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Bayonet History

The evolution of the bayonet can be traced to a certain extent to a fortuitous accident. In the mid-17th century irregular military conflicts of rural France, the peasants of the Southern French town of Bayonne, who were Basques, having run out of powder and shot, rammed their long-bladed hunting knives into the muzzles of their primitive muskets to fashion impromptu spears and, by necessity, created an ancillary weapon that was to influence Western European infantry tactics until the early 20th century. The weapon was introduced into the French army by General Jean Martinet.

The benefit of such a dual-purpose arm contained in one was soon apparent. The early muskets fired at a slow rate (about a round per minute when loading with loose powder and ball, and no more than 3–4 rounds per minute using paper cartridges), and were both inaccurate and unreliable. Bayonets provided a useful addition to the weapons system when an enemy charging to contact could cross the musket’s killing ground (a range of approximately 100 yards/metres at the most optimistic) at the expense of perhaps only one or two volleys from their waiting opponents. A foot-long bayonet, extending to a regulation 17 inches (approx. 43 centimetres) during the Napoleonic period, on a 5-foot (around 1.5 metre) tall musket achieved a reach similar to the infantry spear, and later halberd, of earlier times.

Early bayonets were of the “plug” type. The bayonet had a round handle that fit directly into the musket barrel. This naturally prevented the gun from being fired. In 1671, plug bayonets were issued to the French regiment of fusiliers then raised. They were issued to part of an English dragoon regiment raised in 1672 and disbanded in 1674, and to the Royal Fusiliers when raised in 1685. The danger incurred by the use of this bayonet (which put a stop to all fire) was felt so early that the younger Puysgur saw a ring-bayonet in 1678 which could be fixed without stopping the fire. The defeat of forces loyal to William of Orange by Jacobite Highlanders at the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689 was due (among other things) to the use of the plug-bayonet; and shortly afterwards the defeated leader, Hugh Mackay, is believed to have introduced a ring-bayonet of his own invention. Soon “socket” bayonets offset the blade from the musket barrel’s muzzle. The bayonet attached over the outside of the barrel with a ring-shaped socket, secured on later models by a spring-loaded catch on the muzzle of the musket barrel.

A trial with badly fitting socket or zigzag bayonets was made after the battle of Fleurus, 1690, in the presence of Louis XIV, who refused to adopt them. Shortly after the peace of Ryswick (1697), the English and Germans abolished the pike and introduced these bayonets, and plates of them are given in Surirey de St. Remy’s Mémoires d’Artillerie, published in Paris in that year; but owing to a military cabal they were not issued to the French infantry until 1703. Henceforward, the bayonet became, with the musket or other firearm, the typical weapon of infantry.

Many socket bayonets were triangular in cross-section in order to provide flexing strength in the blade without much increase in weight. Flexing strength was needed in case a bayonet struck a hard object- better to have it bend and be repairable, than have it be stiff and shatter on impact. This design of bayonet did not usually include a grip for using the bayonet apart from the gun, although a socket bayonet was deemed a sidearm anyway, especially in the British army of 1775.

The triangular bayonet, unlike an old urban legend, was not designed to create stab wounds “that were difficult to stitch when attended to by a medic, as it is more difficult to stitch a three-sided wound than a two-sided one, thus making the wound more likely to become infected” (sic). This quote ignores the reality of surgery, in that surgeons have sewn up jagged wounds using more stitches when needed, since time immemorial. Instead, three sided bayonets were designed to be an economical compromise between flexing strength and the amount of wrought iron need to make the bayonet.

Similarly, in the Soviet Union, later bayonet blades, now made of steel, were stiffened with a small cross-section in the form of a cross, in order to make them more compact in form and fold better onto the sides of their rifles (see Mosin Nagant models of 1938 and 1944). It is said that self-inflicted wounds made by soldiers to get themselves out of the line of battle would be recognized as such and bring them greater disciplinary punishment (citation needed….). In All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque, the book’s author, a man whose military service was restricted to rear echelon duty in WW1 (is this true? please see Remarque page), claimed dubiously that in World War I French soldiers killed German prisoners who had serrated blade bayonets, as they assumed they were for cutting off the limbs of Allied soldiers. These were carried by combat engineers as tools and by NCOs as signs of rank.

Bayonet M. 1898/05 used by Prussian Army during WW118th and 19th century military tactics included various massed bayonet charges and defenses. The Russian Army used the bayonet the most frequently in any Napoleonic conflict. Their motto was “The Bullet is foolish, the Bayonet wise”. This implies that the bullet of a smoothbore musket was wildly inaccurate at ranges past 50 yards (which was true in most cases), but with the close quarters of bayonet fighting, it was hard to miss. It should be noted, however, that in the thick of a close-quarter combat, many soldiers revert to using bayonet-mounted rifles as clubs, this apparently being a more “natural” way of fighting (as described by military historians like John Keegan).

Bayonets were experimented with through much of the 18th and 19th centuries. In the United States Navy before the American Civil War, bayonet blades were even affixed to single-shot pistols, although they soon proved useless for anything but cooking. Cutlasses remained the favoured weapon for the navies of the time, though Queen Victoria’s Royal Navy gave up the pikes once used to repel attacks by boarders in favor of the cutlass bayonet.

French infantry bayonet charge during the First World War. These are for Lebel rifle.The 19th century finally saw the popularity of the sword bayonet. It was a long-bladed weapon with a single- or double-edged blade that could also be used as a shortsword. Its intial purpose was to ensure that riflemen, when in ranks with musketmen, whose weapons were longer, could form square properly to fend off cavalry attacks, when sword bayonets were fitted. A prime early example of a sword bayonet-fitted rifle would be the British Infantry Rifle of 1800-1840, later known as the “Baker Rifle”. (However, one usually removed the sword bayonet on the Infantry Rifle before firing…)

The hilt usually had quillons modified to accommodate the gun barrel, and a hilt mechanism that enabled the bayonet to be attached to a bayonet lug. When dismounted, a sword bayonet could be used in combat as a side arm. When attached to the musket or rifle, it effectively turned almost any long gun into a spear or glaive, suitable not only for thrusting but also for slashing. World War I saw the shortening of sword bayonets into knife-sized weapons, usable as fighting knives or trench knives, so that the vast majority of modern bayonets are knife bayonets.

From Wikipedia