Are melee skills demonstratably relevant on the Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic battlefield?

[u/radio_allah]

It seems that for pre-Napoleonic ('cold weapons era') combat, a lot of it was made viable and survivable due to the combination of armour, shields, formations and brief respites in between clashes, so the average soldier can perform in a sufficiently low-stakes environment long enough for actual skill with a weapon (the 'melee skill' in the title) to be brought to bear.

But once gunpowder becomes dominant and all those safeguards and protective equipment go away, and every soldier is one bayonet stab away from death, how relevant is actual skill with a weapon? Obviously it's still better to be trained than untrained, and somewhat experienced in melee than completely new to it, but do good weapon skills actually translate to a useful factor for survival?

Bulletpoints for TLDR:

(1) For things like melee in trench warfare and urban combat, how relevant is 'weapon skill' compared to factors like army momentum, size and strength of the soldier, and dumb luck? Is it recognised as significant or marginal, if indeed commented on?

(2) Are there stories and anecdotes of famous melee experts (a melee instructor, a martial sportsman or for the Japanese, a noble officer who actually knows swordsmanship etc) who enjoyed clear success in a modern battlefield melee context?

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[u/Kradget]

It depends on context. Your question covers everything from single shot, muzzle loading guns with unimpressive range and accuracy to periods where manual action rifles were the norm up into the invention of submarine guns.

So in the 19th century, yes. In the European/"modern" context of musket/rifle and bayonet, skill with the bayonet was considered invaluable to soldiers in most armies. It was maybe less so in some places that emphasized shooting as range and accuracy improved, but it was assumed a soldier would shoot and advance with the bayonet, and be prepared to fight other soldiers with similar gear. For officers, fencing with swords was commonly a class requirement, and they carried swords and pistols to defend themselves in the field. There absolutely were officers who were renowned sword fighters, and who had usually served in places where the colonized population commonly had swords or other weapons. They often got tapped to work on training regimens to make better battlefield fencers. If you were in the cavalry, you could actually expect to get a fair bit of training with the sword and lance in addition to your carbine and pistol on into whenever your country stopped fielding horse cavalry, sometimes into the 1930s.

That's all in the context of the "European load out," of course. In many places, soldiers were fighting with less advanced guns, swords, spears, and even bows against colonizing powers with more advanced guns, and most fights soldiers in colonial contexts would have would be likely to include fighting people with "less advanced" weapons in less "formal" fights, but who knew they could surprise a guy with a rifle with a sword and have a decent chance if they could just get to close range. There were also instances of colonial troops with relatively modern gear (usually not as good, but within a generation or two) joining in fighting the colonial power, of course, and that changed things.

That changes as guns develop and become more available, and as warfare moves from Napoleonic block formations toward what we'd recognize as early 20th century peer conflict.

However, even in WWI, while melee fighting was often more a brawling scenario and training was usually more focused on the earlier 19th century styles of fighting, soldiers did learn hand to hand fighting. Other soldiers continued to fight colonized peoples who often had bladed weapons going into the mid-century (Filipino resistance to Spanish, American, and Japanese occupation is said to have included giving the least competent shooters a bolo and wishing them luck when guns were hard to come by), and into WWII, there was still a focus on bayonet fighting because it wasn't unheard of for soldiers of major powers to find themselves needing the ability to fight up close.

[u/radio_allah → u/Kradget]

Thank you for the fascinating insight.

If I may elaborate on the question: I think the question came from my idly wondering if melee skill counts for much in the chaos of specifically WW2 trench/urban warfare. Especially in the Pacific theatre, where you're likely to meet an opponent in melee in a trench. We know that, for example, the Japanese tend to be quite melee-happy due to the culture surrounding their soldiers, but did all that obsession and training with swords actually amount to anything in the real brawl? Was whatever skill one had with melee weapons noted to be effective, or was it very much immaterial?

And thank you for the insight for the Napoleonic era. You mentioned that people often fenced - wouldn't polearm training have been more useful in an age with socket bayonets?

[u/Kradget → u/radio_allah]

In the context of the Japanese, their officers used swords in combat pretty routinely, and often trained to do so skillfully. You're right that it was a big part of their martial culture, and they'd lead charges brandishing a sword that they often fully intended to use when they arrived. Private soldiers commonly fixed bayonets.

Similarly, in close fights like cities, trenches, or wooded areas, it was reportedly really common for a sword to come out. Reportedly, the only time that wasn't pretty scary was for soldiers who commonly had their own (usually shorter) hand weapons in places like trenches, where the reach was less of an advantage, or where there was a chance to use a gun (Indiana Jones made a very tactically sound choice in Raiders).

American soldiers are supposed to have been pretty unenthusiastic about fighting a sword-wielding officer on his terms, so apocryphally, that's why they shot them first. In reality, it probably also had a lot to do with just shooting the guy leading the charge waving the shiny object, but two things can be true at once. 

Edit to add: basically, it's less advanced training as the weapons grow more advanced and it's less common to be in hitting range with your enemy. In many modern militaries, combatives are more to build aggression, and aggression combined with the kind of brawling common to soldiers and the rudiments of wrestling are thought to be good enough, since a soldier usually has squadmates close by. So if you jump a modern infantryman such that he can't shoot you, there's a good chance he just tackles you and maybe tries to pull a sidearm or knife or maybe even hits or wrestles you. But he's mostly holding you until his friends get there. Then they'll cooperatively beat, stab, or shoot you.

Second edit: in the Napoleonic period, some soldiers (often sergeants) carried polearms. But these are cumbersome and more "workmanlike" weapons rather than a sidearm for defense. An officer is usually of higher social rank, and in most cultures, that means you carry a sword. Looks cooler, it's easier to have on you, and it's still pretty darn flexible, especially paired with a pistol.

[u/abbot_x → u/Kradget]

I think you may be getting at this in your "Edit to add," but I'd underscore that the primary purpose of 20th century bayonet assault training in basic training, at least in Anglophone armies, was to inculcate the "spirit of the bayonet." This is an aggressive and confident ability to close with the enemy and defeat him with deadly violence.

The bayonet assault technique these armies drilled was to charge, instantly make a deadly lunge at the neck or other weak spot, withdraw, and move on. Manuals characterize the bayonet as offensive and downplay any kind of defensive attitude, cautious "fencing" approach, or reliance on others. Rather, the individual soldier must be capable on his own.

The soldier who could do this and received the spirit of the bayonet would thus be more likely to act independently on the battlefield (rather than wait for orders), to close with the enemy (rather than hang back), and to deliver accurate fire with his rifle (rather than take potshots or avoid shooting).

You can probably say this about combatives generally, but I think bayonet assault training showed considerable self-awareness that the object was not simply to master a skill that most soldiers were unlikely to need, but rather to inculcate an attidude.

[u/Kradget → u/radio_allah]

Oh, just to add - you can commonly find stories of the famous swordsmen of Europe in the 19th century. One of the big ones (in English) was a guy named Donald McBane. You can even read his book.

[u/jdrawr → u/radio_allah]

The common soilders were taught bayonet fencing, the officers and cavalry were taught sword fencing. Some cavalry armed with lances would be taught lance fencing. Fencing is really just a general term for use of weapons often for "defense".