Category: Shotguns and Smoothbores
Popular the flintlock musket in the 17th century, they are mentioned as early as the late 14th century. Musket guns became obsolete by the middle of the 19th century when rifles took over for them. Military small fire arms have gone through many changes to present day guns and later the musket was replaced by another type of gun called the rifle.
A musket is a type of gun that is mostly fired from the shooters shoulder. Musket was a term given to older rifles that utilize gunlocks and muzzle-loading. The musket rifle included are caplocks, wheellocks, matchlocks and flintlocks. As for bullets the Musket fires musket balls and later Minie Balls. Muskets used round lead balls packed in a paper cartridge which also will hold the black powder which as you as (gunpowder) propellant-meaning A thing or substance that causes something to move or be driven forward or outward, in particular.
The balls, slightly smaller than the smooth-bore long gun, they came wrapped in a loosely-fitting paper patch that formed the upper part of the cartridge. The bottom part of the cartridge which contains the gunpowder, the musketmen would separated the two pieces with their teeth. They loaded the gunpowder first than followed by the paper from the bottom section of the cartridge used as wadding. Then they would load the ball and the upper piece of cartridge. Finally, a ramrod which is a metal rod used to push the projectile up against the propellant (mainly gunpowder) or other name (scouring stick) served to compact the ball and wadding down onto the gunpowder.
The invention of a fulminating powder in 1807, the musket gun started to use percussion caps which made it much more reliability than flintlocks and would worked in the rain without a special design.
Muskets took time to reload, so army tacticians would line up musket-men in formations two or three lines in a row deep. One line would fire in simpatico, then they would drop to their knees to reload, while the next line behind them fired. this is how wars were fought in the musket gun days.
Picture from National Park Service