How the Musketeers Worked

we can call ourselves. Ye Have we won an award? Are we award winning now? Nope? Okay, maybe someone at home will make us an award and send it in. We've been awarded a podcast, so we are award winning? Yes? Um, yes, so that's this what we're about to do. And I think it's becoming painfully obvious why we haven't won any awards the more we talk about this. Yeah, I think you're right. Um. Are you doing good? Uh? I'm great. Are you getting sucked for Comic Con? It's like two

days dude. Well, and by the time this is out will be like long since I've pooped our pants on stage and laughed at Yeah, yeah, but the horror. Yeah, I'm excited though, Sure, San Diego, let's do it. Yeah, let's go right now. Yes, just wait a day. Um. In the meantime, Chuck, I have a proposal that we speak about the Musketeers. Uh, let's hear it. Yeah, it's like I'm not handling this one by myself. Just take

it away. Uh. Can you imagine how long that episode would be if I just discoursed on the Musketeers alone? About you just keep going and an infinite loop. Hey have you ever heard of a little candy company named Mars? Yeah? Nowadays I think it's Eminem's Mars, but back then it was just Mars, My Stars, My stars. How does Mars make such wonderful candy bars? How old are you? I'm forty one. And my grandfather used to say that it brings back like great memories. That was like one of

the things Granddaddy Mills did. I'm sorry to tarnish it with that's all right? Um, okay, Well, this company Mars that your grandfather liked, and rightly so, Mars bar is one of the greatest all time candy bars. Ever, you're crazy if you say what's in the Mars bar? New Get caramel almonds. It's just this great milane of flavors. The almonds are what really do it? It's like it's like the thinking man Snickers, there's some peanut butter in there,

and I'm on board. Hey, I'm with you too. Well, this is long before anybody ever thought to put peanut butter in anything besides maybe a sandwich. Um, it's the Mars company released a candy that they called, very appropriately, in my my opinion, the Three Musketeers. Today, you pick up a three Musketeers bar, you're like, what the hell

does this mean? Um? Back then, you could very easily figure out what it meant because it was three pieces of milk chocolate covered nougat in three different flavors, vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Hence three Musketeers, three different pieces, three different flavors. So it's three different flavors all in one single rapper. Yes, that's like you pulled the rapper back. You're like, oh, there's three, Like, which one do I want? Value? Which

do I want to give to my little brother? It was you give your little brother, probably the strawberry, one strawberry, vanilla, chocolate. It's like neopolcher. I didn't realize that. I had no idea that there were three. It makes sense now because now when you open it up, you're like, I don't get it. It's one candy bar. That's what I'm saying. It's named after a novel, a classic novel. Yes it is. Thank you for that segue, because I didn't know how I was going to get out of this one. I'd

whipped myself into a quagmire. Today, today we've got three Musketeers that are just the chocolate nougat. We have a classic novel written by Alexandra Duma. I checked pronunciation. Don't even try me on that. I listened to a Frenchman. That's you listen to a Frenchman say it. There's this website called farvo dot com. People's names names. It's awesome. Yeah it is. And one thing I realized reading this is I don't think we have We don't get a lot of mail from uh, the French. Have you ever

notice that? Yeah? I wonder why do you think that? There's probably not a French, not a lot of French listeners. No, I don't think so, Okay, we're beneath him, Yeah, I don't think we're hitting their wheelhouse much like podcast not just podcast. I think podcasts like Mark Marin's huge in France. And again so Jerry Lewis. So, I guess if I was sitting around at cafe like by the river, drinking wine,

I wouldn't have an iPod anywhere near me. I would throw it in the river and just like live my life. You know where we are huge, do you true? Which is awesome to me? Agreed? Hey, India, Uh, let's talk about the Three Musketeers, right. You said it was a

novel by Alexander Juma. Yeah, I mean the really quick one sentence summation is is uh hick Adventurer d'Artagnan moves out of the sticks and because he wants to join the famed Musketeers the Guard, the Musketeers of the Guard, the King's basically secret service right hand men, wants to join them. He goes there. He meets the three musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, and he eventually works his way into I

guess to be the fourth Musketeer. Well, he presents himself with the opportunity to prove his valor and his courage and his skill by basically hanging around them. Yeah. And along the way there are duels and there's some love making. Yeah. I think this is the only article on how stuff works dot com that has the word love making, fighting, convention, and lovemaking. And it's hyperlink too. Is it really to what I would imagine sex to an article on sex? Yeah? Okay, Um,

