Sword bayonet

A sword bayonet is any long, knife-bladed bayonet designed for mounting on a musket or rifle. Its use is thought to have begun in the 18th century and to have reached its height of popularity throughout the 19th and into the early 20th centuries. When unmounted from a musket or rifle, sword bayonets with their typical hilts and long blades also could be wielded as short swords. While modern military bayonets typically have knife blades, they are usually too short to be called sword bayonets and are more akin to fighting/utility knives. Sword bayonets originated for use with muzzle-loading rifles. A typical example of an early sword bayonet is the 58 centimetre (23 inch) blade variety designed for the Infantry rifle, later called the Baker rifle of the Napoleonic era British Army. In the modern British "Rifles" regiment, all bayonets are referred to as swords. Most infantry would routinely keep bayonets fixed to their inaccurate smooth bore muskets throughout a battle. Close order ranks and squares presented a hedge of bayonets to the enemy, which was especially useful for deterring cavalry. But a fixed bayonet - a pound or so of extra metal on the front of a firearm - seriously affects a firearm’s balance and hampers accurate shooting. However, Mosin-Nagant rifles using cruciform and dagger bayonets were arsenal zeroed with them affixed (or extended) as they affect point-of-impact via barrel harmonics, and in the case of Imperial Russian and Soviet battle doctrine dictated they were always affixed (with few exceptions). A rifleman usually fought without a fixed bayonet since accuracy was the whole purpose of their rifled weapon. He therefore required a side-arm that could be drawn and used instantly in an emergency so his bayonet had a cutting edge and a grippable hilt. That such bayonets were far heavier than standard socket bayonets was not a disadvantage since they were rarely fixed. Most riflemen found it worked better for cutting brush and roasting meat over a fire (See Rifleman Harris, Costello's, Simmons's diaries).