The mitrailleuse was one of the early types of mechanical machine gun, along with the Gatling, Gardner, Nordenfelt, and others. "Mitrailleuse" is actually a general name for a volley gun–one with many barrels in a cluster, which are fired sequentially. The two most common types were the Montigny (a Belgian design fired by a lever) and the Reffye (a French design fired by crank).

The Reffye was a top-secret weapon used by the French in the Franco-Prussian War, which was expected to be a huge game-changer. However, there was little experience worldwide in how best to use a weapon like this, and the French commanders chose to use them like artillery, firing at long range where they were inaccurate and underpowered. In this role, they were utterly outclassed by the Prussian Krupp artillery, leading to a general European disdain for the effectiveness of machine guns that would last until the First World War.

Reffye mitrailleuse in use, firing blanks:

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Excellent CAD animation of a Reffye:

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The Montigny was typically a 37-barreled affair, using a removable cartridge plate for loading which allowed it to maintain a very high rate of fire (as long as loaded plates were available to the gunners). The breech was a large block containing 37 separate firing pins, which the cartridge plate attached to the front of. A large lever at the rear of the gun connected to a knee-joint type cam that would push the breechblock forward, chambering the 37 cartridges and locking the breechblock in place. A second lever on the side of the gun would then be pulled up vertically, firing the barrels in succession.

Belgian Montigny mitrailleuse

The firing mechanism was quite simple. When the breechblock was pulled rearward, all of the firing pins would be cocked against their own individual springs, and a plate would slide up between the firing pin and its port in the front of the breechblock. The firing lever simply pulled that blocking plate downward, allowing the firing pins to snap forward against their cartridges in sequence. The rate of fire would be determined by the speed with which the firing lever was pulled, and could be as slow as single shots if the gunner was careful.

Once the cartridges had all been fired, the rear lever would be used to unlock the breech and pull it backwards. The cartridge plate (now full of empty cases) would be pulled out the top of the gun, and a fresh loaded one put in its place. This sequence would be repeated as desired until the gun overheated or ammunition ran out.

Loading plate for a Montigny mitrailleuse

The Mitrailleuse as a general type of firearm saw only one major combat usage, and that was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. The French had adopted the Reffye Mitrailleuse and considered it a game-changer. Unfortunately for the French, the tactical understanding of how to use a weapon like the Mitrailleuse was still totally lacking. The guns were treated like artillery, and used to fire at ranges of 1500 meters or more against German infantry. The sights on the Mitrailleuse were simple post and notch affairs like rifles of the day, and the extreme range required excellent range estimation (which the gunners were not trained for). To compound the problem, the combination of long range and small projectiles made it nearly impossible to observe point of impact when firing, and it was nearly impossible to actually hit targets as a result.

The problems with French use of the Mitrailleuse were compounded by the secrecy surrounding the guns. The Army was so focused on preventing the Germans from discovering the guns that virtually no training was given to troops on their use–few had even seen them prior to battle. The secrecy had not been particularly effective, though, and the Prussians knew about the guns. Concerned about their potential effectiveness, they were made a high-priority target for the very effective Prussian field guns, which could easily destroy them from well beyond the range of return fire.

As a result of their utter failure to provide the French Army with an advantage, a general feeling of the inferiority of all such rapid-fire rifle-caliber weapons would permeate military culture for several decades. Ultimately, it was only the use of Maxim guns in WWI that would change the minds of generals and ordnance departments worldwide (although a forward-looking few did learn from conflicts like the Russo-Japanese War).

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