Lebel Model 1886 rifle Fusil Modèle 1886/M93
Lebel M1886. From the Swedish Army Museum.
Type	Bolt-action rifle
Place of origin	French Third Republic
Service history
In service	1887–1945 (France) 1945–present (Limited usage)
Used by	See Users
Wars	Boxer Rebellion French colonial expeditions First Italo-Ethiopian War Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) Monegasque Revolution World War I Franco-Turkish War Polish–Soviet War Spanish Civil War Second Italo-Ethiopian War World War II First Indochina War Algerian War (limited) War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)[1] Iraq War (limited)
Production history
Designer	Team led by Gen. Baptiste Tramond (Gras, Lebel, Vieille, Bonnet, Desaleux, Close, Verdin).
Designed	1885–1886
Manufacturer	Manufacture d'armes de Saint-Étienne Manufacture d'armes de Châtellerault Manufacture Nationale d'Armes de Tulle
Unit cost	40 francs (1891)[2]
Produced	1887–1920
No. built	3,450,000
Specifications
Mass	4.41 kg (9.7 lb) (loaded with 8 rounds) 4.18 kg (9.2 lb) (unloaded)
Length	130 cm (51.2 in)
Barrel length	80 cm (31.5 in)
Cartridge	8×50mmR Lebel
Caliber	8mm 4 grooves, right to left twist
Action	Bolt-action
Rate of fire	43 rounds per minute
Muzzle velocity	610 to 700 m/s (2,000 to 2,300 ft/s)
Effective firing range	400 m (438 yards) (individual targets)
Maximum firing range	1,800 m (1,968 yards) (volley fire at massed area targets)
Feed system	8-round tube magazine +1 in the elevator +1 in the chamber (unsafe)
Sights	U-notch and front post

The Lebel Model 1886 rifle (French: Fusil Modèle 1886 dit "Fusil Lebel") also known as the "Fusil Mle 1886 M93", after a bolt modification was added in 1893, is an 8 mm bolt-action infantry rifle that entered service in the French Army in 1887. It is a repeating rifle that can hold eight rounds in its fore-stock tube magazine, one round in the elevator plus one round in the chamber; equaling a total of ten rounds held. The Lebel rifle has the distinction of being the first military firearm to use smokeless powder ammunition. The new propellant powder, "Poudre B," was nitrocellulose-based and had been invented in 1884 by French chemist Paul Vieille. Lieutenant Colonel Nicolas Lebel contributed a flat nosed 8 mm full metal jacket bullet ("Balle M," or "Balle Lebel"). Twelve years later, in 1898, a solid brass pointed (spitzer) and boat-tail bullet called "Balle D" was retained for all 8mm Lebel ammunition. Each case was protected against accidental percussion inside the tube magazine by a primer cover and by a circular groove around the primer cup which caught the tip of the following pointed bullet. Featuring an oversized bolt with front locking lugs and a massive receiver, the Lebel rifle was a durable design capable of long range performance. In spite of early obsolete features, such as its tube magazine and the shape of 8mm Lebel rimmed ammunition, the Lebel rifle remained the basic weapon of French infantry during World War I (1914–1918). Altogether, 3.45 million Lebel rifles were produced by the three French state factories between 1887 and 1916.^[3]

Operation, features, and accessories

In operation, the bolt is turned up to the vertical position until the two opposed front locking lugs are released from the receiver. At the end of the bolt's opening phase, a ramp on the receiver bridge forces the bolt to the rear thus providing leveraged extraction of the fired case. The rifle is fitted with a two-piece wood stock, and features a spring-loaded tubular magazine in the fore-end. Taking aim at intermediate distances is done with a ramp sight graduated between 400 and 800 meters. The ladder rear sight is adjustable from 850 to 2,400 meters. Flipping forward that ladder sight reveals the commonly used fixed combat sight up to 400 meters.^[3] The Mle 1886 Lebel rifle has a 10-round capacity (eight in the under barrel tube magazine, one in the elevator, and one in the chamber). The Lebel rifle features a magazine cutoff on the right side of the receiver. When activated, it prevents feeding cartridges from the magazine.^[3]

The Mle 1886 Lebel rifle was issued with a long needle-like quadrangular épée bayonet, the Épée-Baïonnette Modèle 1886, with a length of 52 cm. (20 in.). With its X-shaped cross section, the épée bayonet was optimized for thrusting, designed to readily penetrate thick clothing and leather. The bayonet was dubbed "Rosalie" by French soldiers who were issued it during World War I.^[3]

Origins and development

Original Mle 1886 cartridge with cupronickel-coated Balle M became the first smokeless powder cartridge to be made and adopted by any country

