Toussaint-Henry-Joseph Fafchamps
Joseph Montigny further improved the weapon, completing the transportable 37-barrels Montigny mitrailleuse (also known as the "Fafschamps-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. The invention of Fafschamps thus became the basis of the "mitrailleuse", which was used by the French in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Initially kept under wraps as a secret weapon, it became widely used in battle by French artillery during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71).
Mitrailleuse
Several variants of the mitrailleuse concept were developed, with common elements to all of their designs. 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. The ammunition was secured in a single block and placed into the breech, behind the open ends of the barrels. All of the barrels were loaded simultaneously by a manual closing lever or large horizontal screw. A second lever could be worked rapidly (or in some models, a crank could be turned) to fire each barrel in succession. This earned the weapon its French nickname of "moulin à café" (coffee grinder). (A very similar name was earned by the hand-cranked, mechanically loaded, continuous-firing, "coffee mill gun" in America during the American Civil War.)