The 1874 Gras: France Enters the Brass Cartridge Era
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- čas přidán 29. 06. 2024
- Preorders now open for my book, "Chassepot to FAMAS: French Military Rifles 1866-2016"! Get your copy here:
www.headstamppublishing.com/f...
After the disaster of the Franco-Prussian War, it was clear to the French military that the rationale for using paper cartridge in the Chassepot was no longer valid - a future rifle would need to use brass cartridges. A competition to design a conversion of the Chassepot to use modern ammunition resulted in the 1874 adoption of the rifle designed by French Artillery Captain Basile Gras. This maintained the use of the bolt handle as a single locking lug, but introduced a separate bolt head and extractor. The new cartridge was the 11mm Gras; very similar to the Chassepot loading but at a slightly higher velocity.
The Gras would be produced from 1874 until 1884, with more than 4 million made in total. Most were full length infantry rifles, but two patterns of carbine and a musketoon were also included for cavalry, gendarmerie, and artillery troops. These rifles saw significant use in colonial conflicts, but the much-anticipated war of revenge against Germany would not happen while the Gras was the standard French rifle. Instead, it would see a supporting role in the First World War, both in the original 11mm caliber and also converted to 8mm Lebel.
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My father just bought one of these that was converted into a shotgun. The tag simply said "Weird french 12 gauge" I think he got it for under 50$.
Make sure he knows to not fire smokeless under any circumstances. We don't want dad to get disfigured.
LMAO
One Russian guy wrote in his blog that his friend had a magazine-fed 20-gauge version of this. Apparently, it can handle modern commercial smokeless loads without any problems, and it's very accurate due to the long barrel.
@@rogainegaming6924 i have it in 16 gauge and it handles smokeless fine
@@jorda229 it is a take down model? yes they are 16/70 and that is a fairly new lenght and indicates that it is made for smokeless powder.
The period between 1850 and 1914 to me was the most interesting and aesthically pleasing era for firearms.
For all tehnical stuff. At least for me.
This!
Blueband 8 ditto
Somewhat for me as well. Although, guns of ww2 and even the mp 18 are beautiful to me.
@@farengarsecret-fire9597 Ships as well
Found a chassepot bayonet yesterday at a antique store thanks to the book! They said what every collector wants to hear, "we don't know anything about it"
Oh it's just some pos repro sword 20$ best offer
Ian, you could completely rebrand FW to "French Weapons", and I'd still watch literally every video.
*gasps* the truth original name of the channel has been discovered. Mon dieu!
The Gras was Greece's service rifle during the Greco-Turkish war of 1897. At the time the Greek Army had a stock of 120,000 Gras and 50,000 Chassepot. Most of the Chassepot were of the Chassepot-Mylonas type, which was a Greek redesign of the Chassepot to fire metallic cartridges. The Gras remained in second line service with the Greek Army until WW2.
So if you were killed by this, was it a Coup de Gras?
I'll see myself out...
Actually A pretty good pun
Shame on you!🤣
Oooh good one
Oh that's horrible.........I love it 😂
Would shooting someone using this then be considered l'action de Gras?
Hardest working man on CZcams.
The Gras was one of the rifles used by the Chilean army to defeat Bolivia and Peru in 1879.
450 thousand of Gras were used by Russia due to the lack of repeating rifles in the WW1, btw
Они были модифицированны, чтобы стрелять алебардами.🙃
holy fuck they really were desperate
@@user-ld4qt6ci7b Yes, after the initial defeats of 1914 and 1915.
@@BeelzebulKlendathu Мортирка для отстрела средневековых боевых топоров? Звучит как идеальное оружие для Florida man-a.
"I need to get up and mow the lawn"
*New Forgotten Weapons video appears*
"Ah screw it, the lawn's not going anywhere"
Thankfully I just finished my lawn and tad ahhhhh forgotten weapons appears!
@@gunner678 i still have to plant an aloe Vera, go to the gym, prepare for night shift, find the courage to ask girl out, get a life.... but Ian is top priority obviously
Quoth the man who’s lawn ran off when he wasn’t looking
forgotten lawn
Today on Forgotten Lawns we're looking at a small ex lawn which is now covered with trees, apart from a small patch were archaeologists recently recovered the remains of a male skeleton showing signs of multiple blade traumas with no signs of healing ( Thanks to J Tarkov for the title).
