"Bayonet charges. How often did they connect?" Topic

So wargame rules are full of bayonet charges. We like to line our guys up and push them half across the table.

History books seem to be full of a lot of "The guys with the hats came on with bayonets, and the guys with the different hats realized they had urgent business, preferably far away".

Of course, there's also accounts of hard, hand-to-hand fighting but do those stick out exactly because they were rare, or were they common enough?

In the end, in game terms, maybe the end result is the same. One unit or the other is no longer a factor, but it makes one wonder:
How often DID the boys on each side actually "cross steel" ?

Anyone care to speculate or make vague generalizations?

I think very rarely did they actually cross steel.

I don't agree that war-games are full of bayonet charges though. They are full of close combat. I see that not as one side charging into the other and mixing it up with bayonets but more the two sides being so close together that musketry is effective or very effective, followed by a charge by the side that seems to be ready to do that and a flight by the other side, usually before chargers connect.

Possibly one side breaks even before a charge is started.

But the "charge" is the movement to close combat, not necessarily melee combat.

In my opinion the charge with bayonets was common as dirt while actually crossing bayonets was rarer than he's teeth. You're really just playing chicken and one side breaks.

Melee's in villages and towns I think happened much more often that on open fields. In open fields usually one side or the other broke before contact. However most rule sets take this into account.

Extra Crispy has a good answer.

I think you can consider Japanese banzai charges effectively bayonet charges. Close to very close contact and shoot and or use shovels, bayonets, hand grenades… until one side decides it's had enough and separates.

I think most bayonet wounds in open field combat were in the back, because the last guys to run waited too late. At Maida a British officer visiting the field hospital noticed most of the French were wounded in the back. The French light infantry got too close before they finally went about.

What Extra Crispy said. When troops were defending forts, barricades and such then they might have to be pried out with cold steel.

See Muir's "Tactics and the experience of battle in the age of Napoleon".

Note that cavalry vs. cavalry fights often saw fairly low casualties, and most of those on the side that broke first.

The two walls of people colliding happens mostly in the movies.

I alway perceived game rule "bayonet" charges as troops advancing with alacrity in a threatening manner. Such advances causing morale effects simulated by withdrawal, retreat or route. With that in mind I can reconcile myself to the belief that while they happened…there were a lot of other "close fought things" happening as well that need to be simulated….that game rule "bayonet charges" handle quite well…if not literally.

Note that cavalry vs. cavalry fights often saw fairly low casualties, and most of those on the side that broke first.

Or, as Mercer reports in his Journal of the Waterloo Campaign, the two masses pass through each other.

It happened. But not often. And when it did it wouldn't last for long.

It was most common when troops were defending walls, houses and redoubts. If it was in the open it was considered unusual if their was contact. The charges themselves I think were more common than actual close quarter fighting.

Some incidents off the top of my head…
88th and 45th at Busaco… They hit the French and after a sharp contact the French went reeling down the slope.

As above, current wisdom is that lots of charges took place, very few involved crossed steel outside of BUA etc. It was a test of wills.

See "Battle Studies" by Ardent during Picq, or Murrays "Brains and Bullets".

Almost never in the open field. There are numerous incidences of hand to hand fighting in peripheral areas; entrenchments, villages, broken ground etc.

By the time of the American Civil War it had become an article of faith that a spirited bayonet charge would break the enemy line before contact was made. The writers of the time period express this again and again. Surely this must be based on experience from earlier wars.

Hello. Contemporary accounts would suggest pretty conclusively that the number of occasions that formed bodies of infantry actually crossed bayonets in open country were very few indeed. Musketry was the main killer at closer ranges and the casualties from bayonet wounds, unless self inflicted were few and far between. Indeed Baron Larey, I believe attests to this, from memory.

Blizzards of close range musketry would be enough to deter the bravest of souls and generally the contest would be decided before anyone got to a position to exchange blows. Most bayonets were used as culinary items it would appear.

