Are the Three Musketeers allergic to muskets? (2014)
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ox.ac.uk
Anyway, if you think about it, it makes sense: muskets were a new and unproven technology that still needed a lot of development to actually become usable firearms. While you were busy lighting the fuse on your musket, your opponent could attack and kill you with his sword. So, of course, the king's elite troops needed to be equipped with these "high-tech" weapons for prestige reasons, but due to their impracticality, it's not surprising that they didn't actually see much use...
But they are a symbol of the wrong social class. A musket is something that a peasant or a burgher can use to kill a noble. All the main characters in the three musketeers are nobility, and their social class has suffered greatly from the "democratization" of war. They, like almost everyone like them historically, much prefer the old ways from when they were more pre-eminent, and look down their noses at firearms. They spend very little time at war, and a lot more time duelling and participating in schemes.
The high-tech of the early 17th century wasn't even matchlocks anymore, it was flintlocks. Those took another ~50 or so years to become general issue, but at the time of the novels upper class people who can afford modern weapons wouldn't have been fumbling with matches anymore.
Bayonet charges were a major aspect of Napoleonic warfare, and only really went away with the development of firearms that had higher rates of fire and were accurate out to larger ranges. In the Napoleonic era, soldiers would close to within 50-100 meters, fire off a few volleys, and then charge in with the bayonet.
By the time armies were equipped with breech-loading rifles that could fire half a dozen accurate shots a minute at a distance of a few hundred meters, the volume and accuracy of fire made the bayonet charge obsolete. But that was rather late (the 1860s or so).
See, for example: https://journals.gold.ac.uk/index.php/bjmh/article/download/...
By the Napoleonic Wars, something below 10% of casualties were caused by melee weapons. And even that was mostly cavalry, bayonets account for ~2%. The purpose of the bayonet charge was not to kill your enemy, it was to convince your weakened enemy to cede his position after you had already done the killing. The forces rarely fought hand-to-hand and when they did it was notable, usually one side was so weakened and shocked that they fled or refused to charge.
Even though most of the casualties were caused by musket and artillery fire, the bayonet was tactically very important in Napoleonic warfare. A bayonet charge is absolutely terrifying, and the reason why there were relatively few casualties from them is likely because soldiers would break rank and flee in the face of one. If soldiers had stood their ground and fought, casualties would have been much higher, and with their low rate of fire, muskets would have been of little use in hand-to-hand combat.
They key change that happened in the mid-1800s is that firearms finally achieved ranges and rates of fire that made closing with a massed enemy nearly impossible.
Charing into a solid wall of pointy bits is something you understand in your gut to be a bad idea.
I believe he got this detail right in both ways; in that firearms were the most important weapons, and also the main characters would have done their very best to ignore that fact.
Was France using other people's currrncy back then ?
It was very common before nationalism and the standardization of currencies. I read primary sources about conquistadors and the contracts financing and supplying the expedition might involve a dozen currencies because each trader supplying the wood, food, animals, etc would work in their own preferred/local currency.
Not sure about the Occitan; IIRC Eleanor was considered a queen in her own right as rule of Aquitaine, not a duchess.
Are you sure you know what the coin paid you is made of? A merchant of the time wasn’t. Those who care not to be scammed have never found it simple.
If you want to buy something worth 6% of a gold coin, whacking off an edge of one is a weird way to do it. You'd need a scale handy.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13330922-the-black-count
which arguably served as a template for a famous novel which also features a count in the title.
Nobody drinks and carouses like they do, nobody has their sense of chivalry, artistry and old-fashioned justice. The world has lost its colour, its joy and its sense of fairness, and they are loyal to an institution which is itself corrupted and whose time is clearly ending. And so they are lost: they have no cause and they are slowly destroying themselves.
This is why they are portrayed as musketeers who think muskets (representing callous modernity) are clumsy and uncouth. It underscores that the three don't even feel they really fit with the rest of the musketeers. They know muskets have their place. It's just not with them. So there's no reason to explain them away logically. It's a literary device.
The second point is that D'Artagnan is there to remind them of who they were and could be again. D'Artagnan is the hero of the story because he has not been corrupted by life experience.
The third layer is he's also a proxy for the reader who wishes they were there. He is there to get life lessons on the reader's behalf: that stories don't tell the whole truth, that people begin to confuse themselves with their own personal mythologies, that fame isn't reality, that there are risks in meeting your heroes, that adults will let you down, that no institution is better than its people, etc.
This trope has been parodied in various ways since, not least I think in the form of "person who confuses actors for the people they play and convinces them they know as much about the job as the characters they play". Which has itself been parodied in Three Amigos! and also in Galaxy Quest.
And the trope of guns being impersonal compared to swords and knives turns up everywhere.
"This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster. An elegant weapon for a more civilized age."
If you wrote it set in the present day, they'd be a bunch of 50-somethings pining for the 90s, bucket hats, blasting Pablo Honey and Modern Life Is Rubbish from the Sharp "Full Auto Reverse" in the Astra, and bemoaning how you can't get decent E and no-one gets in fights any more. They probably own very expensive guitars, too, that they can't really play. The Kia e-Niro will run out of battery at the most inconvenient time leaving our trio stranded on their way to retrieve the stolen diamond to pay off the local councillor Ritchley, who is really fronting for a shadowy property developer who he is very much in love with but has no chance with.
They all dream of one day leaving Swindon.
Athos, Porthos and Aramis are Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Dylan Moran, Ritchley is Bill Nighy, and Milady is Tamsin Greig.
Quite a lot of people absolutely hate it, but somehow still have a pirate copy squirrelled away.
Sandford is inspired by Wells and Wimbourne, though neither of those are villages either. Wells is tiny, but actually a city.
The films make more of the musketeers' slow ruin, I think, than the book does. But Porthos is vain and a bit dim, Athos drinks like a fish, etc. If I remember the book right, the films also tend to make a bit less of D'Artagnan's naïvete and tidy up his personal morality, and Athos is usually a loud, drunken, loyal powerhouse in the films rather than an alcoholic.
The fundamentals of the films are usually right: the musketeers are aimless and in need of direction, aware they serve a pretty weak monarch, mostly powerless to deal with the corruption around him. Everyone has their own motivations.
Weirdly, the delightful eighties Dogtanian and The Three Muskehounds series is pretty close to the book — it's toned down rather than bowdlerised. D'Artagnan really is a feisty puppy, basically.
And now I have that song stuck in my head.
I think what I should actually do is read the book again while rewatching Dogtanian, because that sounds fun and I read the book largely because of it!
The novel is more about politics. There are very few scenes where I'd expect a modern solider of any nation to have their gun with them either. (though a few scenes where I would expect one they often don't seem to have them)
The sword is not as clumsy or random as a musket; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age.
Comments here make big conclusions basically out of mundane historical realities. Our modern stories about soldiers feature soldiers using arms appropriate to occasion too - not just the most powerful but least practical gun assigned to their unit.
Tl;dr modern tank battalion guy is not driving tank everywhere either. Not because there is some profound disconnect with social class or system or other people, but because he is not an idiot.
Still only good for one shot before you need to switch to a blade in close battle, of course, and utterly beside the point of the story, but worth calling out.
It would be like the gendarmes today — literally "armed people", even if they don't always carry an arm.