The exception that perhaps proves the rule that French generals never really fired the rifles their soldiers used was Charles Mangin. Born in Lorraine annexed by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian war, he held a deep and bitter grudge against them for that. He would frequently go to the front line just to take shots at the Germans, and being wounded several times in the process did not discourage him.

In every aspect of this war, the disconnect between the military brass and reality is absolutely mind boggling!

It's glad to see the show has a mature audience. I came down here expecting at least half the top comments to be about the girl who was demonstrating the rifles

Looking at the french uniforms and weapons, Did the french general staf hate their own Soldiers ?

The lebel was so long (especially with the bayonet attached) it was nicknamed "the fishing rod" by the soldiers.

As a gun/history nerd I really like seeing this!

This channel should be on TV every day! At least on History or Discovery!

I really like how Othais explains the evolutiion of the guns. Subscribed to his channel.

This crossover episode was brilliant. I look forward to more to come!

Woah. I'm following the episodes in chronological order, and is amazing how this guys just keep improving!

I love a woman that smiles when she shoots.

In keeping with the military thoughts of the time, the three shot capacity was to keep troops from "wasting ammunition". Only late in the war did the French adopt the thought "Firepower Kills".

The French when they turned a 3 shot Berthier into a 5 shot rifle so it has the same capacity as almost every other rifle had: ENOVAISHEN

'We always prepare for the last war' I've never heard it before but based on my History student level knowledge it seems astonishly accurate

Brilliant idea! Keep these coming, I can't wait to see the lovely British Lee Enfield!

I have to say I am loving this channel. Not many people really remember the Great War because of it being over shadowed by the scope and scale of WW2. Thank You so much for taking the time for these incredible videos.

At the start of the war, many French military thinkers, convinced that constant, relentless attacking would carry the day, considered a rifle to be just something onto which a bayonet was mounted. Little wonder not a lot of thought was given to making it a modern "shooter." BTW: great addition to the series.

I wonder how many guys lost their lives because they got their rifles stuck in the mud or in some debris, or lost a shootout because the only had a 3 round clip.

There are a few things that Orthais said that are incorrect or missing. The French were fully aware that their rifles (at least the Lebel) were not up to date, but they also had millions of them in stock. Their pre-war plan was to leapfrog the competition by developing a semi-automatic rifle, which they achieved in 1913 in the Meunier A6 rifle. Due to the war and the need completely overhaul production lines, those rifles were deemed not ready for manufacture and the plan was abandoned. There was another semi-automatic gas-powered rifle produced in France called the RSC M1917, but it was also only deployed on a small scale. Both of these weapons were technologically quite far ahead of the other powers that fought in the war. The French were aware their rifles weren't up to snuff, but they already had millions of them stockpiled. There were several attempts to improve them, but they were considered to be too difficult to mass produce, and not really worth it because they were supported by powerful machine gun designs.

Superb,this level of detail is rare in any popular series.Looking forward to future episodes in this gun series.

Thanks to all the people at The Great War Channel. I really respect and appreciate what you are doing. Also a big shout out to Forgotten Weapons for informing us about The Great War Channel.

A little fun fact: When the Lebel was used in WWI, almost everyone from the swanky Germans till the lowly armed Russians are using stripper clips, only the French troops are loading one round after another manually and with the new Spitzer round, it created panic out of France that if a French soldier was to drop the rifle or anyway, it would create a chain fire for the bullet to touch the primer in a row and it would start firing without pulling the trigger or worse... Explode due to all the 8 rounds firing at once. However, here's a catch. Lebel thought of it way earlier and to prevent that, he designed a catch just around the edge of the primer so when rounds are being loaded, the ring would catch the bullet and he made the cut deep enough that no matter how hard you jiggle the rifle, the round would not hit the primer nor if a gun like the Lebel which has no safety was dropped, it won't cause it to "explode".

Great video! It really makes you think about how many thing that the soldiers had to worry about. It makes you remember that they weren't just numbers in a planning room, but people.

wow so interesting especially the fact to see and to learn about what the soliders had to deal with at the time is fascinating to me (barrel getting hot, bolt action vs machinegun, ...) really enjoyed the relaxed talking and explaining style of the man with the cool beard, kudos to the everybody on the team! :D

excellent topic!

Forgotten Weapons crossover-- the People demand it! I'm sure you've got a deal with Othais goin' on, but a cameo or name-drop wouldn't hurt, riiight? Forgotten Weapons is, after all, what got me subscribed to zees channel.

I have to commend you for these videos. They are excellent and really informative. Thanks for posting them.

this is fascinating, huge thanks for more great content!

