Vive Le Fusil Français!

Nowadays it’s customary, especially among Americans, to look down on the French for their military prowess – or apparent lack thereof.  In addition to getting kicked out of Haiti in the early 1800s by local rebels, then out of Vietnam in 1954 by the Viet Minh, we came to their rescue in WWI and WWII.  But it’s easy to forget a few things – quite important things.

Napoleon.  First off, from his takeover in the late 1700s to his final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Napoleon led France to dominate Europe.  The French Empire was indeed an empire.  He kept the English at bay and forced the Prussians, Austrians, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italians under his will.  He couldn’t defeat Russia or England, but it took a decisive alliance to bring him down once and for all – and Waterloo could have gone either way.  Granted, no one still alive can remember this, but it still matters. 

But there’s other issues to consider.  When it came to making weapons, the French were much less incompetent than their battlefield exploits might sometimes imply.  In fact, they were ahead of the game several times. 

Chassepot.  The French rifle of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) was definitely superior to the Prussian Dreyse rifle – more than twice the effective range.  So much so, that the newly unified Germans recognized this and immediately concocted a new rifle – only to have the French beat them…again.

1886 Lebel.   Prior to the Lebel everyone used black powder.  It was inefficient and smokey.  The French developed something MUCH better: smokeless powder, and a rifle, the Lebel, to fire it.  This immediately made all black powder rifles obsolete and forced the Germans to change – again.  So in the late 1800s, the French were state of the art in infantry weapons. 

            Oddly, the Lebel had a tube magazine, in which rounds are inserted end-to-end rather than side by side, a setup usually associated with lever action rifles (Winchester cowboy rifles) and shotguns.  It wasn’t much of an issue when the rounds were round-nosed (Balle M), but when they switched over to spitzer (sharp point) (Balle D) in 1898 they had to work around it by circular grooves and convex primer covers – which actually worked quite well.  Most other rifles have an internal box magazine. 

            Here again, the French were the innovators.  Germany changed its 8mm Mauser round to a spitzer design, the S-Patrone, in 1904, the US upgraded its .30 caliber round in 1906 (thus the .30-06), Russia changed its 7.62x54 round in 1908, and finally England in 1910 with the .303 round. 

Fusil Automatic RSC M1917/18.   During WWI the French replaced the Lebel with the Berthier, but came up with something even better:  a semi-automatic rifle.  20 years before the M1 Garand, and longer still before the Russians developed the SVT40 and the Germans their Gewehr 41 and 43, the French had a semiauto infantry rifle.  The M1917 wasn’t very popular, though, and its replacement, the M1918, while resolving the issues which made the M1917 unpopular, didn’t come out in time for the war. 

After WWI the French decided to upgrade their Lebel round, going from 8mm Lebel (8x51mmR) to 7.5x54 MAS, a rimless round comparable to today’s 7.62x51/.308 NATO.  They came out with a rifle to go with the round, the MAS 36, but never got around to mass-producing a semi-auto MAS variant until the Model 49 after WWII. 

75mm.  Officially the M1897, colloquially the “soixante-quinze” (75) this gun had a revolutionary hydro-pneumatic recoil system which allowed it to remain on target after being shot, without having to be re-aimed.  This raised its effective rate to 15 rounds per minute – 30 under stress.  The gun featured heavily at The Marne (1914) and Verdun (1916).  The “75” was also the main armament on France’s less successful WWI tank, the St-Chamond.  Its rounds were highly effective against German infantry but less so against fixed fortifications.  The French did not adapt the recoil mechanism to their heavier caliber guns.  By WWII it was obsolete, but it was the top light infantry gun of WWI. 

MAS-36.  One of the ugliest bolt-actions ever made, but remarkably reliable.  MAS stands for Manufacture des Armes St-Etienne (yes, the French football team), the caliber is 7.5x54mm, a rimless cartridge.  It came out shortly before WWII but only 250,000 made at that time.  For the First Indochina War (1946-54) (ending in Dien Bien Phu), Algerian War and Suez Crisis it came around in greater numbers.  Very reliable and very popular with the troops.  I'm not keen on its forward leaning bolt or its switch-around-backward spike bayonet, but that's my deal.