page_title: Breechloader
section_title: Firearms
hierarchical_section_title: Breechloader / History / Firearms
caption_attribution_description: English: Henry_VIII_breech_loading_hunting_gun_breech_block_on_hinges_with_reloadable_iron_cartridge_original_wheellock_mechanism_missing.
context_page_description: A breechloader is a firearm in which the user loads the ammunition via the rear end of its barrel, as opposed to a muzzleloader, which loads ammunition via the front end.
  Modern firearms are generally breech-loading – except for replicas of vintage weapons. Early firearms up until the mid-19th century, however, were almost entirely muzzle-loading. Mortars are the only muzzleloaders remaining in frequent modern usage.
  Breech-loading provides the advantage of reduced reloading time, because it is a lot quicker to load the projectile and propellant into the chamber of a gun/cannon than to reach all the way over to the front end to load ammunition and then push them back down a long tube – especially when the projectile fits tightly and the tube has spiral ridges from rifling. In field artillery, the advantages were similar – crews no longer had to get in front of the gun and force things down a long barrel with a ramrod, and the shot could now tightly fit the bore, increasing accuracy. It also made it easier to load a previously fired weapon with a fouled barrel.
context_section_description: Breech-loading firearms are known from the 16th century. Henry VIII possessed one, which he apparently used as a hunting gun to shoot birds. Meanwhile, in China, an early form of breech loading musket, known as the Che Dian Chong, was known to have been created in the second half of the 16th century for the Ming dynasty's arsenals. Like all early breech loading fireams, gas leakage was a limitation and danger present in the weapon's mechanism. 
  More breech-loading firearms were made in the early 18th century. One such gun known to have belonged to Philip V of Spain, and was manufactured circa 1715, probably in Madrid. It came with a ready-to load reusable cartridge.
  Patrick Ferguson, a British Army officer, developed in 1772 the Ferguson rifle, a breech-loading flintlock firearm. Roughly two hundred of the rifles were manufactured and used in the Battle of Brandywine, during the American Revolutionary War, but shortly after they were retired and replaced with the standard Brown Bess musket.
  Later on into the mid-19th century, there were attempts in Europe at an effective breech-loader. There were concentrated attempts at improved cartridges and methods of ignition.
  In Paris in 1808, in association with French gunsmith François Prélat, Jean Samuel Pauly created the first fully self-contained cartridges: the cartridges incorporated a copper base with integrated mercury fulminate primer powder (the major innovation of Pauly), a round bullet and either brass or paper casing. The cartridge was loaded through the breech and fired with a needle. The needle-activated central-fire breech-loading gun would become a major feature of firearms thereafter. The corresponding firearm was also developed by Pauly. Pauly made an improved version, which was protected by a patent on 29 September 1812.
  The Pauly cartridge was further improved by the French gunsmith Casimir Lefaucheux in 1828, by adding a pinfire primer, but Lefaucheux did not register his patent until 1835: a pinfire cartridge containing powder in a card-board shell. 
  In 1845, another Frenchman Louis-Nicolas Flobert invented, for indoor shooting, the first rimfire metallic cartridge, constituted by a bullet fit in a percussion cap. Usually derived in the 6 mm and 9 mm calibres, it is since then called the Flobert cartridge but it does not contain any powder; the only propellant substance contained in the cartridge is the percussion cap itself. In English-speaking countries the Flobert cartridge corresponds to the .22 BB and .22 CB ammunitions.
  In 1846, yet another Frenchman, Benjamin Houllier, patented the first fully metallic cartridge containing powder in a metallic shell. Houllier commercialised his weapons in association with the gunsmiths Blanchard or Charles Robert. But the subsequent Houllier and Lefaucheux cartridges, even if they were the first full-metal shells, were still pinfire cartridges, like those used in the LeMat (1856) and Lefaucheux (1858) revolvers, although the LeMat also evolved in a revolver using rimfire cartridges. 
  The first centrefire cartridge was introduced in 1855 by Pottet, with both Berdan and Boxer priming.
  In 1842, the Norwegian Armed Forces adopted the breechloading caplock, the Kammerlader, one of the first instances in which a modern army widely adopted a breechloading rifle as its main infantry firearm.
  The Dreyse Zündnadelgewehr (Dreyse needle gun) was a single-shot breech-loading rifle using a rotating bolt to seal the breech. It was so called because of its .5-inch needle-like firing pin, which passed through a paper cartridge case to impact a percussion cap at the bullet base. It began development in the 1830s under Johann Nicolaus von Dreyse and eventually an improved version of it was adopted by Prussia in the late 1840s. The paper cartridge and the gun had numerous deficiencies; specifically, serious problems with gas leaking. However, the rifle was used to great success in the Prussian army in the Austro-Prussian war of 1866. This, and the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71, eventually caused much interest in Europe for breech loader
caption: Henry VIII breech loading hunting gun, 16th century. The breech block rotates on the left on hinges, and is loaded with a reloadable iron cartridge. Thought to have been used as a hunting gun to shoot birds. The original wheellock mechanism is missing.
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