Of all the disadvantages that contributed to the annihilation of Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer’s five-troop battalion at the Battle of the Little Bighorn –among them superior numbers of enemy forces (a 5:1 ratio seems a safe bet), criminal disobedience of direct orders by junior officers in command of support battalions, and terrain so inimical to cavalry maneuvering as to negate every advantage commonly enjoyed by mounted troops in generically similar situations – none was more devastating than the inferiority of the Seventh Cavalry’s government-issued single shot carbines.