Dreyse Needle Gun

Origins

Johann Nikolaus Dreyse was a locksmith's son from Sömmerda in Thuringia. As a young man he worked in Paris for the Swiss gunmaker Jean Samuel Pauly, who was experimenting with breech-loading guns and self-contained cartridges. Back in Sömmerda, Dreyse went into business making percussion caps and began work on a gun fired by a needle. His first needle-fire guns of the late 1820s were still muzzle-loaders. By 1836 he had combined the needle with a sliding bolt that opened the breech, so the gun could be loaded from the rear. The Prussian army tested it and King Friedrich Wilhelm IV ordered 60,000 in 1840. To keep the new weapon secret it entered service in 1841 under the plain name of "light percussion rifle, Model 1841". Dreyse was later ennobled as von Dreyse.

Design & Construction

The rifle's bolt worked like a door bolt. The soldier turned the handle up, drew the bolt back, pushed a cartridge into the chamber, closed the bolt and turned it down to lock. Pulling the trigger released a spring-driven needle. The cartridge was made of paper and held a black powder charge, a pointed lead bullet and a paper sabot that gripped the rifling. The primer sat at the base of the bullet, in front of the powder, so the needle had to pass right through the charge to reach it. This is why it had to be long and thin. It was the weak point of the design. Needles broke or were corroded by the hot powder gases, and soldiers carried spares. The breech did not seal well either, and gas leaked around the bolt face, which cut the power of the shot and made men reluctant to fire from the shoulder after long use. Its effective range was only a few hundred meters. Later models, such as the Infantry Rifle M1862, made small improvements, and carbine and fusilier versions were issued.

Combat Use

The needle gun first saw action in the risings of 1848 and 1849 and in the war with Denmark over Schleswig. In the Second Schleswig War of 1864 it gave Prussian infantry a clear advantage. Its great test came in 1866, in the war against Austria. Austrian infantry, armed with muzzle-loaders, were trained to close with the bayonet. Prussian soldiers could reload lying down and fire perhaps several times as fast, and Austrian attacks suffered very heavy losses, most famously at Königgrätz on 3 July 1866. Historians agree the rifle mattered, though they also stress Prussian staff work, railways and leadership. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 the position was reversed. The French Chassepot Rifle was also a breech-loader and could reach much farther. Prussian infantry suffered heavily when they attacked French positions at long range, as at St Privat on 18 August. They learned to advance in looser order and to rely on their artillery. At the Battle of Sedan on 1 September, Krupp guns rather than the needle gun did most of the work of breaking the French army.

Legacy

The Dreyse proved that a breech-loading rifle could be issued to a whole army, and every major power soon followed. Its paper cartridge and fragile needle were already out of date by 1870. In 1871 the new German Empire adopted the Mauser Model 1871, a bolt-action rifle firing a metallic cartridge, and the needle gun passed out of front-line service. Mauser's later designs, such as the Mauser Gewehr 98, kept the basic idea of a turning bolt that the Dreyse had introduced. The story of the needle gun is told among other Prussian Arms & Weapons of the age of German unification.