Joseph Montigny was a Belgian gunsmith

Gunsmith

A gunsmith is a person who repairs, modifies, designs, or builds firearms. This occupation is different from an armorer. The armorer primarily maintains weapons and limited repairs involving parts replacement and possibly work involving accurization...

, from Fontaine l'Evèque near Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

, and the developer of the Montigny mitrailleuse

Montigny mitrailleuse

The Montigny mitrailleuse was an early type of crank-operated machine-gun developed by the Belgian gun works of Joseph Montigny between 1859 and 1870...

, an early European machine gun

Machine gun

A machine gun is a fully automatic mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire rounds in quick succession from an ammunition belt or large-capacity magazine, typically at a rate of several hundred rounds per minute....

, in 1863. The design was based on the early 1850s prototype of a volley gun

Volley gun

A volley gun is a gun with several barrels for firing a number of shots, either simultaneously or in sequence. They differ from modern machine guns in that they lack automatic loading and automatic fire and are limited by the number of barrels bundled together.In practice the large ones were not...

 by the Belgian officer Fafschamps. Montigny managed to offer his design to Napoléon III, who adopted it in 1867, with Colonel De Reffye making various improvements to the weapons.

Joseph Montigny also developed various rifles and shotgun

Shotgun

A shotgun is a firearm that is usually designed to be fired from the shoulder, which uses the energy of a fixed shell to fire a number of small spherical pellets called shot, or a solid projectile called a slug...

 with breech loading mechanisms based on the designs of the Swiss inventor Jean Samuel Pauly

Jean Samuel Pauly

Jean Samuel Pauly , also Samuel Johannes Pauly, was a famous gunsmith of the early 19th century. Pauly was born at Vechigen near Bern, Switzerland on 13 April 1766.-Career:...

.