I recall reading that many of the abandoned muskets collected up after the battle of Cold Harbor in the Civil War had multiple rounds loaded, one with 7. In other words, the soldier using the weapon followed all the steps, except for actually firing the thing, then loaded a new round on top of the old, unfired one. Same problem, only a different step forgotten under fire.
Always? Even before the beard?
I myself never stopped hating him.
That was pretty common back in the days of muskets. Sometimes it was just a mistake, like forgetting to put the powder in first. Sometimes (especially with flintlocks) it was just due to a misfire. Once you load the second charge on top of the first you’re kinda screwed. The only way to get it all out safely is to use a ball puller, which takes some time.
Sometimes though it was done intentionally. In the Civil War, arms shortages meant that a lot of guys were using old outdated smooth bore muskets and sometimes old flintlocks as well. As soon as people started to die the soldier would often pick up a better weapon off of the battlefield, and would abandon the old weapon. If you fill it with a few charges that guarantees that your enemy can’t take a perfectly good (if somewhat outdated) weapon and use it against you.
Half of the muskets picked up after the battle of Gettysburg had multiple loads in them. One had 23 loads in it, which just about had to be intentional. I can’t imagine someone not noticing that the barrel was over half full and continuing to load it anyway. Maybe they were hoping someone would pick it up and try to fire it and would end up having the barrel explode in their face.