• thisbenzingring@lemmy.today
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    7 days ago

    they were the royal guard, its just what they were called. the musket was not really a thing at that time, it was mostly called a arquebus

    • napoleonsdumbcousin@feddit.org
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      7 days ago

      They were founded in 1622 when Louis XIII furnished a company of light cavalry […] with muskets.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musketeers_of_the_Guard

      The novel starts in 1625, they did have actual muskets at the time, thats where the name of the specific unit comes from. “Heavy muskets” (= arquebuses) fell out of use starting in 1550 and were replaced by snaphance flintlock muskets.

      The heavy musket went out of favour around the same time the snaphance flintlock was invented in Europe, in 1550.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musket

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      7 days ago

      the unit that Charles de Batz de Castelmore served in was called Les Mousquetaires du Roi, or the the Musketeers of the king. Charles de Batz de Castlemore served as a captain in the unit during Lois XIII and Dumas roughly based his novels off his exploits.

      As an aside, one of the few things the movies gets right about the novel (or even just the period) was the general foppishness of the military culture and upper-classes of the time.