Historically, the Mle 1886 Lebel rifle was the first military firearm to use smokeless powder ammunition. This new propellant powder, made of stabilized nitrocellulose, was called "Poudre B" ("Powder B") and had just been invented in 1884 by Paul Vieille (1854-1934). Poudre B was three times as powerful as black powder, for the same weight, and left virtually no residues of combustion.^[3] For this last reason, the new powder enabled the reduction of the caliber. The increase of the bullet speed in the barrel required a stronger bullet than the older lead bullet. New cartridges were designed where the lead was placed in a full metal jacket (invented in 1882 by Eduard Rubin) from a deformable alloy.^[4]

The French military initially planned to adopt a wholly new rifle design and spent the year 1885 on determining an optimal caliber as well as testing Remington-Lee rifles which showed themselves well in the Sino-French War; a Mannlicher rifle was to be tested in 1886 in order to compare it to Lee, and a brand new cartridge was to be designed as well.^[5][6]

However shortly thereafter, in January 1886, a new revanchist French war minister, General Georges Ernest Boulanger, threw these plans into a garbage bin and requested the urgent application of these two technical breakthroughs to the design of a new infantry rifle.^[7] He appointed General Tramond in charge of the project which had to be completed within one year.

Firstly the 11mm Gras cartridge case was necked-down into an 8mm case (similarly to how 8×60mmR Guedes was created by Portuguese a few years earlier, except that cartridge used black powder and therefore was longer), a transformation carried out by Gras and Lt. Colonel Desaleux, which necessitated a double taper handicapping French firearms design for decades to come. The repeating mechanism, derived from the French Mle 1884 Gras-Kropatschek repeating rifle, was implemented by Albert Close and Louis Verdin at the Chatellerault arsenal. The bolt's two opposed front locking lugs, inspired from the two rear locking lugs on the bolt of the earlier Swiss Vetterli rifle, were designed by Colonel Bonnet. The 8mm flat nosed FMJ "Balle M" bullet was suggested by Tramond and designed by Lt. Colonel Nicolas Lebel after whom the rifle (and the caliber) are named. However, Lebel did not lead the team responsible for creating the new rifle. He amicably protested during his lifetime that Tramond and Gras were the two superior officers who jointly deserved that credit. Nevertheless, his name, which only designated the Balle M bullet as the "Balle Lebel," informally stuck to the entire weapon.^[3]

The Lebel was designed to be backwards compatible so it could use up existing stores of parts. It used the straight trigger and horizontal bolt action from the army's single-shot 11mm Mle 1874 Gras and shared the tubular magazine from the navy's Mle 1878^{[note 1]} Kropatschek rifle.^{[note 2]} The Mle 1884^{[note 3]} and Mle 1885 Kropatschek rifles, still chambered for the 11mm Gras black-powder cartridge, were later adopted by the army as a transitional repeating firearm. The Mle 1885 had a two-piece stock and a massive steel receiver and closely resembles the Mle 1886 Lebel.^[3]

Boulanger ordered to produce a million rifles by May 1, 1887, but his proposal how to achieve that was entirely unrealistic^[8] and the overall speed was clearly impossible (he was sacked the same year for provoking a war with Germany). The Lebel rifle was manufactured by three government arsenals: Châtellerault, St-Etienne and Tulle, mostly during late 1880s and early 1890s. It featured a two-piece stock and a massive receiver designed to withstand the higher pressures developed by the new smokeless powder-based cartridges.

In 1893, an improved version of the M1886 Lebel was designated Fusil Mle 1886 M 93.^{[note 4]} The most useful improvement was a modification of the bolt head so it would divert away from the shooter's face any hot gases escaping from a ruptured cartridge case. The firing pin and its rear knob had already been modified in 1887 while the stacking rod remained unchanged.^[3] Lastly, the fixation of the rear sight onto the barrel was substantially improved during that 1893 modification.^[9]

Lebel rifle breech portion

Schematic image Nos. 3 and 4

Between 1937 and 1940, a carbine-length (17.7 inch [45 cm] barrel) version of the Lebel was issued to mounted colonial troops in North Africa. This short carbine version of the Lebel, called the Mle 1886 M93-R35^{[note 5]}., was assembled in large numbers (about 50,000) at Manufacture d'Armes de Tulle (MAT), beginning in 1937. It used all of the Lebel's parts except for a newly-manufactured shorter barrel of carbine length. It used new sights based on that of the Berthier carbine and had a shortened version of the Lebel bayonet. Since the new carbine's tube magazine had to be shortened as well, its magazine capacity was only three rounds.

