This rifle is lot #410 in the upcoming May 2019 Rock Island auction.
When the Belgian military decided to adopt a new rifle in the late 1880s, they attached a wide variety of competitors. The best of the batch were Mauser and Mannlicher, with Mauser ultimately winning – but among the other entrants was Belgian Captain Uldarique Marga and his bolt action rifle design. Marga’s rifle used a Beaumont-style V-spring for the firing pin, 10 rear locking lugs, a single-stack blind magazine, and included a cartridge cutoff. It was an acceptable rifle, if not excellent (the V-spring Beaumont system was less reliable and durable than coil springs, and the rear locking lugs were an artifact of the recent black powder days) – but it simply did not show the excellence of the Mauser rifle.
