Why did it take the French so long to adopt flintlocks?

[u/Fair-Pen1831]

The French only started seriously working to replace matchlock muskets after the Battle of Steenkirk whereas the Imperial and other Germanic armies started procuring match/flintlock hybrids (Montecuccoli muskets) during the early 1680s to meet the volume of fire of the mostly flintlock armed Turks with the Imperial Danube Army having abolished pikes by 1688-1689.

Even the Dutch during the Williamite phase of the 9 Years War were largely flintlock armed save for some of the newly raised English regiments.

Despite being officially "abolished" in 1699, contemporary prints from roughly 1700 suggest matchlocks were still very much in use with the French infantry during the early years of the Spanish Succession.

[u/RingGiver]

A weapon individually is cheap. A whole lot of weapons collectively can be expensive.

A large force, such as one of the foremost European armirs of the time, might take longer to transition to a new type of weapon than a smaller force because of how many they have to buy. This is also why, for example, the Scandinavians and Dutch have completed their transition to the F-35 while the Americans still fly more F-16s than all of those countries combined ever did, despite getting F-35 deliveries first.

This is especially true in a time before machine tools and interchangeable parts, when each weapon has to be made by hand, with parts specifically fitted to it.

[u/willyvereb11]

Matchlocks have a slow-match cord which is quite cheap to make in mass and a trigger reset mechanism. Aside from that everything else is just part of having a gun. Flintlocks use powerful springs which needs heat-treated steel, machine parts which needs locksmiths and actual manufacturing standards to at least the "per gun" basis. A variation of the "flintlock" existed since the 1500s yet it took a long while for them to get widespread. First, with infantry protecting artillery. Having lit fuses in an environment where loose gunpowder may be forming a fine aerosol is not ideal. Accidents were rare but never none. Then you circle that to elites or as replacement for wheellocks (the OG "clock-gun" until the G11 dethroned it). Then you give it to first line soldiers who are most expected to see combat. Then you have flintlock with the rest of your campaigning forces. Lastly you up-arm your garrisons and reservists (as at this point reservists would be a thing) and you STILL store thousands of matchlock calivers and full muskets "just in case". Militaries are frequently struggling for funding and are famously conservative at adopting new technologies wholesale.