Gendarmerie=> in peace time, common police tasks in rural aeras, in wartime, police tasks AND provost.Until few years ago the Gendarmerie was under war department supervision, now, it's home minister
And helping nazis... but they apologized, so there's that.
@@Zorglub1966 The gendarmerie have been around for 2000 years?
@@Zorglub1966 So trully. France it's 1500 years of history. But for amnesic persons the History of humanity began at this end of WWII. And all these people who spit on France it's so easy for them. France surrendered blablabla. Where do they come from ? What's their countries did ? In continental Europe all countries have been invaded by Germans. Only England. And why ? Because England is an isle ! And England had got the most powerful european navy. And at the beginning of the war maybe the most powerful navy in the world.
@@T_bone French Gendarmerie already existed in the Middle Ages. But it's modern form is around 1700's.
@@ggousier Certainly 30 km of anti-tank ditch saved them, on the other hand the millions of tons of arms, ammunition, food, vehicles not even sabotaged abandoned to the Germans during the "miracle of Dunkirk", were surely very much appreciated by the Nazis.
These guns still saw first line service during the Spanish Civil War, with the republican side in the Asturias front 1936-1937.
Hi Ian. Actually, the Gras Mle. 74 did his part on a mayor conflict. In 1879, my country ( Chile) went to war against a Peru and Bolivian alliance in the War of the Pacific, also known as the Saltpeter War. Chile bought Gras rifles made under licence from Waffenfabrik Steyr in Austria. It was one of our two main infantry ordnance rifles then, the other was the belgian Comblain.
Steyr made a contract of Gras rifles for Greece. A Greek cartouche is on the left of the stock. Carbines, Musketoons, and rifles were made.
Steyr also made bayonets for the French rifles. They will bear the enscription on the right side of the blade Usine de Steyr 1876
Saludos desde Laguna del Desierto, Argentina 🇦🇷
...aka rhe 'Bat Guano' War???
@@cbroz7492 No, that took place some 8 years earlier. And on that war Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia were allies against Spain.
@@flamberge8791 Wouldn't Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru all be Spanish speaking countries? So they fought against the "old country "?
Ian, thank you so much for featuring this rifle!!! It brought back great memories. My family is from Colombia and I was born and raised in Queens, Ny. I used to spend my summers in Colombia and at one of the ranches I would stay at, my uncle showed me how to fire a rifle for the first time. It was a life changing experience. I could hear him say "vamos aprender a ser hombres" = let us learn to be men, but I was only 10 years old then in 1984. Lol.
Anyways I was told about how the rifles were build for the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, them purchased by the Colombian army. These also served I big role in Thousand day war in Colombia (I think 1898-1902). They were also used during a time called La Violencia (it came in 3 phases over 2 decades). He was active during this time. Anyways, major blast from the past. Thank you again.
Love the 350K stretch goal! I hope we get there as that would be amazing to sit down and read with a cocktail.
Oh yes the Gras. I don't know of any youtube videos where the Gras is looked at this deeply.
Thank you very much Ian and Co. For your work in history.
As usual, a wealth of knowledge imparted in a short space of time - brilliant, thank you! :)
Has there been any record of a Chassepot reciever making it all the way to the 1874/14 conversion to 8 Lebel? So youd have an 1866/74/80/14?
Yes. Check out C&Rsenal's video about the 1874 Gras.
Lol
What a fucking legend anybody would become by owning that thing.
I have waited for this moment! Ian writing a book, awesome! Also, that's a very nice design and a very nice rifle.
awesome work Ian
Chapeau sur la livre et bon chance Ian!
That cover design on your book is PERFECT. Props to the artist :)
Thanks! After we got his cover art, we ended up hiring him to do the whole layout, and it's looking awesome. :)
I'm glad it's all going so well man. Your channel is amazing; been watching for years. Thanks for all of your hard work and be well Ian :))
Ian, the Gendarmerie is from a legal standpoint similar to Italian Carabinieri: as a part of the standing Army, the Carabinieri are subject (and actually enforce, since one of the responsibilities are to act as Military Police) to NATO standards and Geneva convention, which somewhat limits the weapons and ammo they can actually use.
i don't know for the carabineri, but the gendarmerie even tho is technicaly a branch of the army, only serves as regular police, and very rarely if ever interact with the other military, the main difference is that gendarmes are more often found in rural areas and working on highways, but rarely in big city (exept recently to do crowd control anti-riot mission alongside the regular police) the reason they exist in the first place today is because they can do the same job than regular police exept that they alows the government to spend less money in the police budjet as they're part of the army, therefore their budjet is the army budjet, thus, they usualy have better equipement and training than the police.
