounted on an artillery-style carriage. This made them heavy and cumbersome to handle on the battlefield, with gun and carriage weighing up to 900 kg (2,000 lb).

The mitrailleuse's dependence on manual loading meant that its firing rate depended greatly on the skill of its operators. A skillfully manned Reffye mitrailleuse could sustain four volleys (100 rounds) per minute in ordinary operation and reach five volleys (125 rounds) per minute during emergencies. The rapidity of discharge of each individual volley (25 rounds) was controlled by the gunner's action on a small manual crank on the right side of the breech. The weapon's 25 barrels were not discharged all at once, but in rapid succession. Because it was so heavy (1,500 lbs), the Reffye mitrailleuse did not recoil during firing and thus did not need to be re-sighted on its target after each volley. This essential absence of recoil during firings was promoted by Reffye as a considerable advantage over conventional field artillery. Each regular battery of Reffye mitrailleuses lined up six guns firing together, more or less side by side.

The Reffye mitrailleuse used a 13 mm (.512 inch) centerfire cartridge, designed by Gaupillat, which represented the state of the art in ammunition design at the time.[6] It was rather similar to an elongated modern shotgun shell: centerfire with a rimmed brass head and a dark blue hardened cardboard body.[7] The 770-grain (50 g), 13 mm (0.512 inch) patched bullet was propelled by 185 grains (12 grams) of compressed black powder at a muzzle velocity of 1,560 ft/s (480 m/s), three and a half times more powerful than Chassepot or Dreyse rifle ammunition. This was, by far, the most potent rifle caliber ammunition in existence at the time. The Montigny and Reffye mitrailleuse systems were not designed to function with paper cartridges such as the 11 mm Chassepot combustible paper cartridge.[6]

The 13 mm centerfire Reffye mitrailleuse cartridges were loaded into interchangeable steel breech blocks, unlike the Montigny mitrailleuse, whose ammunition was held by the cartridge base in plates. When firing the mitrailleuse, three breech blocks were kept in continuous use: one being fired, one being pressed down on the extractor and one being loaded from a single pre-packaged 25-round box. Adjusting the elevation of the mitrailleuse in accordance to the distance to the designated target was performed with an elevating screw identical to that on a regular artillery piece. The mitrailleuse's barrel could also be moved sideways while firing, to the right and left, in order to adjust for range and provide lateral sweeping fire if needed. The lateral sweep was narrow, however, thus most effective at far distances only. The weapon's field of fire was so narrow that Prussian soldiers were often hit by several bullets at once.[8] During an early engagement of the Franco-Prussian War, at Forbach in Alsace on August 6, 1870, a Prussian general officer (General Bruno von François) was brought down by a very closely spaced volley of four bullets. According to the Prussian regimental record, those four mitrailleuse bullets had been fired from 600 meters away. French artillery attempted to rectify this problem by developing special ammunition capable of firing three bullets from the same cartridge for short-range point-defence.

In summary, the Reffye mitrailleuse was rarely used to deliver sweeping fire at close range like modern machine guns. The mitrailleuse six-gun batteries had been designed to deliver fire on targets too distant to be reached with Chassepot infantry rifles or artillery grapeshot. To fulfill this role, at least during the early weeks of the campaign, the mitrailleuses were deployed together with the older "Napoleon" muzzle loaded field guns ("canon obusier de 12") used by the French Army during the Franco-Prussian War. The mitrailleuse crews are on record of having generally objected to being placed in proximity to regular artillery batteries .

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  Reffye mitrailleuse mechanism.
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  Magazine plate of a Montigny mitrailleuse, designed to hold 37 cartridges and to be slid into the breech before firing.
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  Reffye mitrailleuse bullet magazine housing.
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  Section of the 25-barrel Reffye mitrailleuse ("Canon à balles").
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  Reffye mitrailleuse muzzle.

View of a Reffye mitrailleuse prepared for action

Mitrailleuses were used in many of the major engagements of the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), but their small numbers greatly restricted their effectiveness. Their flawed usage was a serious problem on the battlefield. While the mitrailleuses were inherently accurate, in a ballistic sense, they were often unable to zero in on targets quickly enough at great distances. Individual 25 round salvos were also too tightly grouped and lacked lateral dispersion. To make matters worse, the complex firing mechanism was vulnerable to damage at the hands of inexperienced crews. Fouling of the mechanism by black powder combustion residues and thus difficulties in closing the breech were reported as a problem after prolonged firings.

A Reffye mitrailleuse position being stormed during the Franco-Prussian war.

In a few instances where the Reffye mitrailleuses were put to good use, they showed that they could have a significant impact. Captain Barbe's mitrailleuse battery at the Battle of Gravelotte devastated massed Prussian infantry when they had quickly found the range on their targets, contributing to the exceptionally high Prussian death toll in that battle. Other examples of effective mitrailleuse fire have also been described for the battle of Mars-la-Tour. For the most part, however, mitrailleuses proved ineffective. It was concluded after the war that Chassepot rifle fire had caused a far greater number of Prussian casualties than the Reffye mitrailleuses. However, about 100,000 Chassepot rifles were engaged in combat in contrast with fewer than 200 Reffye mitrailleuses used in battle at any given time.

