hi guys thanks for tuning in to another
video on forgotten weapons.com I'm Ian
McCollum and today we are continuing our
look through French bolt action rifles
specifically bertiz and today we're
going to do two of them we're going to
take a look at the 1902 and the 1907
berier and these are some of the rarest
uh versions of the gun that are actually
out there so very cool that we have
examples of each to show you today now
where the 190 2 comes from uh the 1902
is actually the Indochina version of the
Bertier for the let me see if I can get
this right
IND so the indo-chinese Sharpshooters
were a group of the French Colonial
military uh that had never actually been
issued label rifles these were guys in
Cambodia Vietnam and Associated French
Colonial areas in Southeast Asia there
who were frankly short and they'd never
been issued the label because it was
frankly a really big long rifle and
wasn't particularly well suited to short
soldiers so they were still using
singleshot grow rifles and the governor
of Indochina had actually uh sent a
request to the French War Ministry
asking for a specialized weapon to be
developed for these guys so they could
have repeating Firepower in a rifle that
was actually practical for them well at
this point uh the French military took
around took a look around and they
realized well we've got this Bertier
carbine and it's it's pretty slick what
about what what if we make the barrel a
little bit longer and issue it to the
indo-chinese Troops and that's exactly
what they did so the barrel length on
this has been increased to 25 in or 635
mm and if I stick this in front you can
see got a rather longer Barrel there
then they made a couple other pretty
minor changes to it which we'll take a
look at up close basically they added a
separate stacking Rod so that you could
get a a triang of rifles a pyramid of
rifles all stood up together and they
proceeded to make about 225,000 of these
guns between 1902 and 1912 now they
would come back after World War 1 in the
1920s and they'd make another 25,000 of
them but those were of the they those
all had the 1916 upgrades so we're going
to cover that modification when we talk
about the M16 rifle in a later video uh
suffice to say for the time being the
indo-chinese troops now have this right
that's actually really well suited to
them it's it's a good length but it's
now a repeating rifle instead of that
single shot gr and I'll be honest in my
opinion the indo-chinese version is the
handiest it's the best balance between
weight and barrel length for the Bertier
the the carbin are almost too short um
they do kick uh substantially I mean
it's not unpleasant to shoot them but
for a rifle that you're going to be
shooting a lot it would be nice to have
a little bit less recoil and the extra
weight and barrel length of the 1902
kind of gives you that um but they're
not as long and pikik as the the final
versions or like the Lael so the
indo-chinese rifles were pretty well
liked they did have some problems with
uh stock breakage and cracking but that
was not so much that was basically a
result of the humidity of taking rifles
into the jungle and it's kind of going
to be a problem with any gun that they
gave those guys however uh things would
proceed on and a few years later in
1907 there was another issue another
similar issue that came up and this was
for sagales Colonial troops now these
guys were very tall or maybe not very
tall but these guys were of the same
stature as the French regular infantry
so they didn't need a short rifle
however they were still using the gr as
well at this point um the label rifle
was kind of seen as primary you know
front top-of-the-line military hardware
and the military didn't necessarily want
to give that stuff to its Colonial
troops that it maybe didn't trust quite
as far uh and that's typical you'll see
that with British uh Military Arms as
well however they really needed to get
something better than that 1874 pattern
grow rifle so they were looking for a
new rifle for the sagales troops and
they realized you know what again we
have this Bertier even if we trusted
these guys with lael's well by this
point 1907 the label is no longer in
full-scale
production this thing is in a addition
to being well in addition to the
Indochina being a little shorter and
lighter this is also a cheaper rifle to
make it's a simpler rifle to train on
that leel with its tube magazine and its
elevator can be a little complicated um
and it really is simpler to have
something like a three shot berier where
you just you have the clip stuff clip in
Rifle work bolt fire gun uh there's not
nearly as much going on and whether
you're a a conscript Colonial Soldier
who's not particularly interested in the
complexities of exactly how your rifle
works or a shooter today yeah simpler is
in many ways better so uh they would
develop a yet longer version of the
Bertier this is up to a 312 inch barrel
uh 800 mm and it's actually the exact
same barrel length as the label so it's
a full-size rifle standard to French
infantry
rifles uh then they used a combination
of some parts from the berier so it's a
it's a berier action but it's going to
use label some of the label Hardware
label sites that sort of thing and
combine the two and you end up with well
a full length berier infantry rifle so
it's at this point the the label was
introduced in 1886 and now by 1907 they
have gotten to the point where they now
have two parallel infantry rifles they
have the tube fed label and they have
the clip-fed
Bertier they would uh manufacture was it
25,000 approximately of these 1907
rifles between 1907 and 1914 uh the
beginning of World War I would end
production of these guys uh I should
actually also point out here and we'll
