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thus gradually superseded the latter arm.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.