However, village fighting etc would indeed be more personal with the break up of formations and the chaos of house and street fighting. FISH, fighting in someone's house, is a bloody close up business indeed.

Musketry was the main killer at closer ranges and the casualties from bayonet wounds, unless self inflicted were few and far between. Indeed Baron Larey, I believe attests to this, from memory.

The problem with this quote – invariably reeled out as "evidence" that bayonet fights were rare – is that it fails to take into account the following:-

1) Disabling bayonet wounds were usually to the chest or abdomen and thus much more frequently lethal; a fallen man was also much more likely to be "finished off".

2) Lesser wounds (eg to limbs) would have been tended to "locally" and not generally presented to senior surgeons such as Larrey.

3) As the wars went on, it became rarer – outside fighting the British – for the French to tend enemy wounded (senior officers apart, perhaps) from successful French bayonet charges, while successful enemy bayonet charges would result in wounded French victims being captured or killed.

I'm not saying that it proves there WERE more bayonet charges, just that it doesn't prove that they were as rare as a lot of folk seem to think it does.

I disagree about lethal bayonet wounds. When cavalry fought each other, many wounds were to the forearm as the out fenced trooper raised their arm to ward off blows.

I see no reason to assume that infantry were less inclined to parry blows than troopers, or less inclined to see the medics when wounded in arms or legs.

We could just agree to disagree.

I know it's a different period but i read an interesting article regarding bayonet wounds in WW1, unfortunately i can't recall where i read it. The gist was that modern opinion was bayonet wounds were quite rare, however the article argued that the vast majority of bayonet wounds were fatal and unless the victim was treated at an organised field station, the cause of death wouldn't necessarily be recorded. This resulted in a big underestimate of deaths caused by bayonet wounds. Like i said, different period but the weapon is still the same fundamentally.

British army introduced the steel helmet in 1916 and there was dismay that the prevalence of head injuries rose so dramatically that there was serious talk of dropping it.

Then the penny dropped.

Without it they would have died. Medical statistical analysis often comes up with such findings but, hopefully, nowadays we look out for such breaks in logic.

WW1 had quite a lot of actual bayonet combat, mainly due to the very close nature of warfare within trench systems.

'Bayonets and Blobsticks' is an interesting study of the subject. All very unpleasant!

As did the Napoleonic wars. Check Mikaberidze's Witness books or the Zhmodikovs' series on Russian tactics.

Musketry was the main killer at closer ranges and the casualties from bayonet wounds, unless self inflicted were few and far between. Indeed Baron Larey, I believe attests to this, from memory.

Apologies for any confusion caused by using my fallible memory.

For the record Baron Larry, possibly the leading battlefield surgeon of the time conducted a survey of wounds inflicted in the battles of 1807. He concluded that bayonets caused about TWO percent of injuries.

Whilst bayonets are very good for 'finishing off' prisoners and wounded this I believe was not the question raised.

The bayonet was and still is primarily a psychological weapon. Whilst 'fencing' matches undoubtably did take place on occasion the normal outcome was decided by cannon and musketry.

Sources. Adkin, Waterloo Companion. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon.

Chris

That's a valid point CM, but was the survey conducted from statistics gleaned from his experience of live casualties making it to a field station ? I can not believe for one minute Baron larry went about the battlefields of 1807 examining thousands of corpses to produce a bayonet wound percentage of 2 percent. This fits in with my point earlier, and i do believe only live casualties with bayonet wounds would form the basis for statistics like these. The majority of the unfortunates bayoneted in battle were dead and left where they fell or at best thrown in shallow graves. Would anyone seriously examine all these corpses and differentiate between bayonet/sword/musket ball injuries?

Sure, but I think the point everyone is making is that Larrey's observations are based on what made it to medical care.

Musketball or cannonball wounds in those days could strike limbs, thorax, abdomen, head…………all but the first would usually be fatal at once or eventually. Actually, how many cannonball injuries would survive long enough to get into a Perry Ambulance?

There was a massive selection process in what any surgeon saw. (Trust me, it still applies today…you only see those that live long enough to get to you. It skews all our analysis…hence my 1916 helmet story).

