Fire!

Long Rifles were the weapons of choice. If you look closely at the picture above...you will see the rifle of the middle infantry man with a blaze of fire out the end of the barrel. Yet the two on each side have no blaze but only a flash at the hammer near the trigger.

This photo shows the two step method that these types of long rifles use to fire their payload. What happens after the trigger is pulled begins with the ignition of the gunpowder as shown by the two outside riflemen. The the explosion forces the lead ball out the end of the musket as we see with the middle rifleman. So by the photo above we can tell that the middle man fired his weapon a fraction of an instant sooner than his two partners. If the shutter was clicked a fraction of an instant later...we would see the fire exiting out the end of the two shooters on the outside.

Dan