Lefaucheux short barrel?

[Lt. Watkins]

Hi, I'm a newbie here so apologize if this has already been covered, but wondering if anyone has any information on the history of Lefaucheux short barrel (121mm) versus the standard sized barrel (158mm)? Were the shorts from the factory or modified after the fact? What was the reason for the shorter barrel...? Any pics of soldiers with the short barrel Lefaucheux? Thanks in advance!

 

[Private Watkins]

Best I can tell, the "short barrel" originated with some of the Italian and French foreign legion Lechaufeux models as a more "handy" size and model requested by those entities. The Union purchase in 1861 seems to have been for whatever was in stock, thus a mixture of predominately standard 6" barrel models were acquired, but the short 4" models were also included. Welcome anyone else's thoughts...

 

[lefaucheux]

The short barrels where orderd by the Italien governement .... in all nearly 27.000 pieces.
The US orders camed in at the same time as the Italien one's, so it's possible that some of them whent over sea, but never seen a short barrel in the hands of a US soldier ...
The most of the Italien 1854 revolver didn't have an ejection rod on the right side..... they're the only one like that .
The French foreign legion made tests with the 1854 short barrel , but never orderd them.... I think ??

Lefaucheux.