[ Beistigui Hermanos Warlord Copy ]
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 Chinese Warlord Era copy of
a Beistigui Hermanos Model H.
Now it's pretty well known that one of the most common,
most popular pistols in Warlord Era China
was the C96 Mauser, and the Mauser was considered
sort of its own stand-alone class of pistol.
There are T&E tables from Chinese divisions of the period that would list
number of rifles, number of pistols, and number of Mauser pistols as a separate line item.
Because these were considered sort of shock troop/assault troop armament.
They would be issued with shoulder stocks,
and with whole bandoleers of 10 round stripper clips for reloading.
And it's worth pointing out that it was not just actual C96 Mausers that were used in this capacity.
... Other European arms companies weren't blind to the fact that
Mauser was doing a tremendous business selling these pistols into China.
And so several Spanish companies took up the opportunity to also make pistols like this.
In this case Beistigui Hermanos. Now Beistigui is a company that was formed in 1910.
And some of their early expansion was during World War One
when they were one of the companies that was contracted by the French
to make copies of the Ruby pistol for French military use.
After World War One, in the 1920s, Beistigui started expanding their market into China.
And the Chinese market really liked larger capacity handguns.
And so Beistigui took its basic Ruby pattern pistol with
what would normally be a 7 or 8 round magazine, and they started making longer frames
with extended 10 and 12 round magazines and selling those into China.
That was popular, but the C96 was a bigger pistol, more imposing,
and that was something that the Chinese clientèle was really looking for.
Now about 1926 Beistigui is able to buy the rights to the trade name Royal.
And Royal was a brand name that was well known in China.
And in China at this time the brand name can be as important as the actual physical pistol.
Brand names are how quality was recognised.
If you don't know exactly what you're looking at,
if you don't have a good way to assess the quality of a pistol, well,
the brand name is a good stand-in for that. Or at least it was considered a good stand-in.
So Beistigui acquires the rights to the Royal trade name,
and they go ahead and manufacture a pistol that is a visual copy, more or less, of a C96.
They actually simplify the lockwork, and I'll show you on here
how it's visually obvious ... which one is a Beistigui.
They name this in their own documentation the Model H,
but they market it under the name Royal, because that's the well-known trade name.
And they started selling these into China in 1926.
They ... make about 3,500 of these.
By 1927, maybe early '28, they altered the pistol to make them full-auto.
And they start selling full-auto Model Hs, those are even more popular.
It is pistols like the full-auto Astra and Beistiguis
that actually convince Mauser to make a full-auto version of the C96.
Mauser is like the last one to that party in the Chinese market.
By 1931, interestingly, Beistigui has sort of stepped backwards.
They've taken their simplified lockwork, and they've realised that
the C96 ... as it exists is very popular in China, it is more popular than their pistol.
And so they introduced in 1930 the MM31, the
Which is actually basically a straight copy of a full-auto C96, and they start selling those into China.
Now all of these different patterns are popular
just as guns to be purchased in Warlord Era China.
And as a result, they're all also popular
as subjects of copies in Chinese shops and small arsenals.
So what we have here today is a Chinese manufactured copy of a semi-auto Model H.
Let me take you ... in a little closer and give you a look.
Like the C96 this is a big, imposing, handgun.
Technically speaking it is a locked-breech short recoil.
It is chambered for the 7.63mm Mauser cartridge.
Magazine holds 10 rounds, fed by a stripper clip up here.
So in all practical terms this handles and operates just like the C96.
We have the same style of safety here. Single action of course, just like a C96.
Now the original Spanish ones would have some markings on them, especially right in here.
This Chinese copy has almost no markings on it.
Pretty much just serial numbers, which however do all match.
So it's number 1419 marked on the back there.
Serial number is on the ... chamber flat where you would expect it on a C96.
And then also on the top of the bolt, just like you would expect on a C96.
The easy way to distinguish Beistiguis (and copies thereof),
are by these two giant screws in the side of the frame.
Essentially what Mauser had done is make a very slick but rather complicated
interconnecting ... chunk of lockwork that all came out as a single unit.
Beistigui simplified on that by instead putting a pair of screwed pins through the frame.
So this one acts as the locking block that the action reciprocates against.
And this is the pin to hold the hammer in place.
