A rifled musket, rifle musket, or rifle-musket is a type of firearm made in the mid-19th century. Originally the term referred only to
musket
A musket is a muzzle-loaded long gun that appeared as a smoothbore weapon in the early 16th century, at first as a heavier variant of the arquebus, capable of penetrating plate armour. By the mid-16th century, this type of musket gradually di ...
s that had been produced as a
smoothbore
A smoothbore weapon is one that has a barrel without rifling. Smoothbores range from handheld firearms to powerful tank guns and large artillery mortars.
History
Early firearms had smoothly bored barrels that fired projectiles without signi ...
weapon and later had their
barrels
A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers for liquids, u ...
replaced with
rifled
In firearms, rifling is machining helical grooves into the internal (bore) surface of a gun's barrel for the purpose of exerting torque and thus imparting a spin to a projectile around its longitudinal axis during shooting to stabilize the ...
barrels. The term later included rifles that directly replaced, and were of the same design overall as, a particular model of smoothbore musket.
History and development
In the early 19th century, there were
rifle
A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting, with a barrel that has a helical pattern of grooves ( rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus on accuracy, rifles are typically designed to be held with ...
s, and there were
musket
A musket is a muzzle-loaded long gun that appeared as a smoothbore weapon in the early 16th century, at first as a heavier variant of the arquebus, capable of penetrating plate armour. By the mid-16th century, this type of musket gradually di ...
s. Muskets were smoothbore
muzzle-loading
A muzzleloader is any firearm into which the projectile and the propellant charge is loaded from the muzzle of the gun (i.e., from the forward, open end of the gun's barrel). This is distinct from the modern (higher tech and harder to make) desig ...
weapons, firing round lead balls or
buck and ball
Buck and ball was a common load for muzzle-loading muskets, and was frequently used in the American Revolutionary War and into the early days of the American Civil War. The load usually consisted of a .50 to .75 caliber round lead musket ball t ...
ammunition, that were also designed to accept a
bayonet
A bayonet (from French ) is a knife, dagger, sword, or spike-shaped weapon designed to fit on the end of the muzzle of a rifle, musket or similar firearm, allowing it to be used as a spear-like weapon.Brayley, Martin, ''Bayonets: An Illustr ...
. Rifles were similar in that they used the same kind of
flintlock
Flintlock is a general term for any firearm that uses a flint-striking ignition mechanism, the first of which appeared in Western Europe in the early 16th century. The term may also apply to a particular form of the mechanism itself, also know ...
or
caplock
The percussion cap or percussion primer, introduced in the early 1820s, is a type of single-use percussion ignition device for muzzle loader firearm locks enabling them to fire reliably in any weather condition. This crucial invention gave rise ...
firing mechanism, but the main difference was that their barrels were rifled – that is, their barrels had grooves cut into the interior surface which would cause the bullet to spin as it left the barrel.
Rifles have the advantage of long range accuracy, because spinning bullets have far flatter and more stable trajectories than balls fired from smoothbore muskets. Muskets had the advantage of a faster rate of fire, for example a trained British soldier could fire three rounds a minute, while a rifleman would average two. A muzzle-loaded weapon required the bullet to fit snugly into the barrel. For a smoothbore weapon this can be a somewhat loose fit, but in the case of a rifle, the helical rifling lands in the barrel have to cut into the bullet to make it spin. The fit needs to be sufficiently tight for the bullet to engage the lands in order to impart spin; otherwise the bullet will wobble as it goes down the barrel, destroying its accuracy. Furthermore, if the barrel-to-bullet seal is not tight, gases will blow through the rifling grooves and around the bullet, compromising muzzle velocity, accuracy and the bullet's
terminal energy at the target. Their greater accuracy and range made rifles ideal for hunting, but the slower rate of fire was a significant impediment for widespread military use, along with the
fouling
Fouling is the accumulation of unwanted material on solid surfaces. The fouling materials can consist of either living organisms (biofouling) or a non-living substance (inorganic or organic). Fouling is usually distinguished from other surf ...
caused by normal firing which made them steadily more difficult to load.