Bayonet wounds will be "immediately" fatal, as delivered to particularly vital areas. Immediately, I will not dwell on……..you will suffer but not live long.

I have little doubt that bayonet duels were quite exceptional, whether Guadalcanal or Vittoria, Rorke's Drift or Waterloo, Gettysburg or Arnhem.

One unit or the other…sometimes one individual or the other…always gives in and tries to flee…almost always anyway……….

But that's my point. The majority of bayonet wounds were fatal, so if so few live casualties were examined could the conclusion be protagonists did actually kill each other with bayonets more frequently than is presumed, given the inefficiencies of black powder muskets ?

Totally, but you beat me to it.

I went on too long. If only I had a quid for every time I have heard that said to me, on the first date too!

LOL !!!!

"The majority of bayonet wounds were fatal"

No – they were not more fatal than smoothbore muskets at very long range – I have to dig out the examples were soldiers survived numerous bayonet stabs, seemingly most very not delivered at full force

I think VW is right, bayonet wounds (like any other stabbing wound) are no more lethal than musket balls. I tend to follow Larrey's(and collegues) statistics, after all Larrey really tried have a working knowledge of all battlefield wounds, he did far more than just treat those patients brought to him. Personnaly I don't have any experience (luckily) in bayonet fighting for real, but my grandfather, W.W. I veteran, did.He siad that to face a man with cold steel was the most scary and horrifiyng thing a man could face. And he survived both a bayonet and a bullet wound. Never did go into detail though about close combat…

Weasel:

You asked a statistical question: How often did bayonet charges connect? Those are the kind of statistics simulations are built on.

As you note: There is plenty of evidence from the 1700s and 1800s to suggest that many did not connect. One side or the other left. There is also abundant evidence where the two sides did come to blows.

To answer your question, someone would have to count up a lot of reported incidents and do the math, much as Lynn did in his "Bayonets of the Republic" when determining how often column, line and skirmishers were used by the French Armee du Nord in 1794.

Anything else is just antidotal impressions: guesses.

Bill wrote:

There is also abundant evidence where the two sides did come to blows.

Bill,

There is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that when one party broke and ran from a bayonet charge, some soldiers would be overtaken and bayoneted, and some brave individuals in the retreating party may have even stood and fenced with bayonets, but there is very little to suggest that two opposing bodies of formed troops ever fought bayonet to bayonet as seen in wargame melees.

I have gathered a considerable amount of first hand accounts of actions like this during the Napoleonic Wars, and have only found two occasions where two opposing lines fought bayonet to bayonet, and in both, the contact was extremely brief. One of these involved only one company and in the other, only a small part of the opposing lines clashed.

Do you have any examples of two lines of infantry fighting bayonet to bayonet?

The OP calls for a 'vague generalization'… so, in that vein, here's mine:

The bayonet was primarily a weapon of threat, and any usefulness in inflicting injury was way secondary to that.

On the tabletop, it's not so much a matter of close combat, more a method of imposing a morale check on the receiving unit.

Martin's point about entrenchments is very telling – if you're bayonet-charged, the very defensive works which kept you safe from incoming fire now effectively keep you penned-in with the frothing shiv-wielding nutjob who just jumped into your foxhole. Good luck with that.

Interesting point on steel helmets and the skewed logic that statistics can prompt.

I remember seeing a similar statistic on injury distribution in the oilfield by body part: injuries to toes made up a tiny fraction of the total… so why bother making the guys wear those uncomfortable steel-toed boots?

There is quite a bit of evidence to suggest that when one party broke and ran from a bayonet charge, some soldiers would be overtaken and bayoneted, and some brave individuals in the retreating party may have even stood and fenced with bayonets, but there is very little to suggest that two opposing bodies of formed troops ever fought bayonet to bayonet as seen in wargame melees.

Hi Major:
How many events would you need to move that from 'very little…'? Have you read enough accounts to assume they aren't out there?

