hi guys thanks for tuning in to another
video on Forgotten weapons comm I'm Ian
McCallum and today we are taking a look
at French military rifles specifically
the 1890 bear key a carbine this is the
cavalry carbine version of this rifle
and this is the very first version of
the Bertier that was actually adopted
now in 1886 France had adopted the 1886
Lebel rifle which was it was a
groundbreaking rifle at the time it was
the first military smokeless powder
rifle held eight rounds in a magazine it
would show it would become obsolete
relatively quickly but when it was
adopted it was cutting-edge now one of
the problems with the Lebel is that it
wasn't very suitable to conversion into
carbine form problem is it has a tubular
magazine under the barrel so if you cut
the barrel length down you're also
cutting down the magazine size they did
some experiments with carbine versions
of the Lebel but came to the conclusion
that interesting it was partly the
magazine capacity they actually had some
trouble getting a magazine to work well
with four rounds in a short version and
they didn't like the weight they thought
it was too heavy for a cavalry carbine
so various other people suggested other
ideas for carbines the one that was
eventually adopted was this one proposed
by Andre RPA he was actually a rail was
seeing a railway employee in Paris
so had some engineering background and
he came up with the idea to combine the
Lebel rifle action with the clip feeding
system taken from Ferdinand von moniker
this is actually what the German army
had adopted in 1888 as part of their
commissioned guevara 88 rifle and this
provided a way to to get a repeating
rifle and a magazine capacity without a
tubular magazine so at this time and in
fact the reason that the carbines hadn't
really been pushed at this point was the
German cavalry was still using the
Gewehr 71 for the same reason which was
a single-shot rifle for the same reason
that the French had trouble making a
carbine version at the Lebel the Germans
had trouble making a carbine version of
the 1871 584 rifle which also has a
tubular magazine under the barrel so
German cavalry was still running around
with single-shot
rifles until 1890 when they finally put
into production the carbine irradiate
the little short version like this size
of the Commission compared 88 rifle now
the German cavalry have five shot
repeating rifles and at this point the
French cavalry service decides that oh
it's just become a lot more important
that they have to maintain some sort of
balance with German military equipment
so now they really want a carbine and
they kind of rush a decision at that
point and the best one out there the
rifle that is most suitable is Andre
Bayer tas so this is adopted in 1890 and
it replaces what the French cavalry had
been using which was the single-shot
Gras cavalry rifle so interestingly they
actually made the the new rifle the new
carbine relatively shorter this thing
only has a 17 point eight inch barrel
persue I would presume that this is
because the smokeless powder just
doesn't need as much barrel lengths to
be equally effective now the majority of
these rifles would be manufactured in
1891 and 1892 in total that there was
also a small batch made between like
1900 1904 and then there was a badge
ordered in 1905 but sources are really
unclear as to whether they were actually
produced or not
so total production of these carbines
was either 160,000 or 200,000 depending
on whether that last order was ever
actually produced they were made at two
different factories son-in TN and she'll
tell Aero and they were actually made in
a slightly different configuration than
this when they first came out so let me
show you that so this is actually the
second model of the cavalry carbine
which you can determine by this rear
sling bar originally these guns had a
sling swivel on the bottom of the stock
and on the front they actually had a
round sling ring on the bottom of the
barrel band and then the sling would run
underneath the rifle however it was
found that this was really quite
uncomfortable to carry the gun would
slam into your back unpleasantly while
you're on horseback and so in 1894 it
was decided to retrofit the guns the new
ones coming out of production would have
this second
pattern of sling attachments which
involved a solid bar on the left side
and a bar like this in leaded into the
stock
so starting 1894 the new production guns
had that and then in 1909 they went back
and retrofitted all of the existing guns
to have this style of sling so this is
their hard to find as a as a second
pattern gun there are even more
difficult to find as a first pattern
with the original sling setup now to
look at some of the markings here on the
left side of the receiver we're going to
have the Arsenal so this is a Sun NTN
gun they were also produced by shell
talero and then we have our model number
model of 1890 up on the barrel we are
going to have a couple of inspection
marks the controller the inspector who
actually certified the gun and we have a
serial number this is a cursive F the
Sun and TN production of these guns was
F and then just slightly into the G
Series they used a five digit serial
number so when they hit 99999 they would
flip over to the next letter on these
shell teller o had the a series and Sun
and TM started with the F Series you
will also find that serial number on the
bolt and on the bottom of the magazine
as well as on the buttstock now this
side of the stock should have a round
stamp on it indicating the actual date
of acceptance as opposed to date of
production on this one it's missing this
might be a replacement stock I am not
entirely sure the rear sight here has
settings from to out 200 out to a
