Note 403 — THE FORMAL TACTICS OF INFANTRY. (continued 7)

Kunz, Noisseville, p. 51. See p. 134 supra. Fieldmarshal Moltke makes the following observations in regard to the bayonet fights of the campaign of 1859: “General Niel credits his victory at Solferino to the use of the bayonet. The question as to how often the advance to hand to hand conflict is carried out, may be left open. As a rule, it is employed only when it may be presumed that the enemy will not await the onslaught.” In his memoranda of 1865, in regard to the influence of improved fire arms on tactics, he states: “If the bayonet fights, so often mentioned in French accounts of the campaign of 1859, were stripped of their dramatic splendor, and if the simple prosaic truth could be ascertained, by far the greater number of these reports would be corrected in so far as to state that the opponent, shaken by more or less heavy losses, avoided the actual collision.”

[404] Examples: The attack on Tempel Hill on October 11th, in Angriffsverfahren der Japaner, von Lüttwitz.—The capture of works No. 17 and No. 18 by the 2nd Division, on March 1st, 1905 (Mukden).—Description by an eyewitness of a bayonet fight. Sir Ian Hamilton, A Staff Officer’s Scrap Book, p. 252.—A bayonet fight occurred in the day time, in the open, when the 11th Rifle Regiment broke through the line at Hamatan during the battle on the Yalu, (see Kriegsgeschichtliche Einzelschriften, 39-40, p. 131), and in Bernaul’s Regiment, during the engagement at Datshishiao, on July 24th, 1904.