Dear Sir:

I am having great pleasure re-discovering the Sharpe series on my Kindle.

As a complete aside, I have discovered that in late 18th C. America, frontiersmen did indeed use rifles similar to the Baker and considered the real test of marksmanship nail driving: they would put a nail half way into a plank and at varying ranges (50 paces was usually the starting point) would drive the nail into the plank with their rifles.

Another frontier diary written by a Brit, talked about exercising with Americans, shooting pistols from horseback at 6×6″ posts. He recorded that “… after a surprisingly small amount of practice, all of the company could expect to hit 5 of 6 posts while riding at a gallop.”

You and I might consider a shot from centre court of a basketball game, people who play for decades do not… I suspect the riflemen were no different. (and btw there is a witnessed shot with a buffalo rifle c. 1870 which brought down an opponent a mile away, I think it was as the battle of Indian Wells.)

So Thanks for the books.

cheers
James