that was a great summation. There's no need to read The Three Musketeers or any of the other works by Dumont that feature the Three Musketeers, including the man in the Iron Mask. Oh was that him? Yeah? I didn't know that, but I kind of figured, you know, like who else was writing that stuff? Yeah? I don't know. He was kind of the market cornered. He was the John Grisham of his day. He was the John Grisham, the Danielle Steele and the Sue Grafton of his day. Okay,

we'll put thanks um so well. The weird thing, I guess it's not too weird, is that he wrote this novel a couple of hundred years after the real action takes place, and it came out at a time when, you know, how you know, later on people have a real fascination with things that came before them, came out during the romantic era in the forties, where people are like Dud's swashbuckling and these outfits and the love making

give me more. It was really really popular, right, And it was also popular because it was based on actual events featuring historical characters. Yeah, all those dudes were real. Yeah, d'Artagnan um or d'Artagnan, he was a real person. And actually the Three Musketeers um that duma wrote was based on a semi fictional memoir written about that guy who was a real musketeer of the Guard, who was who

went on to to great glory. Actually he became the He traveled from the hinterlands, I think gascony Um join up, the sticks joined up, eventually became commander of the Musketeers of the Guard. Did they cover that in the Well? The Well? There was more than one book though, right, Yeah, there were several, and the original book was serialized too. We'll talk about Dumaan in a minute, right. The point is that his work was based on real people, but

it was super fictionalized and super romantic. Um and all of it was based on the idea that in the seventeenth century, there was this new invention that gave rise to all of this, the musket. Thank you China. Yes, like everything else almost on the planet that we have, thank you China. They were the leaders in pretty much everything back in the day. And around one thousand they invented a little something called gunpowder, and um, you pack this stuff in a tube that's a metal tube only

open on one end. You light it like a sort of like a mini cannon. They called it a hand cannon, a hand cannon. And there was a lot of mistakes early on. Man, can you imagine that going wrong so easily? An um, and it would They would light it through something called a touch hole, and then there would be an explosion, create this hot gas that would send whatever they stuck inside there, which was a little round ball at the time. Um, it would send it out decent

speeds at first, fairly decent. Yeah, I mean for back then that was right like whoa, look at that hurling projectile, right, it was probably more like magic run yea. You know there's some that man has a hand dragon. They didn't think they call it hand can and yet they probably a hand dragon. Um. And it was mostly it produced the psychological effect because it wasn't very accurate and like you said that, it didn't really shoot it out at

fast speeds. Yeah, it would like the Knight's armor. It would like hit it and go plunk and then fall on the ground and the night would then down and pick it up and put it in his little satchel and they would catch you in half of the sword. So at first, not super effective, no, but it inspired people to make this better, Like we can do better with it hollow tube and a stick and a touch hole. So let's figure this out. Yeah, if I may segue

to the side here for a moment. This got got me thinking today about battle and just warfare and weaponry and how it's still so basic. I mean, it's like

super advanced now with how they do it. But Took took starts out by hitting another caveman in the face, like it's warfare started out with your fists, and then it transforms into like eventually someone uses a club and they're like, hey, this implement is like way better than hitting with my fist because it's harder and I can do more damage and I can get a little further away from you. Then to come like swords and things

and lances, and they could get even further away. And the whole, the whole history of weaponry is about hurling bigger fists from longer distances. Whether it was the arrow, then later the bullet, and now you have like enter I c b ms that are just like really really really big fists that you can fire from really really far away. I think the point you're making is that war, no matter how advanced we get, is it really primitive.

It is. It's a primitive idea. I didn't know that was my point, but this I think it's spot on. Um all right back to it. Thank you for that. Sure, I just even asked if you could do it first. That's really formal. Well, and each each method was like a little bit further away, like arrows, like hey, we

can get him further away. And then pretty soon it was bullets, and then it was like sniper rifles, and then it was missiles and now it's some guy sitting in Nevada shooting people in Afghanistan with on his computer. It's pretty sad um. Okay, so back to the musket. Um. We've gone from gunpowder to hand cannon and now we're at the arquebus, that's right, not arquebus early fifty hundreds

to be specific. And this actually had a shoulder stock, which was like a huge deal because it wasn't just a stick attached to this metal tube, like you could actually aim this sucker. Now you could look down the barrel and pointed at something and you could shoot it and it would shoot a projectile. But again still the ultimate goal, the ultimate the pinnacle of the battlefield was the horse mounted night in armor. And if that guy