see this up close but this still has a
bent bolt handle because still at this
point there is this is the only style of
Bolt handle made for the Bertier there
is no straight bolt handle one uh anyway
when World War I breaks out there's
going to be a problem with rifle Supply
uh as we as I just mentioned the label
was out of production at this point they
weren't making more they didn't have the
the production line up and running so
when the war breaks out and they need a
whole lot more rifles quickly well
there's going to be a lot of interest in
this cheaper faster and already in
production Bertier as compared to the
label so we will touch on that in a
follow-up video with the
190715 Bertier which would of course
become the standard French or a second
standard French infantry rifle uh but it
came from this sagales model now uh this
was orig Ally designated as the rifle
for sagales troops in 1907 and then in
190 they looked at 1908 they looked at
and they went well you know it really
isn't just Sagal it's all of our African
colonies and so they renamed this the
1907 Colonial pattern rifle and and
issued it to Colonial troops everywhere
with the exception of Indochina so uh
with that uh let's take a close look at
a couple of the details on these um
because there there's a little bit of
evolution that was going on here
well if you've been watching this series
on French rifles you'll recognize all of
this by now uh we have the shaelo
Arsenal this was the manufacturer in
fact they were the Arsenal that did all
of the 1902 and 1907 Bertier we have our
model number here Modell
1902 up on the barrel as always is our
serial number uh both of these sequences
of rifles were done with the a prefix
because they never got anywhere near
100,000 uh they never had to move on to
a b
prefix and again as you'll be used to by
now we have a production date here on
the barrel this is 1907 so uh and 15,000
or 14,000 in change this is pretty much
right in the middle of uh 1902 rifle
production now we do have this n mark on
top of the barrel and chamber that is an
upgrade that was made in the 1930s we
will touch on this later uh through this
whole series there have been a number of
changes made to the 8mm Lael cartridge
and rather than try and address them
individually as they happen I figured
it'd be better to have one Standalone
video talking about what the french did
with that cartridge because I think
it'll make more sense and be more more
easily understood as a single video so
we will get to that now on this 1902
you'll notice that they have added this
kind of swoopy looking stacking hook um
decided that the clearing Rod here was
not sufficient for stacking the rifles
anymore so that has been added added and
really the only other major change uh to
these rifles from the 1892 berthas is
the rear sight uh because this has a
longer Barrel the ballistics change the
trajectory changes so you need a new
site designed for it uh the site here on
the side goes up to 800 M and then if
you want to shoot longer than that you
have to flip it up at which point you
can get out to see right there 2400 uh
this was originally actually 2,000 and
then with one of the cartridg changes
that became 2400 so to do that you would
just move this slider to whatever range
you want stand it up vertical and uh
shoot that way uh this also
introduced the battle site zero for the
Bertier which is located right here it's
a notch when you fold the site all the
way forward and we will see that going
forward uh in all future patterns of the
rifle the 1907 is going to show the same
exactly the same marking so shella row
again and then this is Modell 1907 now
this is marked MD that is another
cartridge change that's when they went
to Bald D and again we'll discuss that
in its own separate Standalone
video this particular example has a
fantastic carou on the stock so I just
wanted to point that out for a moment um
you can see there this rifle was
accepted into service in November of
1913 so less than a year before World
War I was going to break out or as they
would say before War were
declared however you can see that the
barrel was actually manufactured uh in
1912 so this is one of those examples of
where we have a they they made a bunch
of barrels and then it took a little
while before the bar this particular
Barrel actually got attached to a rifle
completed and put into service so on the
1902s we're going to see this same kind
of curved stacking hook however they
have now gotten rid of the clearing Rod
at this point it's deemed no longer
necessary uh and it will not appear on
any of the future versions of the berti
and once again they made another change
to the rear site because again with a
longer Barrel the the ballistics change
again so this is our 1907 that's our
1902 you can see this one's a little bit
longer so that it can be properly
calibrated well I realized that this is
seeming like a long and rambling story
but we are getting somewhere with it so
we started with the early Cavalry carbin
then we went to the artillery carbin
made them a little bit longer for
Indochina made them a little bit little
bit longer for the African colonies and
next up we are going to get to how this
all actually impacted World War I so the
next two videos are going to be two of
the big ones that will be the model of
190715 and then the M16 upgrades the
lessons of war finally applied to all of
these rifles so stay tuned for those if
you are a big fan of French rifles do uh
take a second and uh take check the link
in the description below where we have
uh these only dropped once shirts on
sale that's for a limited time they're
only going to be available until July
28th so if you want one act now get it
fast before they disappear forever
thanks for watching