war in 1689, who says: "All our officers and souldiers were strangers to the Highlanders' way of fighting and embattailing, which mainly occasioned the consternation many of them were in; which to remedy for the ensuing year, having taken notice on this occasion that the Highlanders are of such a quick motion, that if a battalion keep up his fire till they be near to make sure of them, they are upon it before our men can come to their second defence, which is the bayonet in the musle of the musket: I say, the general having observed this method of the enemy, he invented the way to fasten the bayonet so to the musle without, by two rings, that the soldiers may safely keep their fire till they pour it into their breasts, and then have no other motion to make but to push as with a pick."[1]
The merit of this contrivance, however, cannot be claimed for Mackay, for Puysegur mentions that he had seen before the Peace of Nimeguen (1678) a regiment which was armed with swords without guards, but furnished with brass rings, one at the junction of the blade and the handle, the other at the pommel. But he does not state that the regiment thus armed was a French one, and we have sufficent evidence that the plug-bayonet continued in use for some years afterwards. That it was not quickly adopted by the French, is very clear from the same author, who says in his "Art de la Guerre," chap, viii., "Durant la guerre de 1688 on avoit proposé au feu Roi de supprimer les piques et les mousquets; il fit même faire une épreuve de bayonnettes à douille à peu près comme celles d'aujourd'hui sur les mousquets de son régiment; mais comme les bayonnettes n'avoient pas été faites sur les canons qui étoient de differentes grosseurs, elles ne tenoient pas bien ferme, de sorte que dans cette épreuve qui fut faite en présence de S. M. plusieurs bayonnettes en tirant tomboient, à d'autres la balle en sortant cassoit le bout, cela fit qu'elles furent rejettées. Mais peu de temps après des nations contre lesquelles nous avons été en guerre quitterent les piques pour prendre les fusils avec des bayonnettes à douille, ausquelles nous avons été obligés de revenir.
At any rate, we have in Mackay's account the fact of its application in actual warfare, so early as the year 1689; but how shall we reconcile it with the retention of the old method of screwing the bayonet into the muzzle of the musket? for this is directed in a book of exercises, published by royal authority in the following year.
Grose, in his history of the English army,[2] says, "I have in vain endeavoured to ascertain the precise time when the bayonets of the present form were first adopted
