Musketeers were soldiers distinguished by being equipped with the matchlock. For the use of musketeers in battle, see Maurice of Nassau and Gustavus Adolphus. Although the weapon appears first to have been used militarily by the Spanish in the Netherlands revolt in 1567, its name seems only to have entered English usage in 1587, its use being common from 1590. Both were drawn from the French mousquet, thus mousquetaire. Early musketeers, of the late 16th and early 17th century, were noted not only for the flamboyance of their dress but also as élite foot soldiers, armed with the latest in death-dealing technology, the matchlock. Wearing little in the way of body armour, the mousquetaire was characterized in the 17th century by a broad-brimmed hat adorned with feather plumes. He also carried a sword and wore a cross-belt, from which hung short wooden cylinders—usually twelve in number—each containing an individual powder charge; the musket balls were carried separately in a belt pouch before the days of made-up cartridges which carried both powder and ball.
While the musketeer's uniform of broad-rimmed hat and long coat developed into the European infantryman's uniform of the 18th century, the musketeers became fusiliers as the flintlock fusil replaced the cumbersome and less reliable matchlock mousquet, both confusingly known in English as ‘muskets’.
The musketeers romantically portrayed by Alexandre Dumas in the 19th century reflected the flamboyance and panache expected of them and their kind. Mounted musketeers existed in two regiments in the French Maison du Roi: the Mousquetaires Gris, raised in 1622, and the Mousquetaires Noirs, raised in 1667; both regiments comprised one squadron. The former regiment wore a grey sleeveless surcoat and the latter regiment a black one. Neither regiment lasted until the Revolution of 1789 but both were revived after the Bourbon Restoration in 1815. Mounted musketeers, whose firearm would have been a carbine or musketoon, were experimented with in other European armies but the equipping of cavalry with flintlock firearms by the second half of the 17th century rendered the term obsolete except in the very tradition-conscious army of ancien régime France. In the 20th century the only musketeers to have survived are those of re-enactment groups and in the Honourable Artillery Company of London whose pikemen and musketeers, dressed in their 17th-century uniforms, provide the bodyguard to the Lord Mayor of London on state occasions.
— Stephen Wood
