300 Chapter Eight
French field artillery was, in fact, of superior design;^66 but what sewed
up the Russian market for the French was the political rapprochement
of 1891–94, by which France became Russia’s ally against the Ger
mans. Generous loans floated by French banks in response to hints
from the Quai d’Orsay kept the tsar’s government solvent and allowed
it to pay for strategically valuable imports from France. Steel for rail
roads was as important as weapons, and especially so for French steel
makers, who, thanks to their new foreign markets, were at last able to
achieve a scale of production large enough to make technologically
efficient, completely up-to-date mills profitable. As a result, the
growth rate of French ferrous metallurgy in the twenty years before
1914 far outstripped even Germany’s.^67 Their new technical effi
ciency, plus the financial recklessness of French banks in extending
loans to dubiously credit-worthy governments, allowed French firms to
invade German markets for arms and rails in such diverse places as
China, Italy, the Balkans, and Latin America as well as Russia.
Export of arms and steel rails was matched by export of know-how.
French and British arms firms energetically set out to help the Rus
sians by building new and expanding old arms factories on a massive
scale, especially after 1906. Soon the specter of a rearmed, technically
modernized Russia, with a rail net that would permit rapid mobiliza
tion of its vast manpower, began to haunt German General Staff plan
ners with ever increasing poignancy. The financial-technical linkup
between France and Russia, with some British assistance, gave tangi
ble reality to the German fear of encirclement.^68
- In 1893 Schneider-Creusot introduced the famous French 75mm quick-firing
field gun. It revolutionized artillery design because of its unprecedented stability. De
spite its lightness, which allowed easy and rapid deployment and redeployment in
battle, the 75mm, perfected in 1898, remained on target shot after shot without
needing any adjustment whatsoever, and consequently could fire about four times as
fast as other guns—up to twenty rounds a minute—with no loss of accuracy. The secret
was an exact equilibrium between the energy of recoil and the force of the compressed
air that returned the gun to firing position. Krupp designs did not catch up for several
years. Cf. Bernhard Menne, Krupp, or the Lords of Essen (London, 1937), p. 237. British
artillery remained inferior throughout World War I. Cf. O. G. F. Hogg, The Royal
Arsenal, (London, 1963), 2:1421; I.V. Hogg, A History of Artillery, pp. 95–97.
- Joseph A. Roy, Histoire de la famille Schneider et du Creusot (Paris, 1962), pp.
88–89, says that Schneider sold half of its guns and nearly half of its armor plate abroad
between 1885 and 1914. Fifteen countries bought armor plate. Italy, Spain, and Russia
were the leading customers. Twenty-three countries bought artillery, with Russia by far
the most important buyer, Spain and Portugal next. For statistics on the growth of
French metallurgical output see Comité des Forges, La sidérurgie française, 1864–1914
(Paris, n.d.). Newly opened coalfields at Briey near the German border contributed to
the spectacular rise of French steelmaking.
- Raymond Poidevin, Les relations économiques et financières entre la France et l’Al
lemagne de 1898 à 1914 (Paris, 1969), pp. 290–98, 709–11, 811; René Girault, Em-
