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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wilphe" data-source="post: 1437129" data-attributes="member: 8221">1300-1400 was when guns were spreading throughout Europe, they weren't very good, very useful or very portable but the average soldier would have known what one was. They weren't really the sort of things you stood guard duty with unless you were expecting trouble though as you needed a burning brazier or a long length of slow match. They are also pretty expensive.If you want to carry something as a weapon all the time and have it ready to fire, you need to wait until the invention of the wheelock c 1500 and after.Firearms gradually get integrarated into the infantry over 1500-1550. Before that the dominant force on the battlefield was massed pikes, after that is was a mixed force of muskets and pikes.That lasts a century, at about the same time the cavalry go down an evolutionary dead end by adopting firearms from the saddle.c1650-1700 the flintlock and bayonet come in and the pikemen get phased out. Line infantry carry swords as a backup but rarely use them much and they gradually get dropped over the next hundred years.At about the same time the more perceptive cavalry commanders realize that engaging in a firefight when you have pistols and are shooting from horseback and the enemy has muskets and has steady footing is not a battle winning strategy. The charge with the sword then gets re-introduced and remains their prime role until after Napoleon.The sword gradually get's dropped even from the cavalry through the 19th century as personal firearms get better and longer ranged. When the the Light Horse charged at Beersheba in 1918 they had to use their bayonets as lances, but they were mounted infantry not true cavalry. Axis and Soviet cavalry on the Eastern Front occassionaly tried an old fashioned charge with swords, it was even known to work on occassion.The Soviets and Russians disbanded their cavalry in the 50s and 60s so that was probably the last time swords were issued as a weapon that might actually be used someday as opposed to being ceremonial.</blockquote>

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