The smooth-bore musket was the main weapon of the line infantry and light infantry, and rifles were used only by snipers and other specialist troops. All muskets were supplied with bayonets, which allowed them to be used in melee combat. At the time, the Russian and French armies actively used light infantry (rangers and voltigeurs), and sometimes scattered whole infantry battalions as skirmishers to fight long-term on rough terrain. Although rifles had better shooting accuracy than smoothbore muskets, their effective fire range was the same. For example, in the British Army, light infantrymen armed with ordinary muskets were trained for 300–400 yards. Since they were used as pikes, muskets tended to be fairly long and heavy weapons. They tended to be about four to six feet in length (six to eight feet including the bayonet), with a weight of around , as longer and heavier weapons were found to be too unwieldy. The length of a musket also allowed them to be fired by ranks, minimizing the risk that the men in the rear ranks would accidentally shoot the men in the front ranks in the back of the head, or, more likely, scorch their faces and burst their eardrums with the muzzle blast. Muskets six feet in length could be fired in three ranks without fear of accidents.
The relative inaccuracy and short range of the musket was not considered to be significant on the battlefield, because smoke from the
black powder
Gunpowder, also commonly known as black powder to distinguish it from modern smokeless powder, is the earliest known chemical explosive. It consists of a mixture of sulfur, carbon (in the form of charcoal) and potassium nitrate (saltpeter). T ...
used at the time quickly obscured the battlefield and rendered the longer range of the rifle useless, especially as a battle progressed.
Rifles were more expensive to make than muskets, and were typically used by small units of specialized riflemen trained not to fight in closed ranks, but in open order, spread out as
skirmisher
Skirmishers are light infantry or light cavalry soldiers deployed as a vanguard, flank guard or rearguard to screen a tactical position or a larger body of friendly troops from enemy advances. They are usually deployed in a skirmish line, an ir ...
s or
sharpshooter
A sharpshooter is one who is highly proficient at firing firearms or other projectile weapons accurately. Military units composed of sharpshooters were important factors in 19th-century combat. Along with " marksman" and "expert", "sharpshooter" ...
s. Since they were not fired over other men’s shoulders or designed for close-combat bayonet fighting, military rifles could be much shorter than muskets, which also made loading from the muzzle easier and reduced the difficulties associated with fitting the bullet into the barrel, although the rate of fire was still slower than that of a musket.
The problem of slow loading of rifles caused by barrel fouling was solved by the
Minié ball, which was invented in the 1840s by French inventor
Claude-Étienne Minié. Despite its name, the Minié ball was not a round ball at all – it was long and conical, with an expanding skirt at the rear of the bullet. The skirt allowed the minié ball to be smaller than the barrel's bore, so it would slip in as easily as the ball of a smoothbore. When the weapon was fired, the skirt expanded to fit tightly against the inside of the rifle barrel, with less energy wasted in blow-by around the projectile and ensuring that the rifling lands and grooves would impart a stabilizing spin to the minié ball.
In the 1840s and 1850s, many smoothbore muskets had their barrels replaced with similar barrels that were rifled so that they could fire a new type of bullet that greatly enhanced both its accuracy and range. These "rifled muskets" or "rifle muskets" were long enough to serve the function of muskets in close formations of line and square, were as quick to load as the old muskets and as easy to use with minimal training. Yet the
Minié-type rifled muskets were much more accurate than smoothbore muskets. Tests of a rifled musket firing Minié ball, and a smoothbore musket firing round ball, at various ranges against a 10 by 10 inches (25 cm × 25 cm) target, showed much higher accuracy for the rifled musket. From a smooth-bore musket, from 42% to 48% of bullets hit the target at a distance of 200 yards. At a distance of 300 yards, 18% of the bullets hit the target. For a rifle, the results were much better. From a rifle, 46% to 58% of bullets hit the target at a distance of 300 yards; 24% to 42% at 500 yards. This potential accuracy, however, required skills only acquired through advanced training and practice; a rifle-musket in the hands of a raw recruit would not have performed very much better than a smoothbore. Nevertheless, the musket was still a formidable force on the battlefield. At the beginning of the American Civil War, some infantry regiments chose to keep smooth-bore muskets, preferring them because they could shoot "buck and ball".
In the 1860s and 1870s, newer weapons were produced with rifled barrels and continued to be referred to as "rifled muskets" or "rifle-muskets" even though they had not originally been produced with smoothbore barrels. The term was only used for weapons that directly replaced smoothbore muskets. For example, the
Springfield Model 1861
The Springfield Model 1861 was a Minié-type rifled musket used by the United States Army and Marine Corps during the American Civil War. Commonly referred to as the "Springfield" (after its original place of production, Springfield, Massachus ...
with its percussion lock mechanism and long barrel was called a "rifled musket". In contrast, the
Henry repeating rifle and the
Spencer repeating rifle
The Spencer repeating rifles and carbines were 19th-century American lever-action firearms invented by Christopher Spencer. The Spencer was the world's first military metallic-cartridge repeating rifle, and over 200,000 examples were manufactur ...
produced in the same time period did not replace a rifled musket and did not have other musket-like characteristics, and was just referred to as a "rifle".