was wearing plate, the arcbus wasn't gonna do it. Still still still still a matchlock weapon, which meant you had to light a little thing. So you needed a touch hole of some sort, and you needed a some something like a smoldering piece of yarn. Maybe you needed something dry, right, which is a key that we will find out right, And it's a big problem. Like when it's raining, your is not going to help, but you know it works

well in the rain. What a sword it does, like the one that the horse mounted knight in armor is using to cut you in half. Yet again a hundred years later, right, so um, people are like this, we can make this work. This has got to work. We have to figure this out. And the Spaniards were the ones that came up with this new thing called the musqueto, the sparrowhawk, or the boom stick, so I like to call it. Uh, it was even longer barreled. Um, it was really heavy. I looked at pictures of this thing.

They actually mounted it on a little forked stick like, Um, it's sort of like Rambo. Actually Rambo carried his his fifty. Yeah, but that's supposed to be on a tripod. Yeah, you understand, but ran so Mustley. You could carry it Rambo and Charlie Sheenion and hot shots. Oh did he use that too, Yeah, because he was imitating Rambo, right, Okay, So they used the forked stick to like hold it steady and to help them out. The French called it a mosquite. The

English called it a musket. A musket. I think you see where we're going here. Um, it was also matchlock, but it was actually could fire something that would go through armor. Finally, and then all of a sudden, the Nights are like, oh man, shoot, we're done. And they actually did fade from the battlefield after that with the with the mosqueto, the mosquite or the musket and we cover that in the Night's podcast, right, we totally did. Um. So then they're like, okay, we figured it out. We

got the night down. The problem is is like this thing requires a forked stick to aim. It's like pounds. Yeah, and you need a pikeman another soldier, um who has an eighteen foot spear to protect you while you're reloading. I would want two pikemen. Yeah. Well I think you probably had your own little formation because you were so important you could just stand back and shoot a night. So yeah, they're going to give as many pikeman as you asked for. If you knew how to shoot one

of those things with your hand dragon exactly. So um, they're like, okay, we've got it. Now, all we have to do is refine it. And one of the first refinements they made was to make it a flintlock. Huge. Yeah, so now you didn't have to carry a smoldering piece of yarn any longer. That's right. Flintlock worked in the rain because it would strike a piece of flint against steel, producing the spark. Instead of needing that open flame or

the smoldering yarn. They really use yarn. Um, they would use like something akindy yarn They probably was yarned, but they spelled it with an E on the end, yarnie. Um. So all of a sudden, you could, uh, you could shoot it in wet weather, which was awesome. And because the nights have sort of gone the way of the Dodo, it didn't have to be a you know, a two inch iron ball, but you're shooting. So that means that the gun itself can be smaller. Everything can be smaller

and lighter. Very big deal. So now we're starting to see like the kind of thing that the minimen used in colonial America. That's right. For those of you into the era, you'll know what I'm talking about. Um. And then they also got rid of the pikeman by attaching a bayonet to it. Yeah, I don't know about that. They said that that rendered pikeman uh like unnecessary. But I would still rather have an another dude with an eighteen foot lance than me with my bandet on the

end of my rifle. But you might like to have that, but your field commander would rather have another guy with a musket in a bayonet. Yeah, true, you know what I'm saying, Get rid of the pike, give him a musket in a bayonet instead, and all of a sudden, you've got two people shooting fire. Yeah, good point. So they still called it a musket. Yeah, and technically anybody who had a musket and used a musket in battle was a musketeer. I bet a lot of guys like

to throw that word around back in the day too. Yeah, like you know, I'm a musketeer, and then the other guys would say, you're not a real musketeer, a real musketeer, josh. As we mentioned earlier, personal household guards of King Louis the what is that? Yeah, and apparently he it was, was he the one who founded it? Yeah? He formed uh the guard officially in SiO, the musketeers of the Guard. Like they had to add the extra couple of words.

