IN THIS, THE FIRST OF A CONTINUING SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 19TH CENTURY ARMS INDUSTRY, OUR OBJECT IS TO PROVIDE A BASIC OVERVIEW OF THE SOCIAL, POLITICAL, AND TECHNOLOGICAL FACTORS.

Saint Étienne The arms manufactures of Saint Étienne found their origins in the knife-making workshops that had existed there since medieval times. Located near the hills of the Massif Central, the region offered iron ore for blacksmiths, firewood and coal to fuel the forges, and fast-flowing streams to power the mills that operated bellows and trip-hammers. As the crown consolidated its power around the Île de France and emerged into a centralized kingdom, purchases for the loose collection of regional regiments that were to become the French army were made at Saint-Étienne. But there could yet be nothing akin to standardized models of weapons. It would await the 17th century for systematization to begin.

Under Louis XIV, a “Magasin Royal des Armes” had existed as a sort of hereditary monopoly of the Titon family. Titon’s ‘chasse gardée’ had apparently not given satisfaction during the long War of the Spanish Succession (or, perhaps, Titon’s privilege had aroused jealousies). In any event, the old order of things came to end under the Régence, when in 1716, the Council of War accepted proposals of Girard, Louis Carrier, Robert Carrier, and Du Faye to be contractors or Entrepreneurs at Saint-Étienne. After submission of trial muskets to the royal experts, the council of war draws up formal specifications, under which a model arm is made at Charleville. The fusil modèle 1717 thus becomes the first official, standardized, French infantry arm.

In 1727, the modèle 1717 having been objected to in some quarters for its fragility (although this defect may have been more a reflection of ill-treatment and rough use by soldiers than any flaw in its construction), a new musket design was solicited. The specifications are set by the highly experienced Jean Florent de Vallières, director and inspector-general of Saint-Étienne, Charleville, and Maubeuge, and previously inspector of Klingenthal. The fabrication of the model arm was entrusted to the king’s gunsmiths and its greatest innovation is to be found in the substitution of bands for fastening the barrel to the stock. This change greatly improved the solidity and simplicity of the weapon and would later be adopted by many other European powers in succeeding years.

By the Seventeen-fifties, Saint-Étienne produced more than Maubeuge and Charleville combined and, in fact, was one of the leading gun-making centers of the world, with nearly fifty-thousand model 1746 muskets turned out in 1747 for the royal army. The quantity of arms produced for the civilian and export trade was even greater.

By 1761, a number of gun-makers had regrouped and in 1764 the association received royal sanction when the king permitted these makers to entitle themselves as the “Manufacture Royale.” Local connections to the crown, most notably in the persons of the Moras family which also enjoyed links to the Compagnie des Indes, as well as the patronage of the French navy, were probably not unhelpful in securing this distinction.

In 1763, a new model of musket, designed through consultation with the inspectors and controllers of Saint-Étienne, Maubeuge, and Charleville, is introduced. It is at once a simplification and improvement on its predecessors: shortened by two inches, it is handier (the men in the regiments had apparently been cutting down the barrels of their weapons), and its lock is sturdier and less likely to misfire. Three years later, the new model is made lighter by a pound and a half.

Placed in the hands of a single Entrepreneur in 1769, the manufacture—which, despite centralized control, remained a dispersed grouping of sub-contractors and specialists producing different gun components--underwent a series of difficulties which finally led the government inspector de Rouvray to propose that the factory be taken under direct national control, a system not unnaturally known as régie. During these years the Saint Étienne workshops also came under the rationalizing impulse of the powerful Inspector General Gribeauval.

But the fall of the Duc de Choiseul at the war ministry brings with it the removal of his protégé, Gribeauval. The latter's rationalizing and systematizing initiatives to institute and enforce strict standards of weapons production had, it is true, understandably provoked resentment and resistance--notably at Klingenthal, as Ken Alder has shown. Vallière fils was now in charge of armament, and in a short interregnum from 1773-1775, French cannon and muskets enter an atavistic phase: weight is increased, the modern type of barrel fixation via bands is abandoned. Under the impact of these turbulences in leadership and direction, Saint-Étienne’s productivity suffered.

The Revolution and the rapidly ensuing state of war with most of Europe that rapidly ensued gave another fillip to the city’s industry. The Sans-Culottes lost no time in seizing important church properties like the convent des Ursules, the church of the penitents, and the Grande Église, and transforming them into arms factories.

Concurrent with these attempts to enlarge the scale of weapons production at Saint Étienne so as to arm the swollen battalions of the Levée en Masse, were attempts to simplify the weapons themselves. Simplification aimed not only at increasing the speed of production, it was also a realistic acknowledgement that the large increase in the scale of the national workshops had also necessarily entailed the hiring of large numbers of relatively unskilled workers. Tooling was also in short supply. Accordingly, a new, simplified musket model was introduced in 1792, the An IX, combining features of the previous models of 1777 and 1763.

With the Restauration of Louis XVIII came a return to the old system of private entrepreneurs with Jovin. Regardless of the change in regime, the strategic lessons of the invasions of 1792, 1814 and 1815 were heeded: the vulnerability of the eastern weapons manufacturing centers close to the borders, meant that those of the central French heartland gained in importance. The weapons themselves underwent no essential innovation, despite nominal model changes in 1816 and 1822. Jovin ran the manufacture under the Bourbons and into the reign of Louis-Phillipe, ceding his license to the Brunons in 1838. Annual production at this time varied from 15,000 to 30,000 weapons. The productive capacity of Saint-Étienne was apparently elastic for in times of crisis the production increased significantly: in 1848 51,000 standard military muskets (‘fusils No. 1’ were produced, and the following year 77,000 of the same type. The biggest innovation in these years, finally instituted by the model of 1842, was the application of percussion locks to replace the flintlock. Long under consideration, the ministry of war finally acceded to the percussion changeover once a simple and inexpensive method of converting existing flintlocks had been developed.

