There is a saying that: "The Lord made people different, and Colonel Colt made them equal." According to legend, this phrase was engraved on his tombstone. But in fact, this phrase is absent on his tombstone, there is nothing except the surname and dates of his life, and it could not have been, since at that time this was not accepted. But if we try to continue it, then nothing better than such an end can be invented: "… the Mauser brothers made me happy with the best rifle, and the Russian Kalashnikov gave me the most reliable machine gun!" If desired, everyone can change something in this ending - that's whoever you like, but it is obvious that the Mauser Gewehr 98 rifle, as well as our Russian Kalashnikov, is the most widespread weapon in the world, and the bad one around the world is not distributed by.
All the samples, which will be discussed, and for which I managed to "hold on" to their fullest thanks to the responsiveness of my old friend N, are presented here in the photo.
Look from right to left: Gewehr 88 - a very interesting German "hybrid rifle", created on the principle of "hodgepodge of meat-combined", the carbine of the Swedish company "Carl Gustav" M1914, the Spanish carbine model 1916, type 1 (manufactured in 1920), Spanish carbine 1916, type 2, and German Gewehr 1937.
Of course, this is only the smallest part of all those Mausers that were produced at different times and in different countries, however, in my opinion, these samples are quite enough to get a complete picture of the development of this particular model of small arms.
Well, and to start the history of all "Mauser" in general, or, better to say, many Mauser rifles, you need to say that in 1811 in Oberndorf on the Neckar, by order of King Frederick I of Württemberg, an arms factory was founded and that's where most of his life and worked Franz Andreas Mauser - the father of Peter Paul and Wilhelm Mauser. He worked as a blacksmith - a very important profession in the arms business. Moreover, Peter Paul Mauser began working at this plant at the age of 12 and worked until at the age of 19 he was drafted into the army. There he was lucky to get into the Ludwigsburg Arsenal, where he served as an artillery mechanic and designed … a field breech-loading cannon, made according to his drawings. Moreover, it has survived to our time and is now on display in the weapons museum in Stuttgart.
Then, with the help of his brother Wilhelm and thanks to the financial support of the representative of the company "Remington" in Germany S. Norris, Paul Mauser was able to go on an internship to Belgium, to the best arms factory in Europe in Liege. There he received several patents for his original technical solutions, on the basis of which, during the period from 1867 to 1869, a promising single-shot rifle of 11-mm caliber was developed, which became known as the Mauser-Norris M67 / 69 rifle.
It was she who, with some modifications, got into the rifle competition announced by the Prussian army, and turned out to be the winner! The rifle was adopted in 1871 under the designation Gewehr 1871. The rifle became Paul and Wilhelm's "finest hour" and gave them money to manufacture the rifle on the territory of the arsenal in Spandau, where they built their own factory for its production. It was opened in 1873, but only a few weeks later it took it, and it burned down! But then an order for 100,000 rifles from Württemberg followed, which provided the brothers with money and allowed them to cover all the losses.
Mauser M1871. Caliber 10.95 mm. Museum of the Swedish Army. Stockholm.
And it was with them that the Mauser brothers bought the Royal Arms Factory in Oberndorf an der Neckar from the Württemberg government for 200,000 South German guilders and founded their own company - Gebrüder Wilhelm und Paul Mauser. Then, after a transformation in 1874, it became known as Gebrüder Mauser und Cie (Mauser Brothers and Company).
Paul Mauser (1838 - 1914)
Wilhelm Mauser (1834 - 1882).
The building complex of the Mauser brothers in Oberndorf am Neckar in 1910.
Well, and it became the "finest hour", first of all, because the brothers were not only good engineers who began to comprehend this profession from the beginning, but also people who "felt the time." That is, skillfully adapting to it. The point was that a first-class rifle for the time in question, by this time, was "on its way." The same French had a much more advanced Chasspo rifle, but most importantly, it became obvious that the time of needle rifles had passed. Now they needed rifles for unitary cartridges, and the brothers did just that. Moreover, they took all the best from the Dreise rifle - and it was a cylindrical sliding bolt, and combined it with a new cartridge!
Diagram of the Shasspo rifle device.
By the way, captured - that is, captured during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 - 1871. Chasspo rifles (and the Prussians then captured up to 150 thousand of these rifles), they remade them under their 11-mm metal cartridge and, having shortened it, used it as a cavalry carbine until the early 1880s.
