harquebus_ being used in Spain, and before the close of
the century the _muschite_ was in use in the English army. This was a
heavier weapon than the harquebus, and the soldiers were provided with a
long spiked stake with a fork at the upper end in which to rest the
ponderous barrel whilst they took aim.

The method of discharging these weapons was primitive in the extreme, as
it was necessary to hold a lighted match to the priming, in a pan at the
right side of the barrel, and one can imagine what a lot of fizzing,
spluttering, and swearing there must have been in damp weather!

Improvements in the _harquebus_ and _musket_, as it got to be called
later on, continued to be developed from time to time. In the early
days, matchlocks were sneered at as being inferior to crossbows, much in
the same way that the first railway engine was contemptuously spoken of
and written about by the coaching men at the beginning of this century;
but when in 1700 the flintlock musket made its appearance popular
prejudice was shaken, and it was completely removed in 1820 when
percussion guns came into pretty general use.

This may appear to be a digression and somewhat outside the scope of
this little work. I give it, however, to show the origin of the rifle,
to which, after all, the bayonet is but an adjunct.

About the middle of the seventeenth century it occurred to the sapient
mind of one Puseygur, a native of Bayonne, in France, that it would be a
grand thing to have a sharp point on which to receive an advancing
adversary after one had missed him, or the fizzling matchlock had failed
to go off. The weapon devised was a sharp-bladed knife, about eighteen
inches long, with a rounded handle six or eight inches long, to fit like
a plug into the muzzle of the musket, and the bayonet in this form was
used in England and France about the year 1675. It was, of course,
impossible to fire the piece with the bayonet fixed; it was a case of
fire first and then fix bayonets with all possible dispatch. One can
imagine what receiving a cavalry charge must have meant in those days.
Towards the close of the seventeenth century an important step was made
in the right direction. Bayonets were then for the first time attached
to the barrel by two rings, by which means the gun could be fired whilst
the bayonet was in its place and ready for instant use. Very early in
the eighteenth century a further improvement was invented, in the shape
of a socketed