A mitrailleuse (French pronunciation:[mitʁajøz]; 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 captain Fafschamps, ten years before the advent of the Gatling gun. It was followed by the Belgian Montigny mitrailleuse in 1863. Then the French 25 barrel "Canon à Balles", better known as the Reffye mitrailleuse, was adopted in great secrecy in 1866. It became the first rapid-firing weapon deployed as standard equipment by any army in a major conflict when it was used during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71.
A steel block containing twenty-five 13 mm (.51 calibre) centre-fire cartridges was locked against the breech before firing. With the rotation of a crank, the 25 rounds were discharged in rapid succession. The sustainable firing rate of the Reffye mitrailleuse was 100 rounds per minute and its maximum range was about 2000 yards (1800 m), a distance that placed their batteries beyond the reach of Prussian Dreyse needle rifle fire. Reffye mitrailleuses were deployed in six gun batteries and were manned by gunners as a form of special artillery.
Although innovative and capable of good ballistic performance, the Reffye mitrailleuse was a tactical failure because its basic concept and operational use were flawed. Only 210 Reffye mitrailleuses were in existence at the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Their field use was discontinued by the French Army after 1871. After the Gatling gun was replaced in service by newer recoil- or gas-operated weapons, multi-barrelled weapons fell into disuse for many decades. Some examples were developed during the interwar years but only as prototypes or were rarely used. The word mitrailleuse became the generic term for a machine gun in the French language because of its early appearance in the field of weapons, although the mitrailleuse was manually operated.
^"Marines in the Dominican Republic 1916-1924" (PDF).
A mitrailleuse (French pronunciation: [mitʁajøz]; from French mitraille, "grapeshot") is a type of volley gun with barrels of rifle calibre that can fire...
The Montigny mitrailleuse was an early type of crank-operated machine-gun developed by the Belgian gun works of Joseph Montigny between 1859 and 1870....
La Mitrailleuse is a painting by British Futurist artist C. R. W. Nevinson, made in 1915 while he was on honeymoon leave from service as an ambulance driver...
The MAC mle 1931 machine gun (official French designation Mitrailleuse modèle 1931 - machine gun, model of 1931), was a machine gun used in French tanks...
labor-intensive than previous rapid-firing guns, such as the manually cranked Mitrailleuse, Gatling, Gardner, or Nordenfelt. The Maxim gun was water cooled, allowing...
of time were mass-firing volley weapons, like the Belgian and French mitrailleuse of the 1860s and 1870s, and field cannons firing canister shot, much...
chambered in a cartridge designated 8×32mmSR. Its official name was Carabine Mitrailleuse 1918[citation needed] ("Machine Carbine 1918" in English); in a 2007...
BMG (12.7×99mm NATO) heavy machine gun produced under licence. MAG: Mitrailleuse d'Appui Général, 7.62×51mm NATO general-purpose machine gun. Used by...
mitrailleur Chauchat. FM modèle 1915 C.S.R.G." Les mitrailleuses du premier conflit mondial (in French). mitrailleuse.fr. 2003. Retrieved December 18, 2011....
volley gun that was similar to the French De Reffye mitrailleuse and the Belgian Montigny mitrailleuse. Field artillery Siege artillery Congreve rocket Hale...
that was reloaded using multiple breech pieces, similar to the later mitrailleuse, was developed in France in 1775 by a Du Perron. Two notable artillery-sized...
ribauldequin is sometimes considered the predecessor of the 19th century mitrailleuse. The first known ribauldequin was used by the army of Edward III of England...
The FN MAG (French: Mitrailleuse d'Appui Général, English: General Purpose Machine Gun) is a Belgian 7.62 mm general-purpose machine gun, designed in the...
The FN Minimi (short for French: Mini Mitrailleuse; "mini machine gun") is a Belgian 5.56mm light machine gun, also classified as a squad automatic weapon...
to adopt the Hotchkiss Mle 1900 with some minor modifications, as the Mitrailleuse Automatique modèle 1914. The Hotchkiss gun is initially supplied to second-line...
Czechoslovakia - received 1000 M1924 (vz. 24) in 7.92×57mm Mauser France - Mitrailleuse légère Hotchkiss type 1934, used in French colonies : Liban and French...
seconds. Also in 1775, a breech-loading volley gun, similar to the later mitrailleuse, was invented by a Frenchman called Du Perron which was worked by 3 or...
aircraft of the Armée de l'Air. Essentially a faster-firing variant of the mitrailleuse mle 1931, and using the same 7.5 mm MAS ammunition, the MAC 34 worked...
réglementaire AVIS-2 turret fitted with a Hotchkiss 13,2 mm Modèle 1930 mitrailleuse, which could penetrate 20 mm steel at 500 metres. To accommodate the...