Quote Originally Posted by Khorak View Post
Uh....no they weren't. A bayonet charge was a useful tool to use in specific circumstances, not the battlefield endgame. Wellington himself used the word 'contemptible' to describe French forces attempting to attack his men in column formations. While the shock value of the bayonet charge was very effective, it was a deciding move only in that the attacker realistically had to have already defeated the enemy by placing him in a position disadvantageous enough for it to work. Without such conditions you get shot to hell coming in and bounce off a well ordered, disciplined formation.

The mythos of the bayonet is a romanticism even the people of the day bought into, when in reality it was overused by the French to the point of self destruction when they suddenly came up against well trained, stubbornly tenacious British forces, or couldn't find the massive local numerical superiority needed to shove enemies off the objective with sheer mass without breaking them down first. The effectiveness of bayonets in Empire: Total War is...well....largely broken when compared to reality simply because it's a game using a stats system and rules so different from real life that to find similarities you have to get down to the point of "they walk on two legs, like real people!".
Seconded....The myth of the bayonet charge was based upon a fantasy propagated by those who never actually saw the front line of battle, but thought they understood what it was about. Actual historical evidence suggests that opposing troops only every crossed bayonets on three occasions during the entire Napoleonic War and two of those were accidents. The only deliberate bayonet v bayonet action occured at Austerlitz when a column of Russian Infantry and a column of French infantry emerged from the mist opposite each other and just kept marching forward rather than trying to deploy. Another accidental bayonet fight occurred between oppositing light troops who were both rushing to secure the top of a ridge line and arrived at the same moment.

By comparison there are numerous eyewitness accounts of soldiers just a few paces apart racing each other to relod their muskets rather than risk the lottery of trying to use their bayonets.

However, Nafod makes a valid point the Napoleonic Wars do not fall within the period covered by ETW. I'm not sure whether bayonets were used more aggressively in the 17th Century, as musketry was in a period of evolution throughout this period.