@@leonardlallemand5459 same in Italy, most of the headcount is in the territorial units and public order batallions
@@giovannibattistaponzetto5860 oh interesting, i just went once in italy 11 years ago and the only law forces that i saw there were mostly carabineri so i tought they were closer to national police than in france.
@@leonardlallemand5459 The big difference is that the gendarmes can be deployed in theaters of war, the GIGN has been deployed in Afghanistan among others.
No police union, no audible political opinion. It's the army and all the gendarmes are ipso facto judicial police officers, another nuance, they can shoot to kill without having to render accounts and not only in case of self-defense. They are the only ones authorized to arrest an officer of the French army, the national police does not have the right to do so.
During the First World War, second line or territorial units were equipped with Gras rifles, the losses in men and materials having been such that "modern" rifles were available only in small quantities. I'm sure that even during the second war the Gras had to be assigned to non-vital posts, style municipal police...
Encore une très bonne vidéo !
In the Indochina war at vietnam pre-August Revolution, the resistance in Huong Khe ( a town in Ha Tinh province, Viet Nam), captain Cao Thang has capture this gun in a crossfire, he call all the best alchemist on all the Tradition Iron Forging village in Ha Tinh to Copy it and make their own verson and produced more than 360 rifle for all the resistance named Cao Thang Rifle , this gun is 96℅ same as the original, except it haven't got the spiral groove and the gun Barrel make from the umbrella
toujours ingenieux les vietnamiens!
Something about this particular example of this gun being outdated when it was new seems totally relevant today still
Awesome video thanks Ian
H&C in France makes a really nice kit for reloading ammunition for this rifle.
Thank you , Ian .
Your 1866-74 rifle wasn’t rebarrelled, the chamber was bored out and fitted with a chamber sleeve. When replacing the barrel they would not restamp the original Chassepot production year. Occasionally a rebarrelled 1866-74 will have the barrel marked with an N but not always.
Yup, you're right - I fumbled it in the video.
Looks like you reached your Kickstarter goal, congratulations.
Congrats so far on the kickstarter, doing pretty damn good there Ian! :P
Excellent video ! Definitely the best of breed in content on this genre. Thanks for sharing !
Merci monsieur GunJesus, tres cool
Dell yan (amiright?)
Great video and info. Thank you sir.
I own one of these for home defense and hunting. All original and works like brand new.
Hello Ian.
Thanks for this video.
Merci beaucoup 👍
🇫🇷⚓🇺🇲
Cordialy
CZcams would be worthless without you bro. Keep it up.
My Saint-Estèphe glass is ready for the show- Yeah I'm a Médoc and Pessac-Léognan guy- ! Thank you so much Ian. Stumbled upon a shortened 1886 M 93 8*50mm Lebel yesterday, around 950 mm as far as I can remember, not in a great shape unfortunately but still it appears those guns had a long and dense history from North Africa to the Balkans and Greece in WW2. Saved the photos in case of! Congratz for the KStarter, awesome!
I have an Artillery Carbine that was modified (butchered) by Saudi Bedouin that I got in Saudi Arabia in the late 1970s. It is marked Mle 1874 and dated on the barrel 1882. I would love to find some 11mm black powder ammo for it.
Buffalo Arms makes it. Really good stuff, but 4 bucks a shot. Reloading it is much cheaper after...
@@eVVigilance Thanks for that tip! I think they have .577/450 for my Martini Henry as well. I should have looked there.
This was the rifle used in the war in the pacific by chilean forces. Huge respect to the Gras rifle!!
I find it kind of funny that the French word for rifle is Fusil, which afaik comes from the older word foisil meaning piece of flint. Fusilier originally meant a specific soldier, who in an age where most musketeers had matchlocks, carried early types of flintlocks known as dog locks, so essentially Fusil originally meant a flintlock firearm. It's also interesting how long they held on to the term musketoon, since the thing obviously isn't a musketoon in the original sense of the word.
