A rifled breech loader (RBL) is an artillery piece which, unlike the smoothbore cannon and rifled muzzle loader which preceded it, has rifling in the barrel and is loaded from the breech at the rear of the gun.
A Japanese swivel breech-loading gun of the time of Oda Nobunaga, 16th century.
Wahrendorff breech
Armstrong gun screw breech.
The Armstrong gun was a pivotal development for modern artillery as the first practical rifled breech loader. Pictured, deployed by Japan during the Boshin War (1868–69).
A breechloader is a firearm in which the user loads the ammunition from the breech end of the barrel, as opposed to a muzzleloader, in which the user loads the ammunition from the (muzzle) end of the barrel.
Breech from Russian 122 mm M1910 howitzer, modified and combined with 105mm H37 howitzer barrel
Three-shot experimental breech-loading cannon (burst) belonging to Henry VIII of England, 1540–1543.
Early types of breech-loaders from the 15th and 16th century on display at the Army Museum in Stockholm.
Breech-loading firearm that belonged to Philip V of Spain, made by A. Tienza, Madrid circa 1715. It came with a ready-to-load reusable cartridge. This is a miquelet system.