LABOR AT SAINT-ETIENNE During these years of industrialization and the emergence of a social consciousness, the livelihood and well-being of the workers received more attention. But it is important that arms workers and artisans occupied a particular and, in some ways, privileged status, both in France, England, and Russia. The specialization of the trade, its localization in a few centers and the consequent scarcity or ‘inflexibility’ of this craft, along with its importance in providing weapons to the state help explain the extra-ordinary status of gun-makers in these nations.

It is interesting to find the following passage in a French government report on industry published in 1844: “The cost of living being lower at Liège than at Saint-Étienne, and the price of materials also being higher in France than in Belgium, French [gun] makers will have to find the means to arrive at the same prices without reducing the salaries of their workers, for the jury would never consent to encourage an industry which would enrich the maker on the condition of allowing the worker to subsist in misery. In each branch of industry, the worker, with order and economy, must be able to make a living of his work.” Rapport du Jury Central sur les Produits de l’Industrie Française en 1844, Troisième Commission: Machines, p. 590-591.

Perhaps as a result of increased military arm production (not only for France-- Saint-Étienne received considerable foreign trade—in 1848 Piedmont, confronting Austria, ordered 120,000 muskets), civilian arm production decreased in the late 1840s: 1846: 32,000 1847: 44,000 1848: 18,000 1849: 30,000 The total number of arms workers in 1848 at is given Saint-Étienne as 8,740 (including 500 or 600 women). Shortly after the accession of Napoleon III, in 1853, Escoffier became the new entrepreneur for a term of ten years.

But after this thirty-year intermission various factors now again stimulated the development of Saint Étienne. The ambitions of the neo-Napoleon, despite his proclamation that “L’Empire, c’est la paix”, promised new arms orders. Even before the arrival of Louis Napoleon, an increased effervescence on the international scene (especially the Near Eastern crisis of 1841) also had a knock-on effect. The march of technology too, with the introduction of percussion locks and, especially, experimentation with rifling promoted activity in the city. Finally, we can also remark that the useful lifetime of the mountains of arms produced during the wars of the Revolution and the Empire was nearing its end: new guns were therefore needed.

Then, along with the final conquest of the Algerian hinterland, came the wars of the Crimea and Italy. The harsh Crimean campaign especially proved destructive of weapons, and when the French contingent returned in 1856, hundreds of thousands of muskets were in sore need of repair or even replacement. Business was thriving—even the British placed an order for 20,000 Enfield P53 rifles with Escoffier—but the strain on Saint Étienne’s creaking infrastructure was telling. Not only was it difficult for the ageing facilities to keep up with the volume of repairs and production, it was becoming clearer and clearer that the muzzle-loading smoothbore musket was becoming obsolete: rifled, small-caliber breechloaders were the wave of the future, but Saint Étienne was ill-equipped to produce them.

A local, and not disinterested connection, Persigny, now came to the rescue. President of the General Council, Senator, Minister of Commerce, and member of the Emperor’s Privy Council, Persigny helped push for an ambitious renovation of Saint Étienne that was well in keeping with Napoleon III Saint-Simonian dirigiste progressivism. Well situated with respect to France’s great rivers the Loire and the Rhône as well as the embryonic and rapidly developing railway network, home of a prestigious École des Mines which produced many engineers, and well-endowed with skilled labour, Saint-Étienne was a logical pole for industrialization. The report of the chamber of commerce in 1856 numbers 79 gun-making companies with a total workforce of two to three thousand artisans.

Here again, the natural bounties of the Stéphannois region played to Saint-Étienne’s advantage: it became the early centre of French coal mining. Its inhabitants had begun burning coal about the year 1720, and by 1790 its annual coal production had reached 200,000 tons. Indeed, it should be pointed out that Saint-Étienne was the location of the first railway in continental Europe, the 144 kilometer line running from the city to the Loire port of Andrézieux, when barges could carry freight throughout western and northern France via river and canal. The first line, opened in 1827, was initially animal-powered (in effect a natural progression of canal practice). In 1832 a second line, from Saint-Étienne to Lyon (57km) was opened to both steam-powered locomotives and horse-drawn wagons.

In 1862 the city authorities of Saint-Etienne and the ministry of war agreed on a plan for the establishment of a large, new, arms factory built of modern masonry and wrought iron construction and to be sited next to the rail line and the road to Roanne. Concurrent with this project, a revamping of the Furens waterway including dams was carried out.

The project for the reconstruction of the Saint-Etienne arms factory was entrusted to Captain Bouchard and disposed of an initial capital investment of 2.8 million francs with an additional expenditure of 580,000 francs for tooling. Four steam engines constructed by the Farcot Company of 320 horsepower output and fed by eight furnaces in the main building generated the power which was transmitted to the factory workshops via a main drive shaft.

Construction began in 1864 and continued into 1866. Kreuzberger, an engineer of German origin who had previously worked in the American arms industry of New England, and had been working with the French ministry of war since the time of the Crimean War, was charged with the installation of the machine tools in the new factory. These machine tools were primarily the products of the Parisian firms De Coster and Poulot, but also included some made by the military workshop of Puteaux.

The new plant with a central hall measuring 500 feet by 425 feet was inaugurated in April 1866 when the steam engines were first put into operation, but work on the factory continued for the next four years with further installation of forges, mills, the gauge workshop, along with other departments of the factory.