80 PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 



the other girding the waist, to hold a sword and a kind of dagger 

 which served the purpose of our present bayonets. The guns or 

 firelocks were cumbrous instruments with wooden ramrods, and in 

 charging, the dagger was screwed into the muzzle. But during the 

 war the celebrated Martinet, whose name is often pronounced on our 

 drill grounds, first invented the bayonet, while quartered at Bayonne. 

 At the battle of Ramillies in 1706, our troops were still unacquainted 

 with the use of that weapon ; for the regiment in which Colonel 

 Gardener was then a captain, perceiving the French regiment du 

 Roi advancing upon them with that weapon fixed to the muzzle 

 of their arms, concluded that they could not fire, and therefore 

 screwing their daggers into the muzzles of their own firelocks, ad- 

 vanced to meet the charge, but to their astonishment the enemy 

 halted and, without other manual preparation, levelled their ]>i 

 and fired a volley, which had well nigh routed them by the surprise 

 it caused; but animated by their officers they rushed forward and. 

 before the end of the battle, that French corps was nearly destrov 

 The infantry still commonly marched and drew up six deep, and 

 fired by files coming forward in succession. They did not break 

 into columns, by wheeling backwards or forwards, but marched to a 

 flank by facing in that direction : as a regular step, and still less the 

 lock step was unknown, they moved with great irregularity and 

 fluctuation, lengthening out in the inarch, and forming irregular 

 waves in the line of front. 



It was in the year 1704, during the campaign in Italy, when Prince 

 Eugene stormed the French lines of Turin, that a Prussian captain 

 in that army first conceived it practicable to make his men step off 

 together: by means of a plentiful application of baculine argument 

 and persevering obstinacy, he succeeded so far, that when the regi- 

 ment returned to winter quarters at Potsdam it was the wonder of 

 the day and the Prince of Anhalt Dessau, deservedly celebrated for 

 the high discipline he introduced into the Prussian infantry, ran with 

 other officers to witness the singular fact that all the men of the 

 Captain's company could at the word of command lift their legs up 

 at once, and step forward together. He went and mentioned it to the 

 king, who ordered it to be adopted in the guards and soon after in all 

 the regiments, and thus laid the foundation of that admirable unifor- 

 mity in marching for which the Prussian troops have been long 

 celebrated. It was after the war that the same prince invented the 

 iron ramrods, which, giving a greater facility in loading, produced 

 the more attenuated order of the troops, and the whole system of 

 platoon firing. Later still, Winterfeld and Frederick the Great intro- 



