| These formed the basic and largest number of a regular army.
Musketeers used no armour and were armed with fuse muskets as their main weapon.
A musket was about 1.25 m (4 ft) long, about 7 kg (15 lb) in weight and 18 to 20 mm (about 3/4") calibre.
Before firing, a musket was rested on a prop. A marksman could fire a fuse musket only once every two minutes.
Before firing, musketeers would have to pull a fuse out of their serpentines and hold it with his left hand.
Then he rested the butt against the ground and filled the barrel with gunpowder from a tube.
Next, he would flatten the gunpowder with a ramrod, cork it with a wad and put a bullet into the barrel.
Then he took the musket in his hands and filled it with gunpowder from a sprinkler,
closed the cover, blew away the leftovers, and opened the cover again.
Next he would fix the fuse, aim and finally fire the musket. All these actions with a smouldering fuse were dangerous, since just a small spark could easily ignite the gunpowder or the soldier's uniform.
A musketeer had a shoulder belt with 12 wooden tubes of gunpowder 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 a distance of 50 steps. Along with a musket, the soldier was also armed with a sword. Musketeers of the Thirty Years' War used massive formations of 6 ranks. After each salvo, a rank would step back to reload their muskets.
As technologies improved, muskets became lighter. In 1624, the 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 after 1692 the whole French Army was equipped with this new weapon. |
