A sword bayonet is any long, knife-bladed

bayonet A bayonet (from French ) is a knife, dagger, sword, or spike-shaped weapon designed to fit on the end of the muzzle of a rifle, musket or similar firearm, allowing it to be used as a spear-like weapon.Brayley, Martin, ''Bayonets: An Illustr ...

designed for mounting on a

musket A musket is a muzzle-loaded long gun that appeared as a smoothbore weapon in the early 16th century, at first as a heavier variant of the arquebus, capable of penetrating plate armour. By the mid-16th century, this type of musket gradually di ...

rifle A rifle is a long-barreled firearm designed for accurate shooting, with a barrel that has a helical pattern of grooves ( rifling) cut into the bore wall. In keeping with their focus on accuracy, rifles are typically designed to be held with ...

. Its use is thought to have begun in the 18th century and to have reached its height of popularity throughout the 19th and into the early 20th centuries. When unmounted from a musket or rifle, sword bayonets with their typical

hilt The hilt (rarely called a haft or shaft) of a knife, dagger, sword, or bayonet is its handle, consisting of a guard, grip and pommel. The guard may contain a crossguard or quillons. A tassel or sword knot may be attached to the guard or pommel ...

s and long blades also could be wielded as

short sword The English language terminology used in the classification of swords is imprecise and has varied widely over time. There is no historical dictionary for the universal names, classification or terminology of swords; a sword was simply a double ...

s. While modern military bayonets typically have

knife A knife ( : knives; from Old Norse 'knife, dirk') is a tool or weapon with a cutting edge or blade, usually attached to a handle or hilt. One of the earliest tools used by humanity, knives appeared at least 2.5 million years ago, as evid ...

blades, they are usually too short to be called sword bayonets and are more akin to fighting/utility knives.

History

Sword bayonets originated for use with muzzle-loading rifles. A typical example of an early sword bayonet is the 58 centimetre (23 inch) blade variety designed for the Infantry rifle, later called the Baker rifle of the

Napoleonic era The Napoleonic era is a period in the history of France and Europe. It is generally classified as including the fourth and final stage of the French Revolution, the first being the National Assembly, the second being the Legislativ ...

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurkha ...

. In the modern British "Rifles" regiment, all bayonets are referred to as swords. Most

infantry Infantry is a military specialization which engages in ground combat on foot. Infantry generally consists of light infantry, mountain infantry, motorized infantry & mechanized infantry, airborne infantry, air assault infantry, and mar ...

would routinely keep bayonets fixed to their inaccurate smooth bore muskets throughout a battle. Close order ranks and squares presented a hedge of bayonets to the enemy, which was especially useful for deterring

cavalry Historically, cavalry (from the French word ''cavalerie'', itself derived from "cheval" meaning "horse") are soldiers or warriors who fight mounted on horseback. Cavalry were the most mobile of the combat arms, operating as light cavalry in ...

. But a fixed bayonet - a pound or so of extra metal on the front of a firearm - seriously affects a firearm’s balance and hampers accurate shooting. However, Mosin-Nagant rifles using cruciform and dagger bayonets were arsenal zeroed with them affixed (or extended) as they affect point-of-impact via barrel harmonics, and in the case of Imperial Russian and Soviet battle doctrine dictated they were always affixed (with few exceptions). A rifleman usually fought without a fixed bayonet since accuracy was the whole purpose of their rifled weapon. He therefore required a side-arm that could be drawn and used instantly in an emergency so his bayonet had a cutting edge and a grippable hilt. That such bayonets were far heavier than standard socket bayonets was not a disadvantage since they were rarely fixed. Most riflemen found it worked better for cutting brush and roasting meat over a fire (See Rifleman Harris, Costello's, Simmons's diaries). On occasion riflemen did form up in close order. Since rifles were shorter than muskets their bayonets needed to be longer to produce the same total length; the sword bayonet answered this need. As well as rifle regiments, other soldiers whose battlefield role did not involve standing shoulder to shoulder in ranks, notably

sergeants Sergeant (abbreviated to Sgt. and capitalized when used as a named person's title) is a rank in many uniformed organizations, principally military and policing forces. The alternative spelling, ''serjeant'', is used in The Rifles and other un ...

, also came to use sword bayonets. By the end of the nineteenth century all infantry had become riflemen and the sword bayonet had become the standard infantry bayonet. Bayonets lost their popularity after

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

. While sword bayonets can be effective as

s, they proved to be too unwieldy in cramped quarters in

trench warfare Trench warfare is a type of land warfare using occupied lines largely comprising Trench#Military engineering, military trenches, in which troops are well-protected from the enemy's small arms fire and are substantially sheltered from artille ...

, although spike bayonets continued to be used throughout most of the 20th century. A shorter version of the sword bayonet, the knife bayonet, was developed. Today, the majority of modern bayonets are knife bayonets.

Uses

With the appearance of the hiltless sword bayonet, such as the socket-mounted variety, their use on the end of the musket or rifle also became a hindrance during the reloading of the muzzle-loaded longarm, (a common problem to all muzzle-loading infantry weapons). A bayonet of similar style and dimension was used on the

Lee–Enfield The Lee–Enfield or Enfield is a bolt-action, magazine-fed repeating rifle that served as the main firearm of the military forces of the British Empire and Commonwealth during the first half of the 20th century, and was the British Army's sta ...

rifle of the early 20th century. The advantages of sword bayonets over spike bayonets are evident. Where a spike bayonet turns the rifle into a spear, a sword bayonet turns it into a

glaive A glaive (or glave) is a European polearm, consisting of a single-edged blade on the end of a pole. It is similar to the Japanese naginata, the Chinese guandao, the Korean woldo, and the Russian sovnya. Overview Typically, the blade is arou ...

. Unlike spike bayonets, which can be used only for thrusting, sword bayonets can also be used for slashing, except for the

épée The ( or , ), sometimes spelled epee in English, is the largest and heaviest of the three weapons used in the sport of fencing. The modern derives from the 19th-century , a weapon which itself derives from the French small sword. This contain ...

bayonets. Twisting a sword bayonet in the wound was especially lethal. Before the advent of modern medicine after World War I, a soldier struck by a sword bayonet was very unlikely to survive.

Variants

While most sword bayonets have straight blades, a popular variant in the 19th century featured sinuous, S-curved blades like those found on Ottoman sword called the

yatagan The yatagan, yataghan or ataghan (from Turkish language, Turkish ''yatağan''), also called varsak, is a type of Ottoman Empire, Ottoman knife or short sabre used from the mid-16th to late 19th centuries. The yatagan was extensively used in Otto ...

. Today, sword bayonets of this style are said to have "yataghan" blades, or to be "yataghan-bladed".

External links

World Bayonets
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sword Bayonet Blade weapons Modern European swords Sword bayonet