Switzerland was a bit late in the game when it came to universally adopting rifled longarms, and the path do to so was long and tortuous. We explore this journey and also the service cartridge. Once the 1859 modification was approved, the service life of the musket was short due to the arrival of a state-of-the-art 1863 infantry percussion rifle in 10.4mm, which itself was upgraded mid-production to breechloading using the Milbank-Amsler conversion from 1867, shortly before the introduction of the Vetterli.