Earlier invention of the bayonet

[Max Sinister]

AFAI read when the bayonet was invented, the division between riflemen and pikeneers became unnecessary since a rifle with a bayonet can do both jobs.

Since the bayonet isn't really the most complicated weapon to invent (I am not an expert, though) I wonder what had happened if the armies had employed it some time earlier - let's say, during the Thirty-year war.

 

[MrP]

Well, the first bayonets are plug bayonets, which fit into the barrel. One cannot both have the bayonet fixed and be able to fire or load the gun. I think that since in OTL the pikemen covered the transitional phase for a while, bayonets weren't seen as a great research area. Naturally, it's pretty obvious that securing it to the outside of the barrel is a much better position. One'd have to be pretty curmudgeonly to argue that every TL must have plug bayonets.

Is there going to be enough industry to provide armies of OTL size with twice the guns they had in OTL? That's theorising a 50/50 split between pikemen and musketmen, o'course. If it's a 70/30 split between the two sides, then you need three times the OTL guns for the same armies.

So, in my personal opinion, it wouldn't have made a great difference, because you'd need to increase firearms production, too. Tactically, bayonet wielding infantry units have greater fluidity and firepower than part-pike part-gun units, but without the guns, what's that get you?

 

[carlton_bach]

Well, technology comes with its social and organisational contexts. It wasn't until the 1630s that musketeers could reliably be expected to fire as regularly and quickly as would be necessary to operate as independent units without 'anchoring' to heavy infantry squares like crossbows had done. That was the 'Swedish system' (Dutch, actually, but it became known as Swedish), and it spread through Europe's armies by the 1650s. The bayonet doesn't make its appearance much later. So the question is rather, how can you have the 'Swedish system' happen earlier, or spread more quickly?

I don't think it works with the heavy matchlock models of the 16th/early 17th C. The Swedes barely made it work with the best they could get.

 

[NapoleonXIV]

IIRC the bayonet has always been a much less effective weapon than was thought. Now that's only going by the number killed and injured by the weapon, not it's psychological effect, so that might be the exact opposite in reality.

 

[carlton_bach]

IIRC the bayonet has always been a much less effective weapon than was thought. Now that's only going by the number killed and injured by the weapon, not it's psychological effect, so that might be the exact opposite in reality.

The main point of it was psychology - to discourage attacks on or clashes of close formations. You don't cause casualties if you keep away the enemy cavalry, or make their infantry run. You avoid them.

That said, it was probably overrated.