Skirmishers shot officers. It was their task and they were trained in it. As soon as people started deploying those, (which took quite a while but by the time of the Napoleonics, was pretty universal) officers started to get shot. Millander is absolutely right.
Officers are also a ridiculous easy target. They tend to stand in front and waving an epee or sabre. Some of them are even mounted. Even when nobody was aiming for them they still got hit
This was, after all, the time of 'leading-from-the-front', especially in the French, Dutch and Russian armies.
The numbers speak for themselve. Out of a Dutch brigade which had 111 officers during the Waterloo campaign, 7 got killed, 32 got wounded and 10 went missing, plus one stafofficer killed and three wounded (Including the brigade commander) for a grand total of 53, which is nearly half the officers! In fact, After the first French attack at Waterloo, all five battalions were commanded by captains, the brigade by a lieutenant-colonel. Not all were killed or wounded by musket shots, though.
#Numbers #Proof #HistoricalMaterial