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. 

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, 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, produced until 1956 alongside the semi-auto MAS 49.  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.  

Chatellerault M24/29 LMG.  Designed immediately after WWI to replace the Chauchat, which they knew was not a good design.  This was the first weapon chambered in 7.5x54mm, likewise designed after WWI to replace the 8mm Lebel cartridge.  They shortened it from 7.5x58mm to avoid confusion with 8mm Mauser (7.92x57).  It's comparable to 7.62mm NATO (.308), which came out 30 years later.  This machine gun was so well designed it continued in service until 2004, and the Germans used it as well (captured weapons).

By the way:  unlike the FN armory in Belgium, Saint-Etienne was in the unoccupied Vichy section of France and was never taken over by the Germans during the occupation.  

The Franco-Prussian War (1870-71)

[Note:  updated on 3/20/20 and 4/2/21.]

Ready for another installment of “obscure wars no one cares about”?  Let’s go backwards!  There are plenty of WWII veterans still around, and WWII was largely caused by…WWI!  I’ve reviewed WWI at length.  I would imagine that, had someone paid attention to Bismarck and not taken Alsace-Lorraine from the French, odds are that WWI is much less likely to have happened, which makes WWII that much less likely too.  And since taking Alsace-Lorraine was part of this wrap-up of this war, it means that to some extent it actually does have some very remote relevance in the present day, insofar as anyone still cares about WWII.  Anyhow.

 Years ago I was in the train station of St. Lazare, in Paris, and noticed a curious memorial, which referred to World War I as the “Second Franco-Prussian War”, and World War II as the “Third Franco-Prussian War”.  WTF?  And lo and behold, it referred to this as the FIRST “Franco-Prussian War”.  Remarkably, the last French veteran, Seraphin Pruvost, died in 1955, and the last German veteran, Karl Glockner, died in 1953 – both living to see both WWI and WWII.  

 Background.  France at this time was led by Napoleon III, aka Louis Napoleon, the son of Napoleon Bonaparte's older brother (i.e. his nephew), with most of his ambition but little of his talent.  Germany had not quite unified, but was rather a loose confederation of states dominated by Prussia.  Its effective leader was Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, an extremely shrewd statesman.  Ironically, Bismarck had little use for German nationalism, this idea that Germany should be unified.  What he preferred, and what he actually brought into being, was simply Prussia taking over the rest of Germany. 

            Aside from Prussia, the other German states were Baden, Bavaria, Brunswick, Hesse-Darmstadt, Mecklenburg, Saxony, and Wurttemberg.  Each of the others had its own army and uniforms, some appearing distinctly different than the Prussian uniform; and the leaders of these states likewise varied from eager to reluctant allies (some had even tried to weasel deals through back channels with the French).

            Bismarck orchestrated a series of nonaggression treaties with various different countries.  They basically said that these other countries would remain neutral if Prussia ended up in a war with a third country, provided Prussia was not the aggressor.  Then he tricked Denmark (1864), then Austria (1866), then France (1870) into attacking Prussia.  Deprived of allies, each of these countries was decisively defeated in turn by the upstart Prussians.  The war against Austria was definitely a David vs. Goliath contest.

 War.  At the eastern frontier of France, a series of battles took place: Wissembourg (August 4, 1870), Spicheren (August 5), Wörth (August 6), Marnes-la-Tour (August 16), Gravelotte (August 18), and Sedan (September 1) in which the French armies were repeatedly outmaneuvered.  The excellent French chassepot rifle, though superior to the Prussian Dreyse (“needle gun”) design, could not compensate for the Prussians’ massive Krupp artillery.  Metz was encircled and besieged; at the defeat at Sedan, 104,000 French soldiers were captured, along with Napoleon III himself.

 Siege of Paris.  Having defeated the French Army at Sedan in September, the Prussians proceeded to besiege Paris, avoiding a street war, beginning September 19.  Various attempts to relieve Paris by substantial leftover forces marshaled by the French Republic – one army totaled 500,000 soldiers - were ultimately unsuccessful.  On January 28, 1871, the French finally surrendered, and the Prussians occupied Paris for all of…48 hours.  Then they withdrew to the outskirts of the city.

 Hall of Mirrors.  January 18, 1871, Germany was unified under Kaiser (Emperor) Wilhelm I of Prussia, in the Hall of Mirrors at the French royal palace at Versailles.  Of course, the country ended up being truncated after WWI (1919), the treaty also being signed at the same Hall of Mirrors, losing substantial territory to Poland; and then after WWII when Poland was shifted west.  One of the conditions on the re-unification of Germany – West + East – was that any claims on territory now owned by Poland, were waived.  Also, Austria was not part of this unification, though Austria was finally annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938.

 Paris Commune.  I’ve already covered this in my much earlier blog, “Paris Is Burning”.  It lasted from March to May 1871, at which point French government forces coming back from a brief rehabilitative exile in Versailles re-entered the city from the southwest and gradually subdued the National Guard and Communist forces.  The city, having been spared violence and war due to the Prussians’ siege and brief occupation, now suffered street fighting and fires as a result of this brief, urban civil war – the French themselves inflicted far more pain and damage on Paris than the Prussians did.

 Alsace-Lorraine.  These are the two provinces of France which border on Germany to the far east.  Due to the crossover effect, people from this area have an identity crisis.  Are we French?  Are we German?  In Forgotten Soldier, a Franco-German soldier, Guy Sajer, describes fellow German soldiers in WWII dismissing him as “an Alsatian who thinks he’s German” – he speaks better French than German, and speaks German with a French accent.  These provinces are also heavy in coal and iron, and were a prize the Germans could not resist taking from the French, despite Bismarck’s advice to leave it alone – for that exact reason.  Sure enough, just as Bismarck warned, the French burned with passion for revenge over the next 44 years, not only to avenge their shame of 1871, but also to retake these two provinces.  And so we got… World War I.

Uniforms.  Fairly similar to early WWI.  The French wore kepis, dark blue double breasted coats, and red pants.  The "Prussian" side varied, as each nominally independent entity had its own army wearing its own uniforms.  The Prussian uniform resembled the 1914 German uniform except that the jacket was dark blue instead of field grey.  The pickelhaube (leather spiked helmet) was here, albeit with an early tall version and a later short version, the latter we're familiar with from WWI.  

 Books.  I’m not aware of any movies made about this war, but there are two excellent books.  The Fall of France, by Alistair Horne, covers not only the leadup to the war (starting the “story” in 1867), but also the Paris Commune.  And a historical fiction novel by Robert Chambers, Romance in the Red Republic, written in 1895, tells the story of fictional characters who were on the government (anti-communist) side, although during the Paris Commune and not the war.   

April & the Extraordinary World.  This is a recent French steampunk animated movie (2015, well after this blog was originally written in 2009).  In this story, immediately before the war would have begun, Napoleon III dies suddenly, his son resolves matters with the Prussians amicably, and there is no Franco-Prussian War.  This means there is also no WWI and no WWII, and no Nazi Germany.  I'd recommend the movie in and of itself, but this is about the extent of the relevance thereof to the current topic.

Pigeon Post.  Carrier pigeons are remarkably reliable and effective as messengers, in this context allowing Paris to communicate with the rest of France during the four month siege of the city by the Prussians (late September 1870 through late January 1871), who had cut all the telegraph lines in and out of the city.  The lessons learned resulted in pigeons used later (e.g. WWI) but the Franco-Prussian War was the major conflict in which they were employed.