Antoine Treuille de Beaulieu

[1] He studied the subject of rifling between 1840, particularly in the famous Manufacture d'armes de Châtellerault, 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.

[3] This development was paralleled by that of the Armstrong gun in Great Britain (adopted in 1858 by the British Army).

[3] About the same time he developed a pinfire falling-block breech-loading carbine (mousqueton) for the Cent-gardes Squadron 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.

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.