bullets at once. During an early engagement of the Franco-Prussian War, at Forbach in Alsace on August 6, 1870, a Prussian general officer (General Bruno von François) was brought down by a very closely spaced volley of four bullets. According to the Prussian regimental record, those four mitrailleuse bullets had been fired from 600 meters away. French artillery attempted to rectify this problem by developing special ammunition capable of firing three bullets from the same cartridge for short-range point-defence. In summary, the Reffye mitrailleuse was rarely used to deliver sweeping fire at close range like modern machine guns. The mitrailleuse six-gun batteries had been designed to deliver fire on targets too distant to be reached with Chassepot infantry rifles or artillery grapeshot. To fulfill this role, at least during the early weeks of the campaign, the mitrailleuses were deployed together with the older "Napoleon" muzzle loaded field guns ("canon obusier de 12") used by the French Army during the Franco-Prussian War. The mitrailleuse crews are on record of having generally objected to being placed in proximity to regular artillery batteries . Development The mitrailleuse is best known for its service with the French Army but in fact it was first used in Belgium in the 1850s as a static weapon to defend the moats of fortresses. It was a 50-barrel needle fire, paper cartridge weapon which had been designed by a Captain T.H.J. Fafschamps. Then, after 1863, it was improved with only 37 barrels, 11×70mmR centerfire ammunition and the weapon's placement on a wheeled artillery carriage. This transformation was carried out as an industrial venture by Christophe and Joseph Montigny of Fontaine-l'Évêque near Brussels, who sought to sell the new weapon to the rest of Europe. The French military became interested in the Christophe and Montigny mitrailleuse in 1863 and the French Army's Artillery Committee undertook an investigation into the possible adoption of the Belgian weapon. However it was decided to do otherwise and to create a proprietary mitrailleuse weapon by sole French industrial means. In May 1864, General Edmond Le Bœuf submitted a preliminary report entitled Note sur le Canon à balles to the Emperor Napoleon III. Full-scale manufacture began in September 1865, in great secrecy, under the leadership of Lieutenant-Colonel Verchère de Reffye (1821–1880). Assembly and some manufacturing took place at the workshops in Meudon but many parts came from the private industrial sector. Production was slow due