Talk:Hugh Mackay (military officer)

Bayonet
This claim, which appears here unreferenced, is a myth. The French had been using a socketed bayonet for 20 years before Killiecrankie. Iain1917 14:23, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

^The reference, though not given in the "Trivia" section, is linked from the bottom of the wiki page itself - the source is Mackay's own biography, available in full online. In other words, Mackay himself claims to be the inventor of the "ring" bayonet (which may or may not be distinguishable from the socket bayonet), but this is not supported by any other evidence, and as you say, is outright contradicted by the pre-existence in France of ring/socket bayonets.

Now updated to include a reference from John Norris' 2016 book 'Fix Bayonets.' The use of the socket bayonet was rejected by Louis XIV (or his military advisors) because it had a tendency to fall off in combat, a design flaw not resolved for another 20 years (and even then, it continued to be an issue).

Robinvp11 (talk) 08:42, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Update
A lot of this seems to be straight cut and paste from the DNB; I'd like to update it as I've been doing some stuff on this period especially Killiecrankie.

Robinvp11 (talk) 04:04, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

Robinvp11 (talk) 15:51, 15 March 2018 (UTC)