Minié ball and rifled musket
Bala Minié y fusil rayado de infantería
- Date
- 1847-1849 · confidence high
- Place
- Vincennes, France
- Credited to
- Claude-Étienne Minié (and Henri-Gustave Delvigne)
- People
- 👤 Claude-Étienne Minié1804–1879
- Field
- Conflict
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A conical lead bullet with a hollow base that expanded on firing and gripped the rifling, allowing a rifled musket to be loaded as fast as a smoothbore one. It quadrupled the effective range of infantry.
Delvigne and Thouvenin had developed earlier expanding bullets; Minié patented his in 1849, and the British government bought the rights from him.
What it led to
- The carnage of Crimea and the American Civil War (devastating wounds)
- The end of frontal charges and hand-to-hand combat; trenches
- The general adoption of the rifled musket (the Enfield, 1853; the Springfield, 1861)
- Military surgery and mass amputations
Built on
- Rifling of the barrelc. 1480-1520
- Percussion cap and priming1807 (cápsula c. 1814-1822)
- Rifling of gun barrels (16th century)
- Percussion cap
- Delvigne bullet (1826)
Made possible
- Bolt-action breech-loading rifle (Dreyse needle gun)1836-1841
- Armstrong rifled breech-loading gun1855-1859
- Enfield 1853 rifle
- Rifled breech-loading rifle
- Conical cartridge ammunition