Quote:
Originally Posted by Žorkell
Those of you wanting a Three Musketeers type game just think what the name of the regiments means for their armament.
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The title "Musketeers" is weird because you almost never see them with a musket, and they are good swordsmen and horsemen. And they don't seem to have the background for rank and file soldiers of the time. The more you think about it, the stranger it gets.
Turns out the King of France maintained an elite "Nobles only" unit of musketeers. They were not career soldiers, and almost all of them went on to do other things, most notably commanding other military units. It was as useful for networking as attending Harvard is today. So you had the cream of the french nobility in a tight space. They knew fencing and horsemanship not because their unit taught it, but because they were nobility, and generally ambitious nobility at that.
Almost all periods featuring fencing will involve guns as well. You can't really separate the two. You just need to remember that guns only have a single shot (or two if the gun is fancy), and that while they might not be horribly inaccurate, it was expensive to practice aiming, and single shot is often survivable. The sword was a much more reliable weapon, especially for self defense.