Dear Mr Cornwell, first of all: I am a big fan of your Sharpe-books! With all due respect, but there is one thing that strikes me: You seem to underestimate the musket. Let me give an example; it’s from Sharpe’s Escape, last chapter: “Muskets could fight each other at a hundred paces and it was a miracle if an aimed shot hit,…”. There are several statements like this in (I guess) all your Sharpe books. Well, of course it’s true that muskets are much less accurate than rifles, BUT I assure you: A good musketman is considered to be able to hit a man from 70-80 (maybe even 90) yards distance. And concerning the volley-fire: There are many contemporary shooting-tests (e.g. by Scharnhorst in 1810) which show that musket volley-fire was effective even at long ranges up to 330 yards, HOWEVER only in theory. What I want to say is, that the musket itself is not the inherently inaccurate weapon it’s often said to be, but that it’s mostly the shooters fault (e.g.nervousness in battle) when a ball goes wild. That’s it already, sir. Your loyal reader Kai-Arne