LeMat Revolver

Did You Know?

• A rare carbine variant had extended barrels and a rifle-type stock totaling 20 inches in length.
• The rarest variant, the Baby LeMat, was a reduced size version with a 4 3/4-inch barrel, chambered in .32 caliber with a .41 bore shotgun; only 100 were produced.
• Modern reproductions of the LeMat revolver have been manufactured by the Pietta company of Brescia, Italy, since 1985.

History and design

Also called the "Grape Shot Revolver," this sidearm was developed in New Orleans in 1856 by Jean Alexandre Le Mat, with manufacturing backed by P. G. T. Beauregard, later a Confederate general. The first 250 prototypes were made by John Krider of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1859. An estimated 2,900 were produced in Liège, Belgium, and Paris, France; European-made pistols were shipped through Birmingham, England, where they received proofmarks. The revolver's defining feature is a nine-shot cylinder that revolves around a separate central barrel of larger caliber. That central barrel is smoothbore and functions as a short-barreled shotgun. The shooter selects which barrel to fire by flipping a lever on the hammer: up directs the striker to the primer for the lower barrel, standard position fires the cylinder chambers. The 1st Model LeMats from Paris were chambered for .42 caliber in the cylinder with a .63 caliber (18 gauge) smoothbore barrel and had a jointed ramrod on the right-hand side of the frame. Later, a lighter .35-caliber pistol with a .55-caliber (28-gauge) barrel was produced during the American Civil War. Because these were non-standard ammunition sizes, owners had to cast their own bullets. Final models were made in .36 or .44 caliber, but few reached the South due to the Union blockade.

Civil War use

LeMat wanted his unusual revolver to be the go-to firearm for cavalry and dragoons. To get it into the hands of the U.S. Army, he teamed up with his cousin, P. G. T. Beauregard, a major at the time, in April 1859. Beauregard later became one of the first U.S. officers to switch sides for the Confederacy. Once the Civil War started, the Confederacy ordered 5,000 of these revolvers, but since the South lacked the factories to build them, production was set up overseas and the guns smuggled in. Roughly 2,500 made it past the Union naval blockade. Famous Confederate figures like Stonewall Jackson, J. E. B. Stuart, Braxton Bragg, Richard H. Anderson, and Captain Henry Wirz carried one. Stuart was especially fond of the design. Beauregard’s own engraved LeMat, which he used throughout the war, now sits in the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond. The revolver was built between 1856 and 1865. The earliest ones came from John Krider in Philadelphia, while the second model—the first made abroad—was produced by Charles Frederic Girard and Son in Paris. Worried about quality, LeMat looked into having the Birmingham Small Arms Company in England make them, but that never happened. French-made LeMats shipped through the UK were stamped with proof marks from the Birmingham Proof House, leading many to wrongly think they were English. A tiny number were actually made illegally in the UK, likely by the London Armoury Company, but only two examples are known today, and it’s unlikely any of those British copies saw action in the Civil War.