Adding onto that, the word "Grenade" comes from the French for "Pomegranate" as the cross section of early grenades looked much like a sliced open pomegranate.
"The crammed a bunch of bullets and powder into the barrel and blew it up. They also did real tests."
Thanks for these two videos Ian! Now I will be able to tell what my rifle is with the length and if it has the receiver cut.
Damn, so do I, just had my riding mower repaired, my nieces son drove down from 60 miles away to fix it for me, he did a great job but I was to tired out to mow, then yesterday it rained, don't mow wet grass, makes a mess and hard on machinery, today it's so damn foggy I would need to turn on the fog lights on my mower, and since it doesn't have fog lights, guess I have a good excuse to keep learning about French rifles. Funny when I was a kid back in the 60's it seemed all old battle rifles not made in the USA were called Mauser's. There were, of course the German Mauser, the Japanese Mauser, and all sorts of other Mauser's. Of course the British Rifles were called Engfield's so we did have that right, the only French Mauser I ever saw was hanging on the wall of my friends dad's wall, he brought it home from the war, said he couldn't get ammo for it but it was a cool looking rifle. Back then I thought it was just garbage, who would want a rifle they could not use?
Sweet... I just picked up a 1881 Gras Bayonet. Nice to see the rifle it belonged to. thx
I really wish I were interested in French military rifles, it looks a great book.
Grreat Video as always. I would like to add a little precision about what is being said at 1:06. People often say Alsace-Lorraine was lost but in fact it was only Alsace-Moselle. Alsace is a region composed of Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin while Lorraine is composed of Moselle, Meurthe-et-Moselle, Meuse and Vosges. Losing the region of Lorraine entirely and only the Moselle department would mean losing a 2 times larger territory.
Greetings from France, i salute your interest in our country and language ! :)
I love that artillery carbine. Very small and handy
By the sound of it, it seems like the Artillery musketoon was the PDW of the day.
Le Gras c'est la vie!
Elle est où la poulette ?
Got to say, the book cover is really nice)
Have you seen the next two planned as well? www.headstamppublishing.com/publications
I own a gras bayonet so it's nice to see what rifles it could have been used on, it was made in st ettienne in 1879
Who fires a 540 grain black powder charge with 6 bullets like WHAT how is that remotely considered for a "safety test" instead of a "hold my beer test"
Well..."hold my pinot noir."
Here's my guess: by this point it had been observed (notably in the American Civil War, but likely elsewhere as well) that recruits manually loading paper cartridges would often experience a failure to fire for whatever reason and would continue going through the motions of loading as ordered by their sgt. They would then end up with several (6 was not unheard of) bullets stacked in the bore, likely because remedial action was not practical in a battle line and sgts would be expecting to see everyone loading, aiming, etc.
So, this way if a rifle in this state is simply loaded and fired, it -- and the shooter -- can be expected to survive. Actually, really smart thinking. Of course this failure no longer occurs with brass cartridges, but the proofing requirements may not have been updated yet in consideration of this fact.
@@marshaul yes, that sort of testing was not uncommon.
I read somewhere about a Belgian gunmaker who didn't think the then newfangled Remington Rolling Block looked safe, so he tested one by loading a massive overcharge of black powder and ramming the rest of the bore entirely full of bullets all the way to the muzzle. He was apparently trying to blow one up as "proof" of his own designs being stronger. He pulled the trigger with a long piece of string.... and noted in his journal that "nothing particularily exciting happened".
Lol so thats why no one calls rolling blocks weak. Ive never heard anyone say it.
thats what a proof test is ya know they just took it to extreme levels
Got to watch two ADs before your video played! Hopefully you will get a bit for that!
The curved rail on the side of the bolt engaging the screw in the receiver is actually for primary extraction.
Now I like the Gras and want one!
"They also made a African Carbine, which I don't have to show you YET" That's what that book money is for Ian.
