here; that improvement, as well as the original invention, is of French extraction. The following anecdote respecting that weapon was communicated to me by Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Maxwell, of the 30th Regiment of Foot, who had it from his grandfather, formerly lieutenant-colonel of the 25th Regiment of Foot. "In one of the campaigns of King William III. in Flanders, in an engagement the name of which he had forgotten, there were three French regiments, whose bayonets were made to fix after the present fashion, a contrivance then unknown in the British army. One of them advanced against the 25th Regiment with fixed bayonets; Lieutenant-Colonel Maxwell who commanded it, ordered his men to screw their bayonets into their muzzles to receive them, thinking they meant to decide the affair point to point; but to his great surprise, when they came within a proper distance, the French threw in a heavy fire, which, for a moment, staggered his people, who by no means expected such a greeting, not conceiving it possible they could fire with fixed bayonets: they nevertheless recovered themselves, charged, and drove the enemy out of the line.
"Notwithstanding this instance," he adds, "of the superiority of the socket bayonet, it seems as if that invention was not immediately adopted, but that the old bayonets underwent a mutation or two before they arrived at their present form. One of them was a couple of rings fixed into their handle, for the purpose of receiving the muzzle of the piece, like the socket of the present bayonet, by which means the soldier was enabled both to fire and load his musket without unfixing it. The late Rev. Mr. Gostling, of Canterbury, who was extremely inquisitive respecting military affairs, told me he remembered to have seen two horse grenadiers ride before the coach of Queen Anne, with their bayonets fixed, by means of the rings here described."
Daniel, in his "Histoire de la Milice Françoise," says, "Cette arme est très moderne dans les troupes. Je croi que le premier corps qui en ait été armé est le Régiment des Fusiliers, créé en 1671, et appelé depuis Régiment Royal-Artillerie. Les soldats de ce régiment portoient la bayonette dans un petit fourreau à côté de l'épée. On en a donné depuis aux autres régimens pour le même usage, c'est-à-dire, pour la mettre au bout du fusil dans les occasions."[1]
Voltaire, speaking of Louis XIV., says, "L'usage de la baïonnette au bout du fusil est de son institution. Avant lui on s'en servait quelquefois; mais il n'y avait que quelques compagnies qui combattissent avec cette arme. Point d'usage uniforme, point d'exercice: tout était abandonné à la volonté du général. Les
- ↑ Daniel, Histoire de la Milice Françoise. Paris, 1721, tome ii. p. 592. In tome i. pl. 22, p. 415 of the same work is a representation of a plug bayonet, and in pl. 33, p. 466, of a socket bayonet.