While being up to its time, the Lebel rifle design was not without any shortcomings and became outdated much faster than any of the magazine rifles of other European militaries that followed French example during late 1880s and 1890s. While ammunition had to be loaded into the design one at a time, other country's service rifles were being loaded with stripper clips at a much faster rate. The tube fed magazine also greatly affected the rifle's balance when being fired, which could have been another shortcoming.^[10]

Competitors and successors

Upon its introduction, the Lebel rifle proved to be vastly superior to the Mauser M-71/84, the German Army's replacement of the Model 1871 Mauser. France finished its rearmament program with the Lebel in 1889, just 18 months after Germany had completed its rifle replacement program with 780,000 M-71/84s. The new French rifle alarmed Bismarck. Tests at Spandau arsenal in the winter of 1887-1888 found that the Lebel could fire 43 rounds of smokeless powder ammunition per minute compared to just 26 of black-powder ammunition for the M-71/84. The inferiority of the Mauser M71/84 and its 11mm black-powder ammunition was one reason why Bismarck opposed going to war with France that winter, despite being pressed by War Minister Waldersee (another reason was that the new French De Bange field artillery, now equipped with breech loaders after the lessons of the 1870 war, both outnumbered and outperformed the Krupp C64 field guns in their rate of fire).^[11]

The Mle 1886 rifle proved to be a sturdy and serviceable weapon, but one which became rapidly outdated by advances in military rifle and ammunition designs. As early as 1888, the German Army's Rifle Testing Commission had introduced in response a completely new turnbolt magazine rifle with a spring-loaded box magazine: the Gewehr 88 "commission" rifle. Above all else, it had been designed around the first ever rimless military cartridge using the new smokeless powder ammunition: the Patrone 88 cartridge. The early Gewehr 88 was followed 10 years later by the successful Gewehr 98 which originally was chambered for the Patrone 88. Shortly after the 1903 pattern S Patrone cartridge evolved out of and replaced the Patrone 88. The adaption of existing Patrone 88 chambered fire arms to the S Patrone was fairly easy and quickly realized.

In response to being left behind by Germany's Mauser rifle, the French military decided in 1909 to replace the Lebel and its rimmed cartridge by more advanced designs. Consequently, while the bolt action Berthier rifle was first issued in 1907 as a stop-gap to arm colonial troops, the French defense ministry was planning to leapfrog other military forces with an advanced semi-automatic infantry rifle. This new weapon was the Meunier rifle, also known as the Fusil A6, which chambered a more powerful 7×59mm rimless cartridge. It was adopted in 1912 after an extensive competitive process. However, its manufacture, which was to begin in 1913, was suspended because of the imminent risk of war with Germany. Instead, and during World War I, the French Army chose the easier and less expensive solution of adopting a gas-operated semi-automatic rifle which incorporated some Lebel parts: the Fusil Mle 1917 RSC, once again in 8mm Lebel caliber. It was manufactured in large numbers (85,000) during 1918 and issued to select soldiers in infantry regiments. However, the Mle 1917 RSC was criticized by infantrymen as being too heavy, too long, and too difficult to maintain in the trenches. Furthermore, it also needed a special five-round clip to operate. In the end, the aged M1886 Lebel and variants of the Berthier rifle remained in service until the Armistice of November 11, 1918 and beyond.

8mm Lebel cartridge

Balle D round featuring a boat-tailed spitzer bullet introduced in 1898

When it first appeared, the Lebel's 8×50R smokeless ammunition allied to its longer range and flatter trajectory brought a revolution in infantry armament. A soldier equipped with a Lebel could outrange troops carrying rifles chambered for black-powder, large-caliber lead-bullet ammunition. Using smokeless powder, he could remain virtually invisible to an enemy at longer ranges, yet locate an enemy at any range by the smoke from their rifles. He could also carry more cartridges for the same overall weight.^[3]

A new 197 gr (12.8 g) solid brass (90% copper-10% zinc) pointed (spitzer) and boat-tail bullet ("Balle D")—historically the very first boat-tailed plus spitzer rifle bullet to be invented and then widely manufactured—was adopted for the Lebel rifle in 1898 and placed in generalized service after 1901. Desaleux's own Balle D provided a flatter trajectory and increased the range of the Mle 1886 rifle to about 4,000 yards and its maximum effective wounding distance (when fired indirectly at massed area targets) to 1,800 yards. More importantly, due to the bullet's flatter trajectory, the realistic effective range of the 8mm Lebel was increased to approximately 457 yards (418 m) using open sights. The altered ballistic trajectory of the new cartridge necessitated a replacement of the Lebel's rear sights.^[3]

