CHASSELOUP-LAUBAT, FRANCOIS, MARQUIS DE French general and military engineer, was born at St. Sernin (Lower Charente), and entered the French engineers in 1774. In 1 791 he was promoted captain, and his ability was recognized in the campaigns of 1792. After serving as chief engi neer at the siege of Mainz (1796), he was sent to Italy, where he conducted the first siege of Mantua, and afterwards to the new Rhine frontier of France. He was chief of engineers in the army of Italy in 1799, and Napoleon's engineer general in 1800; and he was afterwards employed in reconstructing the defences of the famous Quadrilateral in northern Italy (1801-05). His chef-d'oeuvre was the great fortress of Alessandria on the Tanaro. Chasseloup served in Napoleon's campaign of 1806-07, directing the sieges of Colberg, Danzig and Stralsund; and again in 1809, in Italy. Soon after his last campaign, in Russia (1812), he re tired from active service, and was made a peer of France and a knight of St. Louis by Louis XVIII. He voted in the chamber of peers against the condemnation of Marshal Ney. In politics he belonged to the constitutional party.
As an engineer Chasseloup was an adherent, though of ad vanced views, of the old bastioned system. His front was applied to Alessandria, as has been stated, and contains many elaborations of the bastion trace, with, in particular, masked flanks in the tenaille, which served as extra flanks of the bastions. The bastion itself was carefully and minutely retrenched. The ordinary ravelin he replaced by a heavy casemated caponier after the example of Montalembert, and, like Bousmard's, his own ravelin was a large and powerful work pushed out beyond the glacis.
Chasseloup's only published works were, Correspondance d'un general francais avec an general autrichien. (18o1; republ. 1803 or 1809 as Correspondance de deux generaux .. .) and Extraits de Memoires sur quelques parties de l'artillerie et de fortifications (Milan, 1805; republ. 1811 as Essais sur quelques parties . . .) . The most important of his papers are in ms. in the Depot of Fortifications, Paris. CHASSEPOT, officially "fusil modele 1866," a military breech-loading rifle, famous as the arm of the French forces in the Franco-German War of 1870-71. It was called after its in ventor, Antoine Alphonse Chassepot (1833-1905), who had pre viously constructed a series of experimental forms of breech loader, and it became the French service weapon in 1866. In the following year it made its first appearance on the battlefield at Mentana, where it inflicted severe losses upon Garibaldi's troops. In the war of 1870 it proved very greatly superior to the German needle-gun. The breech was closed by a bolt very similar to those of more modern rifles, and amongst the technical features of in terest were the method of obturation and the retention of the paper cartridge. It was sighted to 1,312yd. (1,200 metres) .