I just finished reading two books, one of Russian officers' memoirs from 1807 and another on the second day of Gettysburg with several incidents [more than three]. Then there is the testimony given at the Congressional investigation into Gettysburg and General Meade's actions. More than one soldier described hand-to-hand combat during Pickett's Charge alone… including the observations that any number of men chose fists over bayonets. I even know of a few incidents of hand-to-hand fighting from the Korean War.

I'm not saying such incidents dominated close combat by any means. I am saying they did happen and there is more than "very little evidence" to suggest they did.

The bottom line would be to do a statistical analysis. Until then we are just trading anecdotes and assumptions based on our own particular reading as to exactly how many did or did not make contact, let alone the odds of it happening.

Plenty of bayonet charges during this era but most as noted were combined with clubbing and shooting. Any assault on built up areas such as towns, walled farms, factories or fortifications included these actions. They were very disruptive to both sides which is why well developed the separate Objective melees system for our rules back in the. 1980s.

I the War of 1812 in the southern campaign, every battle of the Creek war involved levels of hand to hand combat.

"The bayonet was primarily a weapon of threat, and any usefulness in inflicting injury was way secondary to that."

Yes indeed, as winning a battle is to to brake the morale or guts of the enemy by whatever means

hand to had combat did usually happen when fighting in villages, house to house, or other terrain features where it was difficult to realize where the oponent was or lines of retreat were cut off.

"Generally, it was the threat of the bayonet, and not the actual clash that decided an issue."
- Gunther Rothenburg, The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon

"Bayonet encounters are very rare in modern warfare, for as a rule one of the corps is demoralized to begin with by the firing, and draws back before the enemy is near enough to cross muzzles."
- Baron LeJeune

"Regiments charging with the bayonet never meet and struggle hand to hand…and this for the best possible reason, that one side turns and runs away as soon as the other comes close enough to do mischief."
- George Guthrie, a senior medical officer under Wellington

"I never saw such a thing on a regular field of battle."
- Henri Jomini

See "Battle Studies" by Ardent during Picq, or Murrays "Brains and Bullets".

"Brains and Bullets" should be made compulsory reading for all wargamers!

Here you go with a rare snapshot of the bayonet being used in the Peninsula.

From Jonathan Crook's The Very Thing. The Memoirs of Drummer Richard Bentinck, Royal Welch Fusiliers 1807-1823. ISBN 978-184832-598-2

Page 104: Chapter Eight: Vitoria, the Pyrenees and Saururen

Quote:
Bentinck, our ancient veteran, added considerably to his experience of battle sights in these engagements near Pampeluna. 'We had a sharp engagement outside the town and they stood very hard and they came to the charge of the bayonet. The charge of the Welch Fusileers was needed several times and though they killed many, they had many killed too.' The bayonet, as is well known, leaves more dead than wounded (unlike the bullet), for the breast of the combatant is the part chiefly aimed at and at arm's lengh, is too near to the aim. The French rushed to meet them in one charge, with such strength and fury as to break through their line.

His Drummers uniform once more failed to protect Bentinck from hostile weapons and having before let in upon him both bomb shell and bullet, completed the round with a taste of steel. A black looking Frenchman who had skewered a Fusileer as he burst through their line, and jerked him off his bayonet dead, next lunged the weapon at Bentinck, but recieved at that moment a blow on the skull from the butt end of a musket, he fell senseless his bayonet passing through Bentinck's thigh instead of his body.

'When we came to the prisoners there was great rejoicing and shaking of hand for they was the same number on the buttons as us. They were also the 23rd regiment'

Disliking much to have 4d per day taken from his pay for being in hospital, Bentinck limped by the side of his comrades all day, with his shoe full of blood, and both trousers and stocking glued to his leg so fast with it that he had to soften them with water to get them off when evening came. He then went to the doctor and got some plaster and bandages on the wound, and as they rested for some days after this, it soon healed.

These occurrences show that units that were assailed by a bayonet charge did not always break.