Firstly, in order to avoid accidental percussion inside the Lebel tube magazine and in order to receive the pointed bullet tip of the cartridge that followed, all the French-manufactured military Balle D and Balle N ammunition had a circular groove etched around each primer pocket. Moreover, the Berdan primer on each French-made military Balle D round was further protected against accidental percussion by a thick, convex primer cover which was crimped in after 1915, the "Balle D a.m."^[12]

The last type of Lebel military issue ammunition to be introduced was the Cartouche Mle 1932N, using a cupro-nickel, silver-colored, jacketed spitzer boat-tailed lead-cored bullet which was only suitable for Lebel and Berthier rifles marked "N" on top of the receiver and barrel. This 8mm Lebel heavier Balle "N" ammunition had originally been designed to increase the range of the Hotchkiss machine gun. Its manufacturing ceased in France during the late 1960s.

8mm Lebel ammunition was powerful for its time. It ranked slightly higher in muzzle energy than .303 British and slightly lower than the German 7.92×57mm Mauser cartridge. The chief negative characteristic of 8mm Lebel ammunition was the geometry of its rimmed bottlenecked case, due to the will to reuse 11mm Gras case set of tools. This adversely affected the magazine capacity and functioning of firearms, particularly in automatic weapons such as the Chauchat machine rifle. The Lebel cartridge's heavily tapered case shape and substantial rim forced weapon designers to resort to magazines with extreme curvatures as for the Chauchat machine rifle. In contrast, rimless straight-wall cartridges such as the .30-06 Springfield and the 8×57mm Mauser could easily be loaded in straight vertical magazines.^[3]

M1886 in service

French Chasseurs with Lebel rifles in 1912.

Following the adoption of the Lebel rifle by the French Army, most other nations switched to small-bore infantry rifles using smokeless ammunition. Germany and Austria adopted new 8mm infantry rifles in 1888; Italy and Russia in 1891; and the U.S. in 1892 with the Krag rifle. The British upgraded their .303 Lee–Metford with smokeless cartridges in 1895, resulting in the .303 Lee–Enfield.

In the early years of the twentieth century, the Lebel rifle was sold in the French overseas colonies for the protection of civilians or for hunting purposes. Brand new Lebels could be purchased by authorized civilians^[13][14] and were featured in catalogs of the French mail-order firm Manufrance printed until 1939. Those "civilian market" Lebels sold by Manufrance were strictly identical in fit and finish to the military issue Lebels, except for the lack of a bayonet lug and no stacking rod.^[14] Furthermore, a large game hunting version of the Lebel called the "Lebel-Africain" was also offered for sale by Manufrance during the pre-World War II years. This particular version featured a shorter barrel, a turned-down bolt handle and a slimmer, better finished stock. However, it had to compete as a hunting weapon against the bolt-action Mauser and Mannlicher–Schönauer hunting rifles that became available on the French marketplace, in the early 1900s.

Post-World War I use

Harki with a Lebel Mle 1886 M93-R35 rifle during the Algerian War, circa 1961.

Because of negative factors during the late 1920s and 1930s—a depressed economy, reduced war budgets under the Popular Front led by Leon Blum, and neglect at high military levels, the French Army was slow to modernize its infantry weapons. For instance, production of the bolt-action MAS-36 rifle began much too late (in 1937) although its prototype had already been approved in 1929. As a result, MAS-36 rifles to equip French infantry were in short supply when World War II broke out in September 1939. Furthermore, a thoroughly tested French semi-automatic rifle was also ready to be placed into production by 1939. But due to the German occupation of France during the Second World War, five more years had to pass before this gas-operated weapon (the MAS-1939 and MAS-40) could be issued as the MAS-44, MAS-49 and MAS 1949-56 series.^[18] Another adverse result of all these delays is that Lebel rifles—many of which had since been shortened into a carbine-length version, the Mle 1886 M93R35—were still in the hands of front-line and reserve troops at the outbreak of the war. More than 3 million were available in French arsenals.^[19] There are pictures of Italian Social Republic infantrymen armed with M1886s,^[20] perhaps resurrected from a shipment provided by the French in World War I to replace the rifles lost by Italy after the Caporetto defeat, or seized later, during Italian occupation of France.^[21] Other were seen in the hands of Soviet partisans.^[13] Likewise, in 1944 the German Wehrmacht had issued some captured M1886 Lebel rifles, given the German identification code Gewehr 301(f), to some of their occupation troops in France, but in limited numbers.^[19] In 1945, during the final months of the war, many Lebel rifles were issued to Volkssturm conscripts along with any other available weapons.^[22] Some years later, during the Indochina and Algerian Wars, Lebel rifles were issued to auxiliaries or second-lines units.^[23][24] Functional Lebel rifles have been found in Iraq during the Iraqi insurgency after 2003.^[25]

