A bayonet was a big knife fixed at the muzzle of a gun.
A bayonet (from French baïonnette) is a knife, sword, or spike-shaped weapon designed to fit on the end of a rifle's muzzle, allowing it to be used as a spear.[1] From the 17th century to World War I, it was considered the primary weapon for infantry attacks. Today, it is considered an ancillary weapon or a weapon of last resort. Modern bayonets are often multi-purpose knives such as the Soviet AKM bayonet which was also a ground breaking survival knife that can be used as a wire-cutter when combined with its scabbard.
History
17th-century plug bayonet
The term bayonette itself dates back to the second half 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
Plug bayonets
The first recorded instance of a bayonet proper is found in the Chinese military treatise Binglu published in 1606. It was in the form of the Son-and-mother gun, a breech-loading musket that was issued with a plug bayonet that was roughly 57.6 centimetres in length and have an overall length of 1.92 meters with the bayonet attached. It was labelled as a "gun-blade"(traditional Chinese: 銃刀; simplified Chinese: 铳刀) with it being described as a "short sword that can be inserted into the barrel and secured by twisting it slightly" that it is to be used "when the battle have depleted both gunpowder and bullets as well as fighting against bandits, when forces are closing into melee or encountering an ambush" and if one "cannot load the gun within the time it takes to cover two bu (3.2 meters) of ground they are to attach the bayonet and hold it like a spear".[3][4]
Early bayonets were of the "plug" type, where the bayonet was fitted directly into the barrel of the musket.[5] This allowed light infantry to be converted to heavy infantry and hold off cavalry charges. The bayonet had a round handle that slid directly into the musket barrel. This naturally prevented the gun from being fired. The first known mention of the use of bayonets in European warfare was in the memoirs of Jacques de Chastenet, Vicomte de Puységur.[6] He described the French using crude foot-long plug bayonets during the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648).[6] However, it was not until 1671, that General Jean Martinet standardized and issued plug bayonets to the French regiment of fusiliers then raised. They were issued to part of an English dragoon regiment raised in 1672, and to the Royal Fusiliers when raised in 1685.