A few relevant points: 1) One of the reasons why pikes got so ridiculously long was actually because pushes of pikes. Obviously, if you think about it, if you've got these two formations coming together, whichever side has longer pikes is going to be at an enormous advantage - if you've got 15 foot pikes and they've only got 10 foot pikes, and you start advancing on them, they're going to have to get out of the way or else they're all going to die horribly, because they have to go five feet closer to stab you. It seems that pikemen sometimes cut down the length of their pikes to make them more wieldy, but this had profoundly negative consequences if you ran into other pikemen. 2) Doppelsöldner, Rodeleros, and halberdiers were employed in pike formations explicitly to help win pushes of pikes. Doppelsoldner had zweihanders and ranged weapons, both of which were useful in a push of pike - zweihanders could be used to break pikes or at least knock them aside and allow you to engage in melee combat, and if someone got in like that, your ability to fight was probably very poor. Whatever backup weapon you had was probably inadequete to a zweihander-wielding landsknecht, and if they had the ability to break up your pikes coming at them, you were in trouble. Their ranged weapons probably also came in handy; if you were facing off, and one side has ranged weapons and the other doesn't, then you're basically in the situation where you either have to march into their pikes or flee. Allegedly about 1 in 4 people in these formations were these specialists, which makes sense - too many and you damage your pike formation's effectiveness, too few and it doesn't make enough of a difference. Other armies apparently employed halberdiers in a similar role to the doppelsoldner. The rodeleros of Spain had swords and shields and were similarly employed in breaking up these stalemates. So I'm pretty sure that pushes of pike really did happen. You're quite correct that pure formations of pike would absolutely not want to just march to their deaths in that sort of insane "walk into each other and die" sort of way, but as it turns out, the solution is not "they never fought" but rather "they had specialists specifically designed to break the stalemates of pushes of pike". The solution was to change the game in such a way as to win. The Swiss used halberdiers, the Germans the doppelsöldner, the Spanish the rodeleros, and I'm sure pretty much everyone had *something* they used to win these situations and give themselves the edge in pushes of pike. Or at least, everyone who wasn't stupid enough not to realize the problem that pushes of pike would create. Incidentally, these other specialist solders were front-liners who were specially trained and, as a result, were paid double. This of course makes sense - if pushes of pike never happened, being in front wouldn't make it worth double pay. But given that they did happen, and they had specially trained frontline soldiers who were trained to break up these stalemates, it makes a lot more sense.
On your final point - the front row still is most vulnerable in a non pike vs pike situation. You're going to be taking the blunt of the force in a cavalry charge
I would speculate that no Calvary would ever charge into the front of pike formation. Being at the back might have the highest chance of getting killed by Calvary.
There is a record of the Swiss Mercenary Pikemen and the Landsknechts (basically a German equivalent) actually having pike-on-pike clashes. The Italians who witnessed this (Because both sides had been hired by various factions of the Great Italian Wars) felt it was so ugly they called it "Bad War." Wikipedia has a nice, old image of what this looked like under their "Swiss Mercenaries" article. It's a reprint of a 16th century engraving so the possibility exists that it was rendered by an actual observer, or at the very least from a secondhand account. It's a hideous image. There is a forest of pikes standing high about this crowd of men who are doing all in their power to stab, bludgeon, and throttle one another. The phrase "Bad War" really makes sense when you look at it. I look at that, and it makes something about the Landsknechts seem to fall into place for me: the fact that they were also famed for having an unusually large number of men armed with large, two-handed swords. I'll go ahead and call them Zweihanders just because these were Germans using them, though I generally just default to the English word: "greatsword." Perhaps these big "zweihanders" were used to prevent this "Bad War" from happening. Another image from the period of a Landsknecht with a large zweihander confirms that at least SOME of the men using these swords wore lots of plate. google image search "Landsknecht," and you'll find it. So, what I'm suggesting may have been done is this: You send a heavily armored vanguard of men with zweihanders forward, and they wade into the enemy pike formation, cutting the heads off pikes (which evidence from period art suggests these swords were sometimes used to do) or at the very least knocking the enemy pikes aside to make a hole in the line for themselves to enter into that formation through. Once they're in, they keep the enemy distracted, preventing them from offering effective resistance to your own pike square as it moves forward and "snipes" at the enemy pikemen all around the man with the big sword. In other words, the greatswordsman's whole purpose is to be such a threat he cannot be ignored, but he might not even be killing that many people. He might just be knocking their pikes aside, and allowing his own pikemen to approach without that otherwise inevitable threat of taking a pike in the face. I suggest this because I've been practicing greatsword lately, and I can already tell you that these big swords are terrifying in the melee. Huge, wide, sweeping cuts that use the sword's own inertia to keep it moving are the name of the game. Imagine this man standing now in the midst of your pike formation, and he can reach any man within seven feet of himself in any direction. We think of a greatsword as being large and unwieldy, but remember that he can drop to the half-sword if he needs to. Furthermore, the men around him are armed with even longer weapons -- pikes -- that they do not want to drop, lest they lose their ability to serve their purpose in their formation. Their pikes are longer than his sword AND more unwieldy AND can only do him serious harm with the head, which is difficult for them to bring into play once he is past the first row because there is no room for them to lower it. Even if they could, he's wearing plate. So, they not only need to stab him with it, but stab him in very difficult to target places. Basically, the pikemen have the worst weapon they could possibly have in the situation he's established. To do anything about him without losing their pike, they have to fight him with only one hand -- and do so while holding a pike in their other! Sounds rather inconvenient to me, personally. This is of course all just conjecture on my part, and I haven't the people, location, protective gear, or practice weapons to stage effective litmus tests. Still, it seems to me that with what I know of pike warfare from what I've read, this could be a major clue as to how and why we see the greatsword/ zweihander and the pike on the same battlefields together. It also might be a major clue as to how both of them were used, and the "Bad War" that resulted from pike-on-pike warfare might give a major clue as to why the big, two-handed sword came into use, at all. Just some thoughts.
Interesting; I have heard of the greatsword-weidling infiltrations by the Germans. Assuming they could get past the pikes, then I suppose the rest makes sense but I'd expect getting past the sharp bits is very dangerous! Also, assuming this, batting away pikes seems to make sense, but actually cutting off the heads of pikes seems like fantasy to me. People also talk about cutting off spear-heads with swords and stuff and I'm just like...wha....you'd think that with the spear being so popular in history, they wouldn't be so easy to nullify with a sword or axe hit unless the haft was put between two supports/clamped down and hacked at several times as if cutting a log.
Britt Gardner From what ive read on the subject, the specialized weapons such as 2 handed swords and halberds were deployed at the very center of the pike formations and not from an additional unit, which would make some sense because these pike formations had support from Arquebusiers. some of these formations had a 1 to 1 ratio of guns to pikes with the arquebuses (im basing this on the Spanish Turcio formations) being deployed surrounding the pike block on all sides i would imagine during a 'push of pikes' these men would fire directly into the flanks of the opposing unit to break it. Now from the image 'bad War' you will notice most of the pikes forming this bird nest between the 2 pike blocks making both sides pikes useless in the actual fight after the initial engagement. I imagine that having 2 handed sword to be able to push away, or parry the opposing pikes to make room for your own allies to charge into the breach with there back up weapons (a Katzbalger in the case of Landsknechts) or to lay into your opponents with your sword. Swiss formation forbid the use of the greatswords due to the constrained nature of these engagements, and the Landsknechts eventually switched to longswords and Kriegsmessers for the purpose do to there smaller size. But to reiterate these were men within the formation wielding these weapons and for the most part pike formations, including Lansknechts preferred halberds over 2 handed swords for this purpose i would guess because you have more of a chance to cut off the pike heads with the axe head than with a sword and it would double its usefulness when actually engaging cavalry.blows On another note regarding halberd use, ive been watching battle of nations and although its not historically accurate by any means its interesting to note that the men in the larger matches wielding there pole weapons tend to offer more of a support role to the comrades who are actively engaging the enemy by wailing on there head, shoulders, and back. I would imagine that the halberd users within these pike units would be performing a similar role which could explain there deployment in the center of the units. while there fellows are engaging during the push these men are simply repeatedly raining blows down (probably with great effect since pike men generally wore little armor unless they were the front ranks. Just something to think about.
Lindy. Good vid. I live in Switzerland and recently visited the castle of Granson and there was a series of dioramas depicting the Battle of Granson where the Swiss defeated Charles the bold. In the description they referred to Swiss square formations of pikemen defeating the french cavalry. In the middle of that formation were the men armed with short melee weapons and the pikemen formed the outer ring. The Swiss term for such a formation according to the museum was "Gewalthaufen" which literally translates into "pile of violence". The Swiss are hilarious.
Illuminating, thanks! I just read about them and it seems like the middle of the formation wasn't only short melee, but also weapons like halberts. Those people were able to exit the formation for attacks. Halberts must have been really useful to break or bind enemy pikes to allow for this.
Yes, we swiss love our halberds. The papal swiss guard is in fact still equiped with halberts. They do also have the same (modern) weaponery that the swiss army has. (Historically they also had grenadiers and other troops)
@Aetius114 Yes, there were occasions when close melee occurred, and of course painters found this subject much more lucrative to paint than scenes of scared men in a stand-off.
I've read that the "Double pay soldiers" or "Doppelsoldners" of German Landschnect and Swiss formations were actually the wielders of Zweihander(2 handed longswords) or halberds. They went in first, in looser, interspersed lines in front of the pikes. Their jobs, besides acting as guides and NCOs for the pikemen, was to break, knock aside, up or down the enemy pikeshafts or just disrupt the oncoming line of pikeheads. This way, their own pikemen could attack without so much fear of the enemy pikes in their faces.
This is partially true, if a little misunderstood. They actually stood in the second line as the formations closed on each other and would side step into the raised forest with sweeping overhead motions, shunting aside the few forward facing pikes that were left and had small groups of axe and pistol (or in earlier settings, swordsman with bucklers) wielding men behind them to get into the pike formation proper, who then wrecked shop. The Spanish tercio worked in a similar way, where they would made their pike formation "lockdown" enemy groups with a pike square, while men in the centre would periodically come through to the front and take potshots (I believe they were called arcebuceros). If you want a good example of accurate pike men being depicted in film, I suggest you watch the movie Alatriste. The pike tercio wasn't homogeneous in its composition and had swordsman, riflemen and halberdiers all mixed in the group, combining all of their strengths with few of their individual weaknesses.
Anras Rune Alatriste is pretty good with the tercio fighting, especially a depiction of "bad war" where fighting was done with an aim to get victory rather than just "good war" fighting where mercenaries on both sides went through the motions to get paid, but no great result was achieved. Arquebusiers & musketeers could help reduce things, but period accounts repeatedly state that pike fought pike and shot fought shot if both types were arrayed together in a formation. That's a generality of course, but it's how things often went.
I love your videos, but I do believe that you often underestimate and overestimate the ways people CAN kill each other, and the ways they WILL kill each other. I think you're right about pike battles being gigantic games of chicken, however, you never really further explored the idea that pike formations may have stopped just outside of range, but lunged forward occasionally, fencing, for all intents & purposes, with their pikes until one formation cracked or a break was made.
@Segalmed Yes, the pikes would be upright almost all the time. It takes only a second or two to lower them, and they are much heavier to carry when lowered.
