If the assault is not made at this moment, the crisis may pass, but a determined rush by the attacker will, as a rule, bring about the decision. The threat of a bayonet attack usually decides those who have remained in the position, to make no further resistance. The attacker must make use of the moral factors in an assault, hence the importance of running, cheering, and accompanying the advance of all bodies in close order by the beating of drums and the sounding of trumpets.[1]
"The French were unable to withstand an energetic attack, when undertaken
in anything like sufficient strength and accompanied by cheers
and beating drums." Boguslawski.
"Suddenly some soldier shouted: 'Columns! Columns!' Captain von Wobeser rose to see what was going on, but at the same moment his men rushed back and made straight for the Bois."—"The mere launching of the attack from the direction of Point du Jour sufficed to induce the well concealed force of about 400 men, which held the gravel pits, likewise to beat a retreat that very much resembled a rout." Hönig.
In time of peace there should be instilled in the soldier the
conviction that, with the bayonet, he is a match for any opponent;
that, in bayonet fighting, no other infantry is the equal
of his own. The soldier should not be taught to shrink from
the bayonet attack, but to seek it. If the infantry is deprived
of the arme blanche, if the impossibility of bayonet fighting is
preached, and the soldier is never given an opportunity in time
of peace of defending himself, man to man, with his weapon
in bayonet fencing, an infantry will be developed, which is
unsuitable for attack and which, moreover, lacks a most essential
quality, viz., the moral power to reach the enemy's position.
"The rarity of bayonet fights does not prove the uselessness of the bayonet, but shows that opponents will rarely be found who are equally capable of making use of it. Indeed, the bayonet cannot be abolished for the reason, if for no other, that it is the sole and exclusive embodiment of that will power which alone, both in war and in every-day life, attains its
- ↑ One must read Kunz, Kriegsgeschichtliche Beispiele, 13, pp. 80, 116, 123 and 156, in order to appreciate what an electrifying influence the beating of drums may have even on retreating lines.
