The Charleville Modèle 1777 was the standard French infantry musket through the Napoleonic Wars. Designed by Honoré Blanc and manufactured at the Manufacture d'Armes de Charleville-Mézières along with Saint-Étienne, Tulle, and Maubeuge, it was a .69 caliber smoothbore flintlock with a forty-four-inch barrel and the long sixteen-inch triangular bayonet that became the French infantry's signature close-combat weapon. The 1777 pattern was refined from a generation of earlier French muskets — the Models 1763, 1766, 1770, and 1774 — and the 1777 An IX revision under the Consulate added minor improvements that carried it through the Empire. Over seven hundred thousand Charlevilles were produced during the Napoleonic Wars; the musket armed almost every French line and light infantry regiment from Marengo in 1800 to Waterloo in 1815. It was reliable, accurate enough for the volley-and-bayonet doctrine the army was built around, and effectively identical in performance to the British Brown Bess that opposed it. The difference between French and British infantry firepower came not from the weapon but from the drill: how fast it could be loaded, how steadily it could be fired in formation, and how disciplined the volley remained under return fire.

This King & Country figure shows a French light infantryman advancing with the Charleville leveled at the waist — bayonet pointed forward, both hands gripping the stock and forestock in the position for the final yards before bayonet contact. The body leans slightly forward into the advance; the right foot is mid-stride; the eyes are fixed on the target. He wears the légère regulation: dark blue coat with red collar, cuffs, and turnbacks; red epaulettes; white waistcoat; white breeches; black tall gaiters; tall black shako with red plume and red cords. The 1812-pattern sac with rolled greatcoat sits high on his back. He advances alongside the FLI Advancing Port Arms figure at his side, the two advancing in step toward the European Farm Gateway that opens onto the European Farmhouse ahead — the kind of fortified strongpoint Hougoumont's gateway closed against the French breakthrough at Waterloo.

Model: NA530 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set