Maybe three hundred years from now people won't believe that soldiers equipped with rifles and machine guns would ever advance against other soldiers equipped with rifles and machine guns. Consider the battle of Flodden where two armies armed almost exclusively with pole arms clashed, so clearly that kind of fight could and did happen. Flodden was an extreme case because the side that gave way was massacred. There are many modern arguments a la John Keegan that certain types of combats never took place because they would be messy and men and horse would refuse to participate. Most of these arguments fall apart under a mountain of anecdotal evidence, or fail to consider additional factors. The fact is that battles are messy business and that people are perfectly willing to kill, not to mention capable of manipulating animals.
I sorta got to agree with you in general, if not in detail. Even though I know it happened, I still find it hard to believe that people used to line up and trade volleys. I try and imagine what that would be like from a personal perspective and I just can't imagine doing it. On the other hand though, it's worth considering that pike vs pike results may well have been quite similar to the more well documented bayonet vs bayonet engagements of the napoleonic style conflicts. Here, despite the common perception, bayonet charges usually didn't end in melee. Mostly either the charging force was repelled or crippled by gunfire or the receiving force broke and scattered, circumstance and the discipline of the forces being the deciding factors. Yes, situations happened where both sides thought they could win and bayonets where crossed, but it wasn't really the norm. It's worth considering all around that, even though there where exceptions, commanders did generally try to preserve their armies to whatever extent was possible, which in this case would generally mean that you avoid throwing pike formations at each other head on but instead try to beat them through a combination of superior ground, flanking, and fire superiority. Personally, I think that there where two primary purpose of the pikes in these engagements. Firstly to specifically protect the musketeers from cav and other pike formations both in offense and defense. Secondly, to scatter the enemy and drive them off when they have become disordered and demoralized through fire. Still, this would probably be impossible to prove without a time machine.
ColonelSandersLite I agree that musket formations wouldn't have stood at point-blank range and flattened each other, (which is what would happen if they opened up within the weapons' accurate range) one of the chief benefits of firing in formations is that a volley can inflict casualties well beyond the normal effective range of a single weapon. Under these circumstances it was possible for opposing sides to trade a few volleys without being flattened. In terms of the psychological aspect, modern soldiers today advance under heavy fire and do get killed or wounded doing so. Even when not advancing, you still have to keep your head above cover to fire at the enemy. When I was a paratrooper, I knew a guy who had a bullet ricochet off the carrying handle of his machine gun and send shards of hard plastic in his face. He didn't stop firing. From the 18th century to the Napoleonic wars, when infantry were all equipped with early modern muskets, one side would usually end up giving way when the other got the better of them (a kind of fire superiority), which is how Napoleon's army was pushed back across the battlefield throughout the day at Marengo before reinforcements showed up and counterattacked the exhausted Austrians. From the 16th century to the mid 17th century armies wouldn't have had enough firepower to drive the opposing force off the field with firearms alone. The fusiliers would only be able to get off a few rounds within lethal range before the pikes closed. Since we're talking about very large formations engaged at close range, it wouldn't have been such a simple matter for everyone to run away and reform, not to mention it would be fairly pointless since the firearm was no longer in play. In order for the fusiliers to 'soften up' the pike formations, they would have to stand within range of the enemy firearms for some time. Some armies deployed their fusiliers in separate formations while others deployed them in the pike formations. The fusiliers could get away from a pike advance but they couldn't hold their ground without pike support. If you can't hold your ground you'll wind up being slaughtered eventually. If you think about what constitutes superior ground for these weapons systems, there really aren't that many cases when one side would have won just because they were standing on better terrain. Fire superiority, as we've seen, would have been difficult for either side to achieve, and your final point, flanking, rarely happened. The point of flanking is to achieve superior numbers at the point of conflict. If the other side simply refuses the flank you might end up being outnumbered, which is why most successful attacks in history have been direct frontal attacks. Your last point that one would need a time machine; come on man, we're talking about the historical period here, not the stone age. There are contemporary accounts. Paul Dolstein was a bridge builder who fought as a landsknecht in the sixteenth century, and he both wrote down his experiences and drew sketches. He makes it clear that at that time pike formations went at it and they got pretty nasty.
As much as I like Loyd's (is Loyd, isn't it?) channel, to state the pike rarely engaged pike is pretty bad.. but, unfortunately, is in tone with some serious revisionism taking place lately, like ""cavalry didn't really crash in to opponents infantry directly" or "pushing lines didn't really occur..or rarely occurred"..etc Nevermind that we have lots (tons) of examples of pike on pike battles (or the terms..."bad war", "push of the pike"), the reason stated is that soldiers chickened out and didn't want to get hurt..damn the historical evidences,.. Following this line of thought, I fully expect in 30-50 years to hear the following: "in WW1, we have accounts of soldiers repeatedly and directly charging machine gun nests and dying in the thousands. Now, since nobody would want to do that, and take those kind of chances for bodily harm..this probably didn't happen, or not a lot, and the accounts are exaggerated.. What really must of happened is for the infantry to charge and either scare the machineguners in to fleeing or retreating themselves if the machinguners didn't run.., Afterall, who would willingly run in to a hail of bullets (pikes)?? Right? "
For closure, in the American Civil War, musket formations absolutley 100% stood and traded volley fire at close range. See for example the Battle of Sharpsburg/Antietam; the carnage was staggering.
Despite what Lloyd said there were actually quite a few historical instances where musketeers engaged with pikemen in close combat. At the battle of Lubiezow in 1577 the hajduk infantry of the royal Polish army charged frontally against a battalion of Landsknecht pikemen hired by the Danzig rebels, the hajduk fired an arquebus volley at point blank range and then fell upon the pikemen with their sabers. The Landsknectht were not routed but hand to hand fighting commenced for a short while, after which a squadron of hussars fell upon the pike block's flank, causing it to fall apart. The pike-less Huguenot infantry at the battle of Coutras also had no problem closing in with their perky Royalist opponents. I believed Alasdair McColla's men during Montrose's campaign might have also done the same thing, and Gustav Adolph certainly tried to make the musket salvo at pistol-shot range followed by a charge the standard tactic for his foot. My conjecture was that the point-blank volley fire killed, wounded or shocked most of the pike's block front-rankers, causing a temporary disruption which allowed the musketeers to get past the pike points and initiate a close range melee with short weapons. This required a high degree of morale on the part of the musketeers, but history showed that with the right soldiers it could be done. Incidentally this was very similar to Roman legionary tactic: threw pila at close range and then charge in with swords! The musket volley however would be far more effective than the hail of pilum at wreaking massive damage on the opponent's formation. Lloyd mentioned that well-disciplined pike square was largely immune from cavalry attack, what he didn't mention was that cavalry with caracole were able to reduce well-disciplined pike squares unsupported by their musketeers. And undisciplined pike squares remained extremely vulnerable to cavalry attacks throughout the pike-and-shot period, in fact cavalry remained the most decisive element in European warfare until the 19th century.
I must support your assertion that a pike block required its "sleeves" of shot & maybe a few light artillery pieces to form an effective combat group. Without the shot the pikes were vulnerable to an enemy commander willing to shift companies of short and/or horse to immobilize and then pound the block into a fatal loss of cohesion, and thus prey for a final charge from somebody. The Swiss were the first to use firearms to supplement & then supplant crossbowmen in their formations, following a defeat in which Italian crossbowmen had shot away successive ranks of pikes & halberds. Your examples of musket versus pike are examples of the phrase "fortune favors the bold", which has its own place in pike & shot warfare. If the battle is going to be big blocks of hard-to-collapse pike blocks with sleeves of shot, something needs to be done to change the situation if a decisive encounter is desired. In certain situations a select company of brave men bravely led could accomplish wonders. As always the psychological effect that a unit of brave or desperate men who knew what they were doing could exert upon opponents who were not so brave or desperate (or just not soldiers long enough for the drill to sink in) is hard to measure.
Observations from the Bunker Well thanks. Yes the Swiss did employ some shot to support their pikemen, however they did not manage to get to the next stage of the development in increasing the number of their shot to equate that of the pikemen like other armies of the period such as the Spanish tercios. The Swiss arquebusiers were also typically only employed in skirmishing fashion in front of the pike blocks, not massed together for volley fire like later shot formations. Throughout their heyday the Swiss relied entirely on getting their pike blocks in contact as quickly as possible with the enemy, and they were most successful when they could take the enemy by surprise such at the battles of Morat, Nancy and Novara. When faced with an alert enemy with combined horse, pike, shot and artillery the Swiss on their own were generally a lot less successful, though they were famous for being too stubborn to know that they have been beaten :)
Aart Bruneel Well thats why I included the phrase 'during the heyday' didn't I? And my comment on the Swiss was meant to address not Lindy's comments but that of 'Observation From the Bunker'. Neither do I address the other armies that employ the Swiss, but only the Swiss contingents themselves. Even when fighting as mercenaries for the French the Swiss often exhibited arrogance and contempt for any tactic but the frontal advance of their pike block.
Hi. Can you suggest reading material on Pikemen in combat or tactics? Also, have you read anything on pikes marching towards the opponent formation with their pikes aimed? Can they turn a direction while having their pikes lowered and aimed? How fast is their marching speed, I'd also be interested to hear your own educated guess as I know these questions likely has no records to validate with.
Shock volley followed by charge was the most common tactic used by Japanese. Their whole firearm design evolved around it. You had armoured samurai armed with muskets, that had dry boxes and sites close in give a volley then charge. They would absorb fire closing in. For example see Korean invasion. Walk through composite bow fire close in, volley then charge. It is very effective but you need armoured musketeers who are proficient in melee combat, which is an issue
we are talking about several different time periods here. In ancient/classical times there were pike/spear on pike/spear, but they were complemented by armor and shieldwalls. Late medieval periods, english civil war, and italian wars all did have Pike on Pike clashes. They were very bloody and generally ended badly for one or both sides, but unless they were made of completely peasants the soldiers usually had plate armor, or at least a cuirass and helmet, so it wasnt instant death but the weight of all the rows behind them pushing until one side collapsed. This is why the swiss and german mercenaries complemented their pikes with halberds and zweihanders, after the initial clash they could rush the enemy ranks with impunity.
The few times it came to pike on pike action, it most likely meant that one side broke fairly quickly. The Tertio for example is described to have destroyed everything it came into contact with. This is why we see armies like the dutch and swedish (under Mauritz of Oranien and Gustav II Adolf) focus on mobility and firepower, with lighter armour for their pikemen and a larger ratio of musketeers contra pikemen. Especially the swedish also put a focus on lighter and faster firing artillery pieces on a regimental level, which could easily (relatively speaking) be moved to where they were needed to counter Imperial pike formations.
This period lasted about two centuries (1500-1700). Any generalization is likely to fail to capture the changes to warfare from beginning to end. At its beginning, firelocks made up 1/10 of the formation, armor was plentiful, and artillery was woefully inaccurate, immobile, and slow to load. By the end, the ratio of pikes to muskets was 1:1, armor had all but disappeared, and artillery technology and doctrine had advanced considerably. Certainly, unit will and cohesion played a significant role in deciding early modern infantry engagements, just as it did in Napoleonic bayonet charges (in which the rout was more common than the clash). However, to suggest that the famed push of pike is a myth seems to greatly overstate the case. The presence in sixteenth century formations of specialist greatswordsmen suggests that these clashes did indeed occur, as do the historical accounts of the battles of Marignano, Pavia, and Rocroi. This is not to suggest that such mixed infantry formations were the be-all-end-all of warfare, we know the opposite to be true. Combined arms engaged in mutual support was every bit as critical then as it is now. Likewise, while infantry on infantry clashes did occur, we know that they were far from ideal, often resulting in significant casualties; the Italians referred to it as “bad war.”
Pike units were likely strategic units - offering cover from cavalry, charging enemy lines to break up formations, and potentially being maneuvered to flank artillery.
