The Musketeers

I’ve been meaning to write this blog for a while and I’ve finally gotten round to it! You lucky, lucky people. 

Now, for the past few weeks, I’ve been watching The Musketeers (which is excellent and on at 9pm tonight on BBC 1) and I have decided to let you all know who they are because I’ve been watching this for ages and I barely know myself. 

I’m back from google-ing.

The Musketeers come from the French historical novel ‘The Three Musketeers’ by Alexandre Dumas in 1844. It is set in the 1600s where D’Artagnan (my favourite from the TV series) meets the three musketeers: Athos, Porthos and Aramis (who I always get confused, but who cares when D’Artagnan’s there). But, anyway even if you didn’t know their names (like me up until five minutes ago), I think everyone knows their motto “all for one and one for all” which was first put forward by D’Artagnan.

And don’t think that Dumas just made these people up, oh no, Dumas did very good research because these ‘musketeers’ were real. They were an “early modern type of infantry soldier equipped with a musket” as stated in my favourite, oh-so-reliable source; Wikipedia. However, there are some differences between what the TV show depicts and what actually happened. For example, in episode four, it shows them acting as body guards/ welcoming the Duke of Savoy, when really the musketeers were one of the lower units of the Royal Guard and would therefore have had little to do with the royal family. On the other hand, they did actually have those blue capes that you see occasionally in some of the episodes, but they had to wear them all the time as part of their uniform which they are obviously lacking in the photo above. 

Overall, even though I am glad I now know all of their names, the only thing I have really achieved is 310 words and an hour of procrastination and counting... So I’m afraid that I’m going to have to leave all of you Musketeer fans here while I go and ‘do homework’ (i.e. even more procrastination).

JG