No Bayonets?
- Thread starter Rognvald
- Start date
RamscoopRaider
Donor
Get rid of guns
Seriously that's really the only way I can think of
a bayonet is ridiculously simple and can be improvised fairly well, just stick a knife down the barrel, with a matchlock you can spend two minutes reloading or 10 seconds pounding your dagger down the barrel and stab someone, at close range it's a no brainer
A bayonet is just a knife that can be attached to a rifle, kind of hard to butterfly, someone with a knife and a gun will try it in an emergency and it will go from there
Seriously that's really the only way I can think of
a bayonet is ridiculously simple and can be improvised fairly well, just stick a knife down the barrel, with a matchlock you can spend two minutes reloading or 10 seconds pounding your dagger down the barrel and stab someone, at close range it's a no brainer
A bayonet is just a knife that can be attached to a rifle, kind of hard to butterfly, someone with a knife and a gun will try it in an emergency and it will go from there
Exactly. As soon as you have massed firearms you need pikes to cover them, and that makes the bayonet pretty obvious. I suppose you could get a similar outcome if firearms longer than a pistol somehow never occur to anyone, but that seems utterly ASB to me.
Probably impossible to have guns and the bayonet not get invented at some point. Honestly its amazing it took so long in the first place, kind of like the stirrup.
Well, gunpowder that's actually useful takes a pretty particular combination of the ingredients - and some work to make it reliably useful.
Agreed on bayonets though. There's no reason not to develop them once guns are on the battlefield.
It may not be immediate, but it will be worked on.
Agreed on bayonets though. There's no reason not to develop them once guns are on the battlefield.
It may not be immediate, but it will be worked on.
I second this. It is just a big knife attached to a gun. In fact I can't understand why it took so long to invent. Massed gunners appear in the mid 1400s, and the socket bayonet doesn't show up until Vauban. That's over two hundred years. I'd have thought it would be more like twenty.
The only explanation I can think of is that the early matchlock arquebus plus a bayonet would not have been enough to stop cavalry so pikes were still needed.
Indeed, one of the competing "origin stories" of the bayonet says that's exactly how they were created. A 17th century militia unit from Bayonne, France was in pursuit of some outlaws and ran out of powder. Rather than give up the pursuit, they stuck the hilts of their daggers down the barrels of their muskets and used them as spears. It's hard to see how that wouldn't have happened at some point...it's virtually inevitable.
Didn't the Native Americans and Canadians stick knifes on the but of their rifles and use them as stabbing club things?
I don't know if they put them on actual guns, but they did take extra gun stocks and stick blades onto them, making them into a bladed club of sorts. If you ever saw the latest version of Last of the Mohicans, the old guy (Chingagchook?) was using one of those stock clubs...
I think the bayonet became competitive once massed firepower in shallow lines became dominant over deeper formations (and that in turn happened because the reitar killed the knight, while becoming unable to deal with infantry by himself).
Before that, I would bet pike would run right over any bayonet formation. The general de-emphasis of close combat skills in the age of the musket made the bayonet viable. It's a very heavy, very very very heavy weapon, very clumsy too, for what is essentially a short spear.
Before that, I would bet pike would run right over any bayonet formation. The general de-emphasis of close combat skills in the age of the musket made the bayonet viable. It's a very heavy, very very very heavy weapon, very clumsy too, for what is essentially a short spear.