Pike on pike was generally a slaughter. Pikes, however, grew very long. Therein lay their disadvantage. You often hear tell that men used very long swords called beidenhanders (not generally zweihanders) on the doppelsoldiern (those guys making double money) line. The trick was that, when facing a 20 foot pike, your average man can only draw it back so far. Of course, then you have another row of pikemen to get by, who also have their own range. However, that line can't just stab anywhere, they have to go around their fellow man. These men might all be standing in the way of their dragoons or musketeers. Generally, you don't need a big sword or axe, you just need to stop some of these pike heads, then get inside the line of heads. Let's say you're very good at this (you've got that baseball player's eye for swinging things. Once you're inside the formation of pikes, you can rush the opposing line. Obviously, this is all risky business. You have to be on the front line facing the muskets first (after cavalry, of course), then dodge or disable a few rows of pike heads, then probably make it through another line of melee men like yourself, but the object isn't really to KILL the other soldiers across the way. That was the direct action, but your job was likely to break the formation. You see, a pike formation relies a lot on drilling and discipline. If the line breaks and the formation starts having to cover holes and turns at odd angles (much less has people dropping pikes and deserting), you can turn it into a slaughter. That's probably what you mean with a particular band's "reputation" helping. It might, but the winner is often that unit which has more discipline. It only takes your pike formation wall buckling and bulging to put you at a significant disadvantage, and if guns don't do it, close quarters combat certainly might (this also happened during musket-and-bayonet periods with the same basic premise, just swap pike heads for reload times). But yes, two well disciplined formations that don't buckle under the pressure? Where men are dying to hold the line and no one runs? It would be a blood-drenched massacre on both sides. And, from all descriptions of these types of battles, they were.
Definitely. If I may do a literal translation, "Bidenhänder" means "both handed (sword)" whereas "Zweihänder" means "two handed (sword)" so it is basically the same thing. I guess "Bidenhänder" is the older term, but I am not sure on that one.
Only if the archers are behind fortifications of some kind. Otherwise the archers cannot inflict enough casualties before the pikemen reach them. Arrows just don't have the stopping power required to break a formation of heavy infantry.
Spanish pikemen, armored, and equipped with sword, shield, and fairly short pikes, did indeed advance straight into opposing pike formations. The Spanish pikes handed the Swiss one of their few resounding defeats by using their shields to lift the Swiss pikes and get in under their points. The well-armored Spaniards wreaked havoc. Othe pikemen did indeed have supremely bloody engagements - "willingness to 'push pikes'" was a key assessment of your foe, and a major factor to consider in any battle.
In the movie Alatriste (2006) pikes are shown to clash, basically keeping each other at bay and doing some of the killing, while the guys who usually would be using firearms dive below the pikes and do some in-and-out knife killing by stabbing a guy who's attention is elswhere. This seems to happen after hours of battle when both sides are low on ammo and gunpowder.
great movie eh? lots of historical accuracy (especially in costume and attitude) >dat beautiful velazquez inspired aesthetic, and a pretty sweet viggo mortensen performance if i recall correctly. of course in the american release they decided to change the title to "alatriste: the spanish musketeer" ~sigh~
@LucanJacups Pikes are excellent cooperation weapons. A man approaching a pike block has to fight not just the man in front of him, but several others at the same time, just to close with one opponent. Some very brave men tried it, and some succeeded, but after a while, they stopped trying.
Okay, I was a re-enactor for the the English Civil War period, which is around the 1600's, and I started off in the pike block, so... 1) the pike 'push' (raised pikes) is not realistic at all. It never happened in history, it was stupid, it was dangerous (I suffered cracked ribs when a block went over, which was the usual result of a push, or 'boar snout'), and it was there to make the battlefield look busy for the crowd. Pike fought point to point. They advanced on the enemy and stabbed for a few seconds before the front rank dropped their pikes and drew their swords (the pikeman's tuck) and pushed through to butcher the enemy pike. 2) The front 1-2 rank of pike wore heavy back and breast plate armour with tassets to protect them from being stabbed by opposing pike. This was provided for them by their regiments (there are ample records of this if you look into regimental finances and stores). This back and breast could also provide protection against shot from musket. Limbs were exposed but the pikeman wore a thick woolen doublet which offered some protection. Pikemen could also wear buffcoats - thick leather doublets that could be worn under the plate or as its own armour. Latter ranks often wore this, although those at the very back might not. 3) A pike rank would have half-pike, partisans and halberds at the edges. These were held by nco's and their task was to order the ranks. They also helped protect the sides of the block from skirmishers, and... to intercept and break the enemy pike line. Experienced pikemen also knew how to dip their pikes under the enemy points and knock the enemy pikes up, disrupting the line and giving you the edge. 4) If all else failed, it was 'stab-stab-stab-drop-drawsword-advance-stab-stab-stab'. That was how pike fought pike. In one battle, as we didn't take the tuck in with us (too dangerous), after the initial point work, we closed to 'grapple' and I and my opponent decided to dance instead. Yes, we waltzed through the melee 'cause we felt like it. And no, we weren't told off about it, either - it was all a bit of fun :p 5) Pike's main purpose was to control sections of the battlefield by being a big spiky obstacle. They worked with musket by offering them protection and mostly marched around the field. Not because they were scared of fighting other pike, but because when they did, they would be vulnerable to flanking attacks and cavalry. A well drilled pike block could wheel quickly and flank an enemy formation, massacring them in seconds if the enemy formation didn't or couldn't respond in time. And finally... at one battle, we had the entire Royalist forces present march in column onto the field, then turn and wheel as one unit to face the enemy. That was a line of over 2000 men (and women), both pike and musket, keeping formation as they wheeled through 60 degrees. Afterwards, in the bar, those who had been on the parliament's side admitted they'd been a little intimidated by the display as they hadn't thought that a bunch of weekend re-enactors could pull something like that off. Oh, and the crowd loved it.
Oh, and one thing you might be interested in: After the third civil war in England, Cromwell got approval for the New Model Army of professional soldiers. These people were trained based on tactics that had worked in the civil war, and this included pike drill. Might be worth having a look at that to see how pike fought and what they fought against.
Hunter Cat How about the faces? I noticed that English Civil War pikemen tended to wear open faced morions, wouldn't this leave their faces very vulnerable to thrusts? I just couldn't imagine anyone but a crazed berserker charging against a sea of sharp points with his face unprotected.
***** Well I imagined anyone alive have never seen real pikemen closing :p. The historical sources such as Blaise Monluc did describe some pikemen like the Swiss rushing at the enemy. Now I understand that reenactors won't want to do this for reasons of safety, but thats exactly my point. Even if pikemen approached each other's formation slowly and proceeded to 'fence' with their long poles, I would imagine that the faces of the guys in the front rank would be instant primary target in a real fight. With five pikeheads facing every face, I'd say that the math wasnt exactly in favor of wearing open faced helmets. Even wearing three quarter armor plus a helmet with a bevor or a falling buffe as shown by many period artwork of pikemen front rankers would still be scary. Which was why Lloyd's point about 'push of pike' being more of a game of chicken made a lot of sense to me.
I think I read that the reason that pike formations were not blown apart by artillery at least early on was because artillery was still not very mobile in the 16th and 17th centuries, and that many generals did not understand the true value of artillery. Many of the armies of the period were lead by nobles with little military experience, commanding fairly untrained militias and often relying on trained mercenaries for decent soldiers.
***** Well Paramecium914 was also partly correct, artillery during the 16th and 17th century until the coming of Gustavus Adolphus was generally not very mobile, had a very slow rate of fire, were serviced by civilian drovers who often fled at the first sign of battle and were in general not very influential on the course of battles unless there were field fortifications involved. Although yes you were indeed correct that many pike formations (the Swiss being famous) could indeed move at a very fast rate if necessary, and they often rushed slow firing guns. Later during the Napoleonic War it became a death sentence for infantry to try to rush guns, although it did happen.
***** I said drovers, meaning people who managed the horses who pulled the guns, not the people loading and firing the cannons, who obviously has to be professionals. If your civilian drovers refused to get close to the scene of the fighting, you'd be mostly unable to reposition your massive 12 and 24 pounders to a new firing position. Which was part of the reason why field artillery before Gustav Adolph were not very decisive; since the heavy guns could not be repositioned, they would fire a few shots at the start of the battle and then play no further part. Gustav Adolph introduced ultralight 3 pounder regimental guns loaded with premade cartridges which could be wheeled forward to support infantry attacks, but his heavy guns remained immobile. During the Napoleonic era the civilian drovers were replaced by special corps of military drovers, often disabled cavalrymen, which solved the matter of mobility permanently. Big guns now regularly maneveured with infantry and even cavalry. That's exactly my point isn't it? By the Napoleonic war the rate of fire and mobility of field artillery had made such a quantum leap that infantry could no longer rush them in the open with impunity, and military commanders has to take into account how the enemy will position his big guns. Before that period infantry could and did capture artillery frequently by frontal attacks.
I wonder why light fieldartillery was not used at greater scale...a wall of mobile organcanons and six-barreled fieldsnakes with chainballs or other volley-guns, mounted on light carts must be devastating at close range...was it the costfactor?
Mike Romney Not sure about organ cannons and other multi-barreled weapons, the impression I had about them was that they were more effective in theory rather than practice. But light cannons of about 3 lb ball weight were used extensively as infantry support weapon ever since Gustavus Adolphus introduced them, and used in truly massive scales in some armies (Gustavus' army had up to 12 of these light pieces per brigade of about 1,500 men). Their immense firepower contributed greatly to the Swedish victories during the TYW; a Swedish veteran described that each cannon could fire three shots in the time it took a musketeer (still armed with matchlock) took to fire two. An eyewitness of Gustavus' victory at Breitenfield: "...[Tilly's army] received a horrible, uninterrupted pounding from the king's light pieces and was prevented from coming to grips with the latter's forces." - Raimondo Count Montecuccolli, Imperial officer. In fact it's interesting to note that many Swedish failures (Alte Veste, Nordlingen, Lutzen) coincided with them leaving their little guns behind, having attempted to 'surprise' their opponents by force-marching through rough terrain, Many military commanders later did not consider them useful enough to issue, but up until the Napoleonic war and even later they were still quite widespread in many armies until the introduction of breech-loading artillery and machine guns.
Mike Romney With regards to multi-barrelled weapons it came down to them taking so long to reload. They do have a small place of their own in artillery history though as ribaults were part of Edward III artillery train a Crecy where it was used in a filed battle for the first time.
my dad introduced me to this channel and 3 videos later I am in love with this man and his channel. How can one make, standing / sitting in front of a recorder whilst talking about a weapon (not many visuals) so enjoyable. 10/10 channel.
Learning post-Medieval warfare in depth gives you this sense of a very slow arms race. Of course everyone thinks of muskets and firearms, but muskets didn't have as great an impact immediately as everyone believes. They're not the predominant reason heavy cavalry went out of style, and in fact heavy cavalry didn't go out of style really until the 17th century, and even then it was gradual. No, pikes were a cheap answer to cavalry, and as Lloyd touched on they were great at protecting more vulnerable formations, but they didn't attack very much in open warfare. What you begin to see is rapidly evolving tactics throughout the Renaissance, such that units began to be mixed. Musket and pike went so hand in hand that the Spanish just combined the two into something called a Tercio.
***** once tanks became a thing and fighter plains became a thing they really outlived usefulness in the modern era of warfare. Sadly while valiant the polish found this out the hard way.
NERD IT UP The Poles never actually launched attacked tanks with cavalry, the idea that they did is a product of German propaganda. For the duration of the war, the Wehrmacht used primarily horses in their supply line, so the Germans were also very reliant on horses.
