Date: 1874
At the beginning of the late war the French counted much on the superiority of their arms ; and one object of the highly demonstrative but practi cally ineffective attack made at Saarbrucken, on the 2nd of August, seemed to be to inspire the French army and France generally with confidence in the mitrailleuse.  The Charivari had already published an engraving in which a soldier, turning the handle of a mitrailleuse, was represented as sweeping the field of battle with his murderous machine , and looking in vain, after a few minutes' grinding, for one remaining enemy.  Spectators on the French side before Saarbrucken fancied that, through the smoke, they had really seen some such effect as this.