Musketeer, 17th century

Musketeer, 17th century is a ranged infantry unit in Cossacks 3, available in the Barracks, 17th century. They are the generic version of the 17th musketeer family.

Background
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.

Approximately at the same time, all of Europe was armed with similar muskets. A Swedish musket from 1692-1704 weighed 4.7-5.0 kg (10-11 lb) and had a 22 mm calibre. Its range of fire was about 225 m (740 ft). With the introduction of the flintlock and paper cartridge, the muskets' rate of fire was improved significantly, up to 2 to 3 shots per minute. For the whole of the 17th century, musketeers remained very weak in hand-to-hand combat and could not fight back a cavalry attack without pikemen's support. However, at the end of the 17th century, the bayonet was introduced and turned a musket into a kind of pike, though not as good as the real thing. All these innovations contributed greatly to the musketeers' military power, so that they became a kind of all-purpose infantry, while pikemen gradually vanished from the armies. New musketeer square formations could withstand a cavalry charge. The formation depth was reduced from six ranks to three. The first rank fired in kneeling position, the second fired upright, and the third rank fired through in between the ranks of soldiers standing in front of them. Great importance was placed on making perfectly synchronized salvoes sound like a single shot. It was believed that simultaneous hits increased the demoralizing effect shots. Whole battalions or platoons were taught to shoot as one soldier. Soldiers were trained for strict combat procedures; a private had no right to decide by himself, he had only to obey orders. The infantry marched in time, with their officers to left and right. They fired salvoes when commanded to do so. With these tactics, a soldier's personality meant nothing, so even unreliable and ill-assorted elements were recruited. The value of each individual soldier had decreased in comparison to the previous period. A good rate of fire was often achieved with snap shooting up to 4 shots per minute. In the 18th century, musketeers had already become far cheaper and more numerous and were capable of completing virtually any tactical mission.