By the 1880s and 1890s, rifled muskets were made largely obsolete by
single-shot
Single-shot firearms are firearms that hold only a single round of ammunition, and must be reloaded manually after every shot. The history of firearms began with single-shot designs, then multi-barreled designs appeared, and eventually many cent ...
breech-loading rifles
A breechloader is a firearm in which the user loads the ammunition ( cartridge or shell) via the rear (breech) end of its barrel, as opposed to a muzzleloader, which loads ammunition via the front ( muzzle).
Modern firearms are generally breec ...
and
repeating rifle A repeating rifle is a single-barreled rifle capable of repeated discharges between each ammunition reloads. This is typically achieved by having multiple cartridges stored in a magazine (within or attached to the gun) and then fed individually in ...
s, such as the
Springfield Model 1873 and
Springfield Model 1892–99
The Springfield Model 1892–99 Krag–Jørgensen rifle is a Norwegian-designed bolt-action rifle that was adopted in 1892 as the standard United States Army military longarm, chambered for U.S. caliber .30-40 Krag cartridges. All versions and ...
. A significant number of the single-shot breech-loading rifles were produced by simply changing out the percussion lock mechanism of a rifled musket. However, once this change was made, the weapon was no longer referred to as a rifled-musket and was instead referred to as simply a "rifle".
Characteristics of rifled muskets
In general, rifle muskets were the same length as the smoothbore muskets they replaced. This meant that they typically had a barrel length of about and an overall length of about . Period U.S. Armory nomenclature described rifles and rifle-muskets as newly made firearms specifically designed and manufactured with rifling. Rifled muskets were smoothbore firearms returned to the armory or contractors for rifling. Considerable numbers of armory-stored smoothbores were converted in this way in the 1850s upon adoption of the
Minié ball as the standard projectile. Rifle muskets tended to be of smaller caliber than their smoothbore predecessors, for example, the .58 caliber U.S.
Springfield Model 1855
The Springfield Model 1855 was a rifled musket widely used in the American Civil War. It exploited the advantages of the new conical Minié ball, which could be deadly at over . It was a standard infantry weapon for Union and Confederates a ...
or the .577 caliber British
Pattern 1853 Enfield
The Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle-musket (also known as the Pattern 1853 Enfield, P53 Enfield, and Enfield rifle-musket) was a .577 calibre Minié-type muzzle-loading rifled musket, used by the British Empire from 1853 to 1867; after which many wer ...
. Tests conducted by the U.S. Army in the mid-1850s showed that the smaller caliber was more accurate at longer ranges. The cylindro-conical shape of the Minié ball also meant that the smaller-diameter but longer .58 caliber Minié ball had roughly the same amount of lead and weight as the larger .69 round ball. While the caliber was reduced, the overall length of the barrel was not. Shorter rifles could have easily been made (and were made for specific branches or arms such as
mounted infantry
Mounted infantry were infantry who rode horses instead of marching. The original dragoons were essentially mounted infantry. According to the 1911 ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', "Mounted rifles are half cavalry, mounted infantry merely speciall ...
and
riflemen
A rifleman is an infantry soldier armed with a rifled long gun. Although the rifleman role had its origin with 16th century hand cannoneers and 17th century musketeers, the term originated in the 18th century with the introduction of the ri ...
) that would have been more accurate than the smoothbore muskets they replaced, but military commanders still used tactics like firing by ranks, and feared that with a shorter weapon the soldiers in the rear ranks might accidentally shoot the front rank soldiers in the back of the head. Military commanders at the time also believed that bayonet fighting would continue to be important in battles, which also influenced the decision to retain existing barrel lengths.
In the US and British service standardized infantry firearms were produced in a longer "rifle musket" version and a shorter "rifle" version, such as the Springfield Model 1855. The rifle musket version had a 40-inch barrel and an overall length of . The rifle version had a barrel and an overall length of . In the British forces the distinction was retained between the full-length musket issued to the infantry as a whole, and the shorter and handier version of the Enfield produced for specialist rifle regiments and marines. The long version had the barrel held to the stock by three metal bands, while the shorter version needed just two, so they are referred to as “3-band” and “2-band” Enfields respectively.
Rifle muskets typically used
percussion lock systems, with some exceptions like the Springfield Model 1855, which also was equipped with the
Maynard tape primer
The Maynard tape primer was a system designed by Edward Maynard to allow for more rapid reloading of muskets.
