Adventures of a young rifleman in the French and English armies,

During the Napoleonic Wars, few had such an unenviable job as the "poor bloody infantry"; fodder for cannon, unless tightly packed in ranks prey to cavalry, their only recourse was discipline and a highly inaccurate musket. As tactics evolved, the infantry would look for ways to maximize their effectiveness and minimize their own casualties. Increasingly the swift, the crafty and the most capable soldiers took to becoming skirmishers plying their trade away from the lines of death, fighting a pe