Consol Weapons

Of secondary importance to the Lorenz arms but of major interest to the arms collector and historian were another class of Austrian guns, the Consolprimed muskets, rifles, and pistols which were imported by the North. A few of these unusual weapons, erroneously termed “pill lock” by collectors, may have been used by the South. But Confederate supplies of even regular percussion caps were always strained— the special tube-like detonators used in the Consol lock guns would have been almost impossible to supply. The North was in better shape, and the tally at War’s end listed “249,641,400 percussion primers, Austrian, &c......$11,683.50” as having been procured for the Consol-lock guns.

Hermann Boker & Company, “Guns & Hardware,” of 50 Cliff Street, New York, Liege, and Birmingham, England, was the principal source for Consol muskets, though General Fremont acquired 25,000. Boker, until after the turn of the century an active New York export-import munitions firm and jobber of Borchardt automatic pistols, worked closely with a Belgian agent who also seems to have been tied up with the later international junk armaments dealer ALFA, Adolph Frank, Hamburg, and with the post-Civil War United States arms dealer Francis Bannerman. Bannerman, whose Belgian addresss in 1900 was 79, rue Lairesse, Liege, pictured the Consol lock guns in his catalog, saying: “Our agent in Belgium acted for the firm of Hermann Boker & Co. ... He informed me that he altered over 60,000 Austrian tube-lock guns into regular percussion cap muskets, which were used to arm the Union Army Volunteers, 1861-65. . . .” M. Ancion of Ancion-Marx in 1961 told this writer his firm had been agents for Bannerman in Liege.
Major Alfred Mordecai, on a military mission to Europe in 1854, noted the issue of this form of musket lock. “In Austria the greater part of the foot troops are still armed with the smoothbore musket, altered from flint to percussion, and adapted to a peculiar kind of priming,” he wrote. “This priming consists of percussion powder placed in a copper tube of such size that it can be introduced into the vent of the flint musket. Thus inserted, the primer lies in the groove of an iron seat which is substituted for the pan of the old musket; it is there protected by a cover which corresponds to the lower part of the flint ‘battery,’ and is held down by the battery spring; the percussion hammer, substituted for the flint cock, strikes on the top of this cover, and causes a point which projects from the cover into the pan to strike the tube of percussion powder, and thus fires the charge.”
Mordecai noted also that both smoothbores and rifles of the same caliber .70, were issued, rifled guns to noncommissioned officers “and some of the men in each company,” probably the more proficient marksmen as was the case five years later when the several styles of Lorenz rifles had been adopted. The Consol rifle “is constructed on the Delvigne plan; the ball resting on the mouth of a chamber, where it is expanded by a blow from a heavy rammer,” wrote Mordecai.
Two varieties of Consol lock existed. The 1835 pattern of Milanese inventor Giuseppe Consol was a true conversion from flintlock. An improved form was designed by General Baron Vincent Augustin. The latter, vintage Model 1841, was the pattern most widespread in the Austrian Army, an evolution from the Consol flint conversion, and perhaps preferred by Austrian authorities over the new percussion cap system because of its similarity in handling to the flint priming manual, with which hundreds of thousands of soldiers were already familiar, and also because the spring cap held the primer secure against loss yet ready to fire with the hammer cocked.
The original Consol cartridge had a primer fastened to a sort of button by two fine brass wires from primer through the holes in the button. The button was rolled into the paper cartridge tube when making ammunition. Placing it in the primer groove, the protective cap was closed down, cutting the strings and then the cartridge was tom and rammed in conventional fashion. The undersized bullet, upset in the Delvigne system

10720. AUSTRIAN ARMY TUBE-LOCK MUSKET, 33-inch barrel, jj-inch smooth bore, in working order, rusty, requires cleaning. Our agent in Belgium acted for the firm of Hermann Boker & Co. who supplied the U. S. Government with about four million dollars worth of guns, sabers, and other War material during the Civil War. He informed me that he altered over 60,000 Austrian tube-lock guns into regular percussion cap muskets which were used to arm the Union Army Vol* unteers, 1861-1865. Consequently tube-lock guns are now rare, every gun collector needs one to show evolution in fire arms. Offered complete.

Sectional view showing the lock mechanism, «ith pan and entrance for the capsule. Note hammer resting on the firing-pin, which ex* f,^lod” ,^lhe, pill-like fulminating charge when struck by the hammer.  Augustin version of Consol lock used tube primer and had protective hood that closed down over it like “frizzen” over flintlock pan. Firing pin in cover hit primer to detonate. Many were used by North with imported primers.

rifles, was retained by wads top and bottom in the musket load.
Augustin’s improvement consisted of placing a small firing pin in the protective top, hit directly by the hammer and thus making ignition more certain. The Augustin locks, flat beveled edge and with rounded ends much like the later Lorenz locks, were those most commonly bought by Wartime speculators and government agents, and of which Bannerman’s Belgian friend converted 60,000 to caplock for Boker.
The Army’s 1865 “Instructions for making Quarterly Returns of Ordnance & Ordnance Stores” under items of Class VI list a number of Boker guns. Designations are by sample number, as “Boker’s No. 1, Nos. 6 and 7,” up to No. 13. Reference is to a number of sample muskets deposited with the Ordnance Corps in 1861 when Hermann Boker undertook to supply weapons to Uncle Sam, and later referred to by inspecting Captain Silas Crispin in his report of February 13, 1862 to the Commission on Ordnance & Ordnance Stores. Austrian converted muskets were among this lot.
Said Crispin of Sample No. 1: “This arm is caliber .70, rifled with four very light grooves, the lands broader than the grooves. The length of the barrel is 34.5 inches. The stock is of white wood, common to the Austrian manufacture of arms. The lock is inferior in finish, but the material appears to be good. From the indications around the cone-seat, I believe this to be an altered arm, from flint lock to percussion (actually Consol-lock to percussion). It is furnished with the angular bayonet, the provision for securing which is a steel spring or catch riveted on the barrel; its weight is 9.25 pounds. This gun is the Austrian smoothbore musket rifled. It is furnished with an elevating sight, which turns down on the barrel, and has several notches for different ranges up to 900 paces. The implements accompanying these arms are screwdrivers and cone

Official Records illustrated Austrian musket of Augustin lock type converted to percussion, Belgian minie rifle also bought as smoothbores, regular Enfield, and Lorenz Jaeger rifle with broad single edge bayonet.

wrenches, and wipers of the Austrian pattern. No ball screws, spare cones or spring vises are furnished, 10,268 of these arms have been received.”
No. 2 Boker arm was the Austrian Lorenz 1854 rifle musket, both sights. Up to February, 1862, 15.528 had been received, 12,384 of the fixed sight type, 3,144 balance with elevating rear sight ranging up to about 800 yards. One bayonet sample was soft, incorrectly hardened, and Crispin was cautioned about inspecting them, but considered the gun, .54 caliber (he called it .55) “on the whole, fair . . . serviceable.”
No. 3 Broker arm was the same Lorenz rifle musket bored out to .58. Crispin noted the similar external dimensions, deduced this to be bored up to .58 and re-rifled. Same equipments as No. 1. Of the No. 3 kind, 984 had been received to that date.
The No. 4 Boker gun was also the Lorenz rifle musket, bored to .58 inch. “It is finished, in some respects,” stated Crispin, “in imitation of the Enfield rifle; barrel and lock blued, and tompion [tampion] and snap cap attached; the bayonet the usual Austrian model,” and identical, Crispin said, to No. 2 and 3, but “somewhat superior, in every respect, to these (2 and 3) samples.” Exactly 7,376 No. 4’s had been received.