| These were the basic and the most numerous part of a regular army. Musketeers used no armor and were armed with fuse muskets as a main
weapon. A musket was about 1.25 m (4 ft) long, about 7 kg (15 lb) in weight, and of 18-20 mm (about 3/4") caliber. Before firing, a musket was
rested against a prop. A shooter could fire a fuse musket not more than a single time in two minutes. Before a shot, a musketeer had to pull a fuse out
of his serpentine and hold it with his left hand. Then he rested the musket club against the ground and filled the barrel with gunpowder from a measure
tube. Next, he flattened the gunpowder with a ramrod, corked it with a wad, and put a bullet into the barrel. Then he took the musket in his hands and
filled the shelf with gunpowder from a sprinkler, closed the shelf cover, blew off the leftover, and opened the cover again. Next, he fixed in the fuse,
aimed, and fired the musket. All those manipulations with a smoldering fuse were dangerous, since a spark could light up the gunpowder or soldier's
clothes. A musketeer had a shoulder belt with 12 portions of gunpowder in wooden tubes set in leather, a spare fuse, a powder-flask, and a
powder-sprinkler. A musket was quite a powerful weapon capable of piercing thick metal plates from 50-step distance. Along with a musket, the soldier
was also armed with a sword. Musketeers of the Thirty Years War used to assume massive formations of 6 ranks. After a salvo, each rank stepped back to
reload their muskets.
As technologies were improved, muskets became lighter. In 1624 Swedish army was armed with muskets that needed no props. About 1648, a flintlock was
invented. In 1671 a regiment of King's fusiliers in France was armed with flintlock muskets, and since 1692 the whole French Army was equipped with this
new weapo |
