Sharpe’s Madness: How Not to Load a Musket

We love the Sharpe series. The books are great fun, and the TV series was addicting for a generation of reenactors and black powder shooters. But the books and the TV series (in “Sharpe’s Eagle”) included a fictional method for “tap loading,” or rapidly reloading a Brown Bess musket. By biting off the bullet from the cartridge and spitting it down the barrel, a higher rate of fire could be theoretically achieved.
Bernard Cornwall writes fiction and “Bite, pour, spit, tap” is fiction. Unfortunately, some enthusiastic people have tried to replicate this with real weapons and live ammunition. We cannot stress strongly enough that you should NEVER put your head over the muzzle of a loaded gun, as Sharpe’s tap loading procedure requires. Enjoy the novels and TV series for what they are, and they are very entertaining, but not everything in Sharpe is safe or smart to attempt in the 21st century, especially when it violates the principle rule of gun safety!