I normally don't comment, but this was an excellent video. Nice work!

YES! I was just WAITING for this to happen, can't wait to see the next episodes.

Hey guys, came across your series not long ago and have been hooked ever since. . started watching in order around about 3months ago and this is where i am at :) . . i absolutely love that you are now making specials about the specific weapons / rifles etc used in the Great War . . amazing . this is without a doubt my favourite channel :)

This is epic, still 5 years later!

This is why I love this channel, fun yet informative.

Incredible! Loved the episode. Can't wait to see the other parts!

That's is just a great episode! It just give us a very interesting info. Thank u all for the hard work!

Hi, I have a French M93 1886 Le Bell 8 X 50 mmR rifle and I do fire it on occasion for fun at military rifle events. A few things you didn't mention about this design. The first thing is that it has a cartridge (or round) cut off on the right side of the receiver just in front of the trigger guard. The rifles at that time, from most nations, had a feed cut off. The rifles were suppose to be used as a single shot rifle when firing at the enemy at long or normal range. To fire, you open the bolt drop 1 round or cartridge in the feed try and push the bolt forward, fire, pull back the bolt and repeat the process. Now the magazine tube that held 8 rounds of ammunition would have been loaded but cut off from feeding the ammo when the bolt was cycled and was there for an emergency reserve. The reasoning for this was from the officers that felt that loading one round at a time, the solder would be forced to take aim for each round (or bullet) fired. The magazine or tube that held the 8 rounds in reserve, was only to be used when the other side was moving in close and rapid unaimed fire became necessary. But in most cases, an order had to be given for rapid fire, before the cut off could be released. The British Enfield .303 rifle was also made originally with this feed or magazine cut off as where many others from various nations when first developing repeating magazine fed rifles. Now the other reason for this cartridge cut off, was to keep the Soldiers from wasting ammunition. The higher ranking officials, felt that if the soldiers had a rifle able to fire rapidly they would wast ammo without taking aim. Many of these officers felt that wasting ammo in rapid fire would lead to ammunition shortages. They also saw it as if a patrol or fort wasted ammo they could be easily over run and killed, captured or a battle or war would be lost. You have to remember, that at this time, many nations had outposts not easily supplied. An example of this would be the French Foreign Legion and British forces that had outposts in Africa. Many leaders at this time just could not grasp the understanding of this new technology, they were still living in the past. This is shown in these videos and others with the slaughter of millions all because the leadership of that era kept using tactics of a bygone era and didn't understand nor cared to keep up with new technology. It sounds silly today but back then most soldiers were conscripts or enlisted and not highly educated if they had any education at all. It was mostly the officers that had education, came from the upper classes and looked down on the lowly soldier or enlisted. You also have to understand that even though the cartridge ammunition had been around since about the mid 1860's, most rifles were still single shot. Remember, that neither France or Europe, had fought a big war for 40+ years. At that time, solders were still using muzzle loading rifles with loose powder and bullets. Also the lower ranks were trained to obey orders, to the letter and not doing so would reap severe punishment, even execution. Militaries are slow to adapt or buy new weapons and equipment, especially during times of peace or when there governments do not have the money to spend during budget cuts. I know I've been in the military all my adult life. A lot of people think militaries have an unlimited budget and that is simply not true. Military budgets are usually at the bottom of governmental funding and the first to be cut during budget shortfalls. It is expensive to arm an army, yet alone to modernize it when you have a lot of outdated weapons in storage or not in use, especially during times of rapid development and times of peace. Military equipping, even for back then is expensive and when you have several branches, such as a Navy, an Army and an Air Force all requiring and competing for new and updated equipment, like ships or aircraft or tanks or rifles or even sanitary necessities like toilet paper, it gets to be very expensive. It also gets hard for those outside of the military to understand the expense when items cost in the thousands, or millions, or billions and you are not fighting a war or haven't fought one in a long time. What people, governments and military leaders must understand is that there is a lag time for equipment to be designed, manufactured, tested and finally issued to the military. Then there is the lag time in training on how to use and service that equipment. Here in America for example, after the Civil War, the military needed to upgrade to the newer cartridge firing rifles, but they had stock piles of the older .58 caliber muzzle loading rifles and the government didn't have a lot of tax money to spend. The US army literately had to make what they had on hand work with the new cartridge and make it work as cheaply as they could. That is how they came up with the Trap Door Springfield Rifle. Even though there were lever action and early bolt action repeaters out on the civilian market, the Spencer Rifle being one example. Other things about the Le Bell rifle, it dose not eject a spent cartridge very well. It is not shown with the girl firing the M93, but you need to really jerk the bolt handle back on that rifle for 2 reasons. The first is to make sure that you get the spent brass to come out of the rifle or you had to remove it by tipping the rifle to one side or taking the brass out with your fingers. Also, if the spent brass didn't eject, it could fall on top of the new cartridge in the loading tray when feeding from the tube magazine. This could jam the rifle if not caught and cleared and one could lose a live round when clearing this jam when using the tube magazine during rapid fire. I've seen this in all of M93 Le Bells I've handled and have been told that this is normal and jerking the bolt back hard was part of the training. The other reason for this was to make sure that the loading tray, with a new cartridge from the tube magazine would pop up to the feed position. If this didn't happen, a soldier would push the bolt forward without loading a cartridge in the chamber of the rifle. Pulling the trigger, all you would get is a click, not a bang. In a panic situation, it was very easy to do this and never fire the gun. Also reloading that tube magazine after firing several rounds of ammo and especially after rapid fire of 8 rounds, you need gloves to reload it because it is so hot. I found out the hard way after shooting that thing and I never take it out with out a good pair of leather gloves. They did fix that problem when they got away from the tube magazine and modified the rifles to the enblock clip, but then they ran in to the rimed ammo jamming if they didn't load the clip the right way. Something else they had to deal with in the M93 Le Bell was when they went to the spitzer or pointed bullets when it was loaded in the tube magazine. The base of the 8mm Le bell cartridge, is made with a grooved ring stamped or machined around the primer. Even new ammunition has this ring around the primer. The reason for this is so the pointed bullet loaded behind the first in the tube magazine catches in that groove so it will not line up with the primer of the cartridge in front of it. If the point of the bullet was able to line up with the primer, it could set off a chain reaction when the bolt cycled. The spring pressure and the amount of movement, it had enough speed to set off all the cartridges in that tube magazine. This could injure the solders hand taking him out of action and disabling or destroying the rifle. One last thing, this was a new type of rifle and the first one out for a military so design problems should be expected. However the French are known for hanging on to weapons long after they are obsolete. This is shown by how the Germans saw the problems with a rimmed cartridge being used in a magazine fed rifle. They designed their 7.92X57mm or 8mm Mauser cartridge as a rimless cartridge. It feed faster and smoother and dose not have the jamming problems the rimmed cartridges have. The 8X50mmR Le Bell was a great cartridge at the time it was developed and was used by the French military long after WWI. Also, the French didn't have the manufacturing capabilities to rapidly manufacture this rifle. So the French contracted, rifle makers, like Remington here in the US to manufacture the M93 Le Bell and the 8X50mmR ammunition. After the war, there were large stocks of these rifles and ammunition here in America when France canceled contracts. Many were sold here in the 1920's as inexpensive hunting rifles and much of the ammunition was reloaded for that purpose. Many more were sold here when France dumped the M93 and it's modifications on the market after going to the standard NATO ammunition in the 1950's.

