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How the Musketeers Worked · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to you stuff you should
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Speaker 1: know from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome
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Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
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Speaker 1: And since the two of us are together, if I
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Speaker 1: have a couple of microphones, you got stuff you should know?
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Speaker 1: It's right them. Is it an award that we won
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Speaker 1: on iTunes? At the very least we want to vote
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Speaker 1: yet the vote winning podcasts? Yeah? Popular podcast that's what
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Speaker 1: we can call ourselves. Ye Have we won an award?
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Speaker 1: Are we award winning now? Nope? Okay, maybe someone at
0:45
Speaker 1: home will make us an award and send it in.
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Speaker 1: We've been awarded a podcast, so we are award winning? Yes? Um, yes,
0:53
Speaker 1: so that's this what we're about to do. And I
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Speaker 1: think it's becoming painfully obvious why we haven't won any
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Speaker 1: awards the more we talk about this. Yeah, I think
1:00
Speaker 1: you're right. Um. Are you doing good? Uh? I'm great.
1:03
Speaker 1: Are you getting sucked for Comic Con? It's like two
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Speaker 1: days dude. Well, and by the time this is out
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Speaker 1: will be like long since I've pooped our pants on
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Speaker 1: stage and laughed at Yeah, yeah, but the horror. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I'm excited though, Sure, San Diego, let's do it. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: let's go right now. Yes, just wait a day. Um.
1:24
Speaker 1: In the meantime, Chuck, I have a proposal that we
1:27
Speaker 1: speak about the Musketeers. Uh, let's hear it. Yeah, it's
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Speaker 1: like I'm not handling this one by myself. Just take
1:37
Speaker 1: it away. Uh. Can you imagine how long that episode
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Speaker 1: would be if I just discoursed on the Musketeers alone?
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Speaker 1: About you just keep going and an infinite loop. Hey
1:51
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of a little candy company named Mars? Yeah?
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Speaker 1: Nowadays I think it's Eminem's Mars, but back then it
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Speaker 1: was just Mars, My Stars, My stars. How does Mars
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Speaker 1: make such wonderful candy bars? How old are you? I'm
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Speaker 1: forty one. And my grandfather used to say that it
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Speaker 1: brings back like great memories. That was like one of
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Speaker 1: the things Granddaddy Mills did. I'm sorry to tarnish it
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Speaker 1: with that's all right? Um, okay, Well, this company Mars
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Speaker 1: that your grandfather liked, and rightly so, Mars bar is
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Speaker 1: one of the greatest all time candy bars. Ever, you're
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Speaker 1: crazy if you say what's in the Mars bar? New
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Speaker 1: Get caramel almonds. It's just this great milane of flavors.
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Speaker 1: The almonds are what really do it? It's like it's
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Speaker 1: like the thinking man Snickers, there's some peanut butter in there,
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Speaker 1: and I'm on board. Hey, I'm with you too. Well,
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Speaker 1: this is long before anybody ever thought to put peanut
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Speaker 1: butter in anything besides maybe a sandwich. Um, it's the
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Speaker 1: Mars company released a candy that they called, very appropriately,
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Speaker 1: in my my opinion, the Three Musketeers. Today, you pick
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Speaker 1: up a three Musketeers bar, you're like, what the hell
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Speaker 1: does this mean? Um? Back then, you could very easily
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Speaker 1: figure out what it meant because it was three pieces
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Speaker 1: of milk chocolate covered nougat in three different flavors, vanilla, chocolate,
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Speaker 1: and strawberry. Hence three Musketeers, three different pieces, three different flavors.
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Speaker 1: So it's three different flavors all in one single rapper. Yes,
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Speaker 1: that's like you pulled the rapper back. You're like, oh,
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Speaker 1: there's three, Like, which one do I want? Value? Which
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Speaker 1: do I want to give to my little brother? It
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Speaker 1: was you give your little brother, probably the strawberry, one strawberry, vanilla, chocolate.
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Speaker 1: It's like neopolcher. I didn't realize that. I had no
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Speaker 1: idea that there were three. It makes sense now because
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Speaker 1: now when you open it up, you're like, I don't
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Speaker 1: get it. It's one candy bar. That's what I'm saying.
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Speaker 1: It's named after a novel, a classic novel. Yes it is.
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Speaker 1: Thank you for that segue, because I didn't know how
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Speaker 1: I was going to get out of this one. I'd
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Speaker 1: whipped myself into a quagmire. Today, today we've got three
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Speaker 1: Musketeers that are just the chocolate nougat. We have a
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Speaker 1: classic novel written by Alexandra Duma. I checked pronunciation. Don't
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Speaker 1: even try me on that. I listened to a Frenchman.