Paul :)

What I always assume is bayonet attack causalities are mostly runaways some are the stabbed in back guys.

What I always assume is bayonet attack causalities are mostly runaways some are the stabbed in back guys.

Without a proper study, that is all we are doing: Assuming.

From just a few pages of Russian Eyewitness Accounts of the Campaign of 1807 edited by ALexander Mikaberidze.

page 114 Battle of Pultusk, Sergei Volkonskii: [I love this one…]

…The battle was marked by a splendid charge of the Sumskii Hussar Regiment and a bayonet melee between the infantry forces. Although, I am wrong to call this a bayonet melee. Eyewitnesses told me that Ekaterinoslavskii Grenadier Regiment was surprised that a column of the French voltigeurs dard to accept a bayonet melee [and make its own advance] 'These underlings are not worthy of our bayonets,' [the grenadiers] said and , reversing their muskets, they drove off the French column with their musket-butts.

Page 119: Alexsey Yermolov:

Six companies of the Ekaterinoslavskii Grenadier Regiment, led by the gallant Major Fisher, and two companies of the 5th Jagers rushed forward and, without firing a shot, broke through and exterminated virtually everyone in the gardens and the village. We captured the flag of the 9th Light Regiment, while a few survivors fled to the lake.

That is just a few pages and two of scores of eyewitnesses. While not as detailed as dibble's great account, I think it can be seen that actual contact in close combats did occur. How often can only be assumed at this point.

I can't tell you how many times my or others 'impressions' of what has occurred do not tally with an actual accounting. Sometimes we were right and sometimes really off the mark. The same is true whether those assumptions are about the contemporaries we are reading or the contemporaries' assumptions themselves. That is the strength of a statistical analysis: How many are we actually dealing with?

Those eye witness accounts are valid, but they don't say how many of a whole regiment came into contact, it is in my view an illusion that two solid lines charged each other and then all came into contact, as I worte above, hand to hand combat did happen – usually in villages, at sieges, when the line of retreat was cut.

I think VW is right, bayonet wounds (like any other stabbing wound) are no more lethal than musket balls.

Sorry, but I would say not.

A bullet wound can come from a spent round, or a richochet; or it can strike a limb – disabling, but not lethal. The width of the bullet, compared to the point of a bayonet, allows the latter to pass through clothing etc more easily.

Bayonets generally deliver wounds to the torso, because that is the level at which the weapon is held, and due to the depth of the wound; and as I said in an earlier post, low-level bayonet wounds will often be treated locally, not by surgeons.

Also, a man disabled by a bayonet wound will often be "finished off" by his opponent.

This issue was debated at length in the United Service Journal in the 1830s, prompted mainly by the veteran officer, John Mitchell, who had served in both the Peninsula and at Waterloo. He claimed that extremely few casualties had been inflicted by the bayonet, although bayonet charges had often driven the enemy away and that soldiers never fenced with bayonets, even on ramparts or in villages. Several officers challenged this notion, and offered examples of soldiers being bayoneted, however, nearly all of them fall into the bracket of scuffles between individuals in close terrain (e.g. trapped inside a house)or during a retreat from an enemy charge.

An anonymous officer of the 39th Regiment, who disagreed with Mitchell, admitted that few casualties were inflicted by this weapon, however, he considered that on occasion bayonet thrusts may have been exchanged and that the importance of the bayonet should not be judged by the casualties that it inflicted:

Some must have fallen by the bayonet, though probably only a small proportion. In the few cases where sufficient determination has been shown on both sides to allow of adverse bayonets meeting, irregularities in the ground, wavings in the line, or the two lines, on closing, happening to be inclined and not parallel to each other, have probably prevented more than a few files from coming into close conflict at any one point. These would use their bayonets; but the others, being obliged to conform to their line, and not being near enough to fight with the bayonet, would soon naturally resort to firing. But in the late war the enemy seldom awaited the onset of a British charge; and, in breaking, he, with his position, frequently lost many prisoners. And if, then, the British bayonet has thus been the means of taking many positions, and thousands of prisoners, it is not, perhaps, reasonable to quarrel with it, because it cannot be proved to have pierced many individuals.