Time for profile one of the best weapons of the war, The Lee-Enfield Rifle. But Othais does a great job explaining the pluses and minuses of period weaponry and I hope to see more of his commentary on this channel.

Very interesting stuff, great work as always and thanks for the link to Historic Guns! There were a couple videos on German and British anti-tank rifles over on Forgotten Weapons and now this! Drowning in world war one stuff this week, it's great :)

This was VERY appreciated! Thank you for thinking of new ways to bring us information on The Great War! Keep up the great work!

Othais isn't kidding when he talks about the need for hand-guards on rifles during firing! During my 32 years of service I had the honor of receiving much of my weapons training from the US Marine Corps.....as an example I went through what is known as "The High Risk Personnel Course" where for over a month we were involved among other things with learning all about and firing most of the individual/crew-served weapons used by the World's Military Forces. We fired everything from AK-47s to Sten Guns from WW2 to the M-14 to PKM machine-guns and the list goes on and on.....it was a "Gun Aficionado's wet dream come true!!.....I fired so many rounds apparently through my Beretta 9mm semi-auto handgun that it exposed a flaw in the metal to where the bloody slide busted (that's a lot of rounds!)!! What I remember to this day all these years later is how HOT the barrels became after only a few rounds had been sent downrange! The wooden hand-guards on the AK-47 for example would get unbearably hot to touch After firing one to no more than two ammo clips through it. I remember using rags to buffer the heat of the barrel while I fired. The Sten-gun of WW2 took special dedication to use I imagine since I saw how firing it burned a bunch our fingers.....as our Trainers pointed out though, they were better than nothing!!

