Three Musketeers used swords?

[squeegee]

Just saw yet another Three Musketeers movie on the cable box; I just love this swashbuckling tripe for some reason.

But it just occured to me: why do the Musketeers fight with swords? Shouldn't they fight with muskets?? If not, why are they named Musketeers???

Thanks in advance for any historical clarification from the Teeming Millions -- my grasp of French history and cheezy movies is at stake!

[yojimbo]

From http://www.globalstage.net/goback/three_discuss.html

Even though the Musketeers are renowned for their sword fighting, their name comes from the long rifles, or muskets, which you see them using in the play to fight the Huguenots at La Rochelle.

also

The Three Musketeers is a “swashbuckling” story. A swashbuckling soldier carried a sword or “rapier” and was quick on his feet, often adventurous and able to outdo formidable opponents.

This should keep you going till somebody who actually knows what their talking about comes along

[Upham]

The world is insane.

DO NOT try to make sence out of it, as it will take you along too

That is all


9

[Celyn]

Rats! I have wondered that for years, so I came dashing in here expecting to find that someone had sorted it all out in 3 posts. Sadly disillusioned now - I mean I can see that the swashbuckling is more dramatically satisfying, but one does have to wonder why bother carrying the muskets around at all. Or maybe they always forgot to buy musket firing powder, or whatever they use. Or it was a rainy time and the guns got too wet....?


Damn you squeegee, I won't be able to get the musketeers out of my head now. Oh, and hello and welcome to the Straight Dope.

[squeegee]

yojimbo, thanks for the clarification.

However, (and I just can't resist the temptation to ask):

What exactly is a swash, and why would it need to be buckled?

[yojimbo]

And now for a WAG (Wild Ass Guess)

Ok the where Musketeers which AFAIK was a section of the French army, like the infantry. If they went to war they would have used muskets in some mad old fashioned I'll walk at you firing and you walk at me firing sort of way.

The also had swords and would use them in close contact fighting as they where more effective. Most of the fighting we see in the movies is close quarter fighting so that's why they use swords. They also had a macho honour thing going so iit would be more of a manly way of fighting than just taking a gun out and shooting somebody ala Indianna Jones.

And welcome squeegee good to have you here. BTW was it the Oliver Reed/Michael York movie? I love them there sooo funny.

[RM Mentock]

Originally posted by squeegee
What exactly is a swash, and why would it need to be buckled?

No, no, not buckled. Bucklered. Which means protected, by a shield.

[Spiny Norman]

Going to war with only a musket isn't a bright move. It takes forever to reload, and the range is as poor as the accuracy. Besides, the thing is so heavy it has to be supported while firing.

If you're not careful, any enemies surviving the first salvo will run up & kill you while you're reloading. Though a massed salvo from a bunched group of muskets would break most attacking forces, it was a very good idea to have a melee weapon as well. On its own, outside the battlefield, the musket is hopeless.

As for Dumas' figures, I believe they were officers & gentlemen, who wouldn't bother with something so profane as firearms - pistols, perhaps, but those, too, were one-shot affairs. Fencing, OTOH, was one of the skills that distinguished gentlemen from the rabble. Officers still have ceremonial swords, right ? And in the three musketeers' timeframe, having the time to keep up fencing skill was indeed a luxury.

S. Norman

[Spiny Norman]

Rats - yojimbo posted the same. Ah well.

[yojimbo]

Yeah but whats annoying is you said it sooo much better than me.

[Danielinthewolvesden]

The "kings Musketeers" was one of the first organized firearms units. In war, they carried the musket- which was an expensive weapon for a short while. However, it was heavy, and slow to load. Thus, while bopping around Paree, you would carry a sword, or perhaps a pistol. It was a brief period where swashbuckling could really work. Guns were just good enuf- that running around in a lot of armour did nothing but slow you down (a good steel breastplate MIGHT stop a lower powered pistol bullet, which is why they were retained for a while), while guns were not so good that they were good for much outside war. The powder was so bad that they could not be kept loaded for very long, and the muskets were fired mostly by means of slow-matches. Thus- if you REALLY knew you were going to use it- a musket was great- otherwise, a rapier was better.

[screech-owl]

Not musch to add, except that 'yup, the guys are right'.

Having done English Civil War re-enactments, I can vouch for the lack of accuracy and failure rate of firing a musket.

Aiming one a musket could be just as accurate as catching a hyper-active toddler - I've hit the broadside of a barn with musket fire. Too bad it was several feet away from my intended target. Another of my re-enactor colleagues (excellent marksman with many guns) went out turkey hunting with a matchlock - he wasn't surprised that the pilgrims nearly starved. The smell of the match spooked the deer, and the explosion flushed out anything in a half-mile radius. (We had stored-bought turkey that year.)

