A RARE 50-BORE GERMAN BREECH-LOADING FLINTLOCK SPORTING RIFLE WITH REPEATING MAGAZINE ACTION BUILT ON THE LORENZONI PRINCIPLE, BY JOHANN JACOB FREY, AUGSBURG, DATED 1710
with swamped octagonal sighted turn-off barrel stamped with both the maker's signature and the date and rifled with seven grooves, the action frame with raised sighting groove and shaped to house a brass cylindrical breech-block, the latter with separate chambers for powder and ball, inscribed "Augspurg" in stamped letters on its outer face, rotating on the movement of a lever fitted on the left, the lever engraved with a circular garland of foliage about its base and held externally in the rearward half-cock position by a sickle-shaped spring, the right-hand axis of the breech-block also forming a rotary priming-pan fed by the priming-magazine fitted in front of the cock, the action cocked by the rearward rotation of the breech-block and the corresponding action of a stop fitted on the outer face of the breech-block, the stop acting against a sliding cam fitted to the inner side of the cock, and the trigger off-set to the right, with rounded back-action lock engraved with an Italianate scrollwork pattern involving a plaque signed by the maker and supported by a putto, the cock and the steel chiselled in low relief and the priming-magazine closed by a hinged cover, wooden butt and fore-end each carved with decorative mouldings in low relief, the butt with separate tubular magazines for powder and ball each closed by a threaded cap covered in turn by the hinged lower portion of the butt-plate, the fore-end carved with scrolling tendrils about the ramrod-pipe and fitted with an iron cap over the base, and with trigger-guard with chiselled acanthus finials and three moulded baluster ramrod-pipes (the steel-spring disengaged, the lower part or the spring perhaps broken, the butt cracked behind the upper action-tang, the plate supporting the butt-trap catch chipped on one side, ramrod missing)
85 cm; 33½ in barrel

This complex but highly successful mechanism is popularly held to be the invention of the celebrated Florentine gunmaker Michele Lorenzoni but this probably unlikely. It is more likely that Lorenzoni merely perfected the system which he then used subsequently with three types of repeating magazine, apparently of his own invention. The present German example follows the Lorenzoni system "a tutto indietro", with the magazines at the rear. An example made by Giacomo Berselli of Bologna in the late 1660's or early '70's is in the Musée de l'Armée, Paris.

Pistols and longarms built on this principle were also popular in England from the late 17thcentury, and in Germany, particularly from Augsburg workshops, up until circa 1740-50. For a highly detailed and illustrated account of the construction and working of the action see Hoopes 1973, pp. 216-25.