The French adopted a standard infantry musket in 1717 along with a process for producing it in large quantities. For most of the eighteenth century, French arms manufacturing was concentrated in Maubeuge, Charleville and Saint-Étienne, where production was divided between scores of privately owned artisanal workshops working under contract. Final assembly was centralized in the royal armories at Maubeuge and Charleville. At Saint-Étienne muskets were assembled by contractors.
By the time France entered the American War for Independence, this artisanal process was straining to meet demand, but it far exceeded the capacity of any other system. Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière, royal inspector of manufactures, described Saint-Étienne in 1778. The whole town, he wrote, “is shrouded in coal smoke which penetrates everywhere.” He estimated that thirty thousand people lived in and around Saint-Étienne, “all of them occupied at the forge: men, women, children, boys, and girls; armorers, ironmongers, metalworkers of all sorts. You cannot have any idea of the number of forges, and their activity: these are the true dens of Vulcan.”
This engraving—a plate from Pierre Surirey de Saint-Remy’s Memoirs D’Artillerie published in 1741—depicts the armory at Charleville, which gave its name to the standard infantry musket. Thousands of muskets destined for use in the Revolutionary War by American and French troops were assembled, tested, stored and shipped from this facility in the Ardennes.