Slow match took awhile to burn down (and just when you thought it was a dud - BOOM! - right in your face, and percussion locks (later invention) were a little better, but still a little edgy. Wet powder is such a pain in the dupa, and re-loading took at least 20 seconds (pour powder/pack/add wadding/pack/add ammo/pack/prime pan/light match (no zippo here!)/aim) [probably forgot a few things, but you get the idea], allowing your enemy time to advance on you. By that time, if you were in battle, you were probably mown down by the guys with the pikes.

Pick up the "Osprey" series book (great books on military history, and most of the illustrations of uniforms and weaponry are excellent) on the English Civil War (the "Musketeer" time period. You'll find that several of the officers did carry swords as well as guns.

Mmmmmmmm. Michael York. Mmmmmmmm. Oliver Reed.

One neat costuming note - Faye Dunaway (M'lady) is wearing a Montero - a hat contructed to fold up into a small cap or unfold to cover the head and neck (looks like a baseball cap with flaps when folded up), not as flashy as the wide-brimmed hats that everyone expects a 'Musketeer' to wear, but historically accurate for the time period. And worn by men, too!

[squeegee]

Originally posted by RM Mentock
No, no, not buckled. Bucklered. Which means protected, by a shield.

Fair enough. So, what's a 'swash' ? A sword?
Would that make 'swashbuckler' == 'sword and shield' ?

Or is a 'swashbuckler' a specific kind of buckler?

[RM Mentock]

Originally posted by squeegee
Fair enough. So, what's a 'swash' ? A sword?

Apparently not. The meaning of swash that seems to apply is "swagger or bluster," so swashbuckler is someone who carries a shield with a swagger. Seems apt, but I probably wouldn't try to call anyone a shieldswagger.

[Scupper]

IIRC, the York/Reed versions had at least one significant sequence in which the musketeers used firearms extensively.

I really liked those movies.

Trivia bit: Oliver Reed was severely injured and nearly killed during the making of the movies. He was stabbed in the throat during a fight scene.

[Swampwolf]

Actually, a "swash" in a small inlet. If you go to the beach, and see a long finger of water stretching inland for as much as a 1/2 mile, that's what you're looking at.

Pirates would use these swashes to hide in because they were easily defensible from the water (but not land).

[mrblue92]

Perhaps it would help if we would elaborate a little for you on the history of muskets...

As mentioned, muskets of the period were inaccurate and slow loading. Why? Well, they were inaccurate mostly because they were smoothbore (as opposed to rifled) and the balls they fired were not perfectly round. Bullets would tumble erratically in the air and would therefore randomly deflect. Rifling would later fix much of this problem and would extend the effective range of musketry from 100 yards to 400 yards or more. And of course most of us probably realize the difference between loading a musket with powder and shot and loading a gun with modern cartridges.

We also must take into account the method with which the gun is fired, commonly referred to as the "lock" (presumably so-called due to the similarity to locks of the period). The earliest handheld guns (roughly 1300's) were nothing more than miniature cannons held in a gloved hand or on a pole. From multiple craftmen came refinements in the design, and the matchlock evolved sometime during the 1400's. It used a burning wick to light the powder in a flashpan, which in turn lit the powder in the breech, firing the gun. There was some delay between pulling the trigger and firing, which led to further inaccuracy.

If my chronology is correct, this is the type of gun the musketeers would be carrying. It is technically possible that they could have had wheellocks, which were intricate and expensive, but those definitely were not standard army issue. The wheellock had a winding-watch type mechanism to strike a spark against an iron pyrite wheel, IIRC. The flintlock (which made matchlocks obsolete) did not make an appearance until the 1700's, percussion caps were invented somewhere around 1830.

My history here is a little weak, but the Army tactics of the day were basically "shot and pike". In other words, you marched toward the enemy formations in ranks and unleashed a single shot volley of musket fire, then closed the distance and stabbed each other with long spears (aka pikes). Elite, trained troops would use swords instead of spears. Eventually the bayonet would make the gun and pike the same weapon.

(This is all from memory, so don't quote me.)

The other logical reason you'd use a sword? Stealth. If you can only fire your gun once, and it attracts everybody's attention, it's probably not a good idea. Stabbing a guy in the back doesn't make nearly as much noise.

What, you think all these guys were chivalrous?

