The Watchdog

Pedersoli 1854 Lorenz

By Craig L. Barry · Originally published July 2016 · p. 10

The Watchdog By Craig L. Barry Pedersoli 1854 Lorenz The second most commonly imported European military arm during the U.S. Civil War after the P-53 Enfield long and short rifle(s) was the Model 1854 Austrian Rifle. Estimates of three hundred thousand or so were imported by both sides during the early to mid-1860s. There is a certain lack of understanding that has evolved around the Model 1854 Austrian rifle or “Lorenz” as it is often called today. It was simply called the “Austrian Rifle” in the 1860s by U.S. and C.S. soldiers and perhaps sometimes by other less complimentary names. To begin with, the 1854 Austrian Rifle was designed to work with a solid lead projectile invented in 1852 by Josef Lorenz (1814–1879), an Austrian Artillery officer working at the government arsenal in Vienna. Regardless of what you may have read elsewhere, Lorenz was not a gunsmith in Vienna nor a Lieutenant in the Army. Technically his highest rank was Captain of Artillery and as such, this is how he should be referenced by the dictates of military protocol. Josef Lorenz apparently developed an understanding of ballistics from his experience in the field with rifled artillery, of which the Austrians produced some of the best of the middle of the nineteenth-century. All artillery used by the Austrians was manufactured at the Wien (Vienna) Arsenal, where Lorenz was employed. The standard bore size for the Austrian Rifle was designed by Lorenz to be 13.9 mm, which was about .547 caliber. Apparently, the correct ammunition for it was not imported. Instead, the U.S. 1841 Percussion Rifle, better known as “The Mississippi” (.54 caliber) round balls were sometimes issued to be used with the Austrian Rifle. They measured .535 and rattled around in the barrel of a 13.9 mm Austrian rifle like a BBs in a box. The correct round for the Austrian Rifle was not the conical Minié ball either, but rather the Lorenz/Wilkinson solid base bullet. Due to the design of Austrian rifles using solid lead ammunition in a smaller caliber, the trajectory was much flatter. With incorrect ammunition of the wrong size, accuracy was negatively impacted. The following quote is from an 1861 article from an English engineering journal on how the Lorenz projectile and rifling system worked: “Another exactly opposite system, from the hollow base conical Minié ball, of making the projectile fill the grooves is by compression—that is to say, it is not expanded by the explosion of the powder, but squeezed together longitudinally. This system least they mostly used the same size ammunition. The Confederacy also imported Model 1854 Austrian rifles, and roughly 30,000 were issued to the Army of Tennessee in mid-1864. They were part of an earlier shipment which was condemned as “a lot of trash…in horrible condition” upon arrival in Nassau in 1863 and sent to be refurbished and repaired. The rough numbers of C.S. imports are usually given as the awfully round figure of 100,000 (by Caleb Huse). Upon closer examination, one can only account for about 80,000 documented Model 1854 Austrian rifles purchased by Confederate agents. The backing for that is found in the footnotes in the chapter on the Model 1854 Austrian Rifle in an upcoming book (by the author) Suppliers to the Confederacy Volume III: British and European Imported Quartermaster Goods, Artillery and Other Ordnance.

Model 1854 Austrian Rifle lock assembly, note numbered parts (37) and no “tumbler link.” This is an example of the ‘old style’ so-called hook lock where the mainspring rests directly on the tumbler, an antiquated design even at the time. (Craig Barry) possesses the same advantages as the Minié as regards simplicity and convenience of loading, with a great reduction of recoil, through the successive filling of the grooves by the bullet. The peculiarity of this system is that it was simultaneously invented by two gentlemen in 1852, an Austrian artillery officer of the name of Lorenz, and an English gunsmith, Wilkinson, hence the system is fairly known as the Lorenz/Wilkinson. It has been most extensively employed in Austria, where, since 1854, the Chasseurs have been gradually armed with short rifles of that pattern. They were employed in Italy in 1859, and that they are effective in the hands of expert shots was proved by the great loss the French suffered in officers.” By mid-1863, the Union was either re-rifling large numbers of Austrian rifles to .58 caliber or ordering them made by commercial contractors to that bore diameter and issuing them (mostly) to Western Theater but also Eastern Federal troops. It is not uncommon to find Federal units equipped with U.S. Model rifle-muskets, P-53 Enfield long rifles, and the M1854 Lorenz, in .577 or .58 caliber, all at the same time. Private Orrin Cook of the 22nd Massachusetts Co. B noted in his diary, “Some of our boys got Austrian rifles, some Enfield, and others Springfield. I got the Enfield.” There are of course recorded issues related to the scarcity of spare parts, but at

The majority of Model 1854 Austrian rifles in the U.S. Civil War were the Type I infantry version with block sights, 1,335 mm in length (close to fifty-three inches) with a 945 mm (just over thirty-seven inches) barrel and a total weight of 3.9 kilograms (eight pounds). The metal parts were finished in a variety of ways. Some later contracts were ordered “finished as the Enfield,” which most likely meant “blued.” Others were noted by soldiers as “bright and shiny as a fifty-cent piece.” As with all Grade Two, hand-made arms, the Model 1854 Austrian rifle would not interchange parts. For this reason, the individual parts of the rifle are numbered so they could be more easily matched up during final assembly at the factory. Considering the lack of sophistication in the design of the Model 1854, it had other positive qualities that Civil War soldiers appreciated. Compared to the U.S. model rifle-musket, the shorter barrel length meant the round could be rammed home in one continuous push, rather than tapped down in stages. The left side of the stock (often) featured a cheek rest, which was a nice piece of human engineering, at least on most of the Austrian Government rifles. The commercial gun-makers filling commercial contracts later in the war often left the cheek rest off the stock to cut costs. The 1854 Austrian Rifle was a pound lighter in overall weight than either the U.S. Model 1861 rifle-musket or the P-53 Enfield long rifle, a fact much appreciated by the soldiers that carried them. The Lorenz was marked on the lock plate with the last three digits of the year of production. For example, “857” would be a rifle made in 1857. Like the U.S. Model 1861 rifle-musket, the Model 1854 Austrian rifle stocks did not have a ramrod “spoon” in the stock, relying instead on a swell near the tip to hold it in place. This was the reason for double strap top barrel band and trumpet shaped thimble, which would otherwise appear to be there for decoration. The barrel had a very slow rate of twist made to work with the projectile designed for it. The “hook” lock was designed so the mainspring rested directly on the tumbler, in other words, it lacked the tumbler link used in the P-53 Enfield and U.S. model rifle-muskets. Recently, an inquiry directed to reproduction gun-maker Davide Pedersoli about the possibility for a quality reproduction of the Civil War-era Lorenz was answered as follows: “Thank you for your email and for the continuous confidence you are giving to our products. The Lorenz rifle is a project we are currently having working on and we forecast to be ready to introduce it at the end of 2016. If you want to reserve one to be among the first customers to receive it, we suggest you contact one of the following two companies: IFG-NA, LLC dba Italian Firearms Group 1619 South Kentucky Suite B-210 P.O. Box 2726 - 79105 Amarillo, TX 800-450-1852, 806-398-0777 806-398-0778