As mentioned earlier, the Brown Bess employed a flintlock ignition system, whereby a piece of shaped ("knapped") flint was held between the jaws of a cock, and when the trigger was pulled it was then brought down by the force of a mainspring to scrape against the surface of a combination striker and pan cover to produce a shower of sparks, which would then ignite the priming powder and set off the main charge through a touchhole in the side of the breech.

While seemingly primitive by modern standards, the flintlock was a head-and-shoulders improvement over the earlier matchlock. First appearing in various forms in the early 1600s, it became the preferred form of ignition in less than a century.

Flintlocks had the advantages of reliability and relatively low cost of production. If the flint was changed regularly and adjusted properly, weather conditions appropriate to the use of the gunpowder of the period and the touchhole kept clear, reliability was excellent.

The Brown Bess, as mentioned earlier, was a smoothbore musket, as were most of the military arms of the period. The reason for this was ease of manufacture and simplicity of loading. Rifles, which were still in their fledgling state for military use in the late 18th century, took far too long to load, required specialized training and were more expensive to manufacture. The British did have some rifle troops, but Napoleon eschewed them completely as being not worth the bother.

Tactics of the period called for a soldier to load and fire at massed troop formations as rapidly as possible, the object of the exercise being to get as many balls flying in the direction of the enemy in as short a time as possible. Though styles of deployment (column vs. line, etc.) might vary from country to country, basically a textbook-style battle would go something like this: A large number of troops, spaced just close enough together to be able to manipulate their muskets, faced each other at a given distance--usually between 100 and 200 yards. They would be placed in several ranks. The order to fire would be given, and this having been carried out, soldiers would reload and advance, firing at increasingly closer ranges until the command to fix bayonets would be given and the contest decided by hand-to-hand fighting.

Loading a Brown Bess in the original fashion is not really all that difficult. First, bite off the base of the paper cartridge (1, 2). Next, prime the pan, making sure the cock is in the half, safety position (3). Close the pan (4) and drop the musket, resting the butt on the ground. Pour the remaining powder down the barrel (5), place the cartridge in the muzzle (6), and ram it home (7, 8). Cock the musket (9), present, and fire (10).

Both the British and French used triangular socket-style bayonets during the Napoleonic Wars. While the French style had a rotating locking ring to hold the bayonet to the barrel, the standard British 17-inch-bladed pattern employed a simple socket with an angular channel that slipped over a lug on the top of the muzzle. While not as secure as the French version, it could be fixed more rapidly and was still more than adequate to its task. In fact, the British infantryman was particularly feared for his ability with the bayonet.

The East India Company added a simple spring catch to its bayonets, which kept them from slipping around on the barrel, but this was never adopted by Crown troops. Over the years, I've tried to attach a number of different original bayonets to vintage Brown Bess muskets, with varying results. It seems that, depending upon the maker, period and style of the gun, barrel and socket diameters could vary greatly, and a blade that might be perfect on one musket might not work on another. Basically, it behooved a soldier to make sure he kept his equipment together and intact.

The Brown Bess musket was loaded using a paper cartridge that included about 100 grains of coarse black powder (called, simply, "gunpowder" at the time) and a one-ounce, .71-caliber round lead ball. Caliber of the gun was .75, and the difference in ball and bore diameter, called "windage," allowed for ease of loading, especially when the musket became fouled.

Various manuals had a different number of commands for loading and firing a musket, but the average involved about a dozen separate steps (see photo sequence).