Baker Rifle

The Baker rifle is a muzzle-loading flintlock firearm with a rifled barrel, adopted by the British Army in 1800 and designed by the gunmaker Ezekiel Baker, offering considerably better accuracy at range than the smoothbore muskets, such as the Brown Bess, that equipped the great majority of infantry of the period, though its tighter-fitting rifled bore made it slower to load. Because of this accuracy, the British Army issued the Baker rifle chiefly to specially trained rifle regiments, most famously the 95th Rifles, who fought as skirmishers operating in loose order ahead of and around the main infantry line, using the weapon's precision to pick off enemy officers, gunners and skirmishers at ranges ordinary musket-armed infantry could not effectively engage. The Baker rifle saw extensive service with British rifle units throughout the Napoleonic Wars, including the Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal and the Battle of Waterloo, and its performance helped establish the value of dedicated rifle-armed light infantry within European armies of the era.