The Pattern 1853 Rifle-Musket

Terry with his Enfield P-1853. British troops were trained to shoot at long range in the position we now call “offhand.” With the Enfield, volley fire against troops of cavalry and batteries of artillery was astonishingly successful. (Photo courtesy of Burt Reynolds.)

There are many ways one could approach a story about the Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle-musket. First, of course, is its short but spectacular military career; second would be a purely scientific point of view, and how it advanced the fields of gunmaking and ballistics; third is its profound influence on infantry tactics – on how battles are fought and soldiers are trained.

A final approach would be from the political angle. The rifle and its ammunition sparked controversies on several continents, and all of this occurred in a space of merely a dozen years, from 1853 to 1865. When it began, the smoothbore musket was the standard infantry weapon of most armies; when it ended, the era of the self-contained cartridge and breech-loading rifle had arrived.

The sight on the Pattern 1853 was a masterpiece, readily adjustable out to a thousand yards or more, depending on the variation.

Author Brett Gibbons makes the very convincing case that the Enfield Pattern 1853 (P-1853) was the first modern infantry rifle. It gave the infantry longer range than had previously been possible (a thousand yards or more, compared to a few hundred) and with sufficient accuracy to make real use of it. It overcame all the problems that had previously made the rifled arm unsuitable for any but specialty units, such as skirmishers.

Gibbons has studied the whole question, not only the P-1853 but other rifle-muskets of the same era, such as the 1855 Springfield and Austrian Lorenz, in considerable detail. In fact, he has written three and a half books on the subject – on the rifle-musket generally (The Destroying Angel), on ammunition (The English Cartridge), and on black powder specifically (Fire and Powder). The “half” book is his rewrite, in modern English, of the British Handbook for the School of Musketry. All four are available online, and if a reader is interested in this subject, he will never part with a better thirty bucks.

Both the Minié (top) and Pritchard (bottom) bullets have hollow bases. Pressure from expanding gas expands the bullet to grip the rifling.

Until I read them, I thought I had a reasonable understanding of rifles and their evolution through the percussion era. Being mostly interested in cartridge rifles, even delving back into black powder was a departure for me. What I did not fully grasp was the almost painfully incremental way in which the smoothbore musket gave way to rifles, in tiny steps covering every aspect – rifling, projectiles, lubrication, ignition, and finally, training soldiers to make use of them all, in the heat of battle with bullets flying and the wounded screaming.

The P-1853 was preceded by the Pattern 1851, which was in use only a couple of years. This was long enough, however, to make an indelible impression on the military mind – that most misrepresented factor in any history of military technology. The P-1851’s great accomplishment took place at the Battle of Balaclava in Crimea in 1854, when 550 highly trained soldiers of the 93rd Regiment of Foot (the Sutherland Highlanders) repulsed an attack by a mass of Russian cavalry, loosing volleys at 600, then 300, then 150 yards. This was the famous “thin red line,” and it marked a turning point in military history.

It was unprecedented: A battalion, in extended line rather than ranks, had delivered devastating, accurate fire on an enemy 600 yards away. Although many battles around the world remained to be fought with smoothbore muskets, fired at close range by untrained recruits, the Battle of Balaclava was the way of the future. The trick was to get there.

The Pattern 1851 was a percussion rifle with a bore .702-inch in diameter, firing a 740-grain Minié-style bullet. In its styling, it more resembled its predecessor, the Model 1842 musket, than it did later rifles. Even before Balaclava, British ordnance officers realized it needed modifications and work was underway even as troops armed with P-1851s were boarding ships for the Black Sea.

The assembled paper cartridge of the P-1853 (left) with its Pritchard bullet, compared with the later .577 Snider (right) and its cannelured Minié-type bullet. In the Snider, lubrication is held in the cannelures, where the greased paper provides lubrication in the P-1853. The paper cartridge was made by Author Brett Gibbons.

It’s hard to overstate the significance of the year 1851 in England. It was the year of the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London, a celebration of British technology, science, engineering and invention for all the world to see. Sometimes, it seemed, the entire world had traveled to London to see it. Tens of thousands of visitors trooped through its halls, marveling at everything from steam-powered ship’s engines to a break-action, breech-loading gun.

Some of the greatest gunmakers the world has ever seen were at work refining established mechanisms and inventing new ones. These included James Purdey, William Greener, Charles Lancaster and Westley Richards. Not surprisingly, scores of inventors were bombarding the War Office with ideas for weapons to defeat any enemy, and it was the job of the Small Arms Committee, assisted by government ordnance officers, to sort through these and see which might be worth putting to the test.

The military brain trust was ensconced within the office of the Master of the Ordnance and the Royal Artillery laboratories at Woolwich. Since engineer and artillery officers were trained in the sciences, most technical evaluation was entrusted to them.

The obstacles the P-1851 overcame were long-standing: For centuries, it had been recognized that rifling improved accuracy. However, the bullet had to fit the rifling tightly. This could be done with either a fitted bullet like the Brunswick rifle, or a bullet with a patch. Black-powder fouling made loading difficult after a few rounds, and impossible after a few more. This problem needed to be overcome before the rifle would be suitable for battle.

After many years, and many blind alleys, the French hit upon the Minié, a hollow-based bullet small enough to load easily regardless of fouling, whose skirt would be expanded by the powder gases to grip the rifling. This over-simplifies what took place to a shocking degree. Many gunmakers, French and English, had worked on the problem, and many had come up with more or less workable solutions. As Brett Gibbons is careful to point out, the real work on the Minié had been done by Delvigne, and Claude-Étienne Minié merely made a slight alteration, but he got the credit. In England, William Greener claimed he had invented just such a bullet long before, and struggled throughout his life to get recognition.

