The colonial militia was the rebellion's mass: the citizen-soldier called out by his town, county, or colony for short tours close to home, drilling on muster days a few times a year and turning out in earnest only when the alarm bell rang. Massachusetts companies marched to Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775 in whatever dress they had pulled on at dawn; New Hampshire militia under Stark blooded Burgoyne's Brunswickers at Bennington two years later; Carolina militia rode in to King's Mountain and stiffened Daniel Morgan's line at Cowpens at the end of the southern war. They served alongside — and sometimes around the edges of — the regulars of the Continental Line, kept in the field for brief enlistments, generally officered by men they had elected, and armed mostly with whatever fowling piece, trade gun, or family musket had come down from the French and Indian War.

This W. Britain figure shows a militiaman mid-load: musket held vertically with the butt at his right foot, the steel ramrod still in his right hand on its return stroke before sliding back into the pipes below the barrel. He wears the citizen-soldier's everyday dress — a long tan coat cut civilian-style with deep red waistcoat under it, light stockings drawn up over the knees of his breeches, plain black shoes with brass buckles, and a black tricorne — and carries a single white shoulder-belt rather than the regular's full cross-belted accoutrements. The absence of regimental trim is the point: this man owns his musket and his clothes. He drills the same ramming beat as the regular Continental Line 1st American Regiment standing ramming and the Hessian Regiment von Donop ramming cartridge on the other side of the line, and runs forward when the alarm calls in hunting-shirt Continental order.

Model: 16095 / W. Britain 1/30 (60mm) / matte finish / 1 piece set