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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;lordmarcovan, post: 3497857, member: 10461&quot;]Oh, having fired that .58 caliber musket at a Coke can with a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini%C3%A9_ball" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini%C3%A9_ball" rel="nofollow">Minié ball</a> round in it (blew the can in half), I will say that firepower was <i>not </i>lacking then!&nbsp; Accuracy and range, sometimes, maybe, but those bullets were the size of a robin&#039;s egg!&nbsp; Makes you shudder all the more to think of what it must have been like to be on the receiving end of one of those.&nbsp; I&#039;ve dug some Minie bullets on a site here that were .69 caliber!</p><p><br /></p><p><img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Minie_Balls.jpg" class="bbCodeImage wysiwygImage" alt="" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>If you got hit in an arm or a leg, the surgeon cut off that limb.&nbsp; Hit in the main torso of your body, especially the abdomen, and you were a goner, from the infection, if not the actual trauma.&nbsp; Probably best if you croaked from the trauma, rather than the lingering, miserable end those with infections and/or gangrene suffered.</p><p><br /></p><p>Life was not easy then, even in peacetime.&nbsp; In war, it was all the more horrible.</p><p><br /></p><p>When I spent that weekend in &quot;1865&quot;, living as they did, I was recovering from the flu, which gave me some sense of the misery many Civil War soldiers must have had to cope with, since disease killed far, <i>far</i> more men than bullets or shells did.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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