The history of weapons. At the beginning of the 18th century, such a type of trade as trapping, the extraction of animals, most often beaver skins, with the help of traps, spread in North America. Trappers described Fenimore Cooper very well in his Leather Stocking series, although he did not talk about some of the nuances of their profession.
And the thing was that, leaving for a long time from residential areas to where the unafraid animals lived, the trapper simply physically could not carry with him, among other things, a gun of a sufficiently large (or rather, let's say: traditionally large) caliber, characteristic for flintlocks of that time. It took too many charges and too much lead.
Trapper weapons
And the gunsmiths did the seemingly impossible.
In 1735, the Kentucky rifle (caliber 10 and 12, 7-mm) was developed, having a thin butt and a length of 1, 37-1, 52 m. The barrel was also rifled, which made it possible to achieve excellent accuracy. It has been proven that a shooter from "Kentucky" could hit the head of the enemy from a distance of 200 meters, and into a motionless figure - from 300, or even from 400 meters.
In the shooting competitions, it was necessary to hit a target with a diameter of 12 centimeters from a distance of 18 to 230 meters, and there were such snipers who managed to do this at the maximum distance. So the fatal accuracy of the famous Nathaniel Bumpo is by no means an invention of Fenimore Cooper, not his "romantic fantasy." There were arrows like him.
True, the Kentucky rifle also had its drawbacks.
And the biggest one is slow loading. Before putting a bullet into the barrel, it was necessary to place a paper wad (or a piece of oiled suede) on its muzzle, put a bullet on it and, together with the wad, push it into the barrel onto a charge of gunpowder.
By this time, rifled guns already existed. But for some reason it was believed that the less the bullet was hammered into the barrel, the better, the more accurately it would fly. Therefore, the bullets were hammered into the barrels with special wooden mallets, which is why they were deformed and … due to poor aerodynamics, they did not fly as accurately as they could.
True, even with such (deformed) bullets, accuracy was still higher than that of those fired from ordinary smooth-bore muskets. Well, and already "Kentucky" was even less competitive. After all, the bullet did not hammer into it and therefore did not deform.
Without bayonet
But … here we must remember about its second drawback.
The absence of a bayonet. Therefore, when the war of independence began, and the trappers were drafted into the ranks of the Continental Army, it turned out that they could not fight on equal terms with the British soldiers.
Yes, shooting at their dense mass from a distance, they perfectly hit
"Boiled crayfish"
(that was the name of the British soldiers for their red uniforms) and didzens of them were wounded or killed.
But as soon as they rushed at the shooters with bayonets, they were forced to flee and with maximum speed, because they simply had nothing to repulse such an attack with.
That is why, by the way, George Washington put so much effort into building a disciplined regular army capable of fighting in a European manner.
And when he succeeded, his soldiers immediately stopped running around the battlefields back and forth like hares. And the trappers-shooters immediately found a tactical niche corresponding to their capabilities.
Now they met with fire from afar the advancing British infantry or cavalry, and when the "red uniforms" came very close, they retreated behind the line of line infantry, which acted, like the British, with bayonets.
They also used them as scouts and snipers. So the traditions of sniping in America are very old and are by no means connected only with the history of the civil war of 1861-1865.
Well, and the damage inflicted by these shooters of the British army is best illustrated by the following statement from the Midleksy Journal of December 31, 1776:
"Every shooter is a complete killer, and therefore cannot claim any mercy."
As for the British, they, fighting in America, were armed with their popular musket "Brown Bess" or "Brown-haired Bessie".
Its main advantages were, firstly, a large caliber equal to 19 mm, and secondly, a perfect mechanism that allowed trained infantry to fire volleys at a speed of 5-6 rounds per minute.
And although hitting the target with this gun was (by contrast) more difficult than with a Kentucky rifle, it should be remembered that in practice, these rates of fire meant that 2,000 soldiers could fire 10,000 bullets at the enemy per minute. At a distance of 70 meters, this meant the total destruction of all living things.
The soldier was not even taught to aim especially.
The commanders had to be able to determine the distance by eye and command:
"Aim for the chest", "aim for the head!"
And the soldier had to send his "Bessie" only to this level. And, most importantly, in the direction of the enemy, that is, "shoot into the crowd," as they said then.
And it turned out that in the battle the one who fired more often won.
In this case, with a caliber of 19-mm bullets for "Bessie" had a caliber of 18 and even 17, 8 mm. That is, such a bullet did not even have to be driven into the barrel with a ramrod, but it was enough just to throw it into the barrel and then hit the ground with the butt of the gun in order to nail it tightly to the powder.
And at a distance of 120 meters, a shot with such a bullet gave quite satisfactory accuracy. By the way, until 1736, the ramrod for this gun was made of wood, made of walnut, and since 1750, without exception, all ramrods have become metal.
In addition, the Kentucky rifle was considered the best rifled gun until 1840, and the Brown Bess (produced, it is believed, in the amount of 8-10 million copies) was used even after 1850 and after the widespread transition to capsule systems. Well, and, of course, the "Bessie" had a long bayonet, which made it possible to use it in hand-to-hand combat and to successfully repel cavalry attacks, which was demonstrated by the Battle of Waterloo.