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Speaker 1: That's you listen to a Frenchman say it. There's this
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Speaker 1: website called farvo dot com. People's names names. It's awesome.
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Speaker 1: Yeah it is. And one thing I realized reading this
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Speaker 1: is I don't think we have We don't get a
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Speaker 1: lot of mail from uh, the French. Have you ever
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Speaker 1: notice that? Yeah? I wonder why do you think that?
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Speaker 1: There's probably not a French, not a lot of French listeners. No,
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Speaker 1: I don't think so, Okay, we're beneath him, Yeah, I
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Speaker 1: don't think we're hitting their wheelhouse much like podcast not
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Speaker 1: just podcast. I think podcasts like Mark Marin's huge in France.
4:44
Speaker 1: And again so Jerry Lewis. So, I guess if I
4:48
Speaker 1: was sitting around at cafe like by the river, drinking wine,
4:53
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have an iPod anywhere near me. I would
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Speaker 1: throw it in the river and just like live my life.
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Speaker 1: You know where we are huge, do you true? Which
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Speaker 1: is awesome to me? Agreed? Hey, India, Uh, let's talk
5:06
Speaker 1: about the Three Musketeers, right. You said it was a
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Speaker 1: novel by Alexander Juma. Yeah, I mean the really quick
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Speaker 1: one sentence summation is is uh hick Adventurer d'Artagnan moves
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Speaker 1: out of the sticks and because he wants to join
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Speaker 1: the famed Musketeers the Guard, the Musketeers of the Guard,
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Speaker 1: the King's basically secret service right hand men, wants to
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Speaker 1: join them. He goes there. He meets the three musketeers, Athos, Porthos,
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Speaker 1: and Aramis, and he eventually works his way into I
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Speaker 1: guess to be the fourth Musketeer. Well, he presents himself
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Speaker 1: with the opportunity to prove his valor and his courage
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Speaker 1: and his skill by basically hanging around them. Yeah. And
5:55
Speaker 1: along the way there are duels and there's some love making. Yeah.
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Speaker 1: I think this is the only article on how stuff
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Speaker 1: works dot com that has the word love making, fighting, convention,
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Speaker 1: and lovemaking. And it's hyperlink too. Is it really to
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Speaker 1: what I would imagine sex to an article on sex? Yeah? Okay, Um,
6:14
Speaker 1: that was a great summation. There's no need to read
6:17
Speaker 1: The Three Musketeers or any of the other works by
6:21
Speaker 1: Dumont that feature the Three Musketeers, including the man in
6:25
Speaker 1: the Iron Mask. Oh was that him? Yeah? I didn't
6:28
Speaker 1: know that, but I kind of figured, you know, like
6:31
Speaker 1: who else was writing that stuff? Yeah? I don't know.
6:34
Speaker 1: He was kind of the market cornered. He was the
6:36
Speaker 1: John Grisham of his day. He was the John Grisham,
6:39
Speaker 1: the Danielle Steele and the Sue Grafton of his day. Okay,
6:46
Speaker 1: we'll put thanks um so well. The weird thing, I
6:51
Speaker 1: guess it's not too weird, is that he wrote this
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Speaker 1: novel a couple of hundred years after the real action
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Speaker 1: takes place, and it came out at a time when,
7:02
Speaker 1: you know, how you know, later on people have a
7:04
Speaker 1: real fascination with things that came before them, came out
7:07
Speaker 1: during the romantic era in the forties, where people are
7:10
Speaker 1: like Dud's swashbuckling and these outfits and the love making
7:15
Speaker 1: give me more. It was really really popular, right, And
7:18
Speaker 1: it was also popular because it was based on actual
7:22
Speaker 1: events featuring historical characters. Yeah, all those dudes were real. Yeah,
7:26
Speaker 1: d'Artagnan um or d'Artagnan, he was a real person. And
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Speaker 1: actually the Three Musketeers um that duma wrote was based
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Speaker 1: on a semi fictional memoir written about that guy who
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Speaker 1: was a real musketeer of the Guard, who was who
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Speaker 1: went on to to great glory. Actually he became the
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Speaker 1: He traveled from the hinterlands, I think gascony Um join up,
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Speaker 1: the sticks joined up, eventually became commander of the Musketeers
7:58
Speaker 1: of the Guard. Did they cover that in the Well?
