GENERALLY:  The Beaumont is a turning bolt action rifle who's major distinctive feature is the arrangement of the mainspring which is housed inside the large, hollow, bulbous two-piece bolt handle.  The rifle was designed by a Dutch engineer from Maastricht, from whom it gets is name.  Apparently inspired by the French Chasspot, forerunner to the M1874 French Gras, the action is a typical split-bridge with the bolt handle locking forward of the receiver and constituting its sole locking lug.  The rear of the striker is smooth and rounded thus the rifle may only be cocked by the bolt, and cocks on opening.  The bolt is sleve is two piece with a very simple non-rotating bolt head retained by a screw fitted from the top of the bolt body.  Like its early single shot bolt rifle contemporaries, (e.g., the German M1871 Mauser), the bolt head is fitted with an extractor located in a channel on the left side of the receiver, but not with an ejector.  It appears from the literature that the striker spring was delicate and more prone to breaking than the more common coil spring powered strikers, although this author has examined perhaps 20 Beaumonts and has never seen one with a broken striker spring.  Despite what appears to have been the disadvantages of the striker spring arrangement, this design was copied in the Murata Type 13 and Murata Type 18 adopted by Japan in 1880 and 1885 respectfively.  Perhaps more disadvantageous was that the striker spring in the bolt assembly prevented the development of carbine versions with turned down bolt handles.  Holland adopted a Remington Rolling Block carbine chambered in the Beaumont cartridge (now a rather rare variant) to fill it's carbine and short rifle needs.  The M1871 Beaumont was one of the first major Europeon metallic cartridge rifles and also one of the last, remaining in service, after modification to a repeater as the M1871/88 Beaumont-Vitali, to the turn of the century.

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PHOTO:   M1871 Dutch Beaumont, Type 2.   (This rifle was made in 1885, lacking the early version safety lever of the Type 1, pictured below.  It does not have the small hole detent on the right side of the bolt forward of the bolt guide that most Beaumonts have, left over from the safety device).

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DISTINGUISHING CHARECTERISTICS:  The arrangement of the mainspring, which is housed inside the large, hollow, bulbous two-piece bolt handle is particularly distinctive but not apparent at a casual glance.  If you look at the photos you can see the split bolt handle in the photo above, as well as the edge of the retaining screw in the front of the bolt handle.  More apparent from a distance is the rear sight which, unlike the later and more common M1871/88 Beaumont-Vitali, is a small tangent type lever more akin to the Swiss Peabody, than later Beaumonts.   Additionally, the trigger guard has a distinctively Dutch concave rear face, which also appears on the Dutch Snider conversions.

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The receivers are most commonly marked with the name P. STEVENS over MAASTRICHT or the word "BAR" over the armory at DELFT, or the receivers are unmarked.

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See:  M1871/88 Beaumont-Vitali

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Interesting Beaumont Website:   http://www.eddydebeaumont.nl/

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MISC NOTES:  Early Beaumonts had a safety which locked the bolt in a half rotated position.  It consisted of a trigger shaped lever that was mounted at 90 degrees on the right side of the receiver just behind where the bolt is located in the closed position.  The spring loaded lever has a pin which fits into the detent or small hole in the bolt, just behind the bolt ridge and just ahead of the striker guide rib.  When the bolt was half turned, the lever pin locked into this small detent preventing the bolt from being closed completely or turned in any way until the lever was pulled back removing the pin from the detent.  This was abandoned in 1876 and, but for the remaining hole, is missing in the photos above, as that rifle was made in 1885.  An example of the early Beaumont safety system is shown below.