While not wanting to completely dismiss the interesting examples of bayonet fighting provided in some of the previous posts, when considering the frequency of bayonet fighting, I prefer to trust the opinions of people who were actually there, as quoted above by War Artisan, who offered a general overview based on years of experience, rather than a few snap shots from various actions that although they are probably true, represent the exceptions to the rule.

The reflections of veteran officers like James Campbell, who served with the Third Division in the Peninsula and was in the thick of the action several times with one of the hardest fighting outfits should be given due consideration:

I beg leave to say, that although I am certain our soldiers would have closed with their enemies, yet, in all my practice, which was tolerably extensive, I never saw two bodies of troops fairly charge each other with the bayonet; for one side or other (and generally it was that attacked) gave way. I have certainly seen a few instances of individuals, French and British soldiers, actually attacking each other with the bayonet; and at the battle of Rolica, I remember seeing a soldier of the 29th regiment, and a fine-looking Frenchman, lying on the ground close together, who had, judging from the positions in which they lay, evidently killed each other with their bayonets; but such occurrences were, I believe, very rare.

"Bayonets generally deliver wounds to the torso, because that is the level at which the weapon is held, and due to the depth of the wound; and as I said in an earlier post, low-level bayonet wounds will often be treated locally, not by surgeons. "

But that is the "ideal" condition as firing at point blank, I must find the source where I read that soldiers survived numerous bayonet wounds, because they were administered not with full force but superficially, a sort of wounding gesture – as most soldiers did not realy took aim.

This would be a man to man combat and surely both would deny the other an ideal thrust

It takes 15-30 seconds to reload a smoothbore musket and while you are doing it, you are helpless. You are standing still, mostly upright and are not in a position to use your "big long club with a sticking thing on the end and a club on the other" to defend yourself. If you are within perhaps 30 yards of an enemy, and you try to reload while he tries to run at you to stick a knife at the end of a club into you….. you lose. I think that is the equation. If you are within 30 yards (number open to revision), you shoot one time and then run or defend/attack with the bayonet OR run away.

Note also that the knife on the end of a 10 pound stick is a Thrusting weapons and not a Slashing weapon. A hit is usually a penetrating wound that kills. Consider a comparison to the cavalry of the time. Cuirssaiers used a long Thrusting weapon and killed lesser cavalry. The hussars and lights used a curved slashing weapon and usually caused bloody, non-fatal cuts to the arms and upper chest. The thrusting sword killed. The bayonet killed.

"The hussars and lights used a curved slashing weapon and usually caused bloody, non-fatal cuts to the arms and upper chest. The thrusting sword killed. The bayonet killed."

No – it would depend where it did penetrate and with what force – one wasn't fighting against a sand bag on a rack but against moving targets.

"The hussars and lights used a curved slashing weapon and usually caused bloody, non-fatal cuts to the arms and upper chest. The thrusting sword killed. The bayonet killed."

The consequences would not, of course, be automatic but when the straight sword or bayonet did penetrate the torso, the resultant wounds would be serious (as would a projectile wound in the torso, whereas the slashing sword would make wounds that, generally speaking, that were more superficial.

slashing sword wounds may be "superificial" or not primarily life threatening, but would put the trooper out of action, that is inflicting a casualty, I must re read de Brack on that where he acknowledged that the thrust was more lethal (when hitting the torso) but it was easier to hit with a slash – inflicting terrible wounds.

A musket ball may be initially not deadly but proofing life threatening some days later due to wound infection.

That'll do it.

So, who is still playing games that have bayonet fights – i.e. infantry melees ?

Infantry "melee" in a wargame does not necessarily mean that there is a formal bayonet fight. It is just closing with the ennemy (where one sides usually holds and the other breaks or gives way) In most rules I am aware of a prolonged "melee" does not occur frequently or can represent close range continuing fire fights rather than continues bayonet stabbing.