discuss about MUSKETEERS & FUSILIERS - thread for CA
pictures:
early XVIII century:
Russia/ Austria(German)/ Sweden/ Spain/ France
mid XVIII century:
Austria(German)/ France/ Prussia/ Spain/ Swiss/ Britain
late XVIII century - 1806(to European uniform's reform):
Russia/ Britain/ France/ Spain/ Austria(Hungarian)/ Westfalia
1807- 1815(from uniform's reform to end of Napoleonic Wars):
Austria(Hungarian)/ Britain/ Spain/ Prussia/ Russia/ France
from wikipedia:
A musketeer (French: "mousquetaire") was an early modern type of infantry soldier equipped with a musket. Musketeers were an important part of early modern armies, particularly in Europe.
The Musketeers of the Guard were a junior unit of roughly company strength of the military branch of the Royal Household or Maison du Roi. They were created in 1622 when Louis XIII furnished a company of light cavalry (the "carabineers", created by Louis' father Henri IV) with muskets. Musketeers fought in battle both on foot (infantry) and on horseback (dragoons). As a junior unit in the Royal Guard, the Musketeers were not closely linked to the royal family. Traditional bodyguard duties were in fact performed by the Garde du corps and the Gardes suisses. Because of its junior status, the Musketeers were open to the lower classes of French nobility or younger sons from noble families whose oldest son served in the more prestigious units. The Musketeers soon gained a reputation for boisterousness and fighting spirit as the only way for social and career advancement was excelling at their task as mounted light dragoons.
Their high esprit de corps and can-do attitude gained them royal favour and they became a popular fixture at court and in Paris. Shortly after their creation, Cardinal Richelieu created a bodyguard unit for himself. As not to offend the King with a perceived sense of self-importance, Richelieu did not name them Garde du Corps like the King's personal guards but rather Musketeers after the Kings' junior guard cavalry. This was the start of a bitter rivalry between both corps of Musketeers. At the cardinal's death in 1642, the company passed to his successor Cardinal Mazarin. At Mazarin's death in 1661, the cardinal's Musketeers passed to Louis XIV to the disgust of both the King's Musketeers and the Cardinal's Musketeers. The Musketeers were subsequently reorganized as a guard cavalry regiment of 2 companies. The King's Musketeers became the first company, popularly known as "Grey Musketeers" (mousquetaires gris) from the color of their horses while the Cardinal's Musketeers became the second company, known as "Black Musketeers" (mousquetaires noirs) because they rode black horses.
The Musketeers were the among the most popular of the military companies of the Ancien Régime. This popularity was due to the lower entrance requirements. The senior guard units were in effect closed to all but the most senior and wealthy of French nobles so for the vast majority of French nobles (many of whom lived in genteel poverty), service in the Musketeers was the only way to join a cavalry unit in the Royal Household and perhaps catch the King's eye.
In 1776, the Musketeers were eliminated by Louis XVI, for budgetary reasons. Reformed in 1789, they were eliminated shortly afterward. They were reformed on July 6, 1814, and definitively eliminated on January 1, 1816.
Decades later, starting in 1844, this group was the subject of the now-famous serial publication The Three Musketeers, in the magazine Le Siècle between March and July 1844, although the four main characters never actually use, or even refer to, a musket. The author, Alexandre Dumas, père, based his work on the book Mémoires de Monsieur d'Artagnan, capitaine lieutenant de la première compagnie des Mousquetaires du Roi (Memoirs of Mister d'Artagnan, Lieutenant Captain of the first company of the King's Musketeers) by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras (Cologne, 1700).
The iconic "Redcoat" of the British Empire was the staple unit in the British armies that carved out the widest spanning Empire the world has seen. Originally worn only by British soldiers, it was adopted by the East India Trading Company and given to sepoys in India. The facing of the jacket was a variety of colours, depending on the regiment. The redcoat was equipped with the 0.75 calibre Land Pattern Musket, or Brown Bess. He was the most thoroughly trained musketeer in history. The British army being the only one in the colonial era to train with live ammunition. A fully trained redcoat could fire four times a minute, compared to the French conscripts average rate of twice a minute. This, combined with the British technique of firing by companies (a method wherein blocks of men fired smaller volleys in succession, creating a wave of fire down the front of the regiment) made it possible for the British to win pitched battles against far superiour numbers.
Fusilier was originally the name of a soldier armed with a light flintlock musket called the fusil. The word was first used around 1680, and has later developed into a regimental designation.Various forms of flintlock small arms had been used in warfare since the middle of the 16th century. At the time of the English civil war (1642-1652) the term firelock was usually employed to distinguish these weapons from the more common matchlock musket.
The special value of the firelock in armies of the 17th century lay in the fact that the artillery of the time used open powder barrels for the service of the guns, making it unsafe to allow lighted matches in the muskets of the escort. Further, a military escort was required, not only for the protection, but also for the surveillance of the artillerymen of those days. Companies of firelocks were therefore organized for these duties, and out of these companies grew the fusiliers who were employed in the same way in the wars of Louis XIV. In the latter part of the Thirty Years' War (1643) fusiliers were simply mounted troops armed with the fusil, as carabiniers were with the carbine. But the escort companies of artillery came to be known by the name shortly afterwards, and the regiment of French Royal Fusiliers, organized in 1671 by Vauban, was considered the model for Europe.
The general adoption of the flintlock musket and the suppression of the pike in the armies of Europe put an end to the original special duties of fusiliers, and they were subsequently employed to a large extent in light infantry work, perhaps on account of the greater individual aptitude for detached duties naturally shown by soldiers who had never been restricted to a fixed and unchangeable place in the line of battle.
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