Battles such as Naseby appear to have been won by the heavy cavalry (i.e. Cromwell) seeing off the other cavalry & then hitting the infantry - pikes- in the side. It must have been damn near impossible to reorder pikes around a 90 degree turn unless you wheel the formation, which the opposing infantry are not going to let you do or by swinging all the pikes individually to face the attack, which would result in utter chaos. Cromwell was a tactical genius & every battle he took part in was won by his individual initiative at a crucial point.
Wouldn't that formation make them an absolute nightmare to maneuvre and coordinate? Even for a well-drilled group of soldiers, having most of your guys walk sort-of sideways or backwards at significant speed seems quite hard to pull off (let alone having them change direction). Unless they all faced forward while moving, then reformed as soon as they stopped, that might have worked. Also, what happened if they lost the first few rows? Since the center had basically no pikes, and their other pikemen were distributed across the edges, it seems like a frontal attack from enemy pikes could easily disintegrate the whole formation and rout them.
@OzClawhammer There are circumstances in which long reach is an advantage, and circumstances in which it is a drawback. If longer reach were always an advantage, everyone would have made the longest weapons that they could lift. The Romans did awfully well with short swords. If you have a pike, and I get to within shortsword range of you, your pike is useless.
@FakeKraid Oh yes, in war things sometimes go very wrong. If both pike formations believe that their only choice is to press on with an attack, or that they are bound to win...
@GreenEyedSerb Yes, there were fights in the earlier part of this period between pikes and men with other weapons, like halberds, double-handed swords etc.
@WoodyHaroo Yes, many men would have a shorter weapon to back up their pike. In the period I'm talking about, the musketeers were usually in a block next to the pikes, rather than mixed in with the pikes.
I remember reading one account of pike warfare, I believe from the 1600's, that basically spoke to this. There was much bluff charging and retreating, and in the rare cases where they did fight each other, it was bloody business if one side broke while already engaged. Imagine your front like breaking and trying to run through the tightly packed formation behind you while the enemy wall of pikemen advances on you.
@89MikeW I have been told about this, but have never tried it. It is not an easy thing to test with experimental archaeology, partly because it requires the destruction of a lot of kit, and a fighting method that would be difficult to keep reasonably safe. But yes - two-handed swords were supposedly used against pike formations.
Pikemen DID clash into each other in late medieval and early modern period and they were well documented in paintings and written records which is different in nature of Greek vase painting. But, the manner they clashed was different than people would had imagine too. They kind of slowly poke into the enemy formation and sometimes break ranks and attacking them from the flank and rear instead of charge straight in like Lindybeige discribed.
Maybe pikemen were used as shock infantry. They'd simply attempt to scatter the enemy by charging and feigning, just like shock cavalry would. If the enemy didn't waver, the charge'd be called off and they'd try again some other time.
Interesting idea. It's easy to think of a long spear or pike formation as rigid and defensive, but the advantages Lloyd mentioned in the video can easily apply the other way around. Considering it takes quite a while for a 15th-16th century unit of musketeers to kill or rout anything, I suspect the pikeman's place was largely a matter of forcing enemy formations to reposition. Much like earlier medieval armies were comprised largely of conscripts (taking the place of the musketeers) who could be bullied into repositioning by men at arms with polearms (taking the place of the pikemen).
I think the simplest explanation is probably that pikemen in infantry formations in the sixteenth and seventeenth simply serve to protect against cavalry. Remember that the effectiveness of the former firearms was very low, and salvo of muskets had no chance to stop cavalry charge. Also keep in mind that although the musket range reaches up to 250 meters but shooting at such a distance is a waste of powder. Effective fire started from 75 meters. From that distance the enemy infantry could launch an attack, so pikemen also protect against such a situation.
Here's my question though: why didn't they just use shock cavalry then? I tend to think that they were only there to protect the musketeers. Sure they could be useful in other roles, but I tend to assume that it wasn't the intention to end up in them.
101jir A couple reasons come to mind; - Cavalry was expensive and a lot less available than infantry. - Cavalry was more susceptible to missile- and gunfire, because they were bigger targets and more valuable piece for piece. - Cavalry could not stay in a prolonged melee. Infantry could. - Pikemen could not be counter charged by shock cavalry. On a note, there are accounts of pikemen being used as shock infantry. They probably had multiple roles.
Serge Hamelberg "Pikemen could not be counter charged by shock cavalry." - First read something about the Polish hussars, the French "gendarmes" and swedish cavalry. Of course, that the formation of pikemens could be broken by a cavalry charge. Winged Hussars were specialized in this. However, most types of cavalry was not able to do so, which is why the musketeers were shielded by pikemens. Without them, they would be smashed in the charge. "Cavalry was more susceptible to missile- and gunfire, because they were bigger targets and more valuable piece for piece." You forget about the mobility of cavalry which made them much less susceptible to fire muskets and cannons. "Cavalry was expensive and a lot less available than infantry." - You generalizes it. It depends on the region, on the steppes of eastern europe cavalry was sometimes cheaper and more accessible than infantry.
@LucanJacups Yes, obviously there was always the risk that two units would find themselves obliged to engage. It would be pretty horrible if neither unit backed off.
from what I read it was the "Push of Pike" issue, where the focus of Pikemen was not to kill the other guy so much as to push them back to the gunner could hadle them, so you were mostly aiming for the other guy's pike
Swiss pikemen wouldn't just walk towards you. They'd run in full sprint, screaming like maniacs, sending absolutely everyone into rout. Their real trick however wasn't that, it was that they had a mobile Pikemen vanguard, that could turn on the spot, charge, flank, when undrilled Pikefolk would barely be able to stop and start moving again, much less turn against the swiss who would literally run circles around them.
Pikemen carried no shields (obviously), but a lot of period drawings show them as being quite heavily armoured, and given that you don't have a lot of play, it's quite possible that standing in the front row wasn't lethally dangerous, since yours is the piece of armour least likely to be punctured by the pike, as there's no 'focussing effect' of the pike travelling through a narrow gap and thus having limited lateral play.
+Matthew Marden But you have to consider that there's several intervenients in battle. Let's say there are two formations, both with Pikemen, Heavy and Light Cavalry, Light Infantry, Heavy Infantry and Archers/Longbowmen. To win the battle you need to route or kill the enemy forces. That means you need to get their general, and a lot of troops. Archers are going to be firing constantly, thining down the infantry. Which then prompts a cavalry charge, which is called off because there's a pikewall, making the cavalry charge suicidal. However, those pikemen are probabbly being shot by the enemy archers, exactly to allow the cavalry to go through, or even worse, to allow the enemy light infantry to charge, between the gaps, allowing for the heavy infantry to close in in the confusion, effectively keeping the pikes busy, while the cavalry just rushes to the archers, or the enemy infantry. What if your pikes had armor? They're not going to be as easy to kill by the archers, and they'll actually stand a chance against heavily armored troops. Remember, your pikes are not meant to be attacking, but defending positions. If you want to attack with a decent melee range, that's what spearmen are for, a whole lot more mobile to reform and move around the field.
+Lue Lee Pikeman armours certainly vary- certainly by the English Civil War you see pikeman armours with breast and backplate, gorget and tassets, as well as breastplates made with a slightly longer fauld, but with no provision for the attachment of tassets.
+Lue Lee That's pretty much how the Scots, Swiss, and Germans did it. Give the front ranks armor and possibly a small shield like the targe and have bands of Cuirassiers (both mounted and dismounted) armed with short lances and shields, a claymore/greatsword, or a halberd/any of the Scottish pole arms that served a similar function, to stride ahead of the main formation to back up the light cavalry/infantry and disrupt the enemy in preparation for the heavy cavalry/infantry.
***** Any archer can kill a slow ass pikeman. If you didn't know, there are different arrowheads depending on what your enemies were wearing. Gambeson? Use broadheads. Chainmail? Bodkins do them in. Most foot soldiers had little armor, and certainly not full plate, so if you're a good shot you can wedge an arrow in the joints and kill the pikeman. Pikemen are meant to kill cavalry, as cavalry trample swordsmen, and sword+ shield formation defeats archers, and archers defeat pikemen.
@JesiennyDeszcz Thanks. I talk mainly as most people do - about the familiar. People tend to be more interested in the history that led to their world. Britain was little affected by what was east of the Germans.
This came up on my feed as I have been looking at Silver's pike material. Or how to fence with the pike against an opposite number also armed with a pike. As Lindy notes, the object is not to kill everyone on the field, but to make your opposite number push back against the people behind him. Threaten him, wound him, make him drop his pike. The retreat will start from the rear, but in a close formation that would be because the people at the front were breaking back in a way that communicates "We're in trouble."
+turntablized Hussars lances were even longer than the Swedish pikes, therin lay their advantage. It's a shame Lindybeige didnt mention The Deluge though.
turntablized Of course they existed as the elite unit of the Commenwealth; but they are sorrounded by myths (like katanas can cut steel etc.). When people mention them at the secound seige of vienna they claim they won the battle, when this campaign showed how vonurable they are to "modern" military as they were almost completly destoryed when persuing the retreating ottomans. The same goes for "charge pikeformations and crush them", there might be circumstances when this was a good idea, but in general it is still stupid. Its funny how the fall of the great power Poland to a minor power was exactly the time when they used the undefeatable super-power winged hussars (if you believe all the myths). They were simply heavy cavalry, very expencive (especially all the dead horses) but strong shock units. (And because they were the last true (european) heavy cavalry they were the best).
+turntablized If you did actually read that book, you would actually know that Mr Brzezinsky did not condone your view. In general he believed that hussars did not charge pike blocks head on on their own.
5:20 Yes they will. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had a cavalry formation called Hussars, which used very long laces (longer than pikes) to charge them with devastating effect.
I'm personally a big fan of the Polish Winger Hussars (from someone who generally believes most cavalry units are overrated), but even they would not be able to charge a properly formed pike formation. They had long lances sure, but unless they were 5 meters or more longer than the enemy pikes then they wouldn't be able to move with enough speed towards their target and stop in time. The Hussars were successful against infantry due to supporting units, the psychological factor of going up against such esteemed warriors (also their 'wings' made them seem more numerous and more terrifying), and because they had good equipment, not because they were supermen or their horses are pike-proof.
