We all know about the famous Minié bullet (or Minnie Ball, as Civil War soldiers called it), but ten years before old Claude Minié proposed his newfangled idea, there were still rifle-muskets being used.

These include the Delvigne, Pontcharra, and Thouvenin systems, which have been long forgotten, but not for much longer!

With various systems of chambers, sabots, pillars, and patches, these rifles were in military service long before the Minié bullet, although they just needed a little help from a soldier’s ramrod…

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