With this being the pin that holds the safety lever in place, essentially.
Really easy to spot, once you know what to look for.
We don't have any of the typical gibberish sort of markings on this particular example.
If you take a look at the rear sight leaf, it's not bad.
By Warlord pistol copy standards it's really not bad at all. The numbers are all in the right order.
So we've got 50, 150, 250, 350, 450, 500, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 1,000 - that's all correct.
But you can tell that the ... fonts are a little bit off.
The numbers aren't all evenly stamped, that's handmade not machine made,
definitely not a Spanish or German factory product.
I also want to take a moment to show you guys this rig, because this thing is really cool.
So this is an original Warlord Era stripper clip bandoleer - belt I suppose really.
It's got 14 of these pouches that each hold a 10 round stripper clip.
This pouch is a bit of a mystery to me, it's got two closure positions.
And if we open it up and take a look,
you can see that it is about twice the size of a plain stripper-clip pouch.
So what would this have held?
In theory, you know I would like to say it could hold
Schnellfeuer full-auto C96 detachable mags.
But it would be a little weird to be carrying a bunch of standard stripper clips and a single magazine.
Maybe if you only had one or two mags, one goes in the gun, one goes in here,
and then you reload with stripper clips. That's certainly possible.
This whole thing is really pretty robustly made.
The way you would wear it is actually with this in the very front.
It buckles ... in the back here and you have a Y strap.
We've got two straps that go up in the front.
Your head goes right here, this is on the top of your back.
And then a single rear strap that is looped together like this, and slides over that.
And then this buckles through there, and then runs inside and sits inside the belt.
So that's how that all gets set up. And there is even an interesting marking on it.
Actually a pretty darn clear stamp, two Chinese characters and then 31, 24/12.
And I have absolutely no idea what that all means.
I asked my friend Henry at 9-Hole Reviews to translate this,
it is traditional Chinese characters and it basically means "weapon".
Whether it is 1, 3 weapon, or ... weapon 31, ...
exactly what the significance is, and then the 24 and the 12, I have no idea.
This could be a unit mark.
In theory that could refer to a
but I think that's probably a bit of a stretch. But maybe, I don't know.
So if you have some good idea of what exactly that means, what that reference is,
let me know down in the comments.
Oh, and there is also a single pouch here, probably for a set of cleaning rods.
Now the one other really distinctive element of an original Beistigui
is that they actually used a round bolt instead of the square bolt like the C96.
Now this particular copy has taken the lockwork from a Beistigui,
but maintained the square bolt profile of a C96.
So a little bit of an unusual hybrid copy there.
The grips are basically just like C96 grips,
and of course this is cut for a shoulder stock just like a C96.
The Beistiguis came with the shoulder stock holsters
just like C96s, and that was a big part of their popularity in China.
You turn this into the "box cannon" by attaching the box-like stock to the back of the grip.
Unfortunately for Beistigui, the party kind of ended about the time they introduced the MM31.
So as the King of Spain, Alfonso VIII, abdicated
the Republican government took over, civil unrest started to become more of a problem.
The Spanish civil government started cracking down on arms manufacture, and limiting
companies right to manufacture what were considered military pattern firearms.
Then in 1932 you have the Japanese more substantial incursion into China.
Well, Beistigui's actual trade path to get guns into China had always relied on Japanese traders.
Beistigui would ship guns through trading companies based in Japan
that then had their own contacts in China.
You have language issues and such where the Japanese traders
are much ... better set up to be trading into China than Spanish companies.
So in 1932 when Japan moves more into China,
of course it's very easy for the Japanese government to simply cut off
Japanese arms sales into China, which they do.
Between this and domestic Spanish restriction on arms manufacturing
Beistigui has serious problems, and the flow of these pistols into China pretty much stops.
So that's more or less the end of the story for Beistigui.
Unfortunately with this particular copy we have no idea who manufactured it, where, or exactly when.
We just know that it was definitely post 1926/1927
because that's when the guns that it copies start showing up in China.
So hopefully you enjoyed the video. If you'd like to see more about C96s in China,
as well as a wide variety of other Chinese domestic handguns from the Warlord Era,
check out my book of course,
It is available and shipping from headstamppublishing.com.
Thanks for watching.