[tomndebb]

The information on matchlocks and wheellocks has been interesting, but the Musketeers would almost certainly have used flintlocks. The earliest proto-flintlock, the snaphaunce, had been tried out around 1570. By 1620, the improved genuine flintlock had been introduced to the French army (and these were the King's Musketeers--so likely to get decent weapons), and the siege of Rochelle featured in the novel was ordered by Richelieu in 1628.

[Tranquilis]

To 'swash one's buckle': To brag or boast. It doesn't refer to a 'buckler' or shield (English usage, that), but to 'strike' (old French, corrupted).

The Gentlemen of the era were expected to boast of their exploits by social norm, and when gathered about, they would strike the hilts of their swords against the rather large and ornate buckles they wore, as a way of adding emphasis to their words. Not unlike pounding one's hand on a desk or table, as is sometimes done today.

[MEBuckner]

Having done English Civil War re-enactments, I can vouch for the lack of accuracy and failure rate of firing a musket.

You can vouch for the accuracy of musket fire? You mean you guys use live ammunition in these re-enactments?!?

Damn! And I thought some of these American Civil War re-enactors were hard core....

[Olentzero]

Originally posted by screech-owl
Having done English Civil War re-enactments

[major hijack]

Oh God, really?! Tell me they do these things on the Yankee side of the Atlantic! Mrs. O and I have fun doin' the U.S. Civil War reenactments but that would be the absolute bomb. Especially buying all the clothes!

[/major hijack]

[screech-owl]

Originally posted by MEBuckner

You can vouch for the accuracy of musket fire? You mean you guys use live ammunition in these re-enactments?!?

Damn! And I thought some of these American Civil War re-enactors were hard core....

NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!!

Target practice! Large target on bales of hay. I can tell you, the trees beyond the target were not happy.

Then there was cannon practice. Now that was cool. Except for the time (I wasn't there, but I heard about it) one regiment fired a package of fresh cow manure, not knowing there was someone on the other side of the hill.

Direct splatter. And no showers at the site.

[screech-owl]

Originally posted by Olentzero

[major hijack]

Oh God, really?! Tell me they do these things on the Yankee side of the Atlantic! Mrs. O and I have fun doin' the U.S. Civil War reenactments but that would be the absolute bomb. Especially buying all the clothes!

[/major hijack]

Blackwell's Third Company, 'Benjamin' at your service. (okay, I was the cross-dressing drummer - I was the only one who could play the drum, and my cooking skills were atrocious. I could do less damage with a musket than a ladle.)

Not sure if the reigiments are still active (this was several years ago, as evidenced from the conversation re-created below). Once I get the e-mail back up again, I'll see if I can contact anyone who may know. Most of the regiments were based in the Northeast US.


Didn't get a lot of support on this side of the pond (but quite popular in England, obviously - PBS ran a BBC mini-series - "By The Sword Divided" - where some of our other companies were involved, mush like hiring re-enactors for "Glory".

"Are you in a play?"
"No we're re-enactors - English Civil War."
"Civil War, huh? You're dressed awfully funny for Civil War. Are you north or south?"
"Cavalier. He's a Roundhead, <elbow to ribs> ugh, Parliament."
"Cavalier? Oh, The Three Musketeers! Which one of you is D'Artanian?"
Sigh.
"He was French. This is the English Civil War. You know, Oliver Cromwell, Charles the First."
"Huh? The English had a civil war? When? I didn't hear about it? When did Charles get on the throne, and is Diana Queen?"
And so on....


And we made our own clothes - both the field wear and the 'peacocky' flashy stuff. I hated wearing a bumroll.

[Maeglin]

Plenty of people have elaborated about the history of the musket but no one has discussed the rapier. Since I don't think it's all that relevant to the discussion, I won't bother...but for one little factoid.

The rapier is a strictly civillian weapon. It was virtually useless on the field. Learning rapier play was in no way part of a soldier or an officer's military training.

[mrblue92]

Originally posted by tomndebb The information on matchlocks and wheellocks has been interesting, but the Musketeers would almost certainly have used flintlocks. The earliest proto-flintlock, the snaphaunce, had been tried out around 1570. By 1620, the improved genuine flintlock had been introduced to the French army (and these were the King's Musketeers--so likely to get decent weapons), and the siege of Rochelle featured in the novel was ordered by Richelieu in 1628.

Well, paint me blue and call me Dopey Smurf. That's what I get for going strictly from memory... I bet I was thinking about rifling being invented in the 1700's, not the flintlock.

Thanks for the correction. Of course, the accuracy and load time issues were still a problem with the smoothbore flintlock.