You guys are doing a great job with this series- the "big picture" episodes which review the corresponding week a century ago, the specials on different events/significant people and now a focus on weaponry. It just keeps getting better and better. I do hope you do an episode on the building and development of the trench system by Allies and Germans. I'm particularly fascinated by the first development of the system- how on earth did they start them off when so close to each others lines?

I just discovered this series, fantastic insight into WW1 weapons, I know a few others have already said but I'm looking forward to hopefully an ep on British Empire rifles. Keep up the great work!

After watching so many episodes of Forgotten Weapons I think I've caught Ian's fondness for French made firearms.

Another great video. You know how to fill in the holes(answer the questions) along the course of the series. Your videos helps me put myself in the shoes of the common soldiers more and more.

this is a great special! great show in general. thanks for all the effort you guys put in!

3:10 Ironically that's the Prussian Army. Or maybe not ironic since Fredrick the Great was a francophile.

Always great to see and listen to someone who holds intense amounts of detailed knowledge.

Excellent episode, Im now caught up. The rifles of the era were around 30 caliber, fired smokeless powder, and typically predate the widespread use of machine guns. They were therefore designed to be used in "volley fire", and were intended to kill both man and horse. This is part of the reason for the rifles having rifle sights regulated to several thousand yards/meters/arshins. Later guns would fire less powerful ammo, which saved weight and recoil-at the expense of power and range. But since most combat took place at closer range-this was seen as an acceptable compromise. With both lighter bullets and improvements in gun powder-the ammo was quite powerful and accurate, in fact the guns of the era are still known for these qualities.

This was great! I really like it. Can't wait to see more.

Personally, I'd say this is the most interesting video you guys have done so far. Are we going to see more videos like this? One for each major power's arsenal?

That's actually a very beautiful collection. Even that I'm not really into this technical part of the history of the war, this video was impressively informative and fun to watch. Thanks for this great work, guys.

Great, now I found the next youtube channel to watch once I'm through with all of your episodes :D Thanks!

Thanks for doing these, this is very cool!

Amazingly interesting. Great episode!

Excellent job guys!!!! Seriously! It was a real eye opener.

Great variety of weapons. I really liked how you explained the reasoning and logic behind decisions in the rifle design. Very cool, thank you.

Very informative! This kinda fills my knowledge about WWI a bit :)

I really enjoyed this episode, and am looking forward to future episodes like it. I've also subbed to C&Rsenal, so, cross promotion successful. If I could lodge a request, it would be to go beyond just the armaments of the involved national armies, and to take a look at the weapons used by the various partisan and resistance forces active during the war (unless it's the same?). What kind of pistol did Gavrilo Princip use, what rifles were the Bolsheviks overthrowing russia with? Did every army equip all their soldiers, or were some soldiers expected (or able) to equip themselves? Keep up the good work!

Ok I'm quite behind, I know, but I love the seriest! I'm already liking every video before watching it, just because I know that the content is going to be awesome!

It's clear that you were just figuring out how to make this format work. Nice to see you come so far!

Hello, I came by from the german channel (and I am sad, that its being stoped) and I hope, that you guys can continue this Channel the whole time of the war. Thanks again.

"You always prepare for the last war." Absolutely true and the sad and pathetic thing is that the French again failed to learn anything from WW1 and suffered for it during WW2. Well, they did learn some things, but mainly they took away the wrong lessons. They saw the effectiveness of large forts and defensive lines (warding off large scale infantry assaults) and decided to build the wildly expensive Maginot Line, which failed miserably during WW2 when the Germans just went around it. The Germans initially built huge artillery guns to take those forts out (Schwerer Gustav), but never used them for those since using fast moving tanks and air support proved more effective. The Maginot Line fell without ever seeing any major action, because France had already lost most of the land battles while the men manning the line were twiddling their thumbs. Speaking of tanks, that's where the French failed again. They did use tanks during WW2 and their models (Char B1) were often feared by the Germans for their heavy armor and powerful guns, but they were slow as hell and followed the doctrine of the infantry tank, which was to protect the infantry instead of going on seperate operations. And they largely went back to the horse instead of motorizing their troops, despite having a powerful automobile industry. There was some initial cavalry action during the early days of WW2, but practically all sides stopped using cavalry units once they saw what happened to them. But where the French utterly failed was the implementation of rapid fire small arms, like machine pistols. Almost all models used were either imported Thompsons from America or captured German models. They themselves only developed on machine pistol (MAS-38), which saw very limited use.

One of the best videos outside of the weekly news so far!

This an amazing video !!!! Keep up the original work !!!!

