Breech-loading firearms were developed in the mid-19th century by European nations for their armies but attempts to invent and produce a successful breech-loading system for firearms date back to the earliest martial use of gunpowder in the West. First used in artillery in the 14th century, the earliest breech-loading cannons used removable chambers, individually charged with powder, which would be placed at the breech of the loaded barrel, firmly wedged in place, and then ignited through a touch-hole. Accounts of this type of artillery, which was usually quite light in weight, are found in both English and French sources during the Hundred Years War; the cannon so referred to became known by a variety of names, of which perrier is the most common. Leonardo da Vinci is generally credited with the earliest invention of one of the types of breech-loading system which persisted until the invention of the enclosed cartridge in the mid-19th century. In his Codex Atlanticus of c.1500-10 he illustrated a hackbutt—a type of early, heavy matchlock musket—with an unscrewing, or ‘turn-off’ breech. The concept of a breech and barrel assembly separated by simply unscrewing one from the other remained popular until the 19th century because it was the most efficient breech-loading system available, with the advantage that the ball, inserted at the rear of the barrel, could be slightly oversize. This made for a tight fit, less wasted combustion power for the gunpowder and thus greater range and—in the case of rifled barrels—greater accuracy than could be provided by muzzle-loaded firearms with their necessarily looser-fitting balls. The separately charged chamber system for breech-loading firearms existed at the same time as the turn-off breech or barrel system and, although it suffered from—generally—a poorer seal between breech and barrel than had the ‘turn-off’ system, its concept was the one which became eventually modified in the earliest bolt-action rifles. The earliest military breech-loading firearms are thought to be the pistol shields bought by King Henry VIII of England from Giovanbattista, a Ravenna gunsmith, in the mid-1540s. These were separately chambered matchlock pistols, the barrels of which poked through the centre of disc-shaped shields; they are thought to have been intended to arm the king's bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard. Experiments into the development of breech-loaders continued for the following century and a half but were principally aimed at the civilian market for sporting firearms; not until the early 18th century did a breech-loading system suitable not only for large-scale production but also for handling by soldiers attract the attention of military authorities.
Although a French engineer is generally given credit for the development of this successful system, its origins date back to the late 16th century in Spain. The system utilized a screw-threaded plug which, by being screwed and unscrewed vertically at the rear of the barrel, sealed and unsealed the breech for loading with powder and ball. Throughout the 17th century this system was experimented with in Germany, England, and Denmark but was finally developed with success by Isaac de la Chaumette in France in 1704. The inventor was a Huguenot, however, and fled to England subsequently where, in 1721, he took out an English patent to protect his invention. For the next 50 years screw-plug breech-loading muskets and rifles were made in England as sporting guns but, in 1776, Capt Patrick Ferguson, a Scot, took out a patent for an improved version which he intended for military use. Subsequent trials of his rifle impressed British military authorities and it was made in a small quantity to equip a Corps of Riflemen to be led by him on campaign in America. Although successful at Brandywine in 1777, Ferguson's corps was broken up after he was wounded there, and his subsequent death at King's Mountain in 1780 ended Britain's experiment with military breech-loaders for the next half-century.
By the end of the 18th century most systems of breech-loading had been tried: most were regarded as little more than curiosities by the conservative and were not seen as soldier-proof by military authorities—bodies not noted for their radicalism. Although rudimentary cartridges had been designed by Leonardo and were used in some breechloaders, the lack of an effective gas seal bedevilled attempts to get them widely accepted. The combination of reliable cartridges and a better gas seal finally arrived in the early 19th century and was developed separately by the Parisian gunsmith Johannes Pauly and one of his staff, Johann von Dreyse. Dreyse's needle gun utilized a bolt-action breech-locking system which sealed the chamber effectively and fired an efficient self-contained cartridge; it was adopted by the Prussian army in 1841. In 1819, the US army had adopted a breech-loading rifle using a ‘tip-up’ breech-chamber developed by John Hall; Hall's system, which did not use cartridges, remained in use in the US army into the 1850s.
The development of the self-contained cartridge closely paralleled that of breech-loader in the 19th century. By 1870, brass-jacketed centre-fire and rim-fire cartridges were in use for a multiplicity of breech-loading actions, each with its own pros and cons. Bolt-action, hinging chamber, tipping chamber, tipping barrel, sliding barrel, sliding breech-bolt: all systems were tried and adopted by the armies of nations engaged in an arms race, and also in an arms trade which benefited from regular wars in which the latest arms technology could be tried. By the end of the century, most nations had adopted some form of the action by which the breech was closed, sealed, and locked by a turning bolt; by then, too, repeating firearms had been developed and automatic firearms were in their infancy. Long before this, the very great advantage to the infantryman of being able to load and fire from a prone position, as well as the very much greater rate of fire now possible, had revolutionized battlefield tactics and the ranges at which the enemy could be engaged.
Bibliography
- Blackmore, Howard L., British Military Firearms 1650-1850 (London, 1961).
- Blair, Claude (gen. ed.), Pollard's History of Firearms (London, 1983).
- Peterson, Harold L. (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Firearms (London, 1964)
— Stephen Wood
