De Bange 80 mm cannon

The De Bange 80mm cannon (Mle 1877) was a type of field artillery piece developed in France by Colonel Charles Ragon de Bange in 1877, and adopted by the French Army that same year. It superseded the earlier Reffye cannon (1870) and the Lahitolle 95mm cannon (1875). De Bange also manufactured another cannon of a rather similar size: the De Bange 90mm cannon.

The cannon was breech loading and used the original mushroom-shaped obturator system developed by de Bange, allowing to properly seal the breech during each firing. The cannon still had an important recoil, meaning that it moved backward at each firing, necessitating re-aiming every time, which considerably slowed the rate of firing. This would remain a problem with all artillery pieces until the development of the recoilless Canon de 75 in 1897.