Michael Henman Polish hussars lance (in the XVIIth century) had between 4.5 and 6.20 metres, exactly because of the fact they had to fight Swedish pike infantry. They many times succesfully charged Swedish armies using pikes and the Swedes were one of the best European armies at the time and famous for their pike infantry and musketers. The secret was the way hussars hold the pikes (the saddle had leather strap you put the dull end of the lance into, so the hussar only directed the pike, most of the force and weight was transfered to the horse through the saddle), and the fact that Polish pikes were empty (drilled) inside to be lighter. That made them very prone to breaking after impact, and they were much more expansive than regular ones, but it didn't matter - their effectivenes was great against infantry with pikes, and that mattered the most. Their tactic was to charge, retreat and get new lances, charge, retreat and get new lances, etc, until there is no enemy :) They also often used pistols before retreating. Usually the horse loses were very big (because horses were often wounded in charge), but human loses were surprisingly small, even fighting 10 times bigger armies - wounded horses can still get you back to your camp to get a new horse, lance and pistols. Best known battle won by husaria against Swedish pike infantry was en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kircholm
Mr Odrzut I think the Swedish historian Daniel Staberg has already expounded at length on the case of Polish hussars defeating pike blocks at Kircholm and Kluszyn. What essentially happened was that the hussars routed the enemy's own cavalry, which in their panic stampeded through their own infantry, disrupting the pike blocks. The hussars and their supporting light horse and infantry then fell upon these disrupted and morally beaten pike and shot and broke them. The Polish hussar at Kircholm probably did launch a direct attack at the Swedish pike block in the center, the Swedish foot were exhausted from marching all night, were attacking uphill and were disrupted by musket and cannon fire of the Polish hajduks before the hussar charge hit them, and yet still this charge did not rout the pike block, although it did manage to pin them down for the (very short) duration of the battle. And the hussars paid a heavy cost in the lost of their very expensive and very difficult to replace stallions! So even if Polish hussars could theoretically charge through a pike block you wouldnt want to do it too often, it's a desperate tactic and even the Polish writers of the time period admitted that it to be so. Remember that a pike block was a very resilient target, the deep ranks gave the men great moral fortitude and confidence in each other. At the battle of Ceresole, Marignano and Dreux French gendarmes too were described as repeatingly riding through enemy pike blocks (they had armored horses), and yet the Swiss and landsknecht were NOT routed! Just as it happened at Kircholm! Rather like hussars the gendarmes lost a lot of their horses, and only the arrival of supporting troops finally broke the enemy pikes. So simply impaling a pikemen on your lance and knocking his buddies by your horse's rush is in fact not enough to defeat a pike block - which was why pike blocks were adopted in the first place. Like Lindybeige said, missiles were the best counter to pikes, and it could work very well in combination with cavalry charges to pin down the pikes.
@h1zchan Some had two-handers, yes, and it is said that they were used for fighting a way into a pike formation. How much chopping of pikeshafts they did is doubtful.
At the Battle of Marignano the French gendarmerie actually repeatedly charged Swiss pike formations and the Swiss were actually driven back. I can't imagine how they actually were able to do it, but they did. Although the Swiss blocks were heavily weakened by the point blank artillery fire and probably had a few gaps here and there.
The Swiss had insisted on advancing into the teeth of concentrated artillery fire, and refused to back off despite heavy losses. Marignano & Biacoccia were battles in which the Swiss beat themselves through pure obstinacy.
They are mentioned in some spaces as hacking their way into swiss pikesquares - nothing extraordinary, if someone believes it could be effectively done with tiny short sword on foot. (or rather extraordinary, as theres no evidence, that men armed with short weapons had any better chance to break into, let alone break up well ordered pikeblocks, than cavalry - very slim, btw. doppelsoldner is double pay man, or man paid twice as much as ordinary, generally taking up crutial roles in battle like being a part of forlorn hope, guarding standards, being in the leading ranks in charge, or defence - generally armed with a pike, similarly to anyone else, it has nothing to do with two handed swords - but that doesnt say some might not have used them.) Bayard is said to cut his way at least two times through the Swiss and Robert de la Marck is said to break into the Swiss formation and save his half dead sons, to name some examples. While there are examples of few horsemen breaking INTO pikesquares and riding all the way through causing carnage, many times even surviving, thanks to their armour, these examples are rare and generally didnt lead to complete destruction of infantry formation - though its also true most examples to speak of are against the most elite infantry forces of their day, like Swiss at Dreux and veteran spanish/landsknecht infantry at the battle of Ceresole, while less well drilled, or less disciplined/wavering/whatever infantry was more propable to loose any order at such an event and and get cut down and dispersed. Still, of course, using horsemen as sacrifice to supplant, what could have easily been achieved by bombarding the hell out of tightly packed formation was rare. As with Marignan, Id say despite no clear description of gendarmes breaking into Swiss formations, some might have tryed it, though even in abovementioned examples, it might be, they werent really ramming uninterruped wall of pikes and breaking into it. For most of the battle, as I understand, french cavalry would do massive damage to the swiss, but only, if they charged them dispersed and already engaged. They were maybe the only thing, that saved french infantry from being overrun and massacred, with their charges, that would force the disordered enemy to once again resume formation and defensive stance and force them from the ground they just got in infantry vs infantry battle. Compare Marignan to the battle of Novara, where french would be in the same situation, atrillery plus infantry in defensive stance against the Swiss - same setup except for feeble, or none cavalry support. Difference in results are staggering - at Novara most Swiss casualties were from artillery fire, which they quickly overran by rapid advance, infantry on french side was clearly inferior and once routed was simply massacred. At Marignan it returned several times from the rout and resisted in a battle lasting about 28 hours - the only difference being, that this time they had huge and bold cavalry support. So my own opinion is, gendarmes made the difference and most propably did much physical damage as well, actively mostly by engaging enemies, that were in disorder after gaining ground and proceeding to pursuit and passively by making them group tightly together to be pounced by missiles, something, that couldnt be done without them, as there was no force to stop charging swiss in more, or less open countryside from quickly closing in and capturing french artillery without field fortification and terrain obstacles, as at Biccoca. (Also, talking about infantry vs cavalry, especially in rennaisance, youre speaking about elite heavy cavalry being outnumbered by 10-20:1 - and this means locally, not as a whole, as infantry was in most instances packed in huge squares numbering 1000s, not stretched out on long lines - where only few would ever dare to actually ram into infantry, so you can clearly see, that potential to physically eliminate whole enemy force without breaking its order was converging to zero.)
What about those "push of pike" situations where two opposing pike blocks are entangled with one another. That was the reason why halberdiers and rodeleros (sword and buckler men) were used alongside the pikes in order to break the deadlock of a push of pike. There were also the two-handed swordsmen who were supposedly used to break pike formations by cutting-off the tips of pikes.
+Demon Hunter I suspect a lot of men in these formations were hesitant to kill even if engaged as killing would make you a target, and most people have trouble taking human life anyway. I don't understand why they used swords to beat pikes. Muskets just seem so much better for the purpose. I guess swords were also somewhat useful against cavalry in an age before bayonets. So my guess is, Pikes > cavalry Cavalry > muskets Muskets > pikes Swords > everything but master of none since: muskets attack at range and retreat behind other troops cavalry are fast and can run away (really!?) Slow to beat pikes relative to muskets While swords were relatively expensive and can take a long time to learn compared to muskets and pikes if not spear cavalry I don't think much skill would be required to kill pikemen or musketmen so long as you got in range first. Yes, cavalry can charge home again and again but you so much as nick their legs and they're down for the count. Horse armor was VERY expensive. Horses seem mostly useful for charging the flanks of a unit that's already engaged, and while there certainly is a force-multiplier in that.. 2 formations of men>1 That should be apparent to everyone.
interesting and cool video again! i always wondered about the pike tactics of that time, your explaination is quite plausible. btw, your chanel is the best on youtube, i love your videos very much and watch them again and again. i always learn something new. thank you for posting this stuff :)
@JesiennyDeszcz I have been to the museums in Poland and seen the winged hussar armours, and have often seen these warriors depicted on the wargaming table. Even these elite, though, would not choose to charge steady formed-up pikes head-on when there were other options.
Interesting points, but a few corrections. You should indeed call the macedonian formation phalanx. This formation has been labelled "The Macedonian Phalanx" ever since Phillp II re organized the macedonian army into this formation and introduced the sarissa, the very long, two handed pike. And that brings us to next correction. The foot companians of the macedonian army did not use shields. They had to use both hands to hold the long pike. Lloyd got it confused with the old style greek phalanx there, which used spears and shield. Luckily, at the end, Lloyd did arrive at the right conclusion, that pikemen during the renaissance were primarely to fend off cavalry, since musketeers were very vulnable to a cavalry charge.
They did use shields, albeit the smaller convex Aspis (hence the Macedonian foot guard unit known as the Argyraspids or silver shields) rather than the larger hoplite flatter faced shield the Hoplon. This was in effect strapped to the left forearm, which reduced its ability to be moved somewhat, but not decisively so. all laterv Greek and hellenistic pike phalangites used it. Later Macedonian units fighting the Romans were even called the Chalkaspds ( bronze shields) and Leukaspids ( white shields)
Didn't Machiavelli write about a battle where Spanish Rodeleros broke a German Pike formation by affixing their formation with pikes & wading in with their light swords? The Pisa Home guard was modelled on this very pike-&-sword concept. This wouldn't have happened if pike-vs-pike warfare never happened. Then again- the Pisa Home guard was a miserable failure- so maybe Lloyd might be right after all...
Rohit Patnaik Well they did fought pike vs pike it's just that he did not research for this video at all.He also ignores that heavier armored troops were deployed in the front rows.Or is short he didn't bother to read anything about pike and shot warfare: “As soon as you be within reach of the Canon you must go on directly upon the enemie (unlesse you be sheltered from his Artillerie) by this means your souldiers are encouraged, you avoid the danger of the enemies Canon, and you leave behind the place where your Armie stood ranged, which ground will serve to rally and order the Battaillons which shall happen to be routed. You must not give on so hastily, as that thereby the Battaillons be disordered; and on the other-side you are to use a marching pace untill you come within distance of a Pistoll-shot, but then to double your pace and charge furiously, the Pikes being close ferried , and the muskets continually playing on the Flanks, having certain Targetteers in front which may shelter the Battaillon and disorder the enemies Pikes.” *John Cruso The Art of Warre, 1639* Just slowy advancing was a good way to get killed.
@Skalman91 I tend to shoot them in isolated bursts. I usually shoot three to five in one go. I have an old envelope with jottings of ideas. The jottings accumulate faster than my shooting crosses them off. It might take me half an hour to shoot 3-5 videos, but several hours to edit them (esp. if, like the dreams one, I go overboard with the special effects).
Pikes serve two purposes on the battlefield - (i) they provide defensive anchors on the battlefield around which muskets, cavalry and over infantry operate, and (ii) they can be used offensively. The experts at the offensive pike formation were the Swiss who would have the more experienced men in armour up the front and would also have a sprinkling of men with halberds or other weapons inside the formation in case infantry like a Spanish buckler & sword man got into the formation. In fact the whole of Central European warfare had to adapt to the offensive Swiss Pikeman by either copying or coming up with counters like the Landsknechts. The wars of the Hapsburgs (HRE, Austrian, Spain, Italy) showed just how deadly pikemen could be and battles where Swiss faced Swiss (different cantons were happy to fight each other) were exceptionally brutal. So pikemen did enter melee and could be ruthlessly efficient in doing so.
What about the "push of pike" tactics? In which pikemen did fight each other in several battles? Several pictures show pikemen going in at each other (though a bit slow and pushy) to try and get a good edge, almost like a backwards tug-of-war. The group that killed the most men rapidly could then steamroll into the losing formation which had to flee or lose everyone in trying to resist.
UnrealVoicebox It was not a diserable way of doing things, hence Hans Holbein (16th centuy) gave it the name "bad war". The side that caved in was likely to be massaced, so you're essentially gambling all in and can lose it all for nothing.
The Sealed knot is NOT Historical re-enactment. And for pikemen dying quickly, Pikemen wear armour that does protect from other pikes. Dont ever get info from sealed knot ''reenactment''. Doesnt mean that I dont like Pike-rugby :D
+De Prins van Oranje the armour that pikeman had usually didn't cover their whole bodies though, from what I can work out it was a helmet and a breast plate in many armies, it would have been more effective to carry a shield. As they didn't have shields we can only really concur (at least from the 17th century anyway) that pikes were there to stop the musketeers being run down by cavalry (in other words, the tercio and other pike and shot tactics, only to be replaced when bayonets came to prominence meaning pikes were no longer required)
actualy we have tons of evidence for pike on pike, both acounts that claim one side ran away, acounts that talk about horrid mellee and ones that sound like pike fencing. granted we also know that as firearms became more effective they saw increaseing numbers and the pikes became defensive, but in the early periods all evidence sugests pikes were the primary tool and muskets were for supporting fire (to try and soften up the enemies pikes) later the muskets would try to break the enemy and pikes were there to stop cavalry.