[squeegee]

The rapier is a strictly civillian weapon. It was virtually useless on the field. Learning rapier play was in no way part of a soldier or an officer's military training.

Okay, so I'm hearing from the Masses that:

- Musketeers were probably members of the military,
trained to execute suicidal march & fire tactics in
formation.
- Musketeers didn't user rapiers. Or at least weren't
trained in them.

On the other hand:

The films seem to portray the Musketeers as a fairly small
and elite group, sworn to protect the King, who fought with
rapiers. Kind of a Renaissance Secret Service.

So:

Did Dumas just borrow the name Musketeers and associate
it with his fictional swaggering rapier-dandies, or is
there some tangible, historical connection between
the Dumas 'Musketeers' and real Musketeers, whoever they were ?

[Speaker for the Dead]

How do you get into these reenactments?

[Speaker for the Dead]

- Musketeers were probably members of the military,
trained to execute suicidal march & fire tactics in
formation

From sources I've read, they stood still, fired, and had pikemen to protect them from cavalry...

[mrblue92]

The designation "musketeer" means little more than a soldier who carried a musket. However, as with most military organizations, certain groups of soldiers were assigned certain tasks. Seems logical that if I was a king, I'd want the pick of the litter to guard my castle and entrust secrets to. Now, I've never actually read any Dumas, but I'll make a WAG and say the Three Musketeers were supposed to be the best of the best, probably highly experienced field officers.

[mrblue92]

Oops. I'm making quite the pathetic showing in this thread...

Tom already indicated that Dumas's Musketeers were specifically "King's Musketeers", which I suspect was probably a real French Army unit, probably of regimental size.

I'd wager they were romanticized, exaggerated examples of real soldiers, as I don't believe Dumas was writing a historical record.

Tom, maybe I'll just let you finish this one up...

[Akatsukami]

The Three Musketeers is semi-historical, although Dumas probably didn't realize that his sources actually reflected facts (as opposed to being interesting forgeries).

D'Artagnan lived about a generation later than Dumas portrayed (he was commander of one company of King's Musketeers, but under Louis XIV, the son of the Louis XIII in the novel). Treville was not as important as he is made to seem, and Richelieu eventually got the upper hand of him, banishing him for his involvement in the Cinq-Mars conspiracy of (IIRC) 1642. Athos, Porthos, and Aramis (actually d'Athos, de Portau, and d'Aramitz) also existed; none of them had long or distinguished careers as Musketeers, and d'Athos and d'Aramitz were related to Treville, which is how they were recruited for the Musketeers; d'Artagnan may not have known any of them.

Lady de Winter (Milady) is made up of whole cloth; however, the other major non-musketeer characters (Louis XIII, Anne of Austria, Richelieu, Buckingham, Felton) are real, and did the things attributed to them, although the interpretations of their characters are Dumas'.

The King's Musketeers were sort of a cross between a training school for young officer-candidates (not that they weren't expected to fight, too) and a royal bodyguard (thus, Richelieu's having the Cardinal's Guards). The entry requirements were more or less what Treville tells d'Artagnan. Since the Musketeers were officer-candidates, they were young aristocrats; as such, they were trained with the (civilian) rapier, although privately, not as part of their military education.

[Danielinthewolvesden]

Aka has it right. Altho originally, they were a fighting regiment of musketeers (and one of the first), they became a Guard unit, and mostly did errands for the King. Thus, the rapier was important for their usual "about Paris' duties. The REAL Kings guard are those other guys, in Gold & Silver, with halbards- that you see a few times in the Movie.

[Wendell Wagner]

screech-owl writes:

> Another of my re-enactor colleagues (excellent marksman
> with many guns) went out turkey hunting with a matchlock -> he wasn't surprised that the pilgrims nearly starved.

If the sources I've read are correct, the Pilgrims didn't hunt. They trapped for game. Guns didn't become accurate enough to be used for regular hunting until the nineteenth century. Most eighteenth century Americans didn't even own a gun, and many of the ones that were around weren't in workable condition. It wasn't until after the Civil War that guns began to become reasonably common. Even in the old West, they weren't as omnipresent as you might think. It's not clear that there were ever any shootouts as protrayed in movies, with two shooters a few dozen feet from each other daring the other to draw. When people did shoot each other back then, they wanted to be close so that they were sure that they would hit their target.

[Arnold Winkelried]

A few additions to the learned comments of Akatsukami:

Originally posted by Akatsukami
The Three Musketeers is semi-historical, although Dumas probably didn't realize that his sources actually reflected facts (as opposed to being interesting forgeries).

