The earliest true mitrailleuse was invented in 1851 by Belgian Army captain Fafschamps, ten years before the advent of the Gatling gun.

Although innovative and capable of good ballistic performance, the Reffye mitrailleuse was a tactical failure because its basic concept and operational use were flawed.

They were characterized by a number of rifled barrels clustered together and mounted on a conventional artillery chassis or (in the case of one model) a tripod.

(A very similar name was earned by the hand-cranked, mechanically loaded, continuous-firing, "coffee mill gun" in America during the American Civil War.)

Unlike in the Gatling gun and later rapid-firing automatic weapons, the entire loading and firing process was manual.

The mitrailleuse's major innovation was that it greatly increased the speed of these processes when compared to standard infantry rifles of the era.

The rapidity of discharge of each individual volley (25 rounds) was controlled by the gunner's action on a small manual crank on the right side of the breech.

This essential absence of recoil during firings was promoted by Reffye as a considerable advantage over conventional field artillery.

[7] It was rather similar to an elongated modern shotgun shell: centerfire with a rimmed brass head and a dark blue hardened cardboard body.

[8] The 770-grain (50 g), 13 mm (0.512 inch) patched bullet was propelled by 185 grains (12 grams) of compressed black powder at a muzzle velocity of 1,560 ft/s (480 m/s), three and a half times more powerful than Chassepot or Dreyse rifle ammunition.

French artillery attempted to rectify this problem by developing special ammunition capable of firing three bullets from the same cartridge for short-range point-defence.

In summary, the Reffye mitrailleuse was rarely used to deliver sweeping fire at close range like modern machine guns.

The mitrailleuse six-gun batteries had been designed to deliver fire on targets too distant to be reached with Chassepot infantry rifles or artillery grapeshot.

To fulfill this role, at least during the early weeks of the campaign, the mitrailleuses were deployed together with the older "Napoleon" muzzle loaded field guns ("canon obusier de 12") used by the French Army during the Franco-Prussian War.

This transformation was carried out as an industrial venture by Christophe and Joseph Montigny of Fontaine-l'Évêque near Brussels, who sought to sell the new weapon to the rest of Europe.

A total of 215 mitrailleuses and five million rounds of ammunition had been manufactured by July 1870, but only 190 were operational and available for field service when war with Prussia broke out.

The French Army used the mitrailleuse as an artillery weapon, rather than an infantry support weapon—a role later filled by the machine gun.

To avoid being hit by Dreyse rifle fire, the mitrailleuse batteries were systematically deployed beyond about 1,400 m (1,500 yards) from the Prussian lines.

Fouling of the mechanism by black powder combustion residues and thus difficulties in closing the breech were reported as a problem after prolonged firings.

It was concluded after the war that Chassepot rifle fire had caused a far greater number of Prussian casualties than the Reffye mitrailleuses.

[14] United States Army General William Babcock Hazen, who observed the war, commented that "The French mitrailleuse had failed to live up to expectations.

Most of the conventional weapon manufacturing was located in provincial France, but some mitrailleuse repair and even construction continued inside Paris during the city's four-month siege.

The manufacture of the mitrailleuse and its ammunition was resumed under the direction of De Reffye in the coastal city of Nantes in western France.

After the armistice with Prussia in May 1871, one of the last recorded uses of Reffye mitrailleuses was by troops under the command of Adolphe Thiers, when a battery executed captured Communards in the Bois de Boulogne, following the suppression of the Paris Commune.

Similar incidents involving the Reffye mitrailleuse are reported to have taken place at the Caserne Lobau, a barracks in the center of Paris.

An additional 122 Reffye mitrailleuses, which had been captured during the 1870–71 campaign, were all sold back to France by Germany through a London military surplus dealer in 1875.

[17] The 1st, 8th, and 18th infantry battalions prepared to bring a more modern state of warfare against the indigenous inhabitants of Vicam and other Yaqui pueblos along the river.

By October 5, after intense fighting, the remaining Yaqui soldiers had retreated to the mountains above the river, and the Mexican forces decided to mount a vast offensive against them.

It has been suggested that the relative slowness displayed by the French services to adopt machine guns was the result of wariness occasioned by the failure of the mitrailleuse.

Large numbers of Gatling guns were purchased from the United States and were used by Western European powers in colonial wars in Africa, India, and Asia.