So that's WHY I have pikemen fighting against musketeers in my Civ 5 games :P So I guess it was more of a rock-paper-scissors mechanic, the musketeers beat pikemen, the cavalry beat musketeers and the pikement beat the cavalry lol.
"The horses certainly wouldn't charge at them, they're not suicidal." Eeeeeehmmm..... If it was up to the horse, it wouldn't even be near a battlefield. The whole ordeal would seem crazy and suicidal in their eyes and it would run the hell away from it if it had any say in it! Hence the excellent running capability of horses. ;-)
Cavalry in that era rarely, if ever, charged against a well-ordered pike formation; the horsemen would basically stalk the enemy pikemen, waiting for them to lose their nerve and break formation and *then* they'd swoop down on them.
There's a difference between getting a horse on a battlefield (after getting it used to the sounds of guns from a young age, mind you) and getting it to kill itself charging a wall of spears. Horses really won't kill themselves that way. They won't run off a cliff, either. Maybe you've never ridden a horse? They're very smart animals and even well-trained ones have their own ideas about how to do things.
"'The horses certainly wouldn't charge at them, they're not suicidal.' Eeeeeehmmm..... If it was up to the horse, it wouldn't even be near a battlefield." I LOL'd. True, but I think same goes for the soldiers.
Horses meant for war PROBABLY weren't skittish when it came to the battlefield--why would anyone use skittish horses for fighting. But hey you probably know better. So anyways, no horse and no rider is going to say "welp, today's a good day to die, and that pike looks mighty shiny, let's go, Bullseye!"
FloppyHares I recall the standard roles for cavalry prior to Gustavus Adolphus was: 1) Mass Pistol Volleys using rotating "Caracole" 2) Chasing down enemies that have broken formations and/or are fleeing. Eventually you get something like what Gustavus Adolphus did in Breitenfeld; he had a contingent of musketeers for every group of Cavalry who would break the impact an enemy's" Caracole" through musket volleys, and would then send his cavalry with cold steel to break up the opposing cavalry. On the same battle, said cavalry captured the opposing side's artillery and turned them against their previous owners. You also get stories of Gustavus Adolphus also sending contingents of Finnish light cavalry to capture towns, whether or not they were saddled..
IMHO... The pike had a long history of evolution like most other weapons so one cannot "generalise" how it was used unless you break it down into specific time segments. The flow of availability of certain military assets seems to have driven the pike evolution. For instance the sword, shield and bow were great when armies could not field significant numbers of Calvary, but once the wealth of nations allowed greater Calvary numbers history saw the lengthening of the spear to pike lengths to limit the flanking movement of Calvary. Then someone had an idea that a big porcupine-tank like formation of pikes could be used to force dynamic movement on the battlefield, and it became a very effective strategy.... Until everyone else made their own formations at which point the advantage was lost. The pike formation seemed to be strong while armies had small numbers of artillery and good long range muskets. The first field artillery were only a handful per side and more of a terror weapon than actual killing machines. Once nations had the wealth to field larger quantities of accurate artillery is when large tight formations of all kinds seem to be discontinued. I would not anticipate any good leader planning to put pike formations versus a pike formation... primarily because it is always a bad idea to fight a fair and equal battle. Most strategic planners would want some guarantee of superiority which meeting same formations would not give you unless you had vastly superior numbers. My thought is that an army would only move a pike formation toward another pike formation as a reaction to block the pikes until your artillery or other counter troop could provide some flanking fire regaining the advantage. Often it is better to be the underdog than to be equal to your opponent so you rarely see a troop type in direct engagement with it's opposing match, except in art. Thank you all! Great videos, and the posted comments from others are awesome as well.
According to illustrations produced during the 16-17 Centuries that I have seen, units of pikemen were interspersed with units of matchlock musketeers. Apparently the musketeers were the offensive portion of the line, while the pikemen were the defensive portion. It took a long time to load matchlock muskets and, presumably, the pikemen kept the enemy off the musketeers while they were reloading. Bear in mind that the musketeers did not have bayonets, which were not invented until the late 17th century. Once bayonets were introduced onto the muzzles of muskets, there was no longer any need for pikemen, and they disappeared from armies pretty quickly.
+Gabe Freiman The Macedonian Phalanx did in fact exist, but rather than hoplites they consisted of phalangites, (which is just an ancient Greek term for "lightly armoured man with a pike and a shield.").
+Myes Just adding to Gabe's point here. The reason it worked so well was because archers were rare, expensive, and took a long time to train. Pikes were generally screened with skirmish units prior to the melee stage of battle being joined, so it was difficult for another javelin, or slinger formation to hit them. Also, I'm not sure what evidence there is that ancient armies used bows like the english used their longbows which I liken to a sort of artillery. They may have generelly had individuals picking their shots as opposed to a group of archers being told to fire in a certain way without nessecarily even being able to see what they're looking at.
Personally that sounds like it could be just hyperbole to me, but it does make it seem more likely. Perhaps he was simply saying the Persians were cowardly? I've heard the greeks believed archers were cowardly but I don't know if that was true or on what levels of society etc.
Gustavus Adolphus shortened his pikes from the traditional 16 feet to around 11, while simultaneously improving the neck of the pike, making the spearhead less susceptible to being cut off.
that is a fact yes, but when you include other factors like terrain and quantity and quality, weight and how long you have been awake and so on...... long pikes are heavy, and must/should be used two hands on, which makes you vulnerable. So when all comes to all, longer pikes might have a advantage, but also a disadvantage :)
SpiritCock Where did you read that Gustavus Adolphus ordered his pikes to be shortened? As far as I knew this only applied to his Foot Guards which carried half pikes, the rest of his foot retained their long poles. SirFuzzyTheWUzzY During the battle of Ancrum Moor the Scots were said to owe their victory partially due to the fact that their pikes were quite a bit longer than the English. I am sure there were other examples from history.
Lindybeige mentions several times that pike blocks were quite vulnerable to artillery. I would like to point out that in the time pikes were ascendent, artillery was primarily siege equipment, and rarely played a part in field battles. The existing guns were very heavy, slow firing, and mounted on clumsy carriages; any pike block could simply walk out of range, or charge the crew and kill them, in the time it took to ready a gun to fire. The introduction of effective, maneuverable field artillery, first used in large numbers by the Swedes in the 1620s, spelled the end of pike blocks as effective field troops.
I remember playing Cossacks: Art of War, and that's precisely what happened. Pikemen would kind of just awkwardly fight against other pikemen. Decimate cavalry units. Would get somewhat gunned down by musketeers but not for long before musketeers started backing off, spreading, and fleeing a bit left and right. But then artillery would just massacre them horribly at range.
Horses aren't as dumb as humans. They will NOT advance against something obviously dangerous. They wil shy, buck, even throw their riders is someone is stupid enough to try to force them
@@colbeausabre8842 This was a joke about the AI in Rome II: Total War. I'm well aware that charging pikes with cavalry is a terrible idea in real life.
pikes were the ak-47s of their time. they weren't the most effective but most certainly the cheapest to manufacture and arm a mass of troops with plus the most reliable they poke holes 100% of the time. certainly less expensive than arming everyone with muskets. lets not forget that manufacturing wasn't at it's most efficient in the renaissance it took a lot of time to make a musket in those days. so do you send your troops out with half nothing half muskets not you send them with half pikes and half muskets until such time you could arm all your troops with muskets.
There were battles, particularly in the early part of the 16th century, describing "the terrible push of pike." But in the 17th century as a larger portion of infantry were armed with arquebuses and later matchlock muskets, there were fewer clashes between the pike blocks in battle.
Sorry, Lloyd, but your rationale here makes no sense to me. By this logic, no two groups of soldiers with any sort of two handed pole arm would ever had clobbered each other. But pole arms dominated the battlefields of Europe (and one might argue, of the entire world) long before fire arms got remotely efficient. How? Were all battles not involving shields just games of chicken for centuries on end? Or did human psychology take a radical shift starting with the Renaissance?
Well in the Musket era the bayonet charge was essentially a game of chicken - people generally over-estimate the amount of fighting people do when they know they're probably going to die. Spear formations aren't really deadly for guys with shields and armour and lots of friends - but pikemen as we imagine seem to have none of these things. We tend to get so caught up in history we forget that the average soldier is just a guy with a wife and kids a long way from home - he's not going to throw himself into his death if he can possibly avoid it.
+Ameretat010 It seems to me like there are a lot of variables you may have overlooked here: before the industrial revolution, most combat was sieges, not battles, because battles were dangerous and impractical. By the same token, there were relatively few professional armies in the middle ages, with most soldiers being conscripts or volunteers with little or no training, who likely chose the weapons that they thought would give them the best chance of either avoiding a fight altogether or not getting hurt if they were in one, meaning range and intimidation likely contributed to the choice. Given a lack of training and experience, it's unlikely many would have used sophisticated tactics such as maintaining formation - hence Arnaud Amalric's advice to the Crusaders: "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius", popularly interpreted as "Kill them all, let God sort it out". You seem to be assuming that medieval warfare consisted primarily of battles between disciplined, well-equipped units in tight formations, rather than sieges between panicky messes of people running every which way, throwing everything they can at anyone who they think might kill them.
notoriouswhitemoth What does the frequency of battles or the ratio of battles per sieges have to do with anything? Of course battles have always been few compared to sieges, but that's not the point. The point discussed in this video is what happened when there actually was a battle - under specific circumstances (pike square vs pike square) in a specific era. What Lloyd is saying (what doesn't make sense to me), is that pike vs pike virtually never happened during the pike&shot era. We know pike vs pike happened during the Hellenistic period - why would they not happen in later eras? Because later pikemen stopped wearing shields? Well if those small shields strapped to the soldiers arms in antiquity made so much of a difference, I think they would have reappeared at some point, don't you think?
Would the use of soldiers in formation, armed with spears, be viable - or even possible - in a siege? *That's* the relevance of the rarity of open battles. The video is specifically about "pike and shot", a strategy that was only in use for about 200 years, whereas your counter-arguments seem to come from outside that fairly short period. The ancient Greeks used spears, yes - they also used *shields*, shields that were much more effective against swords, spears, and arrows than they would have been against muskets and cannon. Those shields, especially in formation, severely limited mobility, though. The phalanx formation would have been worthless after the advent of cavalry and firearms. Polearms did dominate much of the world through the middle ages. Through that period, there were very few battles, most of which weren't so much 'games of chicken' as bloody, aimless free-for-alls.
I like Lindy, but his logic is flawed here. Pike on pike did happen, hopefully not often, but when it did it wasn't a game of chicken. It might not have taken very long before one side would break formation and flee, but that's another point. Pikemen, or any phalanx trough history, isn't something that you used on its own though. It's terrifying to meet head on, but it's quite slow and would need protection on the flanks and back. But anyway, did pike fight pike? It's still a matter of keeping the center just like with any fencing. And then it's the whole matter of desertion which would be fatal, (more fatal than fighting), so you'd have to wait until your whole unit broke at least.
Hi Lloyd just started watching your videos and they are pure fun. I do think that the pike push while it did occur was something that was actually avoided by commanders because of the immense casualties and your right who wants to lose all their soldiers. yet we do know it occured in battles such as pavia where French casualties were very high. there's even a famous engraving by Hans Holstein illustrating a viscous pike push and it was titled bad war. so we can infer that it was a sort of bayonet charge that was to be avoided.
