The long-term effects of the mitrailleuse's poor performance have been the subject of some dispute among historians. In "Machine Guns: An Illustrated History", J. Willbanks argues that the weapon's ineffectiveness in the Franco-Prussian War resulted in long-standing opposition among European armies to adopting machine gun weapons, particularly in Continental Europe. It is true that the French Army did not adopt an automatic machine gun until 1897, when they chose the Hotchkiss machine gun, later to be followed by the Hotchkiss M1914 machine gun. The French armed forces also adopted another automatic machine gun, the St. Étienne Mle 1907. It has been suggested that the relative slowness displayed by the French services to adopt machine guns was the result of wariness occasioned by the failure of the mitrailleuse. There is some evidence for that suggestion, as the Maxim gun had repeatedly been tested by the French armed services ever since its inception.