The revolver “L’Explorateur” in caliber .320.

When I pleasantly look back into the monthly magazines and arms catalogs – about the collection and our shared hobby in general – which were published thirty years ago, I always have a nagging refrain that comes to my mind: “ Que reste-t-il de nos amours, que reste-t-il de ces beaux jours… “ (TN: “What do we keep from our loved ones, what have we kept from these beautiful days…”). This lament by Charles Trenet carries the nostalgia that is stirred up by these pages from catalogs and classified ads offering in number and at affordable prices objects and weapons that make us dream today. This nostalgia grows even more when we go back in time even further, to the end of the 19th century. The catalogues of La Manufacture d’Armes et Cycles de Saint-Étienne (“La Manu” in the hearts of collectors) or the German Alpha catalogues, illustrate with great richness the extent of the pieces that were then available to ordinary citizens, at least those that could afford such items. (TN: French nickname for the company)

The revolver that we had the pleasure of having a go with was proposed in the catalog of “La Manu”. We briefly exposed in the article on the revolver “L’Africain”, the history of this institution that was the Manufacture of Arms and Cycles of Saint-Étienne and its catalogs that delighted collectors from then and now. At the end of the ^19th century, the arms industry was experiencing unprecedented creativity, as it certainly had for a very long time, but the appearance of the first reliable semi-automatic pistols, would shake up the market. Some observers predicted the quick disappearance of traditional revolvers, others pointed out the relative unreliability and high cost of these guns. More than a century later the two systems still coexist!