The Minié P1851 rifle of the French army
Ammunition 18mm
Weights and dimensions
Mass (charged) 4 kg
Length(s) 95.8cm
Technical features
Rate of fire 2 to 3 strokes per minute
The Minié rifle is a type of rifle that played an important role in the 19th century. It belongs to the broad category of rifled shotguns to have been developed after the invention of the Minié bullet.
The Minié was designed in 1849 following the invention of the Minié ball in 1847 by the captains of the French army:Claude Étienne Minié and Henri-Gustave Delvigne. The rifle was created to allow rapid muzzleloading of rifles, an innovation that spread the use of the rifle as a battlefield weapon. It was developed after the difficulties encountered by the French army during operations in North Africa.
Mechanism
In the Minié rifle, a milling rod was needed to drive the bullet in without damaging its shape.
The Minié rifle caused huge wounds with its large bullets.
The rifle used a soft bullet of a conical-cylindrical shape, slightly smaller than the barrel bore, with three greased outer grooves and a conical cavity at its base. During the shot, the gas pushed the bullet at its base, deforming it to engage the grooves. This made it spin for more precision and tightness and allowed the cleaning of powder detritus.
Prior to this innovation, the smoothbore shotgun was the only weapon used in combat. A few rifled pistols had been in service since the Renaissance, but they required hammering the ammunition with powder inside, creating considerable cleaning problems. A rod system used a pin that deformed the bullet against the barrel wall when it was pushed down. This system was also very problematic for cleaning, especially with the black powders of the time.
The Minié rifle had a percussion system and weighed 4.8 kg. Having a reasonable accuracy up to 550 m, it could be equipped with telescopic sights. It could penetrate 10 cm into a pine located 918 m away. The bullet had a caliber of 17.8 millimeters and weighed 32.4 grams.
A test at Vincennes in 1849 demonstrated that at around 15m the bullet could penetrate two panels of poplar wood, each two cm thick and separated by 50 cm from each other. Soldiers at the time said that at 1 km, the bullet could penetrate a soldier and his backpack and kill anyone standing behind him, even killing every person up to 15 m away.
The rifle had limited use in the Crimean War but was the primary infantry weapon in the Civil War. The large caliber and high speed rotation of these bullets caused terrible injuries.
Usage
"Teaching the negro recruits the use of the Minié rifle":in the Harper's Weekly (Journal of Civilization) of Saturday March 14, 1863, an engraving shows, at the foot of a gabion cliff overlooking a narrow beach, a group of black soldiers from the USCT under the orders of a white officer. At the side of the black soldier who is about to fire with the Springfield Model 1855 or the new Springfield Model 1861, a young drummer looks for the target that the officer points to, on the other side of the river. A group of onlookers stands on the cliff, at a safe distance
The Minié Pattern 1851 rifle was used by the British army from 1851 to 1855. The Minié system was also taken up extensively by various manufacturers, such as the North American Springfield Armory (the Springfield Model 1855, followed by the Springfield Model 1861 were the most widely used long guns of the Civil War) - and by the Royal Arsenal at Enfield (the Pattern 1853 Enfield). The Southerners also used copies of the Minié rifle:Springfields taken from southern arsenals or harvested after their victories - and Enfields purchased from Great Britain.
In Germany, Baden, Hesse, Württemberg also armed themselves with a rifle inspired by the Minié (the Vereinsgewehr 1857), as did Austria (the Lorenz rifle).
Minié rifles were also used in the Boshin War (1868-1869) in Japan, where they played an important role in giving victory to the forces of the young Emperor Meiji over those of the Tokugawa, in encounters such as the Battle of Toba-Fushimi.
Obsolescence
The Minié rifle became obsolete in 1866 after the Austro-Prussian war:the Austrians, equipped with this type of rifle, were beaten by the Prussians, who were equipped with the breech-loading Dreyse rifle. In France, Minié rifles were then adapted to breech-loading:this modification included a hinged cover, hence the name snuffbox rifle.
Soon after, the Chassepot was adopted by the French army.