What is a Musket ?

[Gene L]

The full length stock was to protect the magazine tube from damage that would put the gun out of action and to protect the firer's hand from the heat. They made the 66, 73, 76, 86, 94 & 95 in that configuration.

In the Winchester, but not the Savage. I think in addition to protecting the magazine (in the 94) it was to provide a handle for use of the bayonet.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Gentlemen....This is a muzzleloading forum..

 

[Wes/Tex]

What's the difference between a musketeer and a fusilier?..... :hmm:

In a nutshell, musketeer used a musket and a fusileer used a fusil! :wink: :haha: When the terms first had significance, the fusil was usually a flintlock smaller bored gun originally designed for those guarding the artillery train where burning slow match would be a possible oops! In time a fusil was usually a smaller bored flintlock much like an officer or even sergeant would carry. Later still there was little of no difference...this is the short version and just about all you never wanted to know! :rotf:

 

[Artificer]

One more tidbit, while the term Fusil/s did later come to be a common term for civilian guns in the 18th century, the term Musket virtually always meant a Military Arm in our period of the forum.

Gus

 

[Gene L]

Gentlemen....This is a muzzleloading forum..

It's a matter of terms. Muskets are a type that apparently ranged forward to the 20th century. I have no idea of the "proper" definition of a musket is, but I think it wasn't entirely restricted to the 19th century.

Of course, if one wants to restrict it to smooth bores, one must ignore the "rifle muskets" of the 1860s or the smooth bore preceding it, it makes it easier to define and one need look no farther. Which begs the question since 20th century made "military grade" repeating firearms they designated as "muskets." Perhaps incorrectly, but there it is. There must have been a reason for this. Lever action, maybe for special application...who knows.

I have no idea of the proper definition of a musket. An interesting question and depends on when/where/who defines it. My uninformed opinion would be an old design military-type weapon designed so it can take a bayonet. Maybe a prefix is needed, but it's academic to me since I don't own a rifle that will take a bayonet.

 

[Trot]

Gentlemen....This is a muzzleloading forum..

Yup, per the rules, no discussion of breechloaders. I always consider a musket as a smoothbore military arm that takes a bayonet, then there are fowlers, trade guns, rifles etc. I guess as in many things the parameters are a bit fuzzy.

 

[hanshi]

If the bore doesn't have those spiral scratches, I call it a musket. Of course this excepts "smoothrifles".

 

[tenngun]

What's the difference between a musketeer and a fusilier?..... :hmm:

I understand the first musketeers were the shooters for the fist two man muskets, the first fusiliers, carried a one man sized gun, that acted as skermishers elites. When first used many armies were still useing large free mercenary forces and these elite were national and elite and armed by the king.
Terms remained even after the technology changed.

 

[nhmoose]

What's the difference between a musketeer and a fusilier?..... :hmm:

Musketeer's come in threes. Fusiliers???? :idunno: :youcrazy: :metoo:

 

[Grenadier1758]

What's the difference between a musketeer and a fusilier?..... :hmm:

Clyde asked an interesting question. That sent me down a fascinating rabbit hole. Most of the trip was in a book of two volumes by Francis Grose Esq., Military Antiquities Respecting a History of the English Army from the Conquest to the Present Time (1786) volume 1. My copy was the edition of 1801.

The first thing I found was the reference to a musket. Writing in 1785 was a bit loose in keeping track of dates. The following passage refers to the introduction of firearms into the military establishment at about 1460, so the reference isto matchlocks and wheel locks.

FIRE-ARMS discharged by hand were first (1460?) called hand canons, hand culverines, and hand guns; they afterwards acquired the appellations of hackbuts, muskets, and calivers, and lastly their present name of firelocks. Various are the opinions and accounts, reflecting their origin, and the time and place where they were first used.
Grose, Francis, Military Antiquities Respecting a History of the English Army from the Conquest to the Present Time (1786) v1 p145
AFTER the harquebuses came muskets ; they were made in the time of Francis I. for in the same cabinet of arms at Chantilly, there is one marked with the arms of France, and the salamander, which was the device of that prince. Nevertheless, if we will believe Brantome, it was the duke d'Alva who first brought them into use in the armies, when during the reign of Philip II. he went to take upon him the government of the low countries in the year 1 567 \ but that only means, he brought them more into fashion than they were till that time, and that till then they were rarely used, at least in the field. He says then in his elogy on Monsieur de Strozzi, colonel general of the French infantry under Charles IX. that it was that officer who introduced the use of the musket into France; by this is to be understood the common use of it. PISTOLS with a simple spring, instead of the wheel formerly made use of, fusils and musketoons, all these are modern and well known ; but I know not the inventors ; it is the workmen themfelves who have improved upon these arms, and rendered them more simple. I have been assured, that in 1658, the use of wheel locked pistols was not then abolished. I SHALL remark likewise upon the article of miquelets, that the Spaniards of the time of Philip II. caused them to be made of a very great calibre, and such that a strong and vigorous foot soldier might carry them, but that they were fo heavy that they could not be presented, without the assistance of Raves shod and pointed at the bottom, and which they fixed into the earth, and made use of a fork that was at the top, as a prop to sustain the end of the market: they made use of them not only in sieges to fire over the walls, but also in battles : these large miquelets carried to a great distance, and by the size of their balls made terrible wounds : but since, on account of their weight, they have left off using them in the field, and they are only used in Ceges. Harquebuses and pistols with wheel locks are at this time very little known, and rarely to be found, except in arsenals and in the cabinets of arms, where some of them are preserved out of curiosity : I must therefore explain what this wheel was which gave movement to all the springs. It was a little solid wheel of steel, fixed against the plate of the lock of the harquebuse or pistol; it had an axis that pierced it in its centre ; at the interior end of this axis which went into the lock, a chain was fastened, which twisted round it on the wheel being turned, and bent the spring by which it was held : to bend this spring a key was made use of, into which the exterior end of the axis was inserted. By turning this key from left to right, the wheel was made to revolve, and by this movement a little flicker of copper, which covered the pan with the priming, retired from over it ; and by the fame movement the cock, armed with a flint like the cock of a fuel, was in a state to be discharged on pulling the tricker with the finger, as in ordinary pistols ; the cock then falling on the wheel, produced fire, and communicated it to the priming.
Grose v1 p154

