Bayonet

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This weapon, now generally introduced for all line infantry, is usually stated to have been invented in France (apparently at Bayonne, whence the name) about the year 1640. According to other accounts, it was adopted by the Dutch from the Malays, who attached their kris, or dagger, to a musket, and introduced into France about the year 1679. Up to that time, the musketeers had no effective weapon for close combat, and consequently had to be mixed with pikemen to protect them from a closing enemy. The bayonet enabled musketeers to withstand cavalry or pikemen, and thus gradually superseded the latter arm. Originally, it was fastened to a stick for insertion into the barrel of the musket, but as it thus prevented the soldier from firing with bayonet fixed, the tube passing round the barrel was afterward invented. Still, the pike maintained itself for above half a century as an infantry weapon. The Austrians were the first to exchange it, for all their line infantry, for the musket and bayonet; the Prussians followed in 1689; the French did not do away entirely with the pike until 1703, nor the Russians till 1721. The battle of Spire, in 1703, was the first in which charges of infantry were made with fixed bayonets. For light infantry, the bayonet is now generally replaced by a short, straight and sharp-pointed sword, which can be fixed in a slide on one side of the muzzle of the rifle. It is thus certainly less firmly fixed, but as such infantry are expected to charge in line in exceptional cases only, this drawback is considered to be balanced by the manifold uses in which such an instrument can be employed.