Lorenz rifle
rifled musket used in the mid 19th century
The Lorenz rifle was an Austrian rifled musket introduced in the 1850s and used by the Austrian Army during the mid-19th century. Designed by Joseph Lorenz, it became one of the principal infantry firearms of the Austrian Empire and was produced in large numbers. The rifle was developed as part of the Austrian military's transition from smoothbore muskets to rifled percussion firearms.
The Lorenz rifle saw combat during the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859 and the Austro-Prussian War in 1866. It was also widely exported and became one of the foreign-made firearms used during the American Civil War, where examples were employed by both Union and Confederate forces. Its extensive wartime use and subsequent distribution made it one of the more significant European military rifles of the period.
History
The Lorenz rifle was designed by Austrian lieutenant Joseph Lorenz. It was first approved for manufacture in 1854, and was Austria's first all-new infantry firearm since 1842. The demand for the rifles was much greater than what the Austrian state arsenals could produce, so much of the production was done by private manufacturers. Many of these manufacturers did not have the skill and precision required to make what was then a very modern and sophisticated rifle design, and as a result, the quality of Lorenz rifles was inconsistent.
“Lorenz rifle” enters the record as rifled musket used in the mid 19th century. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lorenz, rifle and rifled can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Lorenz rifle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.