The iron ramrod was a Prussian innovation that gave Frederick the Great's army — and the German auxiliary regiments trained on his manual — a real combat edge. Wooden ramrods swelled in damp weather, snapped under hard usage, and slowed the loading drill at exactly the moments it could not afford to slow. Iron and later steel replaced wood in Prussian service from the 1730s, and by the 1770s every Hessian musketeer's regulation Potsdam-pattern musket carried the heavier rod with a brass tip and a small spring catch holding it in the pipes below the barrel. The disciplined return-stroke that drove ball and wad firmly down on the powder charge — and let the soldier pull the ramrod cleanly back to its pipes without dropping it — was the unglamorous mechanical foundation of the Hessian rate of fire.

This W. Britain figure shows a musketeer of the Regiment von Donop at the third beat of the loading drill, just after the ball has been driven home: musket held vertically with the butt at the ground, right hand raised above the muzzle, the steel ramrod still in his grip on its return stroke before it slides back into the pipes. The order is the regiment's standard musketeer dress — dark blue coat with yellow collar, lapels, and cuffs; yellow waistcoat and breeches; white cross-belts supporting the cartridge box and bayonet scabbard; black tricorne edged white; queue at the nape. He stands between the tearing cartridge beat behind him and the standing firing pose ahead, completing the loading sequence the reaching-for-cartridge figure opens.

Model: 16191 / W. Britain 1/30 (60mm) / matte finish / 1 piece set