When I mentioned French influence on breech loading shotguns, I of course meant Casimir Lefaucheux....just for the historians and people browsing because this knowledgeable crowd already knows about him (and how the Brits basically got around his patents).
The first centerfire breechloader - the Lefaucheux pinfire, breechloading shotgun, 1836: In 1836, French gunsmith Casimir Lefaucheux, taking inspiration from earlier designs by Jean Samuel Pauly that just didn’t work, came up with something pretty radical.
Lefaucheux’s gun, a smoothbore longarm that loaded from the breech rather than the muzzle, in itself was not new. What was new was that he used a self-contained paper tube that held both the charge and the shot in one handy shell. This shell was fired from a pinfire primer in the rear that was struck by a hammer in the rear of breech. To load and reload, one simply cracked the breech open and inserted or extracted the round by hand. Once fired, the empty paper hull was removed and a new one inserted if needed.
Today you can look at the design and see the modern hinge-break shotguns that are still in fast production. Next time you go to the skeet range, you can mutter a little thanks to Casimir.
