The performance of colonial militia in the spring of 1775 surprised the British professionals sent to suppress them. These weren't peasants with pitchforks: many had served in provincial regiments during the French and Indian War or the long frontier conflicts that followed, owned and could shoot their own muskets, and had been drilling on village greens since before the Stamp Act crisis. They had no standard uniforms, no standardized weapons, and only the equipment a man could buy or supply for himself, but they delivered serious losses to the British regulars at Lexington and Concord, then again at Bunker Hill. Some joined the new state regiments or the Continental Line as the war went on; others stayed in their local militia companies, called up for shorter campaigns through the eight years of the war.

This figure is W. Britain's three-dimensional miniature of Don Troiani's Soldier Study American Militiaman, 1775-83 print — both the print and the figure are available at Breagans. Troiani's work is the modern reference standard for American military uniform and equipment detail, and the W. Britain sculptors hold to the painting as closely as the medium allows: brown civilian frock coat over a green-striped waistcoat, buff breeches and leggings, the wide-brimmed slouch hat that distinguishes a militiaman from a regular Continental, musket grounded in standing alert. He pairs naturally with the other Don Troiani militiaman Breagans carries — a complementary 1775-81 figure based on a different Troiani Soldier Study — and with the other Revolutionary figures Breagans carries, the Continental Line in Hunting Shirt, the 1st American Regiment Ensign, and General Washington Mounted, for a fully populated Continental Army-and-militia display.

1/30 scale (60mm), matte-painted, single figure boxed. Catalog number 16106. As with the rest of the W. Britain modern range, the painting is photographic-quality detail intended to read well in dioramas and display cases.