Plug Bayonet

Origins

In the seventeenth century an infantry regiment was made up of two kinds of soldiers: musketeers, who fired the Matchlock Musket, and pikemen, who protected them from cavalry with the Pike. A musketeer who had fired his shot and was caught by cavalry had only his sword or the butt of his gun. Hunters in France had long pushed knives into the muzzles of their guns to finish off wild boar, and by the middle of the century soldiers began to do the same. The name bayonet probably comes from Bayonne in southwest France, a center of knife-making, and the first military references date from the 1640s and 1650s. The French army issued plug bayonets to its fusiliers from 1671, and in England dragoons were armed with them from 1672.

Design & Construction

The plug bayonet was essentially a dagger. It had a straight, double-edged blade about 30 centimeters long, a small crossguard, and a handle of wood, horn or bone that tapered toward the pommel so that it could be pushed tightly into the muzzle of the musket. Once in place, it turned the musket into a short spear about as long as a man was tall. Many were fine pieces, with brass or silver fittings, and some were made as hunting daggers. The problem was obvious: once the bayonet was fitted, the musket could not be fired or loaded, and if it was pushed in too hard it could be difficult to pull out. If it was not pushed in firmly enough, it could fall out or stay in the enemy.

Combat Use

The plug bayonet's most famous failure came at the Battle of Killiecrankie on 27 July 1689, during the first Jacobite rising. General Hugh Mackay's government army, drawn up on a slope in the Pass of Killiecrankie, fired on the Jacobite Highland Clansmen of Viscount Dundee as they charged downhill. The Highlanders took the volleys, fired their own, threw down their muskets and came on with broadsword and targe. Mackay's soldiers had no time to push their plug bayonets into their muskets before the clansmen were among them, and the government army was routed in minutes. Mackay later wrote about the problem and is credited with ordering a bayonet fitted with rings so that it could be attached to the outside of the barrel. The plug bayonet was also used in the wars of Louis XIV, and the danger it posed was clear to every army.

Legacy

The solution was the socket bayonet, in which the blade was set to the side of a tube that slipped over the muzzle, so that the musket could be fired and loaded with the bayonet fixed. The French engineer Vauban is often credited with it, and by around 1700 the socket bayonet had replaced the plug bayonet in most armies. With the flintlock musket, it made the pike obsolete, and every soldier in the line became both musketeer and pikeman. Plug bayonets survive in museums and collections and are the ancestors of every bayonet since, including the Pattern 1907 Bayonet.