The prototype of a gun bayonet - buginet

Very many of our contemporaries, direct participants in the fighting in the hot spots of the planet, truly understand the importance of the presence of a bayonet knife in the equipment as an indispensable assistant in achieving victory in close combat with the enemy, surviving in extreme conditions.

Experts who study the history of the creation and development of cold weapons, argue that the first cases of using a knife complete with firearms were fixed in the middle of the sixteenth century. It was at that time first appeared buginet - a knife with a modified design of the handle, which is a prototype of a rifle bayonet.

The history of the emergence of baginets

To understand, considering the bug, that this is the forerunner of the known bayonet, is quite difficult. The usual knife, only the handle is thin. But it is in this hilt that the mystery of the origin of the deadly bayonet is concentrated.

Many researchers give hunters for wild animals the primacy in making baginets. They motivate their position by going on a hunt, the participants of this fishery, in addition to gunshot single-shot rifles, took with them peaks - long poles with warheads.

This weapon was used in cases where it was necessary to finish off a wounded beast or to defend itself from its attack using stabbing, cutting strokes. It was inconvenient to wear poles and peaks, they restricted freedom of movement, especially in a dense forest. As an alternative to cumbersome attributes, the bug was invented - it's an ordinary knife, but with a thin round handle that was inserted into the muzzle. Thus, the gun was transformed into a peak.

Another of the existing versions of the reasons for the appearance of the buginet says that this weapon appeared in the French city of Bayon and its historically correct name is the bayonet (in accord with the name of the city). Allegedly, the smugglers were the first to come up with a way to use the knife, which was inserted into the barrel of the gun immediately after the shot, in order to gain an advantage in hand-to-hand combat with French or Italian authorities. In favor of this theory is evidenced by the fact that it was the French army among the first who took the bayonet for its armament.

Improving the prototype of the bayonet

Which of the researchers is right, does not matter much. What is important is that someone had the wonderful idea of changing the handle of an ordinary knife in such a way that it could be inserted into the barrel of a rifle.

This is exactly what the buginet looked like, the figure of which can be found in the literature devoted to weapons-related topics. Its original purpose was to use it as a cold weapon at a safe distance, without bothering to wear a peak.

The idea was successful and in demand. Almost half of the seventeenth century, the main direction of improvement of the buginet was attempts to select the most functional material, the configuration of its handle.

Its shape on various parts of it became conical for the purpose of more reliable fastening in the barrel of the gun.

Thus, the man who first changed the design of the knife handle, adapting it to the application by inserting it into the barrel of a gun, created the prototype of a rifle bayonet - a deadly weapon used in hand-to-hand combat for several centuries.

Baghinet in armies of armies

Since the forties of the seventeenth century, the European armies have adopted a baguette for armament. It was at this time that a process of replacing massive, heavy, bulky rifles such as the French musket, Russian burbot, which were used with additional support devices, to fuzzy guns, was carried out. The collection of their buginets led to the gradual abandonment of such weapons as the peak, halberd, fighting pitchforks.

Using the bagitet of the 17th century, the musketeers became both rifles and spearmen, which made it possible to increase the number of riflemen due to the requalification of some soldiers, and, consequently, to strengthen the army's combat power.

Modernization of Baginets in the Armies

Realizing the strategic need to use the knife in combination with a gun, weapons masters faced the problem: a bayonet-equipped weapon lost the ability to produce a shot. Specialists began to work on the modernization of this system.

Efforts were crowned with success, a technical solution was found that allowed to fasten the knife next to the trunk. So in creative torments and searches a prototype of a rifle bayonet was created.

The first gun bayonets

At the end of the seventeenth century, on the guns of the army of Sweden, on the right side of the trunk, the ring was first attached, and then the tube, which allowed simultaneous use of firearms and cold steel. This version of the design was the closest prototype of the rifle bayonet.

Already in the late nineties, armies of European countries began to arm all-metal designs of knives with a tube, which was easily put on the barrel and fastened on it. There were quite a few variants of such fastenings - slotted, solid, with clamps, latches.

Types and types of bayonets

By the same ninetieth year, the established application of two bayonet designs - with a short wide blade of the blade type and an elongated bayonet of needle type in the form of a tetrahedron - pertains to the established application.

The main advantage of the needle bayonet was its weight - less than that of the blade bayonet. Such a parameter was of no small importance given the large mass of small arms and the way bayonets were attached to it - to the end of the barrel of the rifle.

At the same time, the blade type of bayonet is more universal and used in the arsenal of many European states. Thus, the German bayonet during the entire use in the outfitting of soldiers of the army of the country had an unchanged clinker form.

According to the method of wearing, bayonets were divided into two types - weighed, it was worn separately from the gun in a pouch or on the belt of a soldier, as well as an integral one, which was attached to the barrel of the rifle, but not in combat position.

Russian bayonet

Historians associate the appearance of bayonets in the arsenal of the Russian army with the beginning of the eighteenth century, as well as the name of Peter I. At his behest, the Russian army received a bayonet, which was a needle-type blade. Its shape was represented by a trihedron, it was connected with a round tube by means of a neck of an oval section.

Russian commanders of the period of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries attached great importance to this addition of rifles, sought from soldiers and officers to perfect the possession of hand-to-hand combat techniques with the use of bayonets.

In the documents that have survived to this day, literary works, one often meets the idea that the bayonets of the Russian army brought her victory over the enemy. Not guns, not guns, but bayonets. That's what the great Russian commanders of those years, their contemporaries, thought, thought.

Pronunciation of the word buginet

On the forums discussing the problems of linguistics, the word "bagit" is mentioned, the emphasis in which is placed on different syllables. The correctness of pronunciation is difficult to determine. In the dictionaries of the modern Russian language this word is not horrible, like some others having a foreign origin. There is no interpretation, including phonetic interpretation, in the well-known academic dictionaries of Ozhegov and Dahl.

It is generally accepted that accents in French usually fall on the last syllable, but in our interpretation of the word, the notion of stress in this language is absent. The French language is characterized by a prosody, in which the ending of the spoken word is the shock.

If we take as a basis that the analogue of the buginet, the word "bayonet" comes from the name of the city of Bayon, then it can be assumed that the correct way is to stress the second syllable. It is more convenient for Russian-speaking people to emphasize the last syllable, and there is nothing reprehensible about this.