As a matter of fact Dumas and his collaborator Maquet based their work on several histories of the period and the first book of the trilogy in particular (The Three Musketeers) has one of its main plot points directly taken from historical accounts (see below).

Lady de Winter (Milady) is made up of whole cloth

Not quite true. The Mémoires inédits de Louis-Henri de Loménie, comte de Brienne, secrétaire d’Etat sous Louis XIV, published in Paris in 1828, relate the whole story of the diamonds being stolen from the duke of Buckingham (which diamonds had been secretly sent to him by Anne d’Autriche, queen of France, through the intermediary of the Duchesse de Chevreuse). The diamonds were stolen at a ball from the Duke of Buckingham as related in the novel, and the duke of Buckingham suspected the countess of Clarick, with good reasons, since the memoirs say that she is the one that sent the diamonds to the cardinal of Richelieu.
This version of the story seems to be confirmed by the Mémoires of La Rochefoucauld, except that La Rochefoucauld names the stealer of the diamonds as countess Carlisle, a mistriss of the Duke of Buckingham.
Dumas must have read the mémoires of de Brienne since in another of his non-fiction books, Louis XIV et son siècle, he relates the anecdote but attributes the theft to a lady Clarick.

The history of the non-fictional d’Artagnan (in brief): Charles de Batz-Castelmore, aka d’Artagnan was born in Lupiac (Gers) in 1613 or 1615 and died at Maëstricht on 25 June 1673. (He would have been much too young to participate in the events of the first novel of the series, since he would have been approx. 12). He joined the Gardes of M. des Essarts around 1635 and participated in the sieges of Arras, Aire-sur-la-Lys, La Bassée and Bapaume, then left for england and came back shortly after the death of Louis XIII. He became a mousquetaire in 1644, but when the company was abolished in 1646 he became an agent of cardinal Mazarin. In 1658 he was named sous-lieutenant of the reconstituted Musketeers (reformed in 1657), arrested Fouquet at Nantes in 1651 (as mentioned in the third novel in the series, Le Vicomte de Bragelonne), brought a prisoner to Pignerol (possibly the mysterious Masque de fer), and finally died during a campaign in Holland.

Athos: historical figure would be Armand de Sillègue d’Athos d’Autevielle (1615-1643), a cousin (far-removed) of M. de Tréville, Porthos and Aramis.

Aramis: historical figure is Henri d’Aramits (? - 1674), who entered the company of Mousquetaires of M. de Tréville in 1640.

Porthos: historical figure is Isaac de Portau (1617 - ?) who served in the Gardes of M. des Essarts around 160 and joined the Mousquetaires of M. de Tréville in 1643.

Note: all above information is taken from Les grand romans d’Alexandre Dumas - I. Les Mousquetaires - Les Trois Mouusquetaires, Vingt Ans Après, Bouquins, Robert Laffont, in particular from the preface by Claude Schopp and the dictionary of historical figures included after the preface.

[squeegee]

Wow! Great information, gang.
You guys (& girls) rock!

[Speaker for the Dead]

Originally posted by Wendell Wagner
screech-owl writes:

> Another of my re-enactor colleagues (excellent marksman
> with many guns) went out turkey hunting with a matchlock -> he wasn't surprised that the pilgrims nearly starved.

If the sources I've read are correct, the Pilgrims didn't hunt. They trapped for game. Guns didn't become accurate enough to be used for regular hunting until the nineteenth century. Most eighteenth century Americans didn't even own a gun, and many of the ones that were around weren't in workable condition. It wasn't until after the Civil War that guns began to become reasonably common. Even in the old West, they weren't as omnipresent as you might think. It's not clear that there were ever any shootouts as protrayed in movies, with two shooters a few dozen feet from each other daring the other to draw. When people did shoot each other back then, they wanted to be close so that they were sure that they would hit their target.

Wasn't the Kentucky rifle a good weapon that was carried into battle agains the English in the Rev'n War?

[Tranquilis]

Guns didn't become accurate enough to be used for regular hunting until the nineteenth century

Actually, not specifically true. The "Jaeger" or hunting rifle was known in Germany (and likely elsewhere in Europe) well before the Pilgrim's time. It's highly unlikely, however, that they'd have had many, if any at all, of these fairly expensive arms.

The Kentucky (Pennsylvania) Long Rifle, while quite accurate, was developed quite some time after the Pilgrims arrival. First making it's appearance in it's "Green Mountain Boys" form in 1725, or thereabouts, it arrived on the scene more than a hundred years after the Pilgrims landed. Interestingly enough, the name "Kentucky Long Rifle" was first documented around 1812, well after the Revolution.