Of course this entire action was at the mercy of many factors including that of the operators own level of training. Additionally, the moving working parts of the gun would have to be properly maintained while the piece of flint rock used to create the needed spark would have to be in serviceable condition. The gun powder used would have to be as dry as possible and proper amounts would need to be inserted into both the barrel and the flash pan. The ramrod action itself would also need to have had pushed the barrel contents as close to the spark action as possible.
Design of the Charleville was conventional for the time. She was a long gun system with the firing action set within a wooden frame and near the trigger group well aft on the receiver (or gun body). The barrel sat within the frame and was banded at several key points to hold it in place. A ramrod was typically affixed to the underside of the barrel near the muzzle and was integral in the operating action. The wooden frame was thicker near the firing action and the flintlock mechanism was set off to the right side of the receiver. The trigger was held within an oblong ring and the buttstock was integrated into the wooden frame design, featuring a pseudo-ergonomic grip for the firing hand and shoulder. The gun was typically fired using two hands, one set at the trigger to activate the firing action and other set well ahead of the trigger group to hold the barrel upwards and towards the intended target area. The weapon system, as a whole, weighed in at a manageable 10lbs and sported a barrel up to 46.75 inches in length. She was fed through the muzzle making her a "muzzle-loaded" gun. Conversely, later guns of firearms history could be loaded from the rear making them "breech-loaded" guns. Shoulder strap slings were found along the top of the buttstock and under the middle band along the forend.
The Charleville was chambered to fire the .69 lead musket ball. This was conventional ammunition for the time though size varied in terms of the caliber of ball from country to country. For instance, the British Army utilized a .75 ball in their fabled Brown Bess muskets. However, considering that the Charleville made use of a "smoothbore" barrel - this meaning that the barrel interior was smooth and not "rifled" as later firearms would be - the lead ball would rattle and roll its way out of the barrel, seriously affecting its trajectory and velocity once leaving the muzzle. As such, smoothbore muskets maintained a general effective range out to 50 yards if that. This generally meant that firearm battles of the 18th and 19th centuries were relatively close affairs usually (and ultimately) settled by close-in bayonet fighting. It was only later that a threaded barrel interior became the norm for firearms, giving birth to the category name of "rifle" and dramatically increasing the range and accuracy of the musket to well over 200 yards (some sources state as far away as 500 yards). Muskets featuring rifling were aptly categorized as "rifled muskets" and, as time wore on, they became the norm of modern firearms available on the battlefield. Rifled muskets were even in use at the time of the American Civil War, this despite the introduction of rifled, repeating firearms like the Henry series.
To counter the general inaccuracy of first generation muskets, armies generally concentrated their musketeers into groups with infantrymen firing in pre-determined, organized rows. The first row would kneel, aim and fire with the second row, fielding their weapons just overhead, aiming and firing their own "volley". These rows, having had spent their ammunition, would revert to the rear of the formation to reload their weapons whilst a "fresh", ready-to-fire row of infantry would take the frontal position and repeat the firing action. This supplied a consistent field of fire against an equally organized group of targets some distance away. Naturally, flanking maneuvers (engaging an enemy from the sides) were still in play and could prove disastrous against an ill-prepared, ill-equipped enemy formation.
The Charleville Musket maintained an operational tenure stemming from 1717 to 1816. In this span, she was utilized in a variety of French actions including operations throughout the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802), the French Revolution proper (1789-1799), the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) and the French and Indian War across modern day Canada (1754-1763). France was heavily involved in anti-British actions in both the American Revolution (1776) and the War of 1812 (1812-1815), siding with the American colony and funding its movements against anything British with French-made weapons like the Charleville - of course this was done through a dummy corporation set up by the French complete with falsified ship logs. It was the French Charleville Musket that would go on to become the basis for the American-made Springfield Musket of 1795, these produced out of the fabled Springfield and Harpers Ferry armories. The first series of Springfield 1795 muskets were, in fact, indistinguishable copies of the Charleville 1766 model.
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