Minié rifle

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The Minié rifle was an important rifle in the 19th century, developed in 1849 following the invention of the Minié ball in 1847 by the French Army captains Claude Etienne Minié of the Chasseurs d'Orléans and Henri-Gustave Delvigne. The rifle was designed to allow rapid muzzle loading of rifles, an innovation that brought about the widespread use of the rifle as a mass battlefield weapon. It was developed following difficulties encountered by the French army in Northern Africa, who were regularly outranged by the handcrafted but long-barelled weapons of their Algerian opponents.

The rifle used a conical-cylindrical soft lead bullet, slightly smaller than the barrel bore, with three exterior grease-filled grooves and a conical hollow in its base. When fired, the expanding gas pushed forcibly on the base of the bullet, deforming it to engage the rifling. This provided spin for accuracy, a better seal for consistent velocity and longer range, and cleaning of barrel detritus.

Before this innovation, the smooth-bore gun was the only practical field weapon. A few rifled guns had been in use since the Renaissance, but they required hammering the munition inside the barrel, and created considerable cleaning problems. A short-lived system ("à tige") used a pin at the bottom of the barrel which would deform the bullet against the wall of the barrel when the bullet was pushed to the bottom. This system also was very problematic for cleaning, especially with the black powders of the period.

The Minié rifle had a percussion lock and weighed 10 lb 9 oz (4.8 kg). Having a reasonable accuracy up to 600 yards (550 metres), it was equipped with sights for effective aiming. It could penetrate 4 inches (10 cm) of soft pine at 1,000 yards (918 m). The hollow based bullet had a .702 inch (17.8 mm) calibre, and weighed 500 grains (32.4 g ).

A test in Vincennes in 1849 demonstrated that at 15 yards the bullet was able to penetrate two boards of poplar wood, each two-thirds of an inch thick and separated by 20 inches. Soldiers of the time spread rumors that at 1,200 yards the bullet could penetrate a soldier and his knapsack and still kill anyone standing behind him, also killing any person in a line of 15.

In 1846 all French chasseur and Zouave units in Africa were issued the Minié rifle. It saw limited distribution in the Crimean War and was the dominant infantry weapon in the American Civil War. The large caliber of these weapons (13-18 mm) created terrible wounds.

The Pattern 1851 Minié rifle was in use by the British Army from 1851 to 1855. The Minié system was also used extensively by various manufacturers, such as Springfield and Enfield (Pattern 1853 Enfield).

The Minié rifle became obsolete in 1866 following the defeat of the Austrians, equipped with this type of rifle, against the Prussians, who were equipped with breech-loading Dreyse rifles. The Chassepot system was then adopted by the French army.

[edit] References

• Nosworthy, Brent, The Bloody Crucible of Courage, Fighting Methods and Combat Experience of the Civil War, Carroll and Graf Publishers, 2003, ISBN 0-7867-1147-7.
• Smithsonian article