that in which Père Daniel and Voltaire state that the bayonet was first introduced into the French army. It may be noticed, too, that the order directs the regiment to be armed out of the stores remaining in the Office of Ordinance, showing that the efficacy of this weapon had been recognised by military men in this country almost, if not actually as early as in France.
Puysegur (Art de la Guerre, chap. vi.) says, "Lorsque cette guerre commença, il y avoit déjà quelques régimens qui avoient quitté les piques, le reste avoit toujours le cinquième des soldats armés de piques; mais l'hyver de 1703 à 1704 elles furent entièrement abandonées et les mousquets le furent aussi peu de tems après. Durant cette guerre les officiers ont été armés d'espontons de huit pieds de long; les sergens d'hallebardes de six pieds et demi, et tous les soldats de fusils avec des bayonnettes à douille, pour pouvoir tirer avec la bayonnette au bout du fusil."[1]
I have sought in vain for the origin and source of the tradition that the bayonet was invented at Bayonne. The story runs, that in a battle which took place in a small hamlet in the environs of that city, in the middle of the seventeenth century, between some Basque peasants and a band of Spanish smugglers, the former, having exhausted their ammunition, defeated their opponents by charging them with their long knives, fastened in the muzzle of their muskets.
Such an event may have occured, but it requires authentication, and the relation begets a suspicion that the mere similarity of name has laid the foundation of the supposed connexion of the bayonet with Bayonne.
True or false, the story is immortalized in the verse of Voltaire, who, in the eighth book of the "Henriade," thus alludes to this weapon:—
"Cette arme, que jadis, pour dépeupler la terre,
Dans Bayonne inventa le démon de la guerre,
Rassemble en même temps, digne fruit de l'enfer,
Ce qu'ont de plus terrible et la flamme et le fer."
Voltaire, however, was not the inventor of the figment, if it is really to be regarded as such, for we find "bayonet" thus glossed in the dictionary of Ménage, published in 1694: "Bayonette, sorte de poignard, ainsi appelée de la ville de Baionne."
In thus attempting to give the true history of this formidable weapon, I may, in conclusion, be permitted to refer to its common appellation of bagonet." This is at once a vulgarism and an archaism, for it was so designated by men and
- ↑ Art de la Guerre, par le Maréchal de Puysegur, mis à jour par M. le Marquis de Puysegur, son fils. Paris, 1748. Tome i. ch. vi. p. 57.