This is awesome! Looking at your video, I've got the Artillery Musketoon version of the M 1866-74 Gras that was converted from the Chassepot, also got the M.80 upgrade. It's missing the bayonet lock, but there are faint marks on the barrel in the right place to make me think that the lock was ground off at some point. The stock has been pretty heavily beaten up and decorated with brass studs, but I can see the remains of both the primary stamp with the plug and the secondary conversion stamp. My dad picked the gun up in Saudi Arabia in the early 70s. Ideas on how a French rifle ended up in the Middle East, Forgotten Weapons?
It’s a shame that Gras didn’t get any royalties for his design
I assume the next french rifle you gonna talk about is MAS-49
In 1874 French army adopted Gras rifle at the same time in 1873 US army adopted Springfield trapdoor. I'm french and this time it's my turn to laugh buddies ! ;)
Please make a series of these books, collectable, with the same design style covering different topics/guns/countries. Partner with authors and editors if necessary.
See here: www.headstamppublishing.com/publications
I have a bayonet for those as a family member used to have this as a service rifle long ago. To my surprise when I went to visit my inlaws in Colombia, they had the same bayonet hanging on the wall. What are the odds… 😮
Nice.
Conversions to 12 bore appear sometimes over here.
I like the bulky Bolt handle
So this is just Ian in a room with all of his really old french guns.
What a crazy concept, you pay the cost of something new and GET something new.
Yay the national rifle of greece
Gras rife also being copy by cao thang during Huong khe uprising it call Cao Thang rifle
Yep
Am I the only who was expecting and also not expecting him to write a book?
Cavalry trigger guard like a cavalry sabre I suppose
Do an in range video comparing this to similar era winchesters
I'm excited to get my "new" Gras today...
I am in Buenos Aires and just saw one of these in a gaucho (Argentinian cowboy) museum here.
I'm as fan of shorter rifles, thus the prettiest of those IMO in Gendarmerie one, as artillery one is a bit too short.
Ian, will you do a video on the Gras Manufrance .22 trainer that I sold you?
Aimez votre travail sur francais armes militaires....Et tres bien fait Merci beaucoup...!
Currently 1158 orders for the signed book… Someone's going to get a sore hand!
امتلك واحده منها التي صنعت عام 1874 وحالتها جيده جداً
Fun fact, the house gras he grew up in is about 7km from me.
Love the videos, just a small well meaning comment on the French to help you improve: the d is silent in "gendarmerie à pied"
French rifles really aren't my interest, and I've already backed three kickstarts this year, but I'm still tempted because I love the channel.
If you get a copy, French rifles may *become* your interest... :)
@@ForgottenWeapons Kind of like how spending the $30 on a Curio & Relic license to save on transfer fees only means you are going to spend more money. :-)
Ian you glorious bastard. I must now own French guns. Berthiers and gras seem to have survived the gun price scare
The "Gendarmerie Nationale" is a verry special thing. That looking like Police ("Police Nationale"), but, it's directed by the French Army ("Armée Française"). So the "Gendarmerie National" is an army IN the french territory, witch protect the french cytizen in France, opposit to the French Army witch protect the french republic, OUT of the french country.
I'm french !
Can you do a video on how to properly clean the Gras infantry rifle
Remember when Ian used to pronounce the "s" in the "Gras"? Now he's got a book on French rifles
who cares how people pronounce it its the same word
@@gcart7675 Ian has come a long way, that's all I'm saying
Ese tipo de rifle con ese cerrojo es mi favorito, sueño algún día disparar y cargar uno...muy conocido en Chile porque fue el que utilizó el ejercito en la guerra del Pacifico 🇨🇱
That's neato
These were also used in the thousand days war in Colombia between 1899 and 1902.
Ian ... in the 70's, an article in the Gazette des Armes mentioned that the first soldier KIA in the battle for Paris was mistakenly shot by a civilian with a Gras; that man mistakenly identified the yet unseen US helmet for a German helmet. Platz Patrone.
Got one there's a ton availible in my country, thos are great rifles
I have a French bayonet sword with a stamp on the back of the blade that says 1877 and some other stuff in French. The serial number on the cross guard and the sheath match. I'll update this post with the serial numbers when I get home.
Great video. I really wish I could get your book, but kinda strapped for cash right now. What are the fancy letters on the bolts? Is it just serial prefix or are they arsenal codes (similar to Chassepot) or something different entirely?
I use it often in my club
Ian please make a video on chinesse type 63 assult rifle
I've got an original Sword Bayonet to one of these beauties