Users

See also

• Chauchat
• List of infantry weapons of World War I
• Hotchkiss M1914 machine gun

Notes

References

Bibliography

• "France's Wonderful Rifle; Great Performances of the New Small Arm for Infantry". The New York Times. October 15, 1889. p. 3.
• Bull, Stephen; et al. (Illustrations by Adam Hook, design by Alan Hamp) (27 May 2021). "Chapter 3: Infantry weapons in 1914". In Windrow, Martin (ed.). World War I Trench Warfare (1): 1914–16. Oxford, United Kingdom: Osprey Publishing/Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. pp. 9–12. ISBN 978-1-47285-254-0 – via Google Books.
• Guillou, Luc (1 March 2012). Sorlot, C.; Sorlot, Bertrand; Dugroleau, Stéphanie; Dupont, Régis; Barbier, Elodie; Poggioli, Antoine (eds.). "Quelques fusils Lebel atypiques". Gazette des Armes & Uniformes (in French). Paris, France: Régi'Arm. 40 (442): 26–35. ISSN 0767-869X. Archived from the original on 18 November 2013.
• de Haas, Frank; Van Zwoll, Wayne (2003). Bolt Action Rifles. Krause Publications. ISBN 0-87349-660-4. An illustrated chapter in this volume reviews in depth the Lebel and Berthier rifles (and carbines).
• Huon, Jean (1988). Military rifle and machine gun cartridges. Alexandria, Virginia: Ironside International Publishers. ISBN 0-935554-05-X. This volume (in English) provides a detailed description of all the types of 8mm Lebel ammunition, including Balle M, Balle D (a.m.) and Balle N. The 7x59mm Meunier cartridge (for the semi-automatic A6 Meunier rifle) is also illustrated and described in detail.
• Huon, Jean (1995). Proud Promise: French Autoloading Rifles 1898–1979. Collector Grade Publications. ISBN 0-88935-186-4. This volume (in English) contains a highly detailed technical "Introduction" chapter describing the Lebel rifle and its ammunition. This volume primarily describes all French semi-automatic rifles since 1898, notably the Mle 1917 and Mle 1918 semi-automatic rifles, the Meunier (A6) rifle as well as the MAS 38-39 to MAS49 and 49/56 series.
• James, Gary (October 2014). "France's Great War Masterpiece. The 1886/93 Lebel". American Rifleman. Vol. 162, no. 10. National Rifle Association.
• Krause, Keith; German, Eric G.; LeBrun, Emile; McDonald, Glenn; Jones, Richard; et al. (Illustrated by Jillian Luff, photography by Frank Benno Junghanns) (1 August 2012). Allen, Alessandra; Inowlocki, Tania; Strachan, Donald (eds.). Small Arms Survey 2012: Moving Targets. Small Arms Survey (Report) (12th ed.). Geneva, Switzerland (production)/Cambridge, United Kingdom (printing): Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. ISBN 978-0-521-19714-4. Archived from the original on 1 October 2012. Retrieved 25 June 2021 – via Cambridge University Press (printer).
• Lombard, Claude (1987). La Manufacture Nationale d'Armes de Châtellerault (1819–1968) (in French). 162 Grand Rue, Poitiers, 86000, France: Librairie Brissaud. ISBN 2-902170-55-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link) This large illustrated volume (in French) contains the detailed technical history and production statistics for the Lebel rifle as well as detailed technical accounts on the Chassepot, Gras, Kropatschek and Berthier weapons and how they came to be designed and manufactured. This is regarded as the fundamental research volume on the subject. The author is a retired armament engineer who spent most of his career at Châtellerault and had full access to all the archives and the prototypes.
• Malingue, Bruce (2006). "Fusil Lebel". Le Tir Sportif au Fusil Reglementaire (in French). Crepin-Leblond. pp. 332–334. ISBN 2-7030-0265-3. The author is justifiably critical of the Lebel's sights.
• Schwing, Ned, ed. (2003). Standard Catalog of Military Firearms. Krause Publications. ISBN 0-87349-525-X. Contains an informative and detailed page dedicated to the Lebel rifle (by David Fortier).

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lebel Mle 1886.

• Forgotten Weapons: M1886 Lebel Rifle at the Range on YouTube
• Small Arms of WWI Primer 001: Rifle Modèle 1886 M93 "Lebel" on YouTube