Article by Steve N. Jackson (v. 1)

The Great War would bring the innovations of the scientific revolution to the battlefield, using tools such as wireless, aircraft, poison gas, oil powered ships, and over-the-horizon artillery to deadly effect, but there was also a number of anachronisms, such as mounted soldiers with steel breast plates and lances, but some anachronisms were purposeful and effective despite appearing misplaced on the battlefield, one of which was the continued use of black powder based rifles by the French.

The French had been the first country to issue an effective nitro-powder (smokeless) firearm with their Model 1886 8mm rifle. This rifle had caused the world's armies to rapidly switch from their older black powder shooters to adopt the modern magazine-fed, smokeless powder weapons for nearly their entire inventories. The last country to go to war with black powder had been the United States, who was in the process of changing their old single-shot Springfield .45 Government (.45-70) rifles to a newer Krag model firing the 30 Government round (.30-40).

The French though had purposefully decided to keep its old Gras and Chassepot rifles in armories. For peacetime they had plenty of 1886 rifles to arm active soldiers, with nearly a million weapons produced by 1914. For war time though they new they would need even more weapons, and it would be immensely expensive to make new rifles only to have them put into warehouses for a general war that might not come. The French decided instead, when they designed the Lebel, to make sure that the newer 8x50Rmm smokeless ammunition used by frontline soldiers could be made on the same machines that manufactured the older 11x59Rmm black powder cartridges used by the Gras and Chassepot weapons.

With the start of the war in August 1914 the 1886 model repeaters were issued to frontline units and as many second line units as could be accommodated, while second line units where given black powder firing Gras rifles. Second line units were only suppose to act as a casualty reserve for the frontline (giving soldiers with less contemporary training time to get used to being in service before heading to the fighting) and to serve as communication troops which including loading and unloading cargo, directing traffic, and other duties that needed a soldier, but for whom minimal armament was as good as a modern repeater. The Gras rifle was thus brought out of retirement.

Since the 11mm and 8mm French rifle bullets fired a cartridge with the same base and rim size, the weapons were also easily re-barreled. Armories were rapidly set up to refurbish weapons damaged at the front, and these same armories could, when work slowed down, pull older 11mm Gras weapons and put 8mm barrels on them. This weapon was known as the Fusil Gras M80 M14 Mle 1874 which shows how often the French modified their weapons to keep them in service, the M80 representing a previous improvement to the Gras service rifle.

Although France was the last country to purposefully use a black powder weapon as a standard issue infantry arm, the use of the Gras rifle with black powder chambering did not end there. Russia was shipped 400,000 Gras rifles firing the 11mm French rifle cartridge, and used them at the front as late as 1917, and afterwards they were in the hands of soldiers during the revolutions. Russia then passed their rifles to countries on their southern border, most notably Afghanistan. These weapons would then be found for years on arms markets in Africa and Asia, and were still making appearances on the battlefield as late as 2001 during the American-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The last regular army user of the Gras was the Greek army. The Greeks has asked the French for these weapons in 1876, but the French had no capacity to produce them, so they gave the Greeks permission royalty free to have another country manufacture the weapons for them. The Greeks turned to the Austrian firm Styer who made the entire production run for them. The weapons then fought during the Great War, the Turko-Grecian war, and finally, during ww2 (World War Two) both for the Greek army and the Greek resistance. While the weapons were not effective in the front lines after 1914, they gained fame during WW2 in the hands of Greek guerillas. Here, the black powder was an advantage since guerrillas would make their own powder, something nearly impossible to do in primitive settings for smokeless powder. They also proved effective for hit and run sniping, and the 11mm round was condemned by NAZI Germany on humanitarian grounds since it caused horrible injuries similar to that of a heavy machine gun.