No Muskets: The Logic of Bayonets Only

The order that made Stony Point possible went against every soldier's instinct: leave your muskets unloaded. If you fire before the fort is taken, you will be flogged. Wayne understood that the traditional approach against a prepared position — advance, fire, suppress, repeat — was nearly suicidal against an abatis. The defenders had the light, the high ground, and the protection. The attackers had only darkness and momentum, and only if they kept moving.

The bayonets-only order was his recognition that momentum was worth more than firepower. At the abatis — overlapping rows of sharpened branches — any pause let defenders organize and direct accurate fire into a stationary mass. If the columns kept moving, even through casualties, the defenders faced hand-to-hand combat with men who had come too far to be stopped.

The forlorn hope units volunteered knowing their job was not to survive the abatis but to clear it. Wayne offered prize money to survivors. He offered nothing to those who did not survive, which was understood. What the assault proved was not that American troops were brave — bravery was never in question — but that they could be disciplined under conditions that stripped away every conventional comfort. No firepower. No light. No noise.

The British commander Henry Johnson, writing afterward, called it one of the most daring enterprises he had ever witnessed. Wayne's men did what professional European soldiers considered the hardest thing in warfare. They did it in forty-five minutes.