Mauser Model 1895

Origins

Paul Mauser's Model 1893, made for Spain, was the first of his rifles with a staggered-column box magazine that sat flush inside the stock and was filled in one movement from a five-round charger, or stripper clip. The Model 1895 was the same rifle with small changes to the bolt and receiver, and it was sold under that name to Chile, Mexico, China and the two Boer republics. After the Jameson Raid of January 1896 convinced President Kruger that Britain meant to take the Transvaal, his government ordered rifles and carbines from Ludwig Loewe and Company of Berlin and, from 1897, from its successor, Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken (DWM). The Orange Free State ordered its own. Accounts of the numbers differ, but something like 37,000 rifles and carbines reached the republics before the war, with tens of millions of cartridges, and the Transvaal issued them free to any burgher who asked. Orange Free State rifles are stamped O.V.S. above the serial number; Transvaal rifles carry a letter prefix and no state mark.

Design & Construction

The rifle fired the rimless 7x57 mm cartridge, a round-nosed 173-grain bullet driven by smokeless powder at about 2,300 feet per second, with a flatter trajectory than the British .303 of the day and no cloud of smoke to show where it came from. The bolt had two locking lugs at its head, a long claw extractor and a straight handle, and the action cocked as the bolt closed. The magazine held five rounds in a staggered column, loaded by pressing a charger of five down into the open action; the empty charger was thrown clear as the bolt went forward. The rifle had a 29-inch barrel, a walnut stock with a straight wrist, and a leaf rear sight graduated to 2,000 meters. A short carbine with a turned-down bolt handle, popular with mounted men, was bought in smaller numbers. Compared with the ten-round Lee-Enfield Rifle, the Mauser held half as many cartridges but reloaded faster from chargers, which the British rifles of 1899 could not use at all, and its action was stronger and simpler to keep clean.

Combat Use

The Boer commando was a militia of mounted farmers who supplied their own horses and, until the republics armed them, their own guns. Hunting had made them judges of distance and patient shots, and the Mauser gave them a weapon that reached a thousand yards and more without smoke. At the Battle of Magersfontein and the Battle of Colenso in December 1899 British brigades advancing in close order were stopped by riflemen they never saw, and at the Battle of Spion Kop Mauser fire from three sides killed and wounded hundreds of men packed on a bare summit. British officers learned to speak of "the Mauser" with respect, and the word covered every Boer rifle. As the war went on and the supply of 7 mm ammunition failed, many Boers took up captured Lee-Enfields and Lee-Metfords, for which cartridges could be found on any battlefield, and by 1901 the commandos were largely armed with British rifles.

Legacy

The Mauser's showing in South Africa, and the Spanish Model 1893's at San Juan Hill the year before, convinced the British Army that it needed charger loading and a stronger action, and led to the Pattern 1913 rifle and its wartime descendant the Pattern 1914. The Model 1895 itself gave way at Mauser to the Mauser Gewehr 98, which kept its magazine and extractor and added a third locking lug. Boer Mausers were carried home by British soldiers as trophies in thousands, and surviving rifles with O.V.S. marks, Transvaal serials, Boer-carved stocks or the chain and brass tag of a British capture are among the most sought-after of all Mauser contract rifles. The 7x57 mm cartridge outlived the war by a century as a sporting round.