Minié rifle

Minié rifle
Minié rifle
	; The Pattern 1853 Enfield and the Springfield Model 1861. Two prominent Minié rifles of the 19th century.
Type	Service rifle
Place of origin	France
Service history
Used by	France, Prussia, Austria, United Kingdom, United States, Confederate States, Japan, Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Empire of Brazil, United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, Emirate of Afghanistan
Wars	Taiping Rebellion; Crimean War; Indian Rebellion of 1857; Second Italian War of Independence; American Civil War; French intervention in Mexico; Paraguayan War; Second Schleswig War; Austro-Prussian War; Boshin war; War of the Pacific;
Production history
Unit cost	$20 (1861)
Specifications
Rate of fire	User dependent 3-4 rounds per minute
Muzzle velocity	900 ft/s (270 m/s) – 1,250 ft/s (380 m/s)
Feed system	Muzzle-loading

The Minié rifle was a rifled musket used by the infantry of a number of countries in the mid-19th century. A version was adopted in Britain for a short time in 1851 but the French Army only officially adopted it in 1857. This came after the invention of the Minié ball in 1849 by the French Army captain Claude-Étienne Minié of the Chasseurs d'Orléans and Henri-Gustave Delvigne. The bullet was designed to allow rapid muzzle loading of rifles and was an innovation that brought about the widespread use of the rifle as the main battlefield weapon for individual soldiers.