The Prussians and foreign observers were not impressed by the performance of the mitrailleuse. In the case of the Prussians, their views were undoubtedly coloured by propaganda. They had very few machine guns or volley guns of their own and, not least for reasons of maintaining morale in the face of a new weapon technology, they scorned the effectiveness of the mitrailleuse. They nonetheless saw the weapon as a threat and Prussian artillery always made it a priority to engage and destroy mitrailleuse batteries. The weapon's characteristic "snarling rasp" does appear to have made some impression—the Prussian troops called the mitrailleuse the "Höllenmaschine" ("Hell Machine, Infernal Machine")[12]

Its failure to have much effect in the field led to a belief that rapid-fire weapons were useless.[13] United States Army General William Babcock Hazen, who observed the war, commented that "The French mitrailleuse had failed to live up to expectations. The Germans hold it in great contempt, and it will hardly become a permanent military arm."[14] Strictly speaking, manually operated volley guns such as the Reffye mitrailleuse were a technological dead-end, and they were soon replaced by fully automatic machine guns.

After Napoleon III's abdication following the disastrous French defeat in the Battle of Sedan, French war powers fell into the hand of a republican government led by Léon Gambetta. He vigorously organized national defense and the continued manufacture of war equipment. Most of the conventional weapon manufacturing was located in provincial France, but some mitrailleuse repair and even construction continued inside Paris during the city's four-month siege.

The manufacture of the mitrailleuse and its ammunition was resumed under the direction of De Reffye in the coastal city of Nantes in western France. An additional 122 mitrailleuses were manufactured in Nantes to replace the nearly 200 mitrailleuses that had already been destroyed or captured.

Mitrailleuse donated by the French Republic to Switzerland

After the armistice with Prussia in May 1871, one of the last recorded uses of Reffye mitrailleuses was by troops under the command of Adolphe Thiers, when a battery executed captured Communards in the Bois de Boulogne, following the suppression of the Paris Commune. Similar incidents involving the Reffye mitrailleuse are reported to have taken place at the Caserne Lobau, a barracks in the center of Paris.

A fairly large number of the French Army's Reffye mitrailleuses (268 altogether) survived the Franco-Prussian War. An additional 122 Reffye mitrailleuses, which had been captured during the 1870–71 campaign, were all sold back to France by Germany through a London military surplus dealer in 1875. By 1885, many of the mitrailleuses in the overall remaining French inventory were designated to static point-defence duties, for the purpose of providing flanking fire in the moats of eastern French fortifications. The last surviving Reffye mitrailleuses were removed from several forts in eastern France as late as 1908 and scrapped.

The mitrailleuse is reported to have been used by the Mexican Federal Forces against the Yaqui Indian forces in Sonora, then under the command of Cajemé José Maria Leyba, a prominent leader of his people from 1874 to 1887. Three mitrailleuse were used in March, 1886, with two mitrailleuse under the command of the forces of Generals Leiva and Carillo, and one under the command of General Camano.[15]

In September of 1926, the Mexican military, at first just under General Miguel Pina, made preparations to use the mitrailleuse against the Yaqui people in Sonora, then led by their military chief Luis Matus (Matius in some later accounts), and his lieutenant, Albin Cochemea.[16] The 1st, 8th, and 18th infantry battalions prepared to bring a more modern state of warfare against the indigenous inhabitants of Vicam and other Yaqui pueblos along the river. By October 5th, after intense fighting, the remaining Yaqui soldiers had retreated to the mountains above the river, and the Mexican forces decided to mount a vast offensive against them. More than 12,000 Mexican Federal troops, under the command of General Obregon, General Abundio-Gomez, and General Manzo, directed the operations against the remaining Yaqui forces, using munitions that included 8mm mitrailleuse, and aeroplanes carrying gas asphyxiants.[17]

Following their campaign against Arabi Pasha in Egypt during 1882, the British recorded having seized several mitrailleuses. None of these seemed to have been used in combat.

A machine gun is still referred to as a mitrailleuse in French, following the pattern set by the adoption of the Mitrailleuse Hotchkiss in 1897. The FN 5.56 mm NATO machine gun, the Minimi, derives its name from the term Mini-Mitrailleuse, "small machine gun". Submachine guns may be called mitraillettes, the diminutive of mitrailleuse, although they are also called pistolets mitrailleurs ("mitrailleuse pistols").

In Dutch as spoken in the Netherlands, the word mitrailleur is widely used as a synonym for machinegeweer (machine gun). Obviously, this word is derived from the original mitrailleuse by changing the gender of the French word. In Dutch-speaking parts of Belgium, however, the word mitrailleur is rarely used, largely because it is regarded as poor French.

The term is also used in Norwegian. Although spelled slightly differently as mitraljøse, the pronunciation is similar. In Norway, the term nowadays is used to refer to a machine gun (the MG3, labeled as mitr-3, to be specific) mounted on a tripod. This is similar to the German term Schweres Maschinengewehr, which refers to a regular machine gun mounted on a tripod (since the introduction of General purpose machine guns).

In Turkish the term mitralyöz, which is apparently derived from mitrailleuse, was widely used as a synonym for machine guns before becoming an archaic term. Currently, makineli tüfek (machine rifle) is considered the accepted term.

A related word, metralhadora, is used in Portuguese. Although it is derived from the French mitrailleuse, its pronunciation is different. It describes any automatic firearm. Similarly, in Spanish ametralladora is the word for a machine gun, metralleta, connected to French mitraillette for a sub-machine gun.

The word also survived in Romania, where the generic term for a machine gun is mitralieră. In Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian it is mitraljez, and in Albanian a machine gun is referred to as mitraloz. In Greek, mydraliovolo (μυδραλιοβόλο) is a—now somewhat archaic—term for a machine gun.

The word mitrailleuse is surely the source for the modern Italian term: Mitragliatrice, describing a machine gun, as well.