Bayonet

A bayonet (from French baïonnette) is a bladed weapon such as a knife or short sword, or spike-shaped weapon designed to fit in, on, over or underneath the muzzle of a rifle, musket or similar weapon, increasing the weapon, as a spear. In this regard, it is an ancillary close-quarter combat or last-resort weapon. Some modern bayonets, such as the one used on the British SA80 assault rifle, can be used as wire cutters when combined with their scabbards. Knife-shaped bayonets—when not fixed to a gun barrel—have long been utilized by soldiers in the field as general purpose cutting implements.

The term bayonette dates back to the end of the 16th century, but it is not clear whether bayonets at the time were knives that could be fitted to the ends of firearms, or simply a type of knife. For example, Cotgrave's 1611 Dictionarie describes the Bayonet as "a kind of small flat pocket dagger, furnished with knives; or a great knife to hang at the girdle". Likewise, Pierre Borel wrote in 1655 that a kind of long-knife called a bayonette was made in Bayonne but does not give any further description.

A possibility is that the bayonet originated as a hunting weapon: early firearms were fairly inaccurate and took a long time to reload, thus a hunter of dangerous animals such as wild boar could easily have been exposed to danger if his bullet missed the animal. The bayonet may have emerged to allow a hunter to fend off wild animals in the event of a missed shot. This idea was particularly persistent in Spain where hunting arms were usually equipped with bayonets from the 17th century until the advent of the cartridge era. The weapon was introduced into the French army by General Jean Martinet and was common in most European armies by the 1660s.

The usefulness of such a dual-purpose arm soon became apparent. Early muskets fired at a slow rate (about two rounds per minute when loading with loose powder and ball, and no more than three to four rounds per minute using paper cartridges), and could be both inaccurate and unreliable, depending on the quality of manufacture. 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/meters at the most optimistic) at the expense of perhaps only one or two volleys from their waiting opponents. A bayonet on a 5-foot (around 1.5 meters) tall musket achieved a reach similar to the infantry spear, and later halberd, of earlier times. The bayonet/musket combination was, however, considerably heavier than a polearm of the same length.

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