Great video! Greetings from Schleswig-Holstein! Looking forward seeing the other Weapon-countries!

i just wanted to say, if people enjoyed these couple of videos on the french weapons, really take the advice and look at Oathias a@ c&rsenal channel. They are easily one of the most underrated channel on youtube. they put a ton of effort into their videos with excellent summarys of the wepons development, complete with mechanical cutaway animations and shooting tests. it pains me to see some of the videos in the sub 10,000 view range because it offers some of the best ww1 history on youtube

Just History,nothing more.Pure gold!

Only discovered this channel very recently and it's great. This may be the best system/medium for creating understanding on this subject. This segment is very good. The Great War gets better all the time. I'm sure I wouldn't have said that 100 years ago though.

Fantastic present and demo!

GREAT Show guys....Keep it up!!

Excellent episode. There is so much more to see from other countries and as the war moves on. I'm looking forward to it! I will start my support on Patreon to help.

I never even thought to ask about each countries standard issue firearms at the beginning of the war. The Russian forces mostly using the, 'Mosin' from the start through the entire war. The story behind it becoming the, 'Mosin Nagant' is well worth the read. As always another awesome video. I will make sure to catch the next live stream!

Please get Ian from Forgotten Weapons to do a few special episodes on the channel. Seeing as he is the reason I found this channel in the first place ;)

I liked the girl demonstrating the rifles. She had so much fun and it looked cool. Best part in the video! :)

Thank you for making this channel, its amazing.

Really awesome episode guys, cant wait for part 2! love it

Great crossover content - really interesting!

More please, great stuff

That was awesome! Been waiting for this kind of stuff for a while but this is really well done, looking forward to the next one :D

I found this great channel because Ian at Forgotten Weapons gave you a shout out. And I'm glad he did. Very fascinating stuff. I'm also now a subscriber to C&Rsenal's channel thanks to you guys. Keep up the great work!

She got a huge smile on her face every time she was about to fire. You can tell she enjoys firing these old school rifles. I may be a pacifist now but there really is nothing like firing a military grade rifle of any era.

Why don't you don't do a special episode on the avancement of the fully automatic weapons in ww1 ?

this was awesome, thanks a ton for showing us the weapons

well, i've now caught up with all the videos put up so far. but hey, there still three more years of content ahead. this channel is great!

Have you guys thought about doing a Machine gun episode?

thanks...lots of good info for us history buffs.

This is a really great idea and I encourage more programs like these

The C&Rsenal channel is awesome. Cool to see you folks working together. Some things to add: another reason for the length of the rifles was the notion that you wanted a soldier to have the longest possible reach for bayonet combat. You wanted him to stab the enemy before the enemy could stab him. You also wanted your soldier to be able to reach a guy on horseback. And it wasn't that, by this period, they'd figured out that "they didn't need that much accuracy" - rather, they knew there was a point of diminishing returns in terms of barrel length and accuracy. A Lebel or Berthier's barrel is far longer than it needs to be to get maximum performance out of the 8x50R Lebel cartridge. Speaking of accuracy, the pre-war emphasis on volley fire tactics by the French meant that their rifles have fairly crude sights compared to most of the other rifles, but especially those of the US. One last thing to add, regarding whether or not the French were aware of the deficiencies of their rifles. One reason the French rifles were so behind is that the Great War came when France was in the middle of testing and developing a semi-automatic rifle, the Meunier. Because of this, they neglected their bolt-action long arms because they thought they wouldn't need them. WWI interrupted these plans, and forced them to keep the outdated Lebel in service and supplement them with the somewhat better Berthier rifles. In the end, France's plans for semi-auto rifles in WWI had limited success. They struggled to get a working design that could stand up to the mud of the trenches, but the Mle 1917 and Mle 1918 rifles saw some service toward the end of the war and would go on to inspire certain features of the beloved American M1 rifle of WWII.

great great show

I love this new series!

Man I'm loving this. Can't wait for the next one :D

Very informative and in depth information. Thanks

that was crazy good

Will you also talk about French machine guns like the Chauchat (the most widely manufactured automatic weapon of WW1) ?

I just loved this, really good idea guys! keep on doing awsome stuff...

the quality of this channel blows me away, you have my patreon. Keep up the great work!

The forgot to mention the lebel had a cut off function so you could only fire 1 round and had to reload wich was used alot on long ranges and when they go closer they would pretty much turn off the cutt off and empty the magazine

Our shooter is much better looking than the 'average soldier' of France's WWI infantry man.

really love the video. really helps to see what the soldiers had to use up against mgs and more modern rifles

This was a gem of an episode. Colabs like this are a great idea! From a tech point of view, the youtube+hangout is a great idea to enable it on the cheap! S. Carolina represent, love me some Charleston! great work!