Musketeer
"All for one and one for all!"
- – Alexander Dumas
"Quo ruit et lethum (Then they charged and died.)"
- – Actual Motto
The Musketeers are one of the few things which is both undisputedly French and undisputedly awesome.
The Musketeers of the Guard were founded in 1622 by Louis XIII, and served with glory through the reign of Louis XIV (the Sun King). While popularly depicted as freewheeling, drinking, swashbucklers in tabards, they were actually, as their name suggests, primarily a musket formation and typically fought as dragoons (horse infantry that dismount to fight, unlike cavalry). Their role was to serve as the king's guard outside the palace; the palace guards being a separate corps supported by Swiss mercenaries.
At the time France was being torn apart by religious disputes. The crown and country were sworn to Catholicism but were beset large numbers of protestant Huguenots, necessitating an elite force to provide the king continuous protection. Shortly after the formation of the Musketeers, Cardinal Richelieu (who was basically France’s most powerful politician at the time and had plenty of enemies within and outside France) petitioned the king to create a second company of musketeers for his protection as well. This request was granted, creating the Cardinal's Guard. As the best trained and equipped infantry units in France, who spent most of their time sitting around in Paris with nothing to do, the two units had a legendarily fierce rivalry; although nowhere near as fratricidal as pop fiction suggests. When the Cardinal’s guard came under the authority of King Louis XIV, the two companies were reorganized as the Grey and Black companies, based on the colors of the horses they rode. The stylized cross of their uniforms was significant, a bold declaration of their loyalty to Catholicism.
Their equipment of the 17th century was slightly unusual. Gun tactics at the time provided the musketman a crook (a stick with a u-shaped top) to stabilize their gun on, a holdover from the harquebus which was simply too heavy to hold two handed for any significant period of time. The Musketeers had such a crook, but the top of their crook incorporated a bayonet, allowing it to be used as a spear after firing a volley. Rapiers, daggers, and small swords were ubiquitous as backup weapons, consistent with European sword fighting techniques of the era.
Serving in the Musketeers was extremely prestigious and virtually all its members were sons of aristocracy. The Tellier reforms mandated that nobility seeking to become officers needed time in ranks to learn military life, and the Guard was a highly desirable posting to serve out that term before seeking a commission. The Musketeers continued to exist up until the French Revolution; the Marquis de Lafayette who fought in the American Revolutionary War had served in the Musketeers as a teenager.
Games[edit | edit source]
- The Duke has a Three Musketeers expansion which pits the namesake characters of the Dumas book against the Cardinal and his stooges.