The Three Musketeers question

Muskets are good for battles, a pain in the butt to be schepping all the time.
Swords are much better for your day-to-day swashbuckling.

Of course, it is better to have a musket and not need it
than to need a . . .
Well, you know.

The Musketeers in the story seemed always engaged in small actions, not pitched battles between armies. If I recall correctly.

Swords are cooler than muskets.

The Mousquetaires du Roy were a cavalry unit. In modern parlance, they were mounted infantry, i.e. dragoons. In addition to a musket, therefore, they would also be armed with a cavalry saber. For street fighting, jumping out of windows, and general derring-do, a saber is much handier than a musket.

The real question is why the three musketeers are always depicted with rapiers than with sabers.

They wore those on their days off.

Muskets are not like modern pistol. You have load the bullet, a round metal, put in the powder (gunpowder) and also push in the metal rounds. While you are doing all that a sword will certainly in your belly.

In fact, they're often portrayed using fencing foils. A man with a saber who knows how to use it would make chopped liver out of them.

For an interesting sidelight, Cyrano de Bergerac was a truly gifted swordsman. He lived at the time of the Thirty years War, though, and although in fiction he is linked with d'Artagnan, they are both historical figures, who probably never knew one another well, if at all.

D'Artagnan (the real one), did indeed join the King's Musketeers, and it appears that Dumas checked out a book from the library in Marseilles, which was a life of d'Artagnan. He never returned the book, although the card for it from the card catalogue has been preserved.

You know, i'd like to know what a swash is . . . never mind buckling it . . .

How much is the fine for being late ?

Well, it's over 150 years now, i believe--so i wouldn't want to pay it.

A final note, in the English translation, the first line of one of the later chaprers (Chapter L?), Dumas produces that hoary old literary nut, "It was a dark and stormy night."

If he did, he stole it from Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

Well, he didn't write in English of course--maybe we should blame the translator. Where did Bulwer-Lytton use it?

Paul Clifford

The Musketeers were the junior of the three bodies of the French King's Guard, the senior being the Corps of Guards and the Swiss Guards. The younger sons of noble families served in the musketeers hoping to win fame and advancement into the other senior bodies of royal guard. Fame ould not have come from getting off a dashing horse to shoot the enemy but from a glorious charge with the sabre. The whole idea of a junior regiment of guard dismounting to fire a musket would have been laughable to the musketeers. As duels were very common, it was also common to carry a dueling sword when not on duty.

Dragoons were always reluctant to dismount and by the time of Napoleon they were dragoons only in name and organisation, as they very rarely fought on foot but constituted the arm of medium cavalry.

You only have 1 shot with a musket, before long reloading time whilst with a rapier you can continually attack.

OK, so obviously the translator could have read that before making his translation. This is a book i've not ever read in French, so i can't say how faithful the translation is to the original.

Dragoons frequently fought dismounted, and, in fact, at Naseby in the first civil war in England, dismounting the dragoons and putting them at an oblique to the parliamentary foot, effectively flanking any advance by the royalist foot, proved crucial in the New Model's victory. Until quite recently in modern times, other cavalry operated in much the same manner as dragoons did when they were mounted. Cromwell's cavalry, as did all cavalry in the 17th century, would approach the enemy at a walk, and then fire their pistols (horse pistols were huge things, only slightly smaller than the carbines adopted by dragoons in the 19th century). With notable exceptions such as Cromwell's cavalry, a cavalry charge with swords drawn (both heavy cavalry and dragoons used a military long sword rather than a saber--sabers didn't become common until the 18th century) inevitably meant that that body of horse was useless for hours, and usually the rest of the battle. At Marston Moor, Rupert's cavalry charged, broke the parliamentary foot, and then carried on in a mounted, disorganized mob to loot the parliamentary trains (which they considered their legitimate prey). By contrast, Cromwell's horse charged, and then rallied, reformed, and charged again. Such discipline by mounted troops did not become common until the reorganization of the French military in the late 18th century.

Dragoons were most commonly used in la petite guerre, the patrolling and raiding operations which went on constantly as armies marched and countermarched seeking an advantage. Joining the dragooms was popular because of the opportunities for looting. Dragoons were considered ideal for the work because they could dismount and confront infantry formations on an equal footing if encountered during their patrols.

Dragoons operated well into the 19th century, in both capacities--as vedettes to patrol the area of campaign, and as cavalry on the battlefield. At the first battle of Balaclava, General Scarlett's Heavy Brigade made a crucial charge on the Russian horse. His brigade included at least three dragoon regiments, the Royal Dragoons, the Fifth Dragoon Guards and the Sixth Inniskilling Dragoons. The Scots Greys (the oldest continually serving cavalry regiment in British service) who were also in that brigade were originally equipped as and operated as dragoons--by the time of the Russo-Turkish War of 1853, they were considered heavy cavalry.



Note that this officer of the Fifth Dragoon Guards (who participated in Scarlett's "charge of the Heavy Brigade") is equipped with the straight military long sword, rather than a saber.

Musketeers, before they had suitable weapons, were used mixed in with pike formations. This is not how the french musketeers fought. They would have stayed on their horse, for King, for Gloire !

Dragoons were often described as the worst of both worlds. They tended to ride away from serious infantry encounters, for infantry fighting was not their forte, and be badly mauled when charged by real cavalry. Increasingly the old cavalry regiments were made Guard or enjoyed Guard status whilst the Dragoons lost the musket for a carbine and filled the role of medium cavalry. They enjoyed occasional success, but were never really trained to the high standard required of their role by most armies.

The idea of having infantry that could quickly deploy because they were mounted, to a spot on the battlefield, say a building, and defend it as infantry,a was sound but it is still debated today as to how to achieve it. Should modern cav units be able to take on tanks or stick to reconnaissance and running away ? Should infantry fighting vehicles concentrate on firepower or speed ? The debate continues.