Bayonets History
"All nations boast of their prowess with the bayonet,
but few men really enjoy a hand-to-hand fight with the bayonet.
English and French both talk much of the bayonet but in Egypt in
1801 they threw stones at each other when their ammunition was exhausted
and one English sergeant was killed by a stone.
At Inkerman again the British threw stones at the
Russians, not without effect; and I am told upon good authority
that the Russians and Japanese, both of whom proffes to love the
bayonet, threw stones at each other rather than close, even in this
twentieth-century."
J.W.Fortescue, Military History

Antique Spanish hunt Plug Bayonet from 1700
The bayonet stems directly from the various forms
of polearm, it was obviously inappropriate to have a firearm-bearing
soldier encumbered by a pike, yet there was need for a polearm to
stand off cavalry and for hand-to-hand encounters when ammunition
was gone or when there was no time to reload.
The original "bayonnette" - the name came from the
town of its supposed origin, Bayonne in France - was introduced
into the French Army in 1647.
It was a plug bayonet, a spear-like blade to which
was attached a long conical steel plug inserted directly into the
muzzle of the soldier`s musket, a collar lodging against the barrel
to prevent it sliding too far in. This had certain defects; the
musket could not be fired once the bayonet was fitted, and during
the act of fitting the soldier was virtually unarmed. Misfortune
overtook an English army at Killiecrankie in 1689, when a sudden
rush of Scottish Highlanders overwhelmed them as they were fixing
bayonets.
As a result of these defects, the socket bayonet was
developed; this had the blade cranked and attached to a hollow sleeve
which slipped over the muzzle of the musket. The blade lay below
the axis of the barrel and left sufficient clearance to permit the
weapon to be loaded and fired while the bayonet was fixed.
Although generally considered as the infantryman`s
assault weapon, the bayonet was originally a defensive instrument.
Steady infantry standing two or three deep and adopting a "square"
formation could defend their position against a sudden rush of cavalry;
the combined length of the musket and bayonet was sufficient to
permit a standing soldier to reach a man mounted upon a horse.
The 28th of Foot form a square at Waterloo to resist a French cavalry
The idea of using a short sword as a bayonet was
tried from time to time but the first regular users of the sword-type
blade appear to have been the British rifle regiments in the early
1800s. However, the advent of breech-loading, and then magazine
arms provided infantry with a firepower capable of beating off cavalry,
at which time the bayonet turned from being primarily defensive
to being a personal offensive weapon. For this a knife-like blade
was of more use than a spike blade, and so from the middle of the
19th century the knife or sword blade became common, though a few
armies still retained spike blades.
The difficulties of fixing bayonets in the heat of
the battle led some armies to adopt permanently-attached bayonets
which folded above or below the barrel of the weapon and could be
released and locked into place very quickly when required. A singularity
of the Imperial Russian Army, which carried over into the Soviet
Army, was the permanently fixed bayonet; no scabbards were issued,
and the bayonet remained on the rifle muzzle at all times.
With the adoption of modern short assault rifles
the utility of the bayonet as a weapon was placed in doubt; the
combination is not well suited to bayonet fighting.
[Top]
[More Articles]
|