8:01
Speaker 1: The Well? There was more than one book though, right, Yeah,
8:03
Speaker 1: there were several, and the original book was serialized too.
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Speaker 1: We'll talk about Dumaan in a minute, right. The point
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Speaker 1: is that his work was based on real people, but
8:13
Speaker 1: it was super fictionalized and super romantic. Um and all
8:18
Speaker 1: of it was based on the idea that in the
8:21
Speaker 1: seventeenth century, there was this new invention that gave rise
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Speaker 1: to all of this, the musket. Thank you China. Yes,
8:28
Speaker 1: like everything else almost on the planet that we have,
8:31
Speaker 1: thank you China. They were the leaders in pretty much
8:34
Speaker 1: everything back in the day. And around one thousand they
8:38
Speaker 1: invented a little something called gunpowder, and um, you pack
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Speaker 1: this stuff in a tube that's a metal tube only
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Speaker 1: open on one end. You light it like a sort
8:48
Speaker 1: of like a mini cannon. They called it a hand cannon,
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Speaker 1: a hand cannon. And there was a lot of mistakes
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Speaker 1: early on. Man, can you imagine that going wrong so easily?
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Speaker 1: An um, and it would They would light it through
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Speaker 1: something called a touch hole, and then there would be
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Speaker 1: an explosion, create this hot gas that would send whatever
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Speaker 1: they stuck inside there, which was a little round ball
9:10
Speaker 1: at the time. Um, it would send it out decent
9:14
Speaker 1: speeds at first, fairly decent. Yeah, I mean for back
9:17
Speaker 1: then that was right like whoa, look at that hurling projectile, right,
9:21
Speaker 1: it was probably more like magic run yea. You know
9:24
Speaker 1: there's some that man has a hand dragon. They didn't
9:28
Speaker 1: think they call it hand can and yet they probably
9:30
Speaker 1: a hand dragon. Um. And it was mostly it produced
9:33
Speaker 1: the psychological effect because it wasn't very accurate and like
9:36
Speaker 1: you said that, it didn't really shoot it out at
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Speaker 1: fast speeds. Yeah, it would like the Knight's armor. It
9:42
Speaker 1: would like hit it and go plunk and then fall
9:44
Speaker 1: on the ground and the night would then down and
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Speaker 1: pick it up and put it in his little satchel
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Speaker 1: and they would catch you in half of the sword.
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Speaker 1: So at first, not super effective, no, but it inspired
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Speaker 1: people to make this better, Like we can do better
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Speaker 1: with it hollow tube and a stick and a touch hole.
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Speaker 1: So let's figure this out. Yeah, if I may segue
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Speaker 1: to the side here for a moment. This got got
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Speaker 1: me thinking today about battle and just warfare and weaponry
10:16
Speaker 1: and how it's still so basic. I mean, it's like
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Speaker 1: super advanced now with how they do it. But Took
10:23
Speaker 1: took starts out by hitting another caveman in the face,
10:27
Speaker 1: like it's warfare started out with your fists, and then
10:30
Speaker 1: it transforms into like eventually someone uses a club and
10:34
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, this implement is like way better than
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Speaker 1: hitting with my fist because it's harder and I can
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Speaker 1: do more damage and I can get a little further
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Speaker 1: away from you. Then to come like swords and things
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Speaker 1: and lances, and they could get even further away. And
10:48
Speaker 1: the whole, the whole history of weaponry is about hurling
10:55
Speaker 1: bigger fists from longer distances. Whether it was the arrow,
11:01
Speaker 1: then later the bullet, and now you have like enter
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Speaker 1: I c b ms that are just like really really
11:08
Speaker 1: really big fists that you can fire from really really
11:10
Speaker 1: far away. I think the point you're making is that war,
11:14
Speaker 1: no matter how advanced we get, is it really primitive.
11:17
Speaker 1: It is. It's a primitive idea. I didn't know that
11:19
Speaker 1: was my point, but this I think it's spot on.
11:22
Speaker 1: Um all right back to it. Thank you for that. Sure,
11:25
Speaker 1: I just even asked if you could do it first.
11:29
Speaker 1: That's really formal. Well, and each each method was like
11:32
Speaker 1: a little bit further away, like arrows, like hey, we
11:35
Speaker 1: can get him further away. And then pretty soon it
11:37
Speaker 1: was bullets, and then it was like sniper rifles, and
11:40
Speaker 1: then it was missiles and now it's some guy sitting
11:42
Speaker 1: in Nevada shooting people in Afghanistan with on his computer.
