The term "musket" is not that definitive and has been used differently throughout history and in different countries. If you wanted to split it simply on the smoothbore/rifled lines, there are a couple more reason why this wouldn't necessarily be a good idea.
Firstly, a main purpose of the categories is to help people ID unknown weapons, so if it is unknown they will not be able to tell if it is rifles or not to know if it is actually a musket.
Secondly, you have the case of the rifled muskets which in some cases were indistinguishable or at least very similar to their smoothbore brethren, would these go in the musket category? Along with this you have the fact that a lot of replicas either have rifling when they shouldn't or vice versa which would technically mean they were in a different category.
Lastly, a lot of the things that you have described as "muskets" (implying smoothbore) could also be rifled, including Matchlocks, Wheellocks, Tanegashimas, and Jezails as far as I have seen.
If you aren't differentiating a Musket from a Rifle based purely on whether it has rifling, what criteria would you use for a musket? There are plenty of early cartridge rifles which as the time were described as "Muskets", should these go in this category despite the fact that this is not how they would be described today?
|