The Continental Line that took the field by 1778 looked nothing like the gentleman's army its officers would have preferred. Long enlistments, the wage scale, and bounty land had driven the officer-class volunteer of 1775 home and pulled in his place the men with the fewest other options: tenant farmers and farm sons from the New England hill towns, Irish indentured servants who had taken bounty for their freedom, German-speaking recruits from Pennsylvania and the Mohawk Valley, free Black men and the manumitted enslaved who served in mixed companies and — in the 1st Rhode Island Regiment from 1778 — in a battalion of their own. This was the army Washington asked Congress for from Valley Forge: not a militia called out on alarm but a long-service standing line, drilled by Steuben on the Prussian model and dressed by 1779 in the regulation blue coat with regional facings.

This W. Britain figure shows a Continental in mid-stride at the charge: dark blue regimental coat with red collar, lapels, and cuffs and red turnbacks at the skirt, white cross-belts supporting the cartridge box and bayonet scabbard, buff waistcoat and breeches, white gaiter-trousers, black shoes, and a black tricorne. The musket is carried at the charge with bayonet fixed and leveled, and the open mouth places the moment somewhere between an officer's command and a man's own battle cry. He is the regulation-order match to the hunting-shirt Charging No.1 — the two figures form a paired set showing the same regiment in either dress, depending on what the supply train had managed to bring up that month. He supports the standing defending figure holding ground behind him, and runs against the line of Crown regulars like the British 43rd Foot defending.

Model: 16052 / W. Britain 1/30 (60mm) / matte finish / 1 piece set