Sekunda, "The Sarissa" Acta Universitatis Lodziensis Folia Archaeologica 23: 13-41 collects a number of early modern sources and manuals on the use of pikes. From what I recall one British (or possibly English) general was very critical of troops who advanced to just within poking distance and "fenced." He preferred his men to advance boldly and unflinchingly as a spiky steamroller. One of the key factors seems to have been how far troops had to march before a battle and therefore surreptitiously cut their pikes down to make them easier to carry.
lovely ranting as usual Lloyd! Good show! Always when fighting in blocks formations the tricky bit is not upfront but at the end of the formation. I think the fhalanx, roman legion they all had rows of veterans in the last lines to prevent the formation from breaking from the hind. First line guys simply had nowhere to hide so it was fight or fight for them. During the wars of Italy Carlo V and François I had both swiss pikes and Landsknechts and i'm pretty sure they did come to fight piketopike
Don't forget the sword and buckler men who hid in pike formations for the express purpose of weaving through enemy pikes once pikes had met, so as to deal close-in death to the enemy, nice and personal!
That situation is called the push of pike, and it happened pretty much as you described. Cavalry faces cavalry, muskets face muskets, and pikemen face pikemen. Sometimes they really got struck in, and people would work to create openings to run forward and kill a person or two, then return to the lines, but most of the time one side or the other just wasn't having it and just sort of stood there, at pikes distance parrying and giving a good show for the commanders. Most of the time very few people died in the push of pike, and casualties came when the musket or cavalry came around the flank and demolished pike formations, if the opposing pikemen ran first, you would turn and could do the same to musket formations. Check out Revolutions podcast where battles from the English Civil Wars are described (admittedly musket and artillery poor, but hey. Pikes).
@Gilmaris If you train your men to engage with pikes, then all going well they will never have to. If they are not trained and the opposition is, then they may find that they DO have to melee (or run away).
That's an interesting explanation. My immediate thought regarding the mutual raising of the pikes as the blocks closed together was a psychological resistance to stabbing another human being. For a variety of psychological reasons (if anyone is interested, Lt. Col. David Grossman explains this quite well in "On Killing"), soldiers tend to avoid thrusting attacks at all costs. Most soldiers instinctively go for a throat slit as a stealth kill with a knife as opposed to the much more effective thrust through the back into the heart/lungs. When bayonet charges were common, the two sides would often break off their charges just before closing to bayonet range (or one side would turn and flee), and if they were forced to engage, the majority of the soldiers instinctively used their muskets/rifles as clubs rather than penetrate another man with the steel. All that to say, my first thought was that both pike blocks would instinctively prefer to push against each other rather than stab each other.
The first video of yours I watched it I thought u were a nutter but now I logically think about the things u talk about I realise that u are actually pretty intellectual so much respect goes to u and u have a new sub ;D
A pike is too big to wield in one hand. One technique was to hold a pike in position, butt end on the ground, and right hand ready on the sword. If a foe gets into the formation, draw the sword. You would always use both hands to fight better with a spear if you had no shield and could keep foes at a distance. With time to swap to a sword, then you would, for use close-in. Spear + sword together was not what people chose, but might in desperate circumstances be better than sword alone.
i really like what you are doing good work :) . for the video i have to say that i have seen a painting of a battle in italy were pike formations were facing each other it was a massacre yes but they did it i think some times pike men will face each other
Regarding pike blocks and artillery, what I've heard in military history podcasts is that artillery at that time wasn't so deadly. But as it improved it was the actual think that made pike formations obsolete and soldiers started to form in lines to not offer a so easy target to canions. On the other hand this made caballery charges usful again after more than a century of obsolescence. Apparently.
The essential rule is that you don't cross the pikes.
If the pikes don't touch, it's not melee.
I think you are confusing Renaissance pikemen with Ghostbusters
@@AThousandYoung He was referring to crossing dicks and being gay. LOL.
@@Sandouras How the fuck did you even get to this conclusion?
The real question is, how did you connect this with ghostbustrrs?
@@tttable1270 he’s not a woman, unlike yourself
A few relevant points:
1) One of the reasons why pikes got so ridiculously long was actually because pushes of pikes. Obviously, if you think about it, if you've got these two formations coming together, whichever side has longer pikes is going to be at an enormous advantage - if you've got 15 foot pikes and they've only got 10 foot pikes, and you start advancing on them, they're going to have to get out of the way or else they're all going to die horribly, because they have to go five feet closer to stab you. It seems that pikemen sometimes cut down the length of their pikes to make them more wieldy, but this had profoundly negative consequences if you ran into other pikemen.
2) Doppelsöldner, Rodeleros, and halberdiers were employed in pike formations explicitly to help win pushes of pikes. Doppelsoldner had zweihanders and ranged weapons, both of which were useful in a push of pike - zweihanders could be used to break pikes or at least knock them aside and allow you to engage in melee combat, and if someone got in like that, your ability to fight was probably very poor. Whatever backup weapon you had was probably inadequete to a zweihander-wielding landsknecht, and if they had the ability to break up your pikes coming at them, you were in trouble. Their ranged weapons probably also came in handy; if you were facing off, and one side has ranged weapons and the other doesn't, then you're basically in the situation where you either have to march into their pikes or flee. Allegedly about 1 in 4 people in these formations were these specialists, which makes sense - too many and you damage your pike formation's effectiveness, too few and it doesn't make enough of a difference. Other armies apparently employed halberdiers in a similar role to the doppelsoldner. The rodeleros of Spain had swords and shields and were similarly employed in breaking up these stalemates.
So I'm pretty sure that pushes of pike really did happen. You're quite correct that pure formations of pike would absolutely not want to just march to their deaths in that sort of insane "walk into each other and die" sort of way, but as it turns out, the solution is not "they never fought" but rather "they had specialists specifically designed to break the stalemates of pushes of pike". The solution was to change the game in such a way as to win. The Swiss used halberdiers, the Germans the doppelsöldner, the Spanish the rodeleros, and I'm sure pretty much everyone had *something* they used to win these situations and give themselves the edge in pushes of pike. Or at least, everyone who wasn't stupid enough not to realize the problem that pushes of pike would create.
Incidentally, these other specialist solders were front-liners who were specially trained and, as a result, were paid double. This of course makes sense - if pushes of pike never happened, being in front wouldn't make it worth double pay. But given that they did happen, and they had specially trained frontline soldiers who were trained to break up these stalemates, it makes a lot more sense.
On your final point - the front row still is most vulnerable in a non pike vs pike situation. You're going to be taking the blunt of the force in a cavalry charge
I would speculate that no Calvary would ever charge into the front of pike formation. Being at the back might have the highest chance of getting killed by Calvary.
The tendency during the wars of the period was shorter pikes, not longer.
@@Pasavolante if yiu have specialusts you maby dont need longer, also if more handy you nid be able too support your specialists better
@@Pasavolante and a shorter Pike is easier to wield accurately if you’re trying to skewer someone’s face or thigh
There is a record of the Swiss Mercenary Pikemen and the Landsknechts (basically a German equivalent) actually having pike-on-pike clashes. The Italians who witnessed this (Because both sides had been hired by various factions of the Great Italian Wars) felt it was so ugly they called it "Bad War." Wikipedia has a nice, old image of what this looked like under their "Swiss Mercenaries" article. It's a reprint of a 16th century engraving so the possibility exists that it was rendered by an actual observer, or at the very least from a secondhand account.
It's a hideous image. There is a forest of pikes standing high about this crowd of men who are doing all in their power to stab, bludgeon, and throttle one another. The phrase "Bad War" really makes sense when you look at it.
I look at that, and it makes something about the Landsknechts seem to fall into place for me: the fact that they were also famed for having an unusually large number of men armed with large, two-handed swords. I'll go ahead and call them Zweihanders just because these were Germans using them, though I generally just default to the English word: "greatsword."
Perhaps these big "zweihanders" were used to prevent this "Bad War" from happening. Another image from the period of a Landsknecht with a large zweihander confirms that at least SOME of the men using these swords wore lots of plate. google image search "Landsknecht," and you'll find it.
So, what I'm suggesting may have been done is this:
You send a heavily armored vanguard of men with zweihanders forward, and they wade into the enemy pike formation, cutting the heads off pikes (which evidence from period art suggests these swords were sometimes used to do) or at the very least knocking the enemy pikes aside to make a hole in the line for themselves to enter into that formation through. Once they're in, they keep the enemy distracted, preventing them from offering effective resistance to your own pike square as it moves forward and "snipes" at the enemy pikemen all around the man with the big sword.
In other words, the greatswordsman's whole purpose is to be such a threat he cannot be ignored, but he might not even be killing that many people. He might just be knocking their pikes aside, and allowing his own pikemen to approach without that otherwise inevitable threat of taking a pike in the face.
I suggest this because I've been practicing greatsword lately, and I can already tell you that these big swords are terrifying in the melee. Huge, wide, sweeping cuts that use the sword's own inertia to keep it moving are the name of the game. Imagine this man standing now in the midst of your pike formation, and he can reach any man within seven feet of himself in any direction.
We think of a greatsword as being large and unwieldy, but remember that he can drop to the half-sword if he needs to. Furthermore, the men around him are armed with even longer weapons -- pikes -- that they do not want to drop, lest they lose their ability to serve their purpose in their formation. Their pikes are longer than his sword AND more unwieldy AND can only do him serious harm with the head, which is difficult for them to bring into play once he is past the first row because there is no room for them to lower it. Even if they could, he's wearing plate. So, they not only need to stab him with it, but stab him in very difficult to target places. Basically, the pikemen have the worst weapon they could possibly have in the situation he's established. To do anything about him without losing their pike, they have to fight him with only one hand -- and do so while holding a pike in their other! Sounds rather inconvenient to me, personally.
This is of course all just conjecture on my part, and I haven't the people, location, protective gear, or practice weapons to stage effective litmus tests. Still, it seems to me that with what I know of pike warfare from what I've read, this could be a major clue as to how and why we see the greatsword/ zweihander and the pike on the same battlefields together. It also might be a major clue as to how both of them were used, and the "Bad War" that resulted from pike-on-pike warfare might give a major clue as to why the big, two-handed sword came into use, at all.
Just some thoughts.
Interesting; I have heard of the greatsword-weidling infiltrations by the Germans.
Assuming they could get past the pikes, then I suppose the rest makes sense but I'd expect getting past the sharp bits is very dangerous! Also, assuming this, batting away pikes seems to make sense, but actually cutting off the heads of pikes seems like fantasy to me. People also talk about cutting off spear-heads with swords and stuff and I'm just like...wha....you'd think that with the spear being so popular in history, they wouldn't be so easy to nullify with a sword or axe hit unless the haft was put between two supports/clamped down and hacked at several times as if cutting a log.
Andrew Penman Proper wooden handles or shafts of weapons won't get cut through with a sword. Especially not when being struck right at the end.
Britt Gardner From what ive read on the subject, the specialized weapons such as 2 handed swords and halberds were deployed at the very center of the pike formations and not from an additional unit, which would make some sense because these pike formations had support from Arquebusiers. some of these formations had a 1 to 1 ratio of guns to pikes with the arquebuses (im basing this on the Spanish Turcio formations) being deployed surrounding the pike block on all sides i would imagine during a 'push of pikes' these men would fire directly into the flanks of the opposing unit to break it.
Now from the image 'bad War' you will notice most of the pikes forming this bird nest between the 2 pike blocks making both sides pikes useless in the actual fight after the initial engagement. I imagine that having 2 handed sword to be able to push away, or parry the opposing pikes to make room for your own allies to charge into the breach with there back up weapons (a Katzbalger in the case of Landsknechts) or to lay into your opponents with your sword.