11:47
Speaker 1: It's pretty sad um. Okay, so back to the musket. Um.
11:53
Speaker 1: We've gone from gunpowder to hand cannon and now we're
11:55
Speaker 1: at the arquebus, that's right, not arquebus early fifty hundreds
12:01
Speaker 1: to be specific. And this actually had a shoulder stock,
12:04
Speaker 1: which was like a huge deal because it wasn't just
12:07
Speaker 1: a stick attached to this metal tube, like you could
12:09
Speaker 1: actually aim this sucker. Now you could look down the
12:13
Speaker 1: barrel and pointed at something and you could shoot it
12:15
Speaker 1: and it would shoot a projectile. But again still the
12:19
Speaker 1: ultimate goal, the ultimate the pinnacle of the battlefield was
12:24
Speaker 1: the horse mounted night in armor. And if that guy
12:29
Speaker 1: was wearing plate, the arcbus wasn't gonna do it. Still
12:33
Speaker 1: still still still a matchlock weapon, which meant you had
12:35
Speaker 1: to light a little thing. So you needed a touch
12:38
Speaker 1: hole of some sort, and you needed a some something
12:40
Speaker 1: like a smoldering piece of yarn. Maybe you needed something dry, right,
12:45
Speaker 1: which is a key that we will find out right,
12:47
Speaker 1: And it's a big problem. Like when it's raining, your
12:51
Speaker 1: is not going to help, but you know it works
12:53
Speaker 1: well in the rain. What a sword it does, like
12:56
Speaker 1: the one that the horse mounted knight in armor is
13:00
Speaker 1: using to cut you in half. Yet again a hundred
13:02
Speaker 1: years later, right, so um, people are like this, we
13:07
Speaker 1: can make this work. This has got to work. We
13:09
Speaker 1: have to figure this out. And the Spaniards were the
13:12
Speaker 1: ones that came up with this new thing called the musqueto,
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Speaker 1: the sparrowhawk, or the boom stick, so I like to
13:21
Speaker 1: call it. Uh, it was even longer barreled. Um, it
13:24
Speaker 1: was really heavy. I looked at pictures of this thing.
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Speaker 1: They actually mounted it on a little forked stick like, Um,
13:31
Speaker 1: it's sort of like Rambo. Actually Rambo carried his his fifty. Yeah,
13:36
Speaker 1: but that's supposed to be on a tripod. Yeah, you understand,
13:39
Speaker 1: but ran so Mustley. You could carry it Rambo and
13:42
Speaker 1: Charlie Sheenion and hot shots. Oh did he use that too, Yeah,
13:46
Speaker 1: because he was imitating Rambo, right, Okay, So they used
13:49
Speaker 1: the forked stick to like hold it steady and to
13:51
Speaker 1: help them out. The French called it a mosquite. The
13:55
Speaker 1: English called it a musket. A musket. I think you
13:58
Speaker 1: see where we're going here. Um, it was also matchlock,
14:03
Speaker 1: but it was actually could fire something that would go
14:06
Speaker 1: through armor. Finally, and then all of a sudden, the
14:09
Speaker 1: Nights are like, oh man, shoot, we're done. And they
14:13
Speaker 1: actually did fade from the battlefield after that with the
14:16
Speaker 1: with the mosqueto, the mosquite or the musket and we
14:20
Speaker 1: cover that in the Night's podcast, right, we totally did. Um.
14:23
Speaker 1: So then they're like, okay, we figured it out. We
14:25
Speaker 1: got the night down. The problem is is like this
14:28
Speaker 1: thing requires a forked stick to aim. It's like pounds. Yeah,
14:32
Speaker 1: and you need a pikeman another soldier, um who has
14:36
Speaker 1: an eighteen foot spear to protect you while you're reloading.
14:40
Speaker 1: I would want two pikemen. Yeah. Well I think you
14:43
Speaker 1: probably had your own little formation because you were so
14:45
Speaker 1: important you could just stand back and shoot a night.
14:49
Speaker 1: So yeah, they're going to give as many pikeman as
14:51
Speaker 1: you asked for. If you knew how to shoot one
14:52
Speaker 1: of those things with your hand dragon exactly. So um,
14:56
Speaker 1: they're like, okay, we've got it. Now, all we have
14:58
Speaker 1: to do is refine it. And one of the first
15:00
Speaker 1: refinements they made was to make it a flintlock. Huge. Yeah,
15:04
Speaker 1: so now you didn't have to carry a smoldering piece
15:06
Speaker 1: of yarn any longer. That's right. Flintlock worked in the
15:09
Speaker 1: rain because it would strike a piece of flint against steel,
15:13
Speaker 1: producing the spark. Instead of needing that open flame or
15:16
Speaker 1: the smoldering yarn. They really use yarn. Um, they would
15:20
Speaker 1: use like something akindy yarn They probably was yarned, but
15:24
Speaker 1: they spelled it with an E on the end, yarnie. Um.
