Supplemented with French, Russian and captured Austrian weapons, these were the rifles the Serbs fought with in the Great War.Īfter WWI, Yugoslavia received Austrian, German, Turkish and Bulgarian rifles as reparations.
#YUGO MAUSER RIFLES SERIES#
This was followed by a series of rifles based on Mauser’s M95 and M98 actions and chambered for the 7x57mm cartridge: the Puška 1899, the Puška 99/07 and the Puška 1910. In 1880, they adopted the Puška 78/80, a variation of Mauser’s Infanteriegewehr M.71 rifle. Having a history so interlaced with warfare, the Serbs attempted to equip their army with the most up-to-date weaponry. The new kingdom had a mixed population of Serbs, Albanians, Macedonians, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians and Montenegrins who coexisted in a tense atmosphere acerbated by centuries of tribal and religious distrust. While Serbia ws occupied by the Central Powers, the Serbian army was evacuated by the Allies, reequipped and continued to see service on the Thesalonikii front in northern Greece until 1918, After the defeat of the Central Powers, Serbia formed the core of the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, or Yugoslavia. These actions led to the First World War. In 1914, Bosnian-Serb nationalists, who were financed and armed by Serbia, assassinated the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Serbian independence was re-established in 1878, and in keeping with the best traditions of Balkan tribalism and vendetta, Serbia soon found itself at odds with most of its neighbors, especially the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But the Serbs could not stand against the might of the Ottoman Empire, and at the 1389 Battle of Kosovo the Serbian army was destroyed, resulting in almost 500 years of Turkish domination in the region. 600, and by the 12th century under their famous king, Stefan Dusan, they had displaced the Byzantines as the dominant power in the region. The Serbs were a Slavic tribe that settled in the Balkans around A.D.