Rifle regiments first appeared in quantity in the armies of European nations in the first half of the 18th century. At first, riflemen—known as Jägers from the German word for hunters—were recruited and employed in small units within the armies of Hesse and Bavaria in the 1630s and 1640s and proved to be effective skirmishers. Although rifles and their trained marksmen were considered of value, their role was also considered peripheral to the principal use of the infantry arm in Europe, which involved large-scale use of rolling volleys of smooth-bored musketry in which rapidity of fire was of greater importance than long-range accuracy. Opinions began to alter during the wars of the mid-18th century and military riflemen appeared in most combatant nations' armies, albeit in small numbers. The first corps of riflemen in the French army was Grassin's Régiment des Arquebusiers, raised in 1744, to be followed by chasseurs in due course. During the Seven Years War in Europe, 1756-63, Austrian Tirolean Jägers fought Prussian troops to such effect that a battalion of Prussian Jägers was formed: this remained the sole Prussian rifle regiment until the 1790s. In 1788, the last year of ancien régime France, the six battalions of chasseurs à pied were doubled in number to twelve and so, with the notable exception of Britain, most European nations had at least one regiment of riflemen by the outbreak of war in Europe in 1792.
The US army had included companies of riflemen ever since Congress had raised ten companies from the states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virgina in 1775; these companies had been the first outside New England to join the new Continental Army and they represented a recognition of the well-known skills of the American frontiersman and his long rifle. In that war, Britain had made use of riflemen too: German mercenaries armed with Jäger rifles, Highland skirmishers armed with short rifles, and Ferguson's corps of riflemen armed with his breech-loading rifle. Ferguson's men were all picked for their skill and marksmanship and so were those recruited by Col Coote Manningham for the Corps of Riflemen he was authorized to raise in 1800. This corps copied its continental counterparts in its chasseur dress of green and rifle regiments throughout the 19th century retained this earliest form of camouflage, together with other traditions of their role on the battlefield such as a rapid marching pace, the use of bugles and whistles for the giving of commands, and the lack of regimental colours: all these differentiated them from line infantry and helped give them élite status.
By the end of the 19th century, the breech-loading rifle had made all infantrymen riflemen and only the rifle regiments' historic traditions and uniforms differentiated them from the infantry of the line. The British found that the Gurkha regiments of the Indian army were particularly suited to the role of riflemen in the mid-19th century and so trained and dressed them as such, thus exporting the ethos of the rifle regiment outside European culture.
— Stephen Wood
