mousquetaire

Musketeer comes from French mousquetaire, from mousquet (musket), from Italian moschetto (a type of hawk, then a crossbow bolt, then a firearm). The original Musketeers of the Guard were a company of French soldiers formed in 1622 by Louis XIII, armed with muskets. Within a few years, the musket had become secondary to the sword for these elite troops. The Musketeers were the king's personal guard — close-combat bodyguards — and their weapon of choice was the rapier.

Alexandre Dumas published The Three Musketeers in 1844, set in 1625. D'Artagnan, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are musketeers who almost never use muskets. They fight duels, storm fortresses, and rescue queens, all with swords. Dumas knew this was accurate: the historical Musketeers of the Guard were elite swordsmen who happened to be named after a gun they no longer primarily used.

The word musketeer in English now means a Dumas character — a swashbuckling, honor-obsessed, sword-fighting gentleman. The military unit was disbanded in 1776, but the word has had a continuous life in literature, film, and theater for nearly two centuries. The Three Musketeers has been adapted into over a hundred films, making musketeer one of the most recognizable character types in Western fiction.

The real Musketeers of the Guard were not romantic. They were political enforcers for the French monarchy, involved in the intrigues of Richelieu and Mazarin. D'Artagnan existed — Charles de Batz-Castelmore d'Artagnan was a real musketeer who died at the Siege of Maastricht in 1673. But the man and the character have almost nothing in common. The word musketeer belongs to Dumas now, not to history.