So you just think there were some shmos with the musket exactly, because everyone with a musket at that point is, like we said, bragging about being a musket because this is like high technology at the time, and it stayed that way for a century. Like from the musket the flintlock must get that any infantryman could carry with the bayonet was started was introduced at the beginning of the eighteenth century and like all the way up to the

nineteenth century, like that is what people used. Yeah, and then that just like a rifle. I mean it's not sure. I mean it changed somewhat, but like as soon as China invented dunpowder, it was all over. People would be dying left and right, sadly. Um, alright, so these are, like we said, these were sort of like special forces,

secret service, the private guardians of the king and his family. Yeah, very important because in France during the seventeenth century, the early seventeenth century, it wasn't like a party going on back there. No, and actually a lot of a lot of troubles. Louis, his father um On Read the fourth I believe, was assassinated. Um and Louis the thirteenth became he ascended to the throne. He became king at age nine. I was like the boy kings that cracks me up.

And he had like a child bride, uh and of Austria I believe her name was, And I guess overseeing this whole thing was a guy named Cardinal Richelieu. Yeah. So at this time and this was I think fairly correct. Um, there were there were there was a lot of internal

civil strife in France, religious based. Yes, the French were also battling the Habsburgs of Austria, and within his own house, Louist was having to worry about Machiavellian which was new at the time, machinations of Cardinal Richlieu his um basically Dick Cheney. Yeah, but a Dick Cheney with like an I on the throne. Yes, so his Karl Rove. Yeah, it's very it's very Games of Throney. Yeah. I don't know if you watched that or reddit, but no, I've heard of it though. Yeah, I see there's like a

throne made of swords done. It's really good stuff, all right. So the musketeers were there, their guarding the king. A lot of religious upheaval, yeah, yeah, French Protestants saying we don't like you Catholics. Catholics are saying we don't like you Huguenots, which were the French Protestants, and so there was a lot of warring going on. So the king needed these like super specialized and these dudes were you know,

they were bad. Yeah, they were like the tough guys at the time, even though they were dressed up in really really clothing that apparently struck fear into the hearts of their enemies. They're like, look at the deep blue that gold embroidery. But they were highly trained in their their morale or their esprie decor was legendary. Yeah, evidently. Well they were also um expert swordsmen. They were called musketeers, and they knew what they were doing with them with

a musket. But day to day they had a sword by their side and they could take your head clean off with it. Yeah. I mean, in the in the book, you're gonna see a lot more sword fight and in the movies that they've adapted than any kind of musket play. Yes, supposedly. In in the book, muskets are just they show up a few times, they're only fired a few times, but the rest is all swords and swashbuckling. But they were

still musketeers, right. So, And the reason again they were musketeers because this cutting edge technology at the time, and if you were somebody who was really proficient with the musket, you were somebody special. Yeah, you also had to be um. You didn't have to be, but it helped out if

you were an aristocrat, a noble men. You didn't have to be loaded, but you had to kind of run in those circles or you're never gonna get picked up to be one of the what was it dfty hundreds, that's the most, the most in the least they ever had operationally, and they were actually like, this is again, this is real life we're talking about. Um. They were formed in sixteen twenty two, I believe, and they ran all the way into the until eighteen sixteen when they

were disbanded due to a lack of funding. I know, and I saw they rebanded a couple of times after in subsequent years, and then disbanded again, and eventually they all went onto solo success as artists, entertaining recording artists the r MS. He had a nice line of deodorance and personal fragrance. Um. So now can we talk a little bit about the book and Alexander what do you call him? Do? Very nice Paris eighteen twenties, very popular John Grisham like in his output right the swinging Paris

scene of the eighteen twenties. So he was turning out books like he had people writing stuff for him. He was like the Andy Warhol of his time, like he he had. He would have people say, like, here's the structure of the book you're about to write, and he would sit down and write it, research tone, chapter, ideas. He had assistance for everything, and he would just crank this out like it was an assembly line. Well, they

were hugely popular. Yeah, but historians they don't knock him because he also had the goods as a writer, right exactly. And that's that's really like, that's just this prolific nous alone is pretty awesome. But then if you combine the idea that he was actually good at what he did, that's staggering. Like his collected works, his unabridged collected works fills up three hundred volumes, and like some of it's really great, Like if you read the Three Musketeers, you're like, wow,

this is pretty cool. This is it's it's neat, it's interesting, it's engrossing. Um and the lovemaking right, it's hyper linked all over the place. Uh So do we get specific about the real d'artagnan's uh musketeer life a little bit? We said that he came from Gascony, Yeah, a little bit before or was it after now he was after he came Yeah, He came out in sixteen thirty two, which was a little later than the fictional version, and served under Louis the fourteen, the Son King. He was

