Riflemen of the 95th Rifles carry the Baker rifle rather than the standard Brown Bess musket. They are sharpshooters, chosen men able to accurately hit their target from 200 yards, 4 times the distance at which the musket was effective. However the rifle was slow to load as each bullet needed to be wrapped in a piece of leather so that it would grip the rifling in the barrel. Because of this Napoleon chose not to equip any of his men with rifles, preferring the faster musket. Consequently due to their range and accuracy the Greenjackets were feared by the French infantry.
Sergeant Patrick Harper (left) and Major Richard Sharpe (right)
Harper and Sharpe are the only riflemen to have the brown epaulettes.
Harper carries a 7 barreled volley gun made by Henry Nock of London (b.1741-d.1804), and wears one of the modified shakos (painted grey plume and small silver badge) Oh, and I gave him a moustache.
Sharpe is as usual sans shako and is armed with a heavy cavalry sabre (blade painted silver) and a Baker rifle (black Lego musket) His officer's sash is a strip of red sticky label.
The Rifles marching in two files (Left) -
Major Sharpe and men from the 95th Rifles now part of the South Essex.
The men are very un-uniform, some wearing black trousers, others grey or brown, and differing coloured backpacks depending on whether they are British army issue, or ox-hide ones taken from French corpses (most now have the grey ox-hide ones as these are more comfortable). Each man is made using a Captain Red Beard's torso, either grey, brown or black legs, a brown or grey backpack and a modified shako.
Several of these men are modelled after actual characters - for example, Lego Fredrickson has an eye patch.
I tried making authentic green jacket torso design's but the lego green seemed too bright, and I like the look of these uniforms anyway.
