With refeience to Newsletter No. 129, with regard to the rate of fire and accuracy of the smoothbore musket of the Napoleonic period, I believe I have a little information which may possibly be of assistance to those who have not yet been able to undertake research of their own. The British "Brown Bess" musket, one of the most celebrated firearms of all time, could be fired by a trained soldier at a rate of about three shots per minute, given god conditions: i.e. a new flint, dry powder, a clean priming pan and an unfouled barrel, Some more expert battalions could manage a faster rate of fire, up to five shots per minute. However, the rate of misfires was calculated as two out of thirteen shots, and unseasoned troops bad a tendency to fire the ramrod occasionally, thus rendering the musket useless until a new rod was obtained! The rate of fire was much increased by another method of loading, one in which the ball, powder and wadding were simply dropped down the barrel, and, instead of being rammed down, the musket butt was banged upon the ground. Although this increased the rate of fire, misfires were far more frequent. Wet weather likewise increased the percentage of misfires. The rate of fire was slowed down dramatically when bayonets were fixed, as anyone who has ever tried to ram a charge down a musket with fixed bayonet will realise; the danger of stabbing one's arm is extreme! The more shots fired, the slower became the rate of fire, as the barrel became fouled and the flint broke up; the rate of fire dropped, as an action progressed, to perhaps one round per minute, or sometimes even less. As to the accuracy of the musket, a leading authority, Colonel Hangar, wrote in 1814 that "The soldier's musket, if not exceedingly ill-bored (as many are), will strike the figure of a man at 80 yards, but a soldier must be very unfortunate indeed who shall be wounded by a common musket at 150 yards, provided his antagonist aims at him; and as to firing at a man at 200 yards with a common musket, you may as well fire at the moon and have the same hopes of hitting your object. I do maintain and will prove, whenever called for, that no man was ever killed at 200 yards, by a common musket, by the person who aimed at him." This opinion was further reinforced by a test carried out by the Royal Engineers in 1841. At 150 yards, a target twice as high and twice as broad as a man was hit with three out of four shots. At 250 yards, with the same target, not one out of ten shots hit it, and no one even knew where they went! Back to Table of Contents -- Wargamer's Newsletter # 131 To Wargamer's Newsletter List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1973 by Donald Featherstone. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com