Antoine Hector Thésée Treuille de Beaulieu (1809–1885) was a French General of the 19th century, who developed the concept of rifled guns in the French Army.[1] He studied the subject of rifling between 1840 and 1852.[2] Following a request by Napoleon III in 1854 to develop such a weapon, the de Beaulieu system was adopted by the French Army. 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.[3] This development was paralleled by that of the Armstrong gun in Great Britain (adopted in 1858 by the British Army).[3]
These developments led to the introduction of the La Hitte system 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, a smoothbore cannon using shells which was much less accurate and shorter-ranged.[4]
The Beaulieu rifled artillery was fist used Algeria, and then in the Franco-Austrian War in Italy in 1859.[5]
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||