[ Papal Rolling Block ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look
at a particularly historically interesting
version of the Remington Rolling Block.
This is a
made for the Papal States in 1869
by the Nagant brothers of Liège, Belgium.
So let's start with the Rolling Block itself.
This was one of the cutting edge military rifles of the 1860s and 1870s.
This was a pattern that frankly the United States would have adopted
if we hadn't had this notion of being able to cheaply convert old muzzle loaders
into breech loaders, which led to the adoption of the Trapdoor Springfield.
This was a very serious contender, and in many ways
would have been a better choice for the US military to adopt.
Now a lot of militaries around the world did adopt it.
At this point in history Remington was cranking out Rolling Blocks as fast
as they could make them, and they were not able to keep up with demand.
And this led to them having to license a number of ... European manufacturers
in order to supply all of the orders that they were getting.
So, now how does this apply to the Papal States?
So of course the Pope today is in Vatican City,
which is this really historically interesting ... little tiny city that maintains national sovereignty.
Well, before the 1870s the Pope controlled a significant amount of territory.
In the early 1800s this was really significant,
like the Papal States in ... the sort of the central part of the Italian peninsula
controlled almost as much territory as Switzerland in size.
By the 1860s that had been reduced significantly, but ... they remained basically
the only independent state in what is today Italy after Italian Unification.
There was a major ... crushing defeat of the Papal States Army in 1860.
And in the wake of that Pope Pius IX rebuilt his army.
Re-equipped it, reformed the whole thing.
And actually made a pretty darn impressive and effective fighting force.
It numbered about 13,000 men.
Probably the best known unit of it are the Papal Zouaves with their fancy Zouave uniforms.
These were mostly Italians, but did include a fairly substantial number
of foreign volunteers, 20-25%, something around there, foreign volunteers.
And unlike many historical situations of foreign volunteers,
the volunteers in this case were actually highly motivated, pretty high quality troops.
... You couldn't volunteer for example, without getting essentially a letter of recommendation
from your local parish priest. Backgrounds were vetted.
... Basically these weren't these sort of penniless hopeless people looking for a job
and joining the military in order just to have food.
These were people who were dedicated devout Catholics,
who were interested in helping to support the Papacy.
And they volunteered to fight in Papal forces.
Interestingly, the Papal Zouaves in particular didn't really care what your social standing was.
There were some pretty noble, aristocratic sorts of people
who enlisted in the Papal Zouaves around this time.
And they were brought in as privates, and they did the jobs of privates,
and they were treated just like privates.
Anyway in ... the late 1860s there is of course a look for new arms
for the Papal armies, as they're rebuilding the army this requires new equipment.
... There was actually an order for Chassepot rifles that was put in in like 1867.
A couple of thousand of them, to be manufactured by the Nagant brothers.
Now the Nagant brothers (or
And they became one of the more prominent gun manufacturing
families in Belgium around this time.
And you see their name attached to a bunch of stuff, Mosin-Nagant rifles, Nagant revolvers.
These are all guns that were at one point either designed
or patented or manufactured in Belgium by these two brothers.
They were devout Catholics, they were interested in helping to support the Papacy.
And that maybe partially explained why
they were involved in the arms contracts to supply the Papal States.
Now this order for Chassepots was actually cancelled
before it could be delivered, and replaced with a larger order
for Remington Rolling Block rifles. Now we're getting back to the rifle itself.
This was of course a cutting-edge military rifle of the day.
Black powder, self-contained metallic cartridge, durable, reliable.
Pretty economical, this is a relatively inexpensive rifle to manufacture because it is simple.
But it is also bomb proof, solid, safe, etc.
It's everything you would want in a military rifle in the late 1860s.
So an order comes in for 5,000 of the rifles from the Nagant brothers.
And interestingly, at the same time basically another order for 5,000
was licensed out to Westley Richards in Great Britain.
So by 1868 the Papal States are receiving about 10,000 of these rifles.
This would become the primary armament of the Papal armies.
Now the first guns to show up were the British ones in the first half of 1868.
The British guns from Westley Richards turned out to be basically all crap.
They were considered unserviceable. The Papacy brought in a bunch of gunsmiths from Liège,
reworked them, repaired them, and did put them into service.
In the fall of 1868 the rifles from Belgium, from the Nagant brothers, started showing up.
Those were in much better condition, those were thoroughly serviceable high quality guns.
And this would form the main armament for the Papal forces.
So let's take a closer look at what exactly
distinguishes this from other Remington Rolling Blocks.
A quick overview for those of you who aren't familiar with the Rolling Block.
This is a single shot, metallic cartridge, but black powder system.
There would be smokeless powder variants that were introduced
after the development of smokeless powder, but the majority of Rolling Blocks,
including all of the Papal orders, pre-date the development of smokeless powder.
So the way this works, you have a hammer with a half-cock notch.
You'll notice there's our half-cock notch for safety, so if you are cocking it
and your finger slips - like oops - it lands on the half-cock notch
so that it doesn't inadvertently fire a cartridge.
That's fully cocked. The firing pin is right there - spring loaded.
That is our breech block, hence the name "Rolling Block".
That's a round, pivoting breech block.
Open that up. You load one cartridge into the chamber there.
You then close the breech block.
And as soon as the hammer starts to fall, this lug in the front of the hammer
actually locks the breech and prevents it from opening.
So it's a rugged, safe, reliable, durable system. And also a pretty simple one.
Now Rolling Blocks were made for about a gazillion different customers,
so how does one identify a Papal States Rolling Block?
