"Make ready" was the order to bring the musket to the cock — to pull the flint back to full cock and prepare to fire. Everything then depended on the flintlock, the era's defining and most temperamental technology. The flint, clamped in the jaws of the cock, snapped down to strike a steel frizzen; the sparks fell into a pan of priming powder, which flashed through a touchhole to fire the charge. It failed often. A worn flint, a fouled touchhole, or above all damp powder could give only a "flash in the pan" and no shot. The rain the night before Waterloo left muskets misfiring across the field the next day — the difference, sometimes, between a volley and an empty click.

The figure kneels at the make ready — musket brought up and the hand at the lock, drawing the flint to full cock before the piece comes level. He is in full dress: bearskin with red plume, blue coat with red epaulettes, white breeches, the pack on his back. He fits the loading-and-firing sequence of a Guard diorama between the reload and the shot. Set a French Imperial Guard Tearing Cartridge behind him still loading, a French Imperial Guard 1st Rank Kneeling firing alongside, and the standing French Imperial Guard Standing Make Ready to pair the kneeling and standing ranks.

W. Britain model 36179. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Single foot figure on a sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.