I'll compile more information in the future, but reviewing (yes I'm never fast on the hop, comes from consuming too much spicy food and beer) the recent French Spec Ops fiasco in Mali I'm getting the feeling that French Intel and part of their Services are either: A) rank amateur and not engaged with enough counterinsurgency and or special forces actions of late, B) Their intel is just so woeful they drop the ball more now, C) a bit of both.
Premise; The US Army has gained a wealth of counterinsurgency skills and more importantly know-how, at least since October 2001, and this shows. Gone is the ineptitude and lack of clear goals in cases such as the much publicised US cock-up in Somalia in 1993 (read; "Black Hawk Down", No! READ the book by Mark Bowden).
Should make for some interesting dissection. Western Europeans?, they're just too soft now.
Monday 21 January 2013
Bayonets to the Front!
Due to a need to protect musketry from a resurgent, marauding cavalry in the mid-17th century new technology was devised: the bayonet, probably in Bayonne (France) from where it gets its name. A simple blade attachment plugged into the front of the musket relegated the push of pike to history.
Perhaps the inventor or those who adopted this simple device were unaware of the battlefield revolution they were creating. By the simple expediency of turning a mixed force of 10,000 men, of which one would presume 5,000 – 6,000 pike, the army evolved into 10,000, all musket men, ready to provide murderous volleys over a longer line, and consequently greatly increasing the chances of turning the flank.
And it would prove revolutionary. Gone too was the matchlock whose costly match made its, arguably superior, firing mechanism too expensive to maintain. And it did make the army far more professional too. Which in that strange way would make 18th century warfare that beautifully schizophrenic affair were armies proved too expensive to just waste, and gentlemen’s agreements on limiting wholesale destruction became de rigour.
That same revolution that would in time bankrupt economies or enact such strains upon them that colonies would secede and monarchies topple. Catapult an obscure Corsican to Emperor of Europe (the most powerful seen since Charlemagne).
And it provided powerful imagery too. As the pike harked back to the civic imagery of the Hellenes, the Hoplite and all his panoply a symbol of European civilisation versus the barbarian east, the massed ranks of muskets bearing bayonets re-imagined those serried ranks at Marathon (490 BC), Plataea (479 BC) and Gaugamela(331 BC), adding to the Republican imagery of a France at war ‘et en danger’.
It is true there is little evidence of actual charges ‘a la bayonete’. Surgeons of the Napoleonic period saw as little as 3 or 4 bayonet wounds, but then, that was amongst the injured. It proves such a brutal way of carrying the charge, that the deaths (there seems to have been little work into actual cause of death), would probably be quick.
The French would use it to great effect. Traditionally a very attack minded army, the republican dregs were barely trained, yet numerous, and the simple expedient of the headlong rush could carry the day, if the enemy was sufficiently shaken by artillery and rifled skirmishers. Carry it did, from 1793 AD to 1812 AD it made a mockery of the old continental powers, from Northern Italy, to Vienna, to Moscow. Finally withering away in the barren highlands of Spain, and the desolate winter of the Russian steppe.
It was British firepower that broke its back, at Waterloo (1815 AD). Just as a half century later it would prove useless again in the headlong charge against a determined enemy as at the third day at Gettysburg (1863 AD). But it remained, potent in the imagination. New empires would use it, generally out of desperation, or inadequate foolish leadership, almost always to the same effect, at Sedan (1915 AD) or countless pointless brutal charges during Barbarossa (1941 AD) and the Pacific Campaign (1943-1945 AD) where German and American superior firepower would annihilate hundreds of thousands.
Nonetheless, it continues to this day. Having seen action lately at Tora Bora, (2001 AD) and Basra (2005 AD). Cold steel, and all its brutal realism.
 |
| Spanish Musket and Arquebus, 16th century, obsolete and going nowhere... |
Perhaps the inventor or those who adopted this simple device were unaware of the battlefield revolution they were creating. By the simple expediency of turning a mixed force of 10,000 men, of which one would presume 5,000 – 6,000 pike, the army evolved into 10,000, all musket men, ready to provide murderous volleys over a longer line, and consequently greatly increasing the chances of turning the flank.
 |
| Ever wondered why we were ever so much better with swords & yet derived our name from our 'firestick'? |
And it would prove revolutionary. Gone too was the matchlock whose costly match made its, arguably superior, firing mechanism too expensive to maintain. And it did make the army far more professional too. Which in that strange way would make 18th century warfare that beautifully schizophrenic affair were armies proved too expensive to just waste, and gentlemen’s agreements on limiting wholesale destruction became de rigour.
 |
| No! Not him, but ok, it is based on a 'Tale of Two Cities'... |
That same revolution that would in time bankrupt economies or enact such strains upon them that colonies would secede and monarchies topple. Catapult an obscure Corsican to Emperor of Europe (the most powerful seen since Charlemagne).
And it provided powerful imagery too. As the pike harked back to the civic imagery of the Hellenes, the Hoplite and all his panoply a symbol of European civilisation versus the barbarian east, the massed ranks of muskets bearing bayonets re-imagined those serried ranks at Marathon (490 BC), Plataea (479 BC) and Gaugamela(331 BC), adding to the Republican imagery of a France at war ‘et en danger’.
 |
| No longer 'subjects of the crown' but American 'Citizens' A new breed of man. |
It is true there is little evidence of actual charges ‘a la bayonete’. Surgeons of the Napoleonic period saw as little as 3 or 4 bayonet wounds, but then, that was amongst the injured. It proves such a brutal way of carrying the charge, that the deaths (there seems to have been little work into actual cause of death), would probably be quick.
The French would use it to great effect. Traditionally a very attack minded army, the republican dregs were barely trained, yet numerous, and the simple expedient of the headlong rush could carry the day, if the enemy was sufficiently shaken by artillery and rifled skirmishers. Carry it did, from 1793 AD to 1812 AD it made a mockery of the old continental powers, from Northern Italy, to Vienna, to Moscow. Finally withering away in the barren highlands of Spain, and the desolate winter of the Russian steppe.
 |
| "Allons enfants de la Patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrivé!" |
It was British firepower that broke its back, at Waterloo (1815 AD). Just as a half century later it would prove useless again in the headlong charge against a determined enemy as at the third day at Gettysburg (1863 AD). But it remained, potent in the imagination. New empires would use it, generally out of desperation, or inadequate foolish leadership, almost always to the same effect, at Sedan (1915 AD) or countless pointless brutal charges during Barbarossa (1941 AD) and the Pacific Campaign (1943-1945 AD) where German and American superior firepower would annihilate hundreds of thousands.
 |
| Attaque à outrance (French: Attack to excess, & they would, straight into the machineguns & artillery) |
Nonetheless, it continues to this day. Having seen action lately at Tora Bora, (2001 AD) and Basra (2005 AD). Cold steel, and all its brutal realism.
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