The snap cap was invented at the British Army’s School of Musketry at Hythe, to protect the nipple during dry-firing practice. Training to shoot the Enfield P-1853 was intensive and included such heretofore unknown practices as trigger control. Extensive shooting drills were rehearsed before the student ever fired a live shot.

(In the history of guns and gunmaking, this is not an unusual occurrence – think of the Peabody rifle, now universally known as the Martini – but that is all another story.)

The P-1851 was accurate out to a thousand yards or more – accurate enough to hit a troop of cavalry or an artillery battery – but to do so, it needed accurate, instantly adjustable sights; as well, the shooter needed to know the distance to set them, which meant learning range estimation. Finally, the soldier needed to learn how to shoot to a degree never before required. The P-1851’s advantages were all dependent on putting it into the hands of trained riflemen.

This aspect was solved with the establishment of the School of Musketry at Hythe. There, selected officers were taught everything they needed to know; they then became musketry instructors for their individual units.

In 1851, the Duke of Wellington was still Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, and the Duke was notoriously conservative. He loved the Brown Bess, with which he had won so many battles, and many writers represent him as an obstacle in the way of every advance. This was not the case.

Two of his subordinates at Waterloo – the Marquess of Anglesey, who (as Earl of Uxbridge) had commanded the cavalry, and General Sir Henry Hardinge – played key roles. Anglesey, as the Master of the Ordnance, oversaw the development and adoption of the P-1851; on his retirement, he was succeeded by Hardinge. One of the Duke of Wellington’s last acts was to approve the testing required to find a replacement for the P-1851; he died in 1852, and was replaced as commander-in-chief by Hardinge, who pushed through the adoption of the P-1853, which came into service in time to actually take part in some of the last fighting in the Crimea.

The P-1853 was an updated version of the P-1851 and looks like a modern rifle, whereas the 1851 resembles a musket. The major change was to reduce the bore diameter to .577 inch from .702 inch, reducing the weight of the ammunition; the rifle’s weight was reduced as well.

The big question then was the design of the ammunition. The paper cartridge, which contained both powder and Minié slug, was already in use. The soldier ripped it open, poured the powder down the barrel, reversed it, placed the bullet in the muzzle and rammed it home. For the 1853, the paper cartridge was further perfected. A separate powder cylinder was made of heavier paper – almost cardboard – to hold the powder. It was set on the nose of the bullet, and it was all wrapped in thinner paper. This prevented powder from getting down around the bullet. The part that wrapped around the bullet was dipped in lubricant – usually a mixture of animal fat and beeswax.

Before and after: The twisted top is torn off the cartridge to allow the powder to be poured down the barrel. When the greased bullet end is placed in the muzzle, the excess paper (including the stiff paper “powder chamber”) easily breaks off to allow the bullet to be seated. An enormous amount of time, effort and field trialing went into perfecting a cartridge that worked every time, regardless of climate.

The top was ripped off, powder poured down the barrel, the paper cartridge reversed and placed in the muzzle. Excess paper (including the powder cylinder) was easily broken off, leaving the greased paper cup around the bullet to dampen the fouling and allow it to be expelled with the next shot. It was easy, quick and almost foolproof.

The training program at Hythe was thorough and remarkably effective, overseen by officers who became almost fanatical in their devotion to rifles and long-range shooting. The new commander- in-chief, Sir Henry Hardinge, was very supportive, and the way was paved for the professional infantrymen of the British Army to become the most effective troops in the world.

No longer would they depend on volleys of roundballs at close range, followed by a bayonet charge, to win battles. Now, they could stand off out of musket range and direct accurate, deadly fire at distant enemies. Suddenly, infantry could be used against faraway targets, where previously artillery was needed, and the way was open for the development of fire and movement – the basis of infantry tactics to this day.

For the Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle-musket, however, the future held two key events that were to affect its reputation.

The first occurred in India in 1857. Hindu and Muslim sepoys of the Indian Army, being trained in the use of the P-1853, objected to the grease on the paper cartridges, believing it was pig or beef fat, which would defile them. This was not entirely true, it was all horribly confused, and nor was it the main cause, but it did act as a catalyst. In May of that year, many units mutinied, leading to one of the most brutal conflicts of the nineteenth-century. In the end, fittingly, the P-1853 was the deciding factor that allowed heavily outnumbered, but highly trained, British troops to win key battles.

An Enfield Pattern 1853 rifle-musket (second variation). Adopted in 1853 to replace the Pattern 1851, it has a smaller bore (.577 inch versus .702 inch) and is lighter in weight (9.5 pounds with sling and bayonet, versus 11 pounds-plus).

The second event was the American Civil War. Desperate for weapons, both the Union and the Confederacy purchased P-1853s by the tens of thousands, and many Birmingham gunmakers grew wealthy as a result.

On American battlefields, the results were decidedly mixed, largely because raw troops on both sides were handed Enfields, but not trained in their use. As well, American-made cartridges did not work as well as the carefully designed British ones. Ever since, some historians have blamed the Enfield for the carnage, others have shouted back that they were ineffective, poor battle weapons and a waste of money. Since Civil War history is an evergreen field for historians wanting to sell books or make a name, the Enfield’s reputation has suffered.

With the Civil War came the first real use of breech-loading rifles and the development of self-contained metal cartridges. By 1865, this was recognized worldwide as the way of the future. Having a huge stock of excellent P-1853s in its warehouses, the frugal U.S. War Office looked for a way to convert them, and found it in the invention of the American, Jacob Snider. The result was the Snider- Enfield – an excellent rifle in itself that remained in use in different corners of the Empire until well into the twentieth-century.