POTD: Le Terrible Sixteen-Shot Revolver – Two Barrels, One Cylinder
Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have one of the goofier answers to the question of how many rounds you can cram into a pocket revolver. This is the Le Terrible, a 16-shot double action revolver chambered in 7.65mm (32 ACP).
The design comes from Henrion, Dassy & Heuschen, a Belgian outfit in Liège that patented it in 1910. Instead of making the cylinder enormous, they stacked two barrels one on top of the other and bored the cylinder with an inner and outer ring of chambers set offset from each other, one ring per barrel. The hammer carries two firing pins, and each pull of the trigger sets off the top or bottom barrel in turn while the cylinder indexes. Basically, you get double the capacity without doubling the cylinder diameter.
These went out under a whole pile of names. The French retailer Manufrance sold the 16-shot 7.65mm gun as Le Terrible next to its 20-shot 6.35mm sibling, Le Redoutable, and I have read that they were also marketed as the “Mitrailleuse” and even the “Wild West” in India and Asia. The Manufrance catalog kept getting more extravagant before World War One broke out, and in my book these double-barrel oddballs were the peak of that trend.
The rest of the gun is a top-break with a hinged barrel and a spring loaded ejector, which is about the only normal thing going on here. I personally imagine reloading all 16 staggered chambers was a chore, but nobody could accuse it of running dry in a hurry.
Most of our POTDs utilize images from our friends at Rock Island Auction Company, the premier firearms auction in the United States. Take some time to browse their current auctions – who knows, maybe you’ll find a piece of history to take home!
“Fine European ‘Le Terrible’ Sixteen-Shot Double Action Revolver.” Rock Island Auction, www.rockislandauction.com/detail/4097/1352/fine-european-le-terrible-sixteenshot-double-action-revolver. Accessed 29 Sept. 2026.
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