Continental Line Kneeling Firing 1777-87

At Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-78, Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben — a Prussian volunteer claiming a noble title and a general's rank he didn't quite have — taught the Continental Army to drill the way the European regulars drilled. Until then, American infantry could fight bravely but couldn't reliably manoeuvre under fire. After Von Steuben's six-month winter campaign of bayonet drill, marching, and the loading and firing sequence at three ranks deep, they could. The 1777-87 period covered by this figure begins at that turning point and runs through Yorktown, the war's end, and the early peacetime army. By the time of Yorktown in 1781, the Continental Line was infantry the British regulars treated as equals — a transformation worth remembering, since the army that came out of Valley Forge looked nothing like the army that went in.

This figure shows a Continental Line soldier in the kneeling firing position — the front-rank posture in the three-deep firing formation Von Steuben drilled into the army. He wears the late-Continental uniform: blue coat with red facings, cuffs and lapels, white waistcoat and breeches, the tricorne worn brim-up, white cross-belts with cartridge box and bayonet sheath. The musket is the standard Continental smoothbore — likely a Charleville variant, since American Springfield production didn't take over until the 1790s. He pairs with the other Continental Line figures Breagans carries — the standing firing soldier (the kneeling man's second-rank counterpart in the same firing line), the officer standing at ease (the commander of that firing line), and the charging soldier — for a complete fire-and-maneuver composition.

1/30 scale (60mm), matte-painted, single figure boxed. Catalog number 16061. As with the rest of the W. Britain modern range, the painting is photographic-quality detail intended to read well in dioramas and display cases.