Mitrailleuse
The first "mitrailleuse" was a manually fired 50-barrel volley gun originally developed in Belgium in 1851 by the Belgian Army Captain Fafschamps, who made a rough prototype and drawings of his invention. The system was improved during the 1850s by Louis Christophe and the Belgian engineer Joseph Montigny, with the completion of the 37-barrel Montigny mitrailleuse in 1863. From 1859, Joseph Montigny proposed his design to Napoleon III, which led to the development of the French Reffye mitrailleuse, designed by Jean-Baptiste Verchère de Reffye with the collaboration of Montigny, and which was adopted by the French Army in 1865. Initially kept under wraps as a secret weapon, it was widely used in battle by French artillery during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). Smaller numbers of other designs, including the Gatling gun, were also purchased by the French government during the latter part of that conflict. The Reffye model had initially been built in small numbers and in secrecy: only about 200 were available at the beginning of the conflict. This also kept regular French field artillery in a neglected position in the eyes of French emperor Napoleon III, with dire consequences during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71.
Madeleine Malraux
On 8 January 1943, she married , a journalist and half-brother of André Malraux. From their union was born on 11 June 1944, a son, Alain Malraux, who never knew his father. On 21 March 1944, Roland Malraux was arrested by the Gestapo in Brive-la-Gaillarde and deported to Neuengamme in Germany. He died during the bombardment of the ocean liner "Cap Arcona" by the RAF off Lübeck Bay on 3 May 1945.
It is during this same year 1943 that Madeleine Lioux met for the first time André Malraux at her parents' home and her then companion . The future minister of General de Gaulle will not know the same fate as his half-brothers. Indeed, shortly before his arrest, Roland had introduced André Malraux to the head of the Footmann network, another network of the SOE: . After he joigned the Resistance under the name of Colonel Berger, André Malraux was in turn arrested by the Germans at Gramat on 22 July 1944. Transferred to the of Toulouse, he was liberated by a "coup de force" from the Maquis on 19 August.