15:28
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, you could, uh, you could
15:31
Speaker 1: shoot it in wet weather, which was awesome. And because
15:34
Speaker 1: the nights have sort of gone the way of the Dodo,
15:37
Speaker 1: it didn't have to be a you know, a two
15:39
Speaker 1: inch iron ball, but you're shooting. So that means that
15:42
Speaker 1: the gun itself can be smaller. Everything can be smaller
15:45
Speaker 1: and lighter. Very big deal. So now we're starting to
15:48
Speaker 1: see like the kind of thing that the minimen used
15:52
Speaker 1: in colonial America. That's right. For those of you into
15:55
Speaker 1: the era, you'll know what I'm talking about. Um. And
15:58
Speaker 1: then they also got rid of the pikeman by attaching
16:01
Speaker 1: a bayonet to it. Yeah, I don't know about that.
16:04
Speaker 1: They said that that rendered pikeman uh like unnecessary. But
16:08
Speaker 1: I would still rather have an another dude with an
16:11
Speaker 1: eighteen foot lance than me with my bandet on the
16:15
Speaker 1: end of my rifle. But you might like to have that,
16:18
Speaker 1: but your field commander would rather have another guy with
16:20
Speaker 1: a musket in a bayonet. Yeah, true, you know what
16:23
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Get rid of the pike, give him a
16:25
Speaker 1: musket in a bayonet instead, and all of a sudden,
16:27
Speaker 1: you've got two people shooting fire. Yeah, good point. So
16:31
Speaker 1: they still called it a musket. Yeah, and technically anybody
16:34
Speaker 1: who had a musket and used a musket in battle
16:37
Speaker 1: was a musketeer. I bet a lot of guys like
16:40
Speaker 1: to throw that word around back in the day too. Yeah,
16:42
Speaker 1: like you know, I'm a musketeer, and then the other
16:44
Speaker 1: guys would say, you're not a real musketeer, a real musketeer, josh.
16:48
Speaker 1: As we mentioned earlier, personal household guards of King Louis
16:52
Speaker 1: the what is that? Yeah, and apparently he it was,
16:57
Speaker 1: was he the one who founded it? Yeah? He formed
17:00
Speaker 1: uh the guard officially in SiO, the musketeers of the Guard.
17:04
Speaker 1: Like they had to add the extra couple of words.
17:06
Speaker 1: So you just think there were some shmos with the
17:08
Speaker 1: musket exactly, because everyone with a musket at that point is,
17:11
Speaker 1: like we said, bragging about being a musket because this
17:15
Speaker 1: is like high technology at the time, and it stayed
17:18
Speaker 1: that way for a century. Like from the musket the
17:22
Speaker 1: flintlock must get that any infantryman could carry with the
17:26
Speaker 1: bayonet was started was introduced at the beginning of the
17:29
Speaker 1: eighteenth century and like all the way up to the
17:32
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, like that is what people used. Yeah, and
17:35
Speaker 1: then that just like a rifle. I mean it's not sure.
17:39
Speaker 1: I mean it changed somewhat, but like as soon as
17:42
Speaker 1: China invented dunpowder, it was all over. People would be
17:46
Speaker 1: dying left and right, sadly. Um, alright, so these are,
17:49
Speaker 1: like we said, these were sort of like special forces,
17:53
Speaker 1: secret service, the private guardians of the king and his family. Yeah,
17:59
Speaker 1: very important because in France during the seventeenth century, the
18:03
Speaker 1: early seventeenth century, it wasn't like a party going on
18:07
Speaker 1: back there. No, and actually a lot of a lot
18:10
Speaker 1: of troubles. Louis, his father um On Read the fourth
18:15
Speaker 1: I believe, was assassinated. Um and Louis the thirteenth became
18:21
Speaker 1: he ascended to the throne. He became king at age nine.
18:26
Speaker 1: I was like the boy kings that cracks me up.
18:28
Speaker 1: And he had like a child bride, uh and of
18:31
Speaker 1: Austria I believe her name was, And I guess overseeing
18:35
Speaker 1: this whole thing was a guy named Cardinal Richelieu. Yeah.
