My ’71 Mauser was produced in Amberg, Bavaria in 1878, and bears the crown and letter L cypher of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Fifteen hundred of them reached the hands of Irish Nationalists, many seeing action in the Easter Rebellion of 1916. Colonial German native troops, the Askaris, continued to use them through WWI. The Chinese were armed with them during the Boxer rebellion of 1900. Germany supplied them to the Boers fighting the British. The Model 1871 was used in conflicts long after it was obsolete. In 1884 the rifle would be produced with a tubular magazine inside the stock and be designated the Model 1871/84. There had been earlier bolt action rifles, but the Model 1871 introduced a bolt with most of the features still used in bolt actions made today: Self-cocking, self-extracting, flag-type safety, and of course firing a metallic cartridge. Mauser would go on to supply Germany and much of the world with his rifle designs through two world wars and beyond. This is Paul Mauser’s first successful rifle, being that it was the first Mauser rifle to be adopted by an army anywhere.
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