the Sun King. You know a lot about French history. Well, I went to very Ci once, did you really? Yeah? Um, I never made it there. I didn't make it inside, but I went to verst Si. So you tried, though, right, that's an um and he actually the real d'Artagnan became the commander of the Musketeers and was build in sixteen seventy three. And apparently the three dudes were also based on real guys right right there. I don't know if their names were dead on, but they're pretty close approximations

in the book. Um. And so, like you said, like this book was hugely popular. It was first serialized in the French magazine Las Cieco lasco very nice. I don't know about that, but UM in eighteen forty four, and like he said, he was really hitting the romantic period and everybody loved this. So they took this, They took the serial and UM put it into a book. That's why a lot of the chapters have like cliffhangers, because

it was published it was serialized in the magazine. When I think he started out, didn't he start out as a playwright? Yeah, okay, which makes sense with the whole Cliffhanger thing. So he uh, he writes, never really gets the respect that some of his contemporaries like Victor Hugo um got or a Meal Zola um. And it wasn't until two doz. And this possibly was because he had mixed race heritage. His Yeah, his grandfather was a French nobleman.

His his grandmother, I believe, was a Creole woman from Haiti, so he had um African in his blood. Um. Now, in France, it's not anything like it is in the United States, where it's like that that idiotic one drop rule. Um. But apparently it was enough, there was enough racism in France that like, it wasn't until two two, when Jacques Sharrock was president that he was moved. Um. His remains were moved to the pantheon alongside like Zola. So uh. A lot of people said, well, no, he was he

was a hack. He was he was just a hack, you know, like he was good, but he was still a hack, and that's why people didn't take him seriously. But it's also possible it is because of his his racial background as well. I think that in this budde Well for us, I think hundreds of years on, even prolific hacks can be looked upon as you know, genius. Right. So that's pretty much what I've been betting on since

we first sat down pretty started doing. Yeah, it's just somebody out there somehow society is gonna just devolved and they'll be like these guys are It'll be like idiocracy. Yeah that's our meal ticket, right, but more entertaining. Are you got anything else? No? I mean the rest is history, great, great book. Uh, And I love the story behind the musket and the Musketeers, the real life thing. That was

pretty cool, you know, I like my history. If you want to learn more about Alexander Duma and the Musketeers and Muskets, you can type Musketeers m U s K E T E E R S into the handy search part how stuff works dot Com, which means it's time for a listener mail. Josh. I'm gonna call this, uh

clarification on that I've actually copied that about um. Josh and Chuck just started listening to stuff you should know when I love the podcast, but I was recently listening to your Samurai podcast and I couldn't help but notice that you gave credit to George Lucas when talking about a Darth Vader mask uh and its relative similarity to

the Samurai Cabudo mask. That yes, um, I thought I would point out that Mr Lucas, although responsible for Star Wars, was not responsible for the design for the conception of Vader's mask. Credit for that should go to the great concept artist Ralph mcquarie, who's used future aesthetic as in like full time you're looking. Yeah, no, I love that aesthetics.

Oh yeah, me too. It's one of the reasons for the iconic status of Star Wars and really informed like every great space movie sense, don't you think, Yeah, like think about it, like the um like a spaceport or something like that, Like all the jet engines are kind of battered and beaten and everything, and every once a while go to an airport and look in Stephen plains are just like that, and I'll just see exactly what the guy was doing and how well they nailed. They agreed.

So mcquarie, hats off to you, and Geiger is awesome. I'm gonna take my hand off to YouTube as well, sir um, and then continue with the email. Lucas's original script did not put Vader in a mask at all, evidently, and it was Ralph's idea to put a frightening helmet on the Sith Lord. Macquarie recently passed away, and it would be a shame if his contributions to popular culture were not recognized. And Joe from San Francisco could not

agree more. And I'm glad you pointed this out because movies, although it is a director's medium, are made up of many, many, many people's talents contributing to the end result of the film, and people like mcquarie are often overlooked with something as iconic is Darth Vader's mask. That's awesome, So thank you

for that joke from San Francisco. Well done, Joe. Um. Well, yeah, if you have an awesome correction for us, or just the clarification, or if you want to tell us that we were utterly and completely wrong about something, we're always open to hearing that kind of thing, especially if you're nice, nice, nothing. There's no point in being mean. Um. You can tweet to us at s y s K Podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com at Facebook dot com, slash stuff, you shadow, and you can send us an

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