18:39
Speaker 1: So at this time and this was I think fairly correct. Um,
18:44
Speaker 1: there were there were there was a lot of internal
18:47
Speaker 1: civil strife in France, religious based. Yes, the French were
18:52
Speaker 1: also battling the Habsburgs of Austria, and within his own house,
18:57
Speaker 1: Louist was having to worry about Machiavellian which was new
19:02
Speaker 1: at the time, machinations of Cardinal Richlieu his um basically
19:06
Speaker 1: Dick Cheney. Yeah, but a Dick Cheney with like an
19:11
Speaker 1: I on the throne. Yes, so his Karl Rove. Yeah,
19:15
Speaker 1: it's very it's very Games of Throney. Yeah. I don't
19:18
Speaker 1: know if you watched that or reddit, but no, I've
19:21
Speaker 1: heard of it though. Yeah, I see there's like a
19:23
Speaker 1: throne made of swords done. It's really good stuff, all right.
19:30
Speaker 1: So the musketeers were there, their guarding the king. A
19:33
Speaker 1: lot of religious upheaval, yeah, yeah, French Protestants saying we
19:37
Speaker 1: don't like you Catholics. Catholics are saying we don't like
19:39
Speaker 1: you Huguenots, which were the French Protestants, and so there
19:43
Speaker 1: was a lot of warring going on. So the king
19:45
Speaker 1: needed these like super specialized and these dudes were you know,
19:50
Speaker 1: they were bad. Yeah, they were like the tough guys
19:53
Speaker 1: at the time, even though they were dressed up in
19:55
Speaker 1: really really clothing that apparently struck fear into the hearts
19:58
Speaker 1: of their enemies. They're like, look at the deep blue
20:03
Speaker 1: that gold embroidery. But they were highly trained in their
20:08
Speaker 1: their morale or their esprie decor was legendary. Yeah, evidently.
20:13
Speaker 1: Well they were also um expert swordsmen. They were called musketeers,
20:17
Speaker 1: and they knew what they were doing with them with
20:19
Speaker 1: a musket. But day to day they had a sword
20:22
Speaker 1: by their side and they could take your head clean
20:25
Speaker 1: off with it. Yeah. I mean, in the in the book,
20:28
Speaker 1: you're gonna see a lot more sword fight and in
20:31
Speaker 1: the movies that they've adapted than any kind of musket play. Yes, supposedly.
20:35
Speaker 1: In in the book, muskets are just they show up
20:38
Speaker 1: a few times, they're only fired a few times, but
20:40
Speaker 1: the rest is all swords and swashbuckling. But they were
20:43
Speaker 1: still musketeers, right. So, And the reason again they were
20:46
Speaker 1: musketeers because this cutting edge technology at the time, and
20:49
Speaker 1: if you were somebody who was really proficient with the musket,
20:52
Speaker 1: you were somebody special. Yeah, you also had to be um.
20:56
Speaker 1: You didn't have to be, but it helped out if
20:58
Speaker 1: you were an aristocrat, a noble men. You didn't have
21:01
Speaker 1: to be loaded, but you had to kind of run
21:03
Speaker 1: in those circles or you're never gonna get picked up
21:06
Speaker 1: to be one of the what was it dfty hundreds,
21:10
Speaker 1: that's the most, the most in the least they ever
21:12
Speaker 1: had operationally, and they were actually like, this is again,
21:16
Speaker 1: this is real life we're talking about. Um. They were
21:19
Speaker 1: formed in sixteen twenty two, I believe, and they ran
21:24
Speaker 1: all the way into the until eighteen sixteen when they
21:27
Speaker 1: were disbanded due to a lack of funding. I know,
21:30
Speaker 1: and I saw they rebanded a couple of times after
21:33
Speaker 1: in subsequent years, and then disbanded again, and eventually they
21:37
Speaker 1: all went onto solo success as artists, entertaining recording artists
21:43
Speaker 1: the r MS. He had a nice line of deodorance
21:45
Speaker 1: and personal fragrance. Um. So now can we talk a
21:50
Speaker 1: little bit about the book and Alexander what do you
21:53
Speaker 1: call him? Do? Very nice Paris eighteen twenties, very popular
22:00
Speaker 1: John Grisham like in his output right the swinging Paris
22:05
Speaker 1: scene of the eighteen twenties. So he was turning out
22:08
Speaker 1: books like he had people writing stuff for him. He
22:10
Speaker 1: was like the Andy Warhol of his time, like he
22:14
Speaker 1: he had. He would have people say, like, here's the
22:18
Speaker 1: structure of the book you're about to write, and he
22:19
Speaker 1: would sit down and write it, research tone, chapter, ideas.