However, the Kentucky rifle also had something to be proud of.
For example, during a skirmish at King's Mountain in 1780, loyalist militiamen of Major Patrick Fergusson (armed with a rapid-fire musket of his own design) and continental riflemen met by chance. The oncoming battle then lasted less than an hour. And during this time 338 loyalists were killed or wounded, and many were shot in the forehead between the eyes.
Major Fergusson was undoubtedly the # 1 target, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to be hit with eight bullets. The case then simply did not come to a bayonet attack, such was the deadly accuracy of the "Kentucky rifle."
Jaeger teams
I must say that detachments of especially well-aimed shooters - rangers, recruited from hunters, foresters and the same rangers (since at that time it was a responsible and popular profession and there were quite a few of them), were used during the Thirty Years' War.
Subsequently, whole units of "well-aimed shooters" appeared, in particular, in Russia, a battalion of rangers was created in 1761, and since 1763, rangers were officially registered in the army as light infantry units.
Then jaeger rifle teams of 65 people with one officer began to create with all the infantry regiments of the Russian army. And later they began to create regiments from them and bring them into divisions. True, not everyone there received rifled guns, but in any case, their number in the armies of Europe began to grow.
And here a certain problem arose related to the bayonet …
The Jaeger Battalion was formed on November 9, 1796
"From the jaeger teams, consisting of the Semenovsky and Izmailovsky Life Guards regiments and the jaeger company of Lieutenant Colonel Rachinsky."
On May 10, 1806, the battalion was reorganized into the Life Guards Jäger Regiment, consisting of two battalions, which in turn consisted of four companies.
And then a third battalion was added to them, also of four companies.
Chief of the regiment in 1806-1812. was General Prince P. I. Bagration, and the commander in 1806-1809. was Colonel Count Emmanuel Frantsevich de Saint-Prix.
In 1802, privates wore round hats, trimmed on top with an orange trim, instead of which the non-commissioned officers had a gold braid. The tassels on them were orange with a green center. The cuffs, like edging, are orange. The color of the uniform is green, as is the color of the "winter" trousers, whereas in the summer they wore white.
In 1804, officers received two-cornered hats with buttonholes made of narrow gold lace, decorated with a tall green sultan, and the lower ranks received cloth hats.
In 1805-1807. the battalion fought in the battle of Austerlitz (20.11.1805), 24.05.1807 - in the battle of Lomitten, and on 2.06.1807 took part in the battle of Friedland.
In the same England, or rather in the British troops in the American colonies, a unit similar to the gamekeepers appeared in 1756, and for them, together with the traditional "Brown Bess", German fittings were purchased, which fired much more accurately.
A second similar unit appeared in 1800 under the name: "Experimental Rifle Corps", armed with Baker fittings. It is interesting that the transmission of commands in it took place not with the help of a drum (as in the linear regiments), but with the sounds of a horn. The color of the uniforms was also changed: from the traditional red for the British, it was changed to green.
The fact is that if the Kentucky rifle, although it did not have a bayonet, was at least long, the rangers' rifled guns were short, since the bullets were driven into them.
And the huntsmen themselves recruited people 5, 5 feet in height maximum, so that it would be easier for them to "apply to the terrain." And since now the huntsmen had to "go with bayonets", it turned out that their weapons in this type of battle began to lose to the weapons of the line infantry. We tried to make very long bayonets for them, but it turned out that they were inconvenient to use.
Dirk
A way out was found in the use of blade bayonets-cleavers (or, as they were still called at that time, bayonets-daggers) of considerable length, with which the rangers were armed. That is, it was realized that for those units for which bayonet fighting is not the main one, it is more profitable to have a bayonet with a bladed one, so it can be used for other purposes.
A purely piercing bayonet has become an attribute of the line infantry, while a cleaver (suitable for all other needs) has become an addition to the infantryman's main armament.
Such bayonets, and even with a guard, in 1788-1801. had, for example, Danish infantrymen.
The long-bladed boarding bayonet was received by the British Royal Navy in 1859 for the Enfield rifle.
Well, and of course, it is absolutely impossible to forget the French bayonet-epee of 1874 for the Gra rifle. He had a guard with a hook for grabbing the enemy's blade and a ring to put it on the barrel. The handle is made of brass with wooden plates. The blade is very long with a T-shaped profile, which gave it great strength.
A lot of these bayonets were fired. And it happened that even those soldiers who could not use them exactly as bayonets received them instead of cleavers.
The Spanish halberd bayonet of 1857 was very original. It had a cast brass handle, a crosshair with a curved spike located on it and a hatchet in the shape of an inverse crescent. And, most interestingly, a blade with a wavy blade.
That is, a new trend has emerged in the development of the bayonet.
But in more detail about how the replacement of stabbing bayonets with bladed bayonets took place, will be discussed next time.