A paper cartridge for the Draize rifle (left), a paper cartridge for the Chasspo rifle, and a metal cartridge 56-50 R for the Spencer rifle.
However, now there was no such special need for this alteration, because they had a Mauser mod. 1871 year. The decision of the army to adopt it was preceded by year-long tests of this sample and rifles of various systems, and the main competitor of the Mauser brothers was the rifle of the Bavarian gunsmith Werder M1869.
Rifle Werder M1869.
She had an original lever action, similar to the bolt of the English Martini-Henry rifle. But only the army of Bavaria adopted it as "its own". In Prussia, the Mauser brothers' rifle was wisely chosen.
The originality of the Werder Bremen shutter was that in order to open it, it was required to press the shutter lever, which was inside the trigger guard; then, when the trigger was pulled back, and he was on the right of the bolt, it closed, that is, it rose up. But it was necessary to send the cartridge into the barrel by hand. Whereas in the Mauser, it was sent to the barrel with a bolt!
Werder shutter device. Its complexity is striking, isn't it? Especially compared to the sliding bolt of the M1871 Mauser.
Scheme of action of the shutter of the Werder rifle. In the diagram, the shutter is cocked and ready for action.
This is how the first Mauser ended up in service with the army of the German Empire (except for Bavaria), and already in it we can see a number of very important technical solutions that later became generally accepted. For example, the flag-shaped safety lever, well-known today, was first used on the Gewehr 71. Moreover, we note that the rifle was constantly being improved. So, in 1884, it was equipped with a tubular under-barrel magazine for eight cartridges designed by Alfred von Kropachek, and thus it was this rifle that became the first German magazine rifle, designated Gewehr 71/84. The rifle attracted Turkey, where it was put into service as the M1887 with a barrel chambered for 9.5 × 60R. Moreover, at the beginning of the twentieth century, in the arsenal in Ankara, some of these rifles were remade for cartridges 7, 65 × 53. The popularity of the rifle was such that it was produced for cartridges 11 × 60 mm R (with a welt, that is, with a rim), 11, 15 × 37, 5 mm R, 10, 15 × 63 mm R, 9, 5 × 60 mm R, 7 × 57 mm, 7, 65 × 53 mm Argentine, and even 6, 5 × 53, 5 mm R, that is, it is already quite small-caliber!
Argentine cartridges 7, 65 × 53 mm and clip for them.
In 1880, a version for the border guard was prepared, the M1879 Grenzaufsehergewehr chambered for 11, 15 × 37, 5R - a slightly shorter version of the army cartridge, although why this was done is not very clear.
In 1881, Serbia adopted a version of the M1878 / 80 rifle with a bolt similar to the bolt from the Italian Vetterli M1870 rifle, and with a progressive barrel rifling, which was developed by the Serbian Major Kosta Milovanovic. The essence of this progressive rifling was to reduce the width of the rifling in the direction from the breech to the muzzle of the barrel. In 1907, some of these rifles were also converted to 7 × 57 mm cartridges and equipped with a five-round magazine. The converted rifles were given the name M80 / 07, but they were often called simply "Dzhurich Mauser".
The M1871 Mauser was used by the Korean army (primarily in the guards units, where they replaced their former Russian Berdan rifle), although how many were supplied to this country is unknown. Then, in 1894, in Uruguay, the French firm Societe Française d'Armes Portatives Saint Denis converted this rifle to caliber 6, 5 × 53 mm R. New stocks were attached to the old rifles, new barrels and sights were installed, stock rings, and the ramrod was placed why something from the side.
Mauser 1871 - cavalry carbine. Museum of the Swedish Army. Stockholm.
In addition, about 900 single-shot Mauser were delivered to the Irish volunteer units in 1914. And that made a certain sense. The rifles were old, not new, and Irish fighters could get them from anyone. And whether it be the brand new German "Hevers"? Then it would be a very unfriendly step by one country towards another. They were used by the Irish during the Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland and shot many English soldiers out of them!
The bolt of the Mauser rifle model 1871.
So this rifle, too, was destined for a very long and rather rich life for a weapon, although, of course, not as impressive as that of the rifles - its heirs, but they will be described in the following materials …
