History:
While Nicolas Pieper was busy with enhancements to his vestpocket pistol, the new company Anciens Etablissements Pieper decided to put a vestpocket pistol of own design onto the market.
For these reasons they purchased the patents of the gun designer Bernard Clarus (Brit Pat. 7.237 from March 26th, 1907). The main feature of this patent was (besides the kind of stripping and the release of the hammer) the damping of the recoil impulse by a strong spiral spring.
This feature was accordingly emphasized as great enhancement in advertisments of that time.
The pistol appeared on the market end of 1909 with its name "Bayard" and sold very well from the beginning on.
"Bayard" and it's trademark -the armed knight- became later on a protected tradename of the company Anciens Etablissements Pieper and was used for lots of other guns of their production.
First models were made in caliber .32 ACP, followed in 1911 by a model in caliber .380 and in 1912 by one in caliber .25 ACP. These variations therefore sometimes are named by collectors as Model /10/11/12 according the year of it's introduction.
During the time of production over the years some minor changes in the construction took place, like e.g. guiding of the slide, total length and fixing of the grips.
The pistols stayed in production up to the start of World War I in 1914 and had increasing demands before the war. After the end of the war in 1918 the production was started again and was continued up to 1923, when a new model was introduced.
Exact figures are not reported, however the highest serial number reported up to now is 265890.
Remark:
In some resources in relation to the Bayard pistol sometimes another patent of B.Clarus (Brit Pat. 22.282 from Okt.9th, 1907) is mentioned, which is dealing with the "inverted hammer", a hammer placed in the slide instead of the receiver. This however appearently results from a mixing up of Clarus' patents. There is no Bayard pistol reported, which got this features.
Technical Data:
SYSTEM: self-cocking pistol with internal hammer
CARTRIDGES : 5+1
CALIBER : .32 ACP
BARREL LENGTH : 54.5mm, 5 grooves left hand twisting
WEIGHT EMPTY : 460 g
TOTAL LENGTH : 132.5 mm
TOTAL HEIGHT : 88.5 mm
TOTAL WIDTH : 25 mm
TRIGGER : Single Action
SIGHT : fix
SAFETY : lever-safety
FINISH : blued
GRIPS : hard rubber