The Germans had paid close attention and were taking advantage of critical lessons learned from the Turks at the battles of Plevna in 1877 where the Turks, armed in critical part with M1866 Winchester tube magazine repeating rifles, soundly defeated the numerically superior Russians armed with Russian M1867 Krnkas, the Russian M1868 Berdan I and Russian M1870 Berdan II single shot rifles.  But even more importantly to the new Mauser’s development, from the German perspective another war with France seemed inevitable following France’s humiliating loss of the 1870-1871 conflict.  French war minister General Boulanger was fanning the flames of revenge and it was anyone’s guess what the post war decade would bring.  Germany had widely fielded its solid M1871 Mauser, but it was not long before the Prussian Ministry of War sought to introduce a magazine rifle for the German army.  Given the political tensions between the two countries, the cost and disruption to ammunition producing factories of changes, and the already abundant stores of M71 ammunition, it was decided to pursue a repeater chambered for the same cartridge as the plentiful M71s.

   The army doctrine underlying the employment of a repeater, in almost everyone’s army, was for the infantryman to be able to increase his rate of fire in critical tactical situations.  But that otherwise ammunition should be used carefully.  Thus the new rifle would employ a cut-off device that would keep its magazine as a reserve, using the rifle as a single-shot in most situations and engagements.  Only critical situations would trigger the employment of the cartridges in the magazine.

   Most all other nations’ military repeaters of the time, both tube and box magazine rifles, were equipped with some kind of magazine cut-off device; French Kropatschek (1878), Portuguese Kropatschek (1886), Norwegian Jarmann (1887), Italian Vetterli-Vitali (1887), Chinese-purchased Winchester-Hotchkiss (1879), Dutch Beaumont-Vitali (even in 1889) and the British Lee Metford (1888).  The only significant exceptions were the Swiss Army, who was already significantly advanced with a magazine repeater arming front-line soldiers by 1869.  The M1869 Swiss Vetterli was initially equipped with a magazine cut-off but it was quickly discarded, the Swiss opting to go full repeater by 1870 and the box-magazine-metal-clip fed Austrian M1886 Mannlichers.

   Indeed, by the early 1880s, several tubular magazine turning bolt repeaters were in service, including the well-proven Swiss Vetterli series, the Austrian Fruwirth and Styer-built French M1878 Gras-Kropatschek. A number of other magazine rifle designs were reviewed and tested, but as yet there was no design that did not have significant drawbacks.  Box magazine rifles were simply not yet evolved enough to offer the advantages that would later become apparent with the introduction of the British Lee series, the later Mauser 1889 and their brilliant progeny.  In the early 1880s, the best option appeared to be a turning bolt action rifle with a magazine tube running below the barrel; i.e., the well-established Winchester solution.

   Army trials took place in Prussia in the winter of 1882-1883 using 2,000 prototype Mauser rifles, the trials leading to some improvements in the design:  Deleting a cartridge from the magazine to get the magazine tube further back and to somewhat improve weight distribution; altering ammunition to use a flat-nose bullet and more deeply seated primers to reduce the risk of an in-magazine ignition; cutting rifling depth from 0.30mm to 0.15mm to improve gas sealing, and determining that an integral cleaning rod was not absolutely essential.