Competitors and Successors
Upon its introduction, the Lebel rifle proved to be vastly superior to the Mauser M-71/84, the German army's repeater replacement of the single-shot Dreyse needle gun. France finished its rearmament program with the Lebel in 1889, just 18 months after the Second Reich had completed its rifle replacement program with 780,000 M-71/84s. The new French rifle alarmed Bismarck. Tests at Spandau in the winter of 1887-1888 found that the Lebel could fire 43 rounds of smokeless powder ammunition per minute compared to just 26 of black powder ammunition for the M-71/84. The inferiority of the Mauser M71/84 and its 11mm black powder ammunition was one reason why Bismarck opposed going to war with France that winter, despite being pressed by the War Minister Waldersee (another reason was that the new French De Bange field artillery, now equipped with breach loaders after the lessons of the 1870 war, both outnumbered and outperformed the Krupp C73s in their rate of fire).
The Mle 1886 rifle proved to be a sturdy and serviceable weapon, but one which became rapidly outdated by advances in military rifle and ammunition designs. As early as 1888, the German Army’s Rifle Testing Commission had introduced in response a completely new turnbolt magazine rifle with a spring-loaded box magazine: the Gewehr 88 "Commission" rifle. Above all else, it had been designed around the first ever rimless military cartridge using the new smokeless powder ammunition: the 7.92×57mm Mauser cartridge. The early Gewehr 88 was followed 10 years later by the highly successful Gewehr 98 Mauser rifle which still fired the same cartridge but with ballistic improvements.
In response to being left behind by Germany's Mauser rifle, the French military decided in 1909 to replace the Lebel and its rimmed cartridge by more advanced designs. Consequently, while the bolt action Berthier rifle was first issued in 1907 as a stop-gap to arm colonial troops, the French defense ministry was planning to leapfrog other military forces with an advanced semi-automatic infantry rifle. This new weapon was the Meunier rifle, also known as the Fusil A6, which chambered a powerful 7×59mm rimless cartridge. It was adopted in 1912 after an extensive competitive process. However its manufacture, which was to begin in 1913, was suspended because of the imminent risk of war with Germany. Instead, and during World War I, the French Army chose the easier and less expensive solution of adopting a gas-operated semi-automatic rifle which incorporated some Lebel parts: the Fusil Mle 1917 RSC, once again in 8mm Lebel caliber. It was manufactured in large numbers (85,000) during 1918 and issued to select soldiers in line infantry regiments. However, the Mle 1917 RSC was criticized by infantrymen as being too heavy, too long, and too difficult to maintain in the trenches. Furthermore, it also needed a special five-round clip to operate. In the end, the aged M1886 Lebel and variants of the Berthier rifle remained in service until the Armistice of November 11, 1918.
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