The Collaborative International Dictionary
Chassepot \Chasse`pot"\, n. [From the French inventor, A. A. Chassepot.] (Mil.) A kind of breechloading, center-fire rifle, or improved needle gun.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
bolt-action breechloading rifle used by French forces in the Franco-Prussian War, 1870, named for French inventor Antonine-Alphonse Chassepot (1833-1905).
Wiktionary
n. (context military English) A kind of breechloading, centre-fire rifle.
Wikipedia
The Chassepot, officially known as Fusil modèle 1866, was a bolt action military breechloading rifle, famous as the arm of the French forces in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/1871. It replaced an assortment of Minié muzzleloading rifles many of which were converted in 1867 to breech loading (the Tabatière rifles). A great improvement to existing military rifles in 1866, the Chassepot marked the commencement of the era of modern bolt action, breech-loading, military rifles. Beginning in 1874, the rifle was easily converted to fire metallic cartridges (under the name of Gras rifle), a step which would have been impossible to achieve with the Dreyse needle rifle.
It was manufactured by MAS ( Manufacture d'armes de Saint-Étienne), Manufacture d'Armes de Châtellerault (MAC), Manufacture d'Armes de Tulle (MAT) and, until 1870, in the Manufacture d'Armes de Mutzig in the former Château des Rohan. Many were also manufactured under contract in England ( the "Potts et Hunts" Chassepots delivered to the French Navy ), in Belgium (Liege), and in Italy at Brescia (by "Glisenti"). The approximate number of Chassepot rifles available to the French Army in 1870 was close to 1,000,000 units. Manufacturing of the Chassepot rifle ended in February 1875, four years after the end of the Franco-Prussian War.
Usage examples of "chassepot".
Their object, as a sharp, wiry artizan bellowed into my ear, was to force the Government to consent to the election of a Commune, in order that the Chassepots may be more fairly distributed between the bourgeois and the ouvriers, and that Paris shall no longer render itself ridiculous by waiting within its walls until its provisions are exhausted and it is forced to capitulate.
The first was evidently a chassepot --one recognized it by the sharp report, which sounds like the crack of a whip--while the other three came from the lancers' carbines.