22:25
Speaker 1: He had assistance for everything, and he would just crank
22:29
Speaker 1: this out like it was an assembly line. Well, they
22:32
Speaker 1: were hugely popular. Yeah, but historians they don't knock him
22:37
Speaker 1: because he also had the goods as a writer, right exactly.
22:39
Speaker 1: And that's that's really like, that's just this prolific nous
22:44
Speaker 1: alone is pretty awesome. But then if you combine the
22:46
Speaker 1: idea that he was actually good at what he did,
22:49
Speaker 1: that's staggering. Like his collected works, his unabridged collected works
22:53
Speaker 1: fills up three hundred volumes, and like some of it's
22:58
Speaker 1: really great, Like if you read the Three Musketeers, you're like, wow,
23:02
Speaker 1: this is pretty cool. This is it's it's neat, it's interesting,
23:06
Speaker 1: it's engrossing. Um and the lovemaking right, it's hyper linked
23:11
Speaker 1: all over the place. Uh So do we get specific
23:15
Speaker 1: about the real d'artagnan's uh musketeer life a little bit?
23:20
Speaker 1: We said that he came from Gascony, Yeah, a little
23:23
Speaker 1: bit before or was it after now he was after
23:26
Speaker 1: he came Yeah, He came out in sixteen thirty two,
23:30
Speaker 1: which was a little later than the fictional version, and
23:33
Speaker 1: served under Louis the fourteen, the Son King. He was
23:38
Speaker 1: the Sun King. You know a lot about French history. Well,
23:41
Speaker 1: I went to very Ci once, did you really? Yeah? Um,
23:46
Speaker 1: I never made it there. I didn't make it inside,
23:48
Speaker 1: but I went to verst Si. So you tried, though, right,
23:51
Speaker 1: that's an um and he actually the real d'Artagnan became
23:56
Speaker 1: the commander of the Musketeers and was build in sixteen
24:01
Speaker 1: seventy three. And apparently the three dudes were also based
24:04
Speaker 1: on real guys right right there. I don't know if
24:07
Speaker 1: their names were dead on, but they're pretty close approximations
24:09
Speaker 1: in the book. Um. And so, like you said, like
24:14
Speaker 1: this book was hugely popular. It was first serialized in
24:17
Speaker 1: the French magazine Las Cieco lasco very nice. I don't
24:22
Speaker 1: know about that, but UM in eighteen forty four, and
24:25
Speaker 1: like he said, he was really hitting the romantic period
24:27
Speaker 1: and everybody loved this. So they took this, They took
24:30
Speaker 1: the serial and UM put it into a book. That's
24:33
Speaker 1: why a lot of the chapters have like cliffhangers, because
24:36
Speaker 1: it was published it was serialized in the magazine. When
24:40
Speaker 1: I think he started out, didn't he start out as
24:42
Speaker 1: a playwright? Yeah, okay, which makes sense with the whole
24:46
Speaker 1: Cliffhanger thing. So he uh, he writes, never really gets
24:51
Speaker 1: the respect that some of his contemporaries like Victor Hugo
24:54
Speaker 1: um got or a Meal Zola um. And it wasn't
24:59
Speaker 1: until two doz. And this possibly was because he had
25:03
Speaker 1: mixed race heritage. His Yeah, his grandfather was a French nobleman.
25:09
Speaker 1: His his grandmother, I believe, was a Creole woman from Haiti,
25:14
Speaker 1: so he had um African in his blood. Um. Now,
25:19
Speaker 1: in France, it's not anything like it is in the
25:22
Speaker 1: United States, where it's like that that idiotic one drop rule. Um.
25:26
Speaker 1: But apparently it was enough, there was enough racism in
25:28
Speaker 1: France that like, it wasn't until two two, when Jacques
25:32
Speaker 1: Sharrock was president that he was moved. Um. His remains
25:36
Speaker 1: were moved to the pantheon alongside like Zola. So uh.
25:44
Speaker 1: A lot of people said, well, no, he was he
25:46
Speaker 1: was a hack. He was he was just a hack,
25:48
Speaker 1: you know, like he was good, but he was still
25:49
Speaker 1: a hack, and that's why people didn't take him seriously.
