Although innovative and capable of good ballistic performance, the Reffye "mitrailleuse" was a tactical failure because its basic concept and operational use were flawed. Only 210 Reffye mitrailleuses were in existence at the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. Their field use was discontinued by the French Army after 1871. After the Gatling gun was replaced in service by newer recoil- or gas-operated weapons, multi-barrelled weapons fell into disuse for many decades. Some examples were developed during the interwar years but only as prototypes or were rarely used. The word "mitrailleuse" became the generic term for a machine gun in the French language because of its early appearance in the field of weapons, although the "mitrailleuse" was manually operated.