The video in this blog shows me shooting an 1882 Martini-Henry rifle, the weapon used in my novel Pharaoh by British troops against the forces of the Mahdi during the 1884 expedition to relieve General Gordon in Khartoum.  That war was one of the last major conflicts fought using black powder, though with fast-action breech-loading rifles far superior to the muzzle-loading weapons that had been the mainstay of armies only twenty years previously. With reloading now taking only seconds, these new rifles allowed a disciplined force to lay down a withering fire almost as devastating as machine-gun fire was to be in wars to come; their accuracy also meant that sniping, or ‘sharpshooting’ as it was called, was now possible at ranges that were previously impossible, allowing my protagonist Major Mayne to use one of these rifles to pick off a dervish rifleman across the Nile more than 600 yards distant ...