25:51
Speaker 1: But it's also possible it is because of his his
25:54
Speaker 1: racial background as well. I think that in this budde
25:58
Speaker 1: Well for us, I think hundreds of years on, even
26:01
Speaker 1: prolific hacks can be looked upon as you know, genius. Right.
26:05
Speaker 1: So that's pretty much what I've been betting on since
26:08
Speaker 1: we first sat down pretty started doing. Yeah, it's just
26:12
Speaker 1: somebody out there somehow society is gonna just devolved and
26:16
Speaker 1: they'll be like these guys are It'll be like idiocracy.
26:19
Speaker 1: Yeah that's our meal ticket, right, but more entertaining. Are
26:22
Speaker 1: you got anything else? No? I mean the rest is history, great,
26:25
Speaker 1: great book. Uh, And I love the story behind the
26:29
Speaker 1: musket and the Musketeers, the real life thing. That was
26:31
Speaker 1: pretty cool, you know, I like my history. If you
26:35
Speaker 1: want to learn more about Alexander Duma and the Musketeers
26:39
Speaker 1: and Muskets, you can type Musketeers m U s K
26:43
Speaker 1: E T E E R S into the handy search
26:46
Speaker 1: part how stuff works dot Com, which means it's time
26:48
Speaker 1: for a listener mail. Josh. I'm gonna call this, uh
26:54
Speaker 1: clarification on that I've actually copied that about um. Josh
26:59
Speaker 1: and Chuck just started listening to stuff you should know
27:02
Speaker 1: when I love the podcast, but I was recently listening
27:05
Speaker 1: to your Samurai podcast and I couldn't help but notice
27:07
Speaker 1: that you gave credit to George Lucas when talking about
27:10
Speaker 1: a Darth Vader mask uh and its relative similarity to
27:14
Speaker 1: the Samurai Cabudo mask. That yes, um, I thought I
27:19
Speaker 1: would point out that Mr Lucas, although responsible for Star Wars,
27:23
Speaker 1: was not responsible for the design for the conception of
27:26
Speaker 1: Vader's mask. Credit for that should go to the great
27:29
Speaker 1: concept artist Ralph mcquarie, who's used future aesthetic as in
27:35
Speaker 1: like full time you're looking. Yeah, no, I love that aesthetics.
27:38
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, me too. It's one of the reasons for
27:41
Speaker 1: the iconic status of Star Wars and really informed like
27:45
Speaker 1: every great space movie sense, don't you think, Yeah, like
27:47
Speaker 1: think about it, like the um like a spaceport or
27:50
Speaker 1: something like that, Like all the jet engines are kind
27:52
Speaker 1: of battered and beaten and everything, and every once a
27:55
Speaker 1: while go to an airport and look in Stephen plains
27:58
Speaker 1: are just like that, and I'll just see exactly what
28:00
Speaker 1: the guy was doing and how well they nailed. They agreed.
28:03
Speaker 1: So mcquarie, hats off to you, and Geiger is awesome.
28:08
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take my hand off to YouTube as well,
28:10
Speaker 1: sir um, and then continue with the email. Lucas's original
28:16
Speaker 1: script did not put Vader in a mask at all, evidently,
28:19
Speaker 1: and it was Ralph's idea to put a frightening helmet
28:21
Speaker 1: on the Sith Lord. Macquarie recently passed away, and it
28:25
Speaker 1: would be a shame if his contributions to popular culture
28:27
Speaker 1: were not recognized. And Joe from San Francisco could not
28:31
Speaker 1: agree more. And I'm glad you pointed this out because movies,
28:36
Speaker 1: although it is a director's medium, are made up of many, many,
28:40
Speaker 1: many people's talents contributing to the end result of the film,
28:45
Speaker 1: and people like mcquarie are often overlooked with something as
28:48
Speaker 1: iconic is Darth Vader's mask. That's awesome, So thank you
28:52
Speaker 1: for that joke from San Francisco. Well done, Joe. Um. Well, yeah,
28:57
Speaker 1: if you have an awesome correction for us, or just
29:00
Speaker 1: the clarification, or if you want to tell us that
29:04
Speaker 1: we were utterly and completely wrong about something, we're always
29:07
Speaker 1: open to hearing that kind of thing, especially if you're nice, nice, nothing.
29:13
Speaker 1: There's no point in being mean. Um. You can tweet
29:16
Speaker 1: to us at s y s K Podcast. You can
29:19
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook dot com at Facebook dot com,
29:22
Speaker 1: slash stuff, you shadow, and you can send us an
29:25
Speaker 1: email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. For more
29:34
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29:37
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