When I read the book in my youth, I remember being surprised not only by the lack of muskets, but also that it was more about D'Artagnan than about the titular Three Musketeers.
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...
The original novel is set in 1625-1628. At that point, firearms are well and truly established, having proven themselves to be the war-winning weapon in the Italian Wars more than a century ago. They are not new and unproven technology; they are the weapon that the great grandparents of the main characters fought and won with.
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.
Even though firearms were well and truly established by the 17th Century, blade weapons remained important right on through to the mid-1800s.
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).
I suppose you are right about the history of firearms. However, the novel was written in 1844, more than 200 years after the time in which it is set.
Which makes me wonder if the author (Alexandre Dumas) knew and cared about the historic facts.
The whole point of The Three Musketeers is that they are men out of their time, in an end-of-epoch story, surely.
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.
> 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.
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.
Yeah, I guess that's what I meant with "impractical". Sure, if you had your enemy on the other side of a battlefield, or outside the walls of your castle, muskets were great. If you met them on the streets of Paris, not so much...
Matchlock Musket took forever to fire. It needed all these steps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KTS8PQ06Qo
This is powerful when in actual battle, pretty impractical in the Paris streets and situations these guys find themselves in.
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.
Flintlock tech was available at the time the books were set. The pan could be primed and loaded in advance and kept ready to fire.
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.
Fans might also look at Steven Brust's fantasy Dumas pastiches, especially The Phoenix Guards, set in the same world as his Vlad Taltos novels. Truly a hoot.
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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).
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.
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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.
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