Antoine Treuille De Beaulieu
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Count Antoine Hector Thésée Treuille de Beaulieu (; 7 May 1809 – 24 July 1885) was a French General of the 19th century, who developed the concept of rifled guns in the French Army. He studied the subject of rifling between 1840, particularly in the famous
Manufacture d'armes de Châtellerault The ''Manufacture d'Armes de Châtellerault'' (, "Châtellerault Weapons Factory", abbr. MAC) was a French state-owned weapons manufacturer in the town of Châtellerault, Vienne. It was created by a royal decree of 14 July 1819 to manufact ...
, and 1852. Following a request by Napoleon III in 1854 to develop such a weapon, the de Beaulieu system was adopted by the
French Army The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (, , ), is the principal Army, land warfare force of France, and the largest component of the French Armed Forces; it is responsible to the Government of France, alongside the French Navy, Fren ...
. It consisted in cutting six grooves inside the bore of a muzzle-loading cannon, and to use shells equipped with six lugs which would engage the grooves.''A Dictionary of Military History and the Art of War'' by André Corvisier, p.4

/ref> This development was paralleled by that of the
Armstrong gun An Armstrong gun was a type of rifled breech-loading field and heavy artillery piece designed by Sir William Armstrong. It was first manufactured in England starting in 1855 by the Elswick Ordnance Company and the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. ...
in Great Britain (adopted in 1858 by the
British Army The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...
). About the same time he developed a
pinfire The pin-fire (or pinfire) is an obsolete type of metallic cartridge used in firearms, where the priming compound is ignited by striking a small pin that protrudes radially from above the base of the cartridge. Invented by Frenchman Casimir ...
falling-block A falling-block action (also known as a sliding-block or dropping-block action) is a single-shot firearm action in which a solid metal breechblock slides vertically in Groove (machining), grooves cut into the breech (firearms), breech of the wea ...
breech-loading carbine (''mousqueton'') for the
Cent-gardes Squadron The Cent-gardes Squadron ( French: L'Escadron des Cent-gardes), also called ''Cent Gardes à Cheval'' (Hundred Guardsmen on Horseback), was an elite cavalry squadron of the Second French Empire primarily responsible for protecting the person of t ...
which was a bit ahead of its time in using a metallic cartridge and is very unusual (for a single-shot weapon) in that it fires from an
open bolt A firearm is said to fire from an open bolt or open breech if, when ready to fire, the bolt and working parts are held to the rear of the receiver, with no round in the chamber. When the trigger is actuated, the bolt travels forward, feeds a car ...
. These developments led to the introduction of the
La Hitte system The La Hitte system (), named after the French general Ducos, Count de La Hitte, was an artillery system designed in March 1858 to implement rifled muzzle-loading guns in the French Army. Conception The La Hitte system was developed through the ...
in 1858, a fully integrated system of muzzle-loading rifled guns. The Beaulieu 4-pounder rifled field-gun was adopted by the French Army in 1858, where it replaced the
canon-obusier de 12 The Canon obusier de 12 (officially the "Canon obusier de campagne de 12 livres, modèle 1853"), also known as the "Canon de l’Empereur" ("emperor's cannon"), was a type of canon-obusier (literally "shell-gun cannon", "gun-howitzer") developed b ...
, a
smoothbore A smoothbore weapon is one that has a barrel without rifling. Smoothbores range from handheld firearms to powerful tank guns and large artillery mortars. Some examples of smoothbore weapons are muskets, blunderbusses, and flintlock pistols. ...
cannon using
shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses Science Biology * Seashell, a hard outer layer of a marine ani ...
s which was much less accurate and shorter-ranged. The Beaulieu rifled artillery was first used in Algeria, and then in the
Franco-Austrian War The Second Italian War of Independence, also called the Sardinian War, the Austro-Sardinian War, the Franco-Austrian War, or the Italian War of 1859 (Italian: ''Seconda guerra d'indipendenza italiana''; German: ''Sardinischer Krieg''; French: ...
in Italy in 1859. In 1842 he invented a prototype of the modern
muzzle brake A muzzle brake or recoil compensator is a device connected to, or a feature integral (ported barrel) to the construction of, the muzzle or barrel of a firearm or cannon that is intended to redirect a portion of propellant gases to counter re ...
and had it tested in 1862.


Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beaulieu, Antoine Treuille De École Polytechnique alumni French generals 1809 births 1885 deaths People from Lunéville