“Do you think bows and arrows will ever be used again by soldiers?”
“I think not, for the archer is not so well provided for close fighting as he who carries a musket: the ball on the inside, and the bayonet on the out, render the musket a most formidable weapon.”
“How dreadful it must be to charge with the bayonet! but, indeed, the sword must be dreadful too.”
“As I have undertaken to answer your questions, and to tell you about war and warlike weapons, I suppose that you must know all that I happen to remember. About a dozen years ago Captain Von Selmnitz projected a new mode of employing the bayonet, and afterwards paid such attention to it that it became very popular; and many officers in the service of other countries resorted to Dresden to study under him. It was thought by many, that under this system a single foot soldier, of common strength and of moderately good eye and limb, would be able to resist two horsemen. It was the dexterous use made of the cudgel among the common people in Brittany and Normandy, that led Selmnitz to reflect on the matter, and to apply it to the bayonet.”
“Which is the worst, the bayonet or the sword?”
“There is a difference of opinion respecting swords and bayonets as weapons of destruction, or, in other words, between the power of infantry armed with swords, and infantry armed with muskets and bayonets. An officer describes the bayonet as a rickety, zigzag, unhandy instrument, and says that, ‘at Preston-Pans two thousand highlanders, armed only with broad-swords and targets, overthrew, at the very first onset, nearly two thousand British infantry, and completed their defeat in about a quarter of an hour. The same was the case at Falkirk, and even at Culloden: every point of the line that the highlanders reached in their charge was completely overthrown! The destruction made by musketry is certainly not so great as we might expect from so formidable a weapon.’”
“One would think that almost every bullet would kill a man.”
“That is not the case by a great deal, as you shall hear. The same officer goes on to reason the matter thus: ‘Supposing that twenty thousand French were killed and wounded at Waterloo, and allowing five thousand of these to have fallen by the fire of the artillery and the sabres of the cavalry, it leaves fifteen thousand to the share of the infantry; and counting the latter at thirty thousand only, though the number present was certainly greater, it required an entire day’s hard fighting before the thirty thousand had disabled fifteen thousand adversaries; that is, all the exertions of two men, during an entire day, only brought down one enemy! We must not here think of two fencers, who by equal skill and courage foil each other’s exertions. There is no such thing as parrying a musket-ball when properly aimed, nor is there any defensive power in modern armies beyond what they derive from their offensive strength; for with modern arms all fighting is purely offensive. The above estimate of the efficiency of modern tactics may, indeed, be considered as highly overrated, because it applies only to the most sanguinary battles fought during the war, such as that of Marengo, Talavera, Boradino, and others, but by no means to actions of minor note: at Rolica only a few hundred French were put hors-de-combat, and at Vimiera sixteen thousand British only killed and wounded two thousand French, in what was called a smart action.’
“It is, however, maintained by others, to be impossible for the sword to contend generally with success against the musket and bayonet, for that the latter, to say nothing of the advantage of the fire, are more than a match for the sword in themselves; but this is a subject that we had better leave. My own opinion is, from what I have seen, that soldiers armed with swords alone would on very few occasions wait the issue of a charge of fixed bayonets. May the sword never be drawn in a bad cause, and the bayonet never be used as an instrument of oppression.”
“Which are the strongest, cavalry or infantry?”