thousand meters and then you can
actually shoot at longer ranges by
flipping the site up on the reverse side
you will see that the markings go up to
2,000 meters
so you just adjust this slider to where
you want it 2,000 for example and then
good luck
I had this was pretty typical that this
is entirely typical on rifles of this
period one common element on French
rifles of this period is also the rod
which is threaded into the receiver
unscrew it
there we go pull that out
so you'll notice it has a threaded
section back here where it threads into
the receiver so it doesn't come loose
when firing but at this end it's just a
solid brass rod head this is actually
not a cleaning rod although it's
commonly called that this is for both
stacking the rifles so you can lean
several up together and then it is also
for knocking out a spent a stock
cartridge case should you have a problem
with extraction there's a slot cut in
the side of the stock here for the rod
and in the 1920s that was an element
that was determined to no longer be
relevant and a great many birth ei
carbines were updated to fill in this
slot and get rid of the clearing rod so
being in its original configuration this
still has that so bertier's original
design actually used a four round clip
but that was changed to three for the
production version of the gun at the
time it was really it was kind of seen
that this was an update from a single
shot rifle so having three rounds at
your fingertips was just as good as
having four because hey you're getting
three rounds with the same motion that
you would originally have only gotten
one with and and hey that's good enough
so these are dummy rounds but you have a
three round clip it is symmetrical and
reversible so it can go in either way
and you just press it in right there and
it's going to catch in place there is a
button here on the front of the trigger
guard that allows you to remove a
partial clip of the spring by the way
the magazine spring this one's a little
sticky normally if you hit that button
this will pop out with some energy all
of the breath EA carbines have this bent
bolt handle and there is no manual
safety on the rifle just like there was
no manual safety on the Lebel however
what's interesting to note is that early
in production the Bethea is actually had
two cocking notches to sear notches here
on the cocking piece and so if you close
to the bolt like so you could then pull
this the cocking piece back just
slightly
- right there and that was considered a
safety notch so if you pull the trigger
it will drop but at that distance it did
not have enough energy to actually
detonate a primer that was used for a
little while and then it was later
removed as being unnecessary and really
kind of ineffective it was certainly not
not a fast way to to operate the safety
and didn't it just wasn't effective and
necessary so they got rid of that and
later birthdays that you see will have
only one cut out in the back of the
cocking piece I should mention the
bottom of the magazine is open here that
is because as is typical with a moniker
style of system when you chamber the
third round or the last round in the
clip the empty clip simply falls out the
bottom should it get stuck you can just
stuff a new clip loaded in the top and
it will push the empty clip out at the
bottom as for disassembly I will go
ahead and take the bolt out for you it
is a procedure that is not ideal on both
the Lebel and the birth TA you actually
have to remove this screw and take the
bolt head out separately before you can
get the bolt body out of done put this
up here take the bolt head screw out and
then need to bring this to here there's
a cutout in the receiver right there so
that I can rotate the bolt head vertical
should be able to anyway there we go and
then I can take the back end of the bolt
out and the bolt head out separately so
that allows you to that you have to do
that it gets a bolt out of the gun and
that would persist all the way through
they never changed that system on the
Bertier one last thing I should
definitely mention is that these are
extremely light and handy rifles these
cavalry carbines came in at right at 3
kilograms or six point six pounds
overall length is 0.945 of a meter which
would be like 30
seven inches and the barrel length is 17
point eight inches or 0.46 five meters
so really handy little guns a kick-butt
great to carry so these are relatively
scarce guns to find these days because
well they did make a fair number of them
in the first place
the vast majority were ultimately
converted into more modern versions of
the carbines either 1892 carbines which
were then equipped with a bayonet lug
after the cavalry was really made
obsolete by World War one or model of
1916 carbines with a bayonet lug and
handguard and a five round magazine
we'll get to further videos on those
models in a little while but it's
relatively uncommon to find one that
survived in this original cavalry
carbine form so hopefully you enjoyed
learning something about the 1890
cavalry carbine version of the bear PA
today we will be continuing this series
with the later incarnations of this
rifle the next one up in a couple days
is going to be the curiosity Hayes
carbine which is a particularly cool one
so if you enjoy seeing this sort of
thing do consider checking out my
patreon account its support from folks
there that makes it possible for me to
bring you video series like this one and
if you are a connoisseur of French
firearms in general you may want to
check out that cool shirt that is
available now but only for a limited
time so a way to show your support for
the French soldiers that are the butt of
too many unfair jokes here in the United
States thanks for watching