Simple. The mark on the top of the barrel here, on top of the chamber,
is Saint Peter's crossed keys. That is the mark of the Papal States' arms.
Now we have a whole plethora of other markings here on the side of the receiver.
It's worth pointing out initially that the guns made by Westley Richards
didn't have most of these marks, but the Nagant ones did.
So we have Émile and Léon Nagant in Liège.
This is patented by Remington. So that's a serial number.
And then more importantly, we have the Papal States serial number up here.
There were three different versions of these rifles that were supplied to the Papal States.
There's a full-length infantry rifle which accounts for the majority of them.
About 6,800 of those were made by Nagant and another 5,000 by Westley Richards.
Those will be marked with a two-letter prefix that is "FI",
or
There were then about 2,100 of these short ... rifles.
They ... still have 30 inch barrels, but they are the "short" carbines.
And that is marked "MG", and that's
or the Gendarmerie musketoon, or short rifle.
And then there was a small number of artillery musketoons, properly really short carbines,
and those have an "MA" prefix for
So that's how you can differentiate these.
And again this is a marking that was only on the Belgian ones,
the British-made rifles didn't have that prefix.
So probably these numbers were applied in Belgium, although we don't know for sure.
They might have been applied in Rome after the guns were received.
Anyway, the serial number here is the specific ... order of
MGs,
And then this, I believe, is overall Nagant cumulative production.
The sights have a bottomed out zero of 200 metres.
You can also set that to 300 or 350.
Like so. And then if you flip the sight up it has graduations out to 700 metres.
The cartridge these are chambered for was the 12.7x45mm Remington Pontificio.
Which is allegedly a special cartridge for the Papal States.
However, in practice it is virtually identical to the American .50-70 cartridge.
... There's not a lot of information out there about the cartridge,
but in terms of ballistic effectiveness, virtually identical to .50-70.
As for the remaining features, we have a sling swivel on the middle band.
Nose cap out here. There is of course a cleaning rod on the gun.
No bayonet lug on these short carbines.
They could have taken socket bayonets, or no bayonet at all.
The long rifles used a Chassepot-style Yataghan sabre bayonet
with a lug on the side of the barrel.
The stock on this one unfortunately has been sanded and varnished.
And so the original markings in the wood that talk about the date of production
and them being designated specifically for the Papal States,
those markings are all unfortunately gone.
These didn't end up being in service for all that long, they arrived in 1868.
Well, in September of 1870 the Papal States come to a pretty abrupt end.
Despite their own military force being fairly good, it was also fairly small.
And in reality the Papal States were being propped up by the French, by Napoleon III.
He had a significant garrison in Rome to protect the Papacy.
And the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 kind of ended all that.
France needed all of its armed forces at home fighting the Prussians
(which still wouldn't end up going well), they pulled their garrison out of Rome.
And the Italian Royal Army took that opportunity
to essentially seize the city, which they did with very little trouble.
So what happened to all of these guns at that point?
Well, basically all of them went into Italian military stockpiles.
There were a few exceptions, the very short
of the Pope's personal bodyguard, they were allowed to keep those, so those remained.
And I believe they basically all remain in the Vatican Museum today.
Eventually they moved from the Vatican armoury to the Vatican Museum
as they became particularly obsolete.
About 150 of these things were also hidden away in the Vatican
to be used later by the Palatine Guard.
But the vast majority of them, especially the long rifles
and the Gendarmerie short rifles like this one, were taken by the Italians.
What did they do with them? Right off the bat a bunch of them
were actually issued out to the Italian Bersaglieri.
These were guys who would eventually get Vetterli carbines,
in fact fairly quickly they got Vetterli carbines.
But until the Vetterli was available, Rolling Blocks were a pretty good stand-in
in place of something like an 1867 needlefire Carcano conversion.
So that was an initial use.
Once they replaced them with Vetterlis, the guns went back basically into storage.
And interestingly, the one major recipient of these surplused,
leftover, and quickly becoming obsolete Papal Rolling Blocks
was actually Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia.
Now Italy had an on/off good/bad relationship with Ethiopia.
In the 1890s they would make a concerted attempt to capture and colonise Ethiopia, which failed.
But in the 1880s they were supporting Ethiopia against other European powers,
and they sent 5,000 of these Papal Rolling Blocks to Menelik as surplus arms that he could use.
Now this is probably all of the Rolling Blocks
that were in reasonably serviceable condition at that time,
because they don't appear to have shown up anywhere else.
The guns went to Menelik in 1881.
They remained in Ethiopian service at least until the 1930s,
because some of them at least were still in use when the Ethiopians
ended up fighting the Italians again in the 1930s.
Most of the ones that appear to be in European and American collections today
seem to have come out of Ethiopia in the 1930s, probably with Italian troops as souvenirs.
And that's kind of where the story ends.
It's interesting that recently we have seen the opening up
of Ethiopian obsolete ... old arms storage being sold off.
In particular to Inter Ordnance here in the US.
I have not seen any of these Papal ... Rolling Blocks come in from Ethiopia.
... I specifically recommended to ... to Uli like,
"Hey, keep an eye out for these things. Look for those crossed keys on Rolling Blocks,
because those are particularly interesting and rare rifles."
And thus far nothing appears to have shown up. So I don't know.
Maybe they are still in another warehouse somewhere in Ethiopia.
Maybe they were destroyed at some point. But they remain
particularly scarce Rolling Blocks on the collector's market today.
So very cool to get a chance to take a look at this one.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. Thanks for watching.