In the above, the musket is a matchlock or wheel lock. It took about 200 years before the snaphaunce or true flintlock came into general use. The flintlock was a significant advance in terms of safety and readiness. It appears that the flintlock was a fusil.

A SMALL anonymous military treatise (u) printed in the year 1680, says the fusil or fire-lock was then in use in our army, especially among the fusileers and grenadiers ; in all likelihood the appellation of fusileers was given to those troops who were armed with fusils ; in that case the date of the oldest regiment of that denomination will give some little direction toward finding their first introduction. PERHAPS the fusileer regiments were originally a sort of grenadiers, as like them they wear caps, and have no ensigns(x). THE use of cartridges, which seems to have taken place about the same time as the firelock, introduced the cartridge-box instead of the bandeleers. This was a very considerable improvement, as the am munition was not only more commodiously and safely carried, but by using cartridges, a soldier was enabled to fire at least three times the number of shot he could discharge when loading from his bandeleers, which were besides subje6l to many inconveniences and objections. Their imperfections are fully Rated by lord Orrery (y).
(u) ENGLISH Military Discipline, or the Way and Method of exercising Horse and Foot, printed for Richard Harford, p. 19.
(x) FUSILEERS are foot soldiers armed with fusees with slings to sling them. There are four regiments in our army, which have always been called fusileers, and go by the name5 of the English, Scotch, Irish, and Welsh fusileers ; but now we have none but fusileers abroad, for the pikes are quite laid aside. The first design of fusileers was to guard the artillery, for which end the regiment of English fusileers, now commanded by Sir Charles O'Hara were first raised. To supply the want of pikes, and to secure themselves against horse, the fusileers used to carry turnpikes along with them, which in a camp were placed along the front of a battalion, and on a march were carried by the soldiers, each carrying one of the short pikes, and two, by turns, the sparr through which they are thrust, so that they were quickly put together. Gentleman's Dictionary. According to Millan's Succession of Colonels, the yth regiment, or royal English fusileers, were raised, June nth, 1685; the 2ist regiment, or royal North British fusileers, 23d Sept. 1679; the 23d, or royal Welsh fusileers, I7th March, 1688 ; but there is no Irish regiment bearing the appellation of fusileers. . (y) " I AM also (says he) on long experience, an enemy to the use of bandeleers, but a great approver of boxes of cartridges ; for then but by biting off the bottom of the cartridge, you charge your musket for service with one ramming.

Grose V1 p159



There's great information in these footnotes. The book is quite distracting by not having dates well identified, but most can be worked out. If course Grose is trying to cover 700 years of English Military History in a mere 1000 pages.

Now then, that brings us back to the original question and to some extent the authority on the subject, Francis Grose, didn't do a great job of clarifying the difference.

A musket is a large bored matchlock, wheel lock or flintlock.

A fusil appears to be a flintlock, perhaps of smaller bore diameter than a musket.

If the differences were hard to discern for knowledgeable sources in the time period, then the differences are still blurry for us.

 

[Gene L]

I apologize for breaking kayfabe by referring to modern rifles, but it appears that ONE definition of a musket is one with wood pretty much all the way to the muzzle and capable of bearing a bayonet. "Rifle muskets" of the ACW fit that definition as well.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Has anyone mentioned "Musket caps"?

One possible explanation for "musket" is that it refers to a small gun, early guns were cannons.

The different etymologies of the word all refer to something smaller in it's class.... A fly, a sparrow hawk, a crossbow bolt.

Early firearms started out big and clunky....they have slowly gotten smaller and more nimble over time.....
I think the term "musket" reflected that initial change.