Invention
Muskets in the early 19th century were flintlocks, which had a high rate of misfire and performed poorly in damp and humid w ...
system.
Since rifle muskets were meant as a direct replacement for smoothbore muskets, they were fitted with bayonets.
In military use, rifle musket loading was simplified somewhat through the use of
paper cartridge
A paper cartridge is one of various types of small arms ammunition used before the advent of the metallic cartridge. These cartridges consisted of a paper cylinder or cone containing the bullet, gunpowder, and in some cases, a primer or a lub ...
s, which were significantly different from modern
metallic cartridges. They typically consisted of rolled-up tubes of paper containing a premeasured amount of black powder and a greased Minié ball. The paper was torn open (typically with the shooter's teeth), the powder was poured down the barrel, the Minié ball was placed into the barrel and rammed down on top of the powder with the
ramrod
A ramrod (or scouring stick) is a metal or wooden device used with muzzleloading firearms to push the projectile up against the propellant (mainly blackpowder). The ramrod was used with weapons such as muskets and cannons and was usually held i ...
. The paper was then discarded. Also differing from a modern cartridge, a separate
percussion cap
The percussion cap or percussion primer, introduced in the early 1820s, is a type of single-use percussion ignition device for muzzle loader firearm locks enabling them to fire reliably in any weather condition. This crucial invention gave rise ...
had to be placed onto the percussion lock's cone before the weapon could be fired. The Maynard tape primer system attempted to speed up this last step by using paper strips similar to those used in modern toy
cap gun
A cap gun, cap pistol, or cap rifle is a toy gun that creates a loud sound simulating a gunshot and smoke when a small percussion cap is ignited. Cap guns were originally made of cast iron, but after World War II were made of zinc alloy, and mo ...
s in place of the percussion cap, but this proved to be unreliable in field service and was abandoned on later weapons.
An exception to this method was the Enfield rifle-musket cartridge. There were no lubrication rings moulded or swaged into the Enfield projectile. The projectile was inserted upside down in the cartridge and the outside of the cartridge paper was greased at the projectile end and intended to be inserted and used as a paper patch. A ramrod was used to fully seat the round.
Use in battle
Rifled muskets were heavily used in the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...
. The American-made
Springfield Model 1861
The Springfield Model 1861 was a Minié-type rifled musket used by the United States Army and Marine Corps during the American Civil War. Commonly referred to as the "Springfield" (after its original place of production, Springfield, Massachus ...
was the most widely used weapon in the war, followed by the British
Pattern 1853 Enfield
The Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle-musket (also known as the Pattern 1853 Enfield, P53 Enfield, and Enfield rifle-musket) was a .577 calibre Minié-type muzzle-loading rifled musket, used by the British Empire from 1853 to 1867; after which many wer ...
. The
Lorenz rifle
The Lorenz rifle was an Austrian rifle used in the mid 19th century. It was used in the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859 and the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, and also featured prominently in the American Civil War.
History
The Lorenz r ...
was the third most used rifle during the Civil War
The Enfield was also used in the
Crimean War
The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia.
Geopolitical causes of the war included the ...
where its greater range provided a significant advantage over the much shorter-ranged
Russian
Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including:
*Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries
*Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
smoothbore muskets in certain combat circumstances.
However, soldiers armed with rifled muskets were not always successful on the battlefield. In the
Italian War of 1859,
Austrian
Austrian may refer to:
* Austrians, someone from Austria or of Austrian descent
** Someone who is considered an Austrian citizen, see Austrian nationality law
* Austrian German dialect
* Something associated with the country Austria, for example: ...
troops armed with rifled muskets, but insufficiently trained and practiced in their effective use, were defeated by
French forces using aggressive skirmishing tactics and rapid bayonet assaults at close range.
See also
*
Muzzle-loading rifle A muzzle-loading rifle is a muzzle-loaded small arm or artillery piece that has a rifled barrel rather than a smoothbore. The term " rifled muzzle loader" typically is used to describe a type of artillery piece, although it is technically accurate ...
*
Springfield rifle
The term Springfield rifle may refer to any one of several types of small arms produced by the Springfield Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts, for the United States armed forces.
In modern usage, the term "Springfield rifle" most commonly ref ...
*
Rifle
*
Rifling
References
{{reflist
External links
The Enfield Pattern 1853 through to its culmination as the Snider MkIIIRifle Musket and Minié BallThe Enfield Pattern 1856 Rifle Musket