STATUS

The French word "mousquetaire" (literally "musket user": Ambiguous "Infantryman with musket") lost it's associations with the weapon because infantrymen really had no use for muskets since they were incredibly impractical, and really useless weapons. As such, after they fired their first shot in combat in order to break picket lines (rows of pikemen), knocking them out of formation, after which they preferred to use the bayonets mounted on the barrels to continue fighting instead of wasting their time reloading. As such, "mousquetaire" came to be applied to elite specialized cavalrymen skilled with rapiers and pistols. The mousquetaires rode in two different companies during pre-revolutionary France. The mousquetaires noir rode black horses and served the cardinal of the royal household while the mousquetaires gris rode grey horses and served the king. Musket, or mousquet, is named for moschetto from old Italian meaning "arrow", itself the name of the sparrow hawk, from the Latin musca, meaning "fly".

^v^