Swiss formation forbid the use of the greatswords due to the constrained nature of these engagements, and the Landsknechts eventually switched to longswords and Kriegsmessers for the purpose do to there smaller size. But to reiterate these were men within the formation wielding these weapons and for the most part pike formations, including Lansknechts preferred halberds over 2 handed swords for this purpose i would guess because you have more of a chance to cut off the pike heads with the axe head than with a sword and it would double its usefulness when actually engaging cavalry.blows
On another note regarding halberd use, ive been watching battle of nations and although its not historically accurate by any means its interesting to note that the men in the larger matches wielding there pole weapons tend to offer more of a support role to the comrades who are actively engaging the enemy by wailing on there head, shoulders, and back. I would imagine that the halberd users within these pike units would be performing a similar role which could explain there deployment in the center of the units. while there fellows are engaging during the push these men are simply repeatedly raining blows down (probably with great effect since pike men generally wore little armor unless they were the front ranks.
Just something to think about.
Britt Gardner en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_of_pike
+Britt Gardner this theory seems rather sound to my under-educated mind
Lindy. Good vid. I live in Switzerland and recently visited the castle of Granson and there was a series of dioramas depicting the Battle of Granson where the Swiss defeated Charles the bold. In the description they referred to Swiss square formations of pikemen defeating the french cavalry. In the middle of that formation were the men armed with short melee weapons and the pikemen formed the outer ring. The Swiss term for such a formation according to the museum was "Gewalthaufen" which literally translates into "pile of violence". The Swiss are hilarious.
Illuminating, thanks! I just read about them and it seems like the middle of the formation wasn't only short melee, but also weapons like halberts. Those people were able to exit the formation for attacks. Halberts must have been really useful to break or bind enemy pikes to allow for this.
" 'Gewalthaufen' which literally" ...means violent heap!
Sorry, just adding what I assume was missing at the end.
Adam Tyson
it may be a display problem
Yes, we swiss love our halberds. The papal swiss guard is in fact still equiped with halberts. They do also have the same (modern) weaponery that the swiss army has. (Historically they also had grenadiers and other troops)
do you know Alan Larson , do you know Chris Tapster, I was a re -enactor ACWS and Heilbronn Commando,, , must have met you at kelmarsh hall,
@Aetius114 Yes, there were occasions when close melee occurred, and of course painters found this subject much more lucrative to paint than scenes of scared men in a stand-off.
I've read that the "Double pay soldiers" or "Doppelsoldners" of German Landschnect and Swiss formations were actually the wielders of Zweihander(2 handed longswords) or halberds. They went in first, in looser, interspersed lines in front of the pikes. Their jobs, besides acting as guides and NCOs for the pikemen, was to break, knock aside, up or down the enemy pikeshafts or just disrupt the oncoming line of pikeheads. This way, their own pikemen could attack without so much fear of the enemy pikes in their faces.
This is partially true, if a little misunderstood. They actually stood in the second line as the formations closed on each other and would side step into the raised forest with sweeping overhead motions, shunting aside the few forward facing pikes that were left and had small groups of axe and pistol (or in earlier settings, swordsman with bucklers) wielding men behind them to get into the pike formation proper, who then wrecked shop.
The Spanish tercio worked in a similar way, where they would made their pike formation "lockdown" enemy groups with a pike square, while men in the centre would periodically come through to the front and take potshots (I believe they were called arcebuceros). If you want a good example of accurate pike men being depicted in film, I suggest you watch the movie Alatriste. The pike tercio wasn't homogeneous in its composition and had swordsman, riflemen and halberdiers all mixed in the group, combining all of their strengths with few of their individual weaknesses.
Anras Rune
Alatriste is pretty good with the tercio fighting, especially a depiction of "bad war" where fighting was done with an aim to get victory rather than just "good war" fighting where mercenaries on both sides went through the motions to get paid, but no great result was achieved. Arquebusiers & musketeers could help reduce things, but period accounts repeatedly state that pike fought pike and shot fought shot if both types were arrayed together in a formation. That's a generality of course, but it's how things often went.
I love your videos, but I do believe that you often underestimate and overestimate the ways people CAN kill each other, and the ways they WILL kill each other. I think you're right about pike battles being gigantic games of chicken, however, you never really further explored the idea that pike formations may have stopped just outside of range, but lunged forward occasionally, fencing, for all intents & purposes, with their pikes until one formation cracked or a break was made.
Good point.
There you have the german adage: "Keinen Fußbreit zurückweichen." (dont shrink back an inch)....^^
I think the Tercio exemplifies your point.
Why is lloyd perpetually the same age?
@Segalmed Yes, the pikes would be upright almost all the time. It takes only a second or two to lower them, and they are much heavier to carry when lowered.
applicants must be over 14.
many lulz were had.
Maybe three hundred years from now people won't believe that soldiers equipped with rifles and machine guns would ever advance against other soldiers equipped with rifles and machine guns. Consider the battle of Flodden where two armies armed almost exclusively with pole arms clashed, so clearly that kind of fight could and did happen. Flodden was an extreme case because the side that gave way was massacred. There are many modern arguments a la John Keegan that certain types of combats never took place because they would be messy and men and horse would refuse to participate. Most of these arguments fall apart under a mountain of anecdotal evidence, or fail to consider additional factors. The fact is that battles are messy business and that people are perfectly willing to kill, not to mention capable of manipulating animals.
I sorta got to agree with you in general, if not in detail. Even though I know it happened, I still find it hard to believe that people used to line up and trade volleys. I try and imagine what that would be like from a personal perspective and I just can't imagine doing it.
On the other hand though, it's worth considering that pike vs pike results may well have been quite similar to the more well documented bayonet vs bayonet engagements of the napoleonic style conflicts. Here, despite the common perception, bayonet charges usually didn't end in melee. Mostly either the charging force was repelled or crippled by gunfire or the receiving force broke and scattered, circumstance and the discipline of the forces being the deciding factors. Yes, situations happened where both sides thought they could win and bayonets where crossed, but it wasn't really the norm.
It's worth considering all around that, even though there where exceptions, commanders did generally try to preserve their armies to whatever extent was possible, which in this case would generally mean that you avoid throwing pike formations at each other head on but instead try to beat them through a combination of superior ground, flanking, and fire superiority.
Personally, I think that there where two primary purpose of the pikes in these engagements. Firstly to specifically protect the musketeers from cav and other pike formations both in offense and defense. Secondly, to scatter the enemy and drive them off when they have become disordered and demoralized through fire. Still, this would probably be impossible to prove without a time machine.
ColonelSandersLite
I agree that musket formations wouldn't have stood at point-blank range and flattened each other, (which is what would happen if they opened up within the weapons' accurate range) one of the chief benefits of firing in formations is that a volley can inflict casualties well beyond the normal effective range of a single weapon. Under these circumstances it was possible for opposing sides to trade a few volleys without being flattened. In terms of the psychological aspect, modern soldiers today advance under heavy fire and do get killed or wounded doing so. Even when not advancing, you still have to keep your head above cover to fire at the enemy. When I was a paratrooper, I knew a guy who had a bullet ricochet off the carrying handle of his machine gun and send shards of hard plastic in his face. He didn't stop firing.
From the 18th century to the Napoleonic wars, when infantry were all equipped with early modern muskets, one side would usually end up giving way when the other got the better of them (a kind of fire superiority), which is how Napoleon's army was pushed back across the battlefield throughout the day at Marengo before reinforcements showed up and counterattacked the exhausted Austrians.
From the 16th century to the mid 17th century armies wouldn't have had enough firepower to drive the opposing force off the field with firearms alone. The fusiliers would only be able to get off a few rounds within lethal range before the pikes closed. Since we're talking about very large formations engaged at close range, it wouldn't have been such a simple matter for everyone to run away and reform, not to mention it would be fairly pointless since the firearm was no longer in play. In order for the fusiliers to 'soften up' the pike formations, they would have to stand within range of the enemy firearms for some time. Some armies deployed their fusiliers in separate formations while others deployed them in the pike formations. The fusiliers could get away from a pike advance but they couldn't hold their ground without pike support. If you can't hold your ground you'll wind up being slaughtered eventually. If you think about what constitutes superior ground for these weapons systems, there really aren't that many cases when one side would have won just because they were standing on better terrain. Fire superiority, as we've seen, would have been difficult for either side to achieve, and your final point, flanking, rarely happened. The point of flanking is to achieve superior numbers at the point of conflict. If the other side simply refuses the flank you might end up being outnumbered, which is why most successful attacks in history have been direct frontal attacks.
Your last point that one would need a time machine; come on man, we're talking about the historical period here, not the stone age. There are contemporary accounts. Paul Dolstein was a bridge builder who fought as a landsknecht in the sixteenth century, and he both wrote down his experiences and drew sketches. He makes it clear that at that time pike formations went at it and they got pretty nasty.
As much as I like Loyd's (is Loyd, isn't it?) channel, to state the pike rarely engaged pike is pretty bad.. but, unfortunately, is in tone with some serious revisionism taking place lately, like ""cavalry didn't really crash in to opponents infantry directly" or "pushing lines didn't really occur..or rarely occurred"..etc
Nevermind that we have lots (tons) of examples of pike on pike battles (or the terms..."bad war", "push of the pike"), the reason stated is that soldiers chickened out and didn't want to get hurt..damn the historical evidences,..
Following this line of thought, I fully expect in 30-50 years to hear the following: "in WW1, we have accounts of soldiers repeatedly and directly charging machine gun nests and dying in the thousands. Now, since nobody would want to do that, and take those kind of chances for bodily harm..this probably didn't happen, or not a lot, and the accounts are exaggerated.. What really must of happened is for the infantry to charge and either scare the machineguners in to fleeing or retreating themselves if the machinguners didn't run..,
Afterall, who would willingly run in to a hail of bullets (pikes)?? Right? "
Flodden was mostly a case of Scottish Pike being engaged by better-trained English Billmen,.
For closure, in the American Civil War, musket formations absolutley 100% stood and traded volley fire at close range. See for example the Battle of Sharpsburg/Antietam; the carnage was staggering.
Despite what Lloyd said there were actually quite a few historical instances where musketeers engaged with pikemen in close combat. At the battle of Lubiezow in 1577 the hajduk infantry of the royal Polish army charged frontally against a battalion of Landsknecht pikemen hired by the Danzig rebels, the hajduk fired an arquebus volley at point blank range and then fell upon the pikemen with their sabers. The Landsknectht were not routed but hand to hand fighting commenced for a short while, after which a squadron of hussars fell upon the pike block's flank, causing it to fall apart. The pike-less Huguenot infantry at the battle of Coutras also had no problem closing in with their perky Royalist opponents. I believed Alasdair McColla's men during Montrose's campaign might have also done the same thing, and Gustav Adolph certainly tried to make the musket salvo at pistol-shot range followed by a charge the standard tactic for his foot.
My conjecture was that the point-blank volley fire killed, wounded or shocked most of the pike's block front-rankers, causing a temporary disruption which allowed the musketeers to get past the pike points and initiate a close range melee with short weapons. This required a high degree of morale on the part of the musketeers, but history showed that with the right soldiers it could be done. Incidentally this was very similar to Roman legionary tactic: threw pila at close range and then charge in with swords! The musket volley however would be far more effective than the hail of pilum at wreaking massive damage on the opponent's formation.
Lloyd mentioned that well-disciplined pike square was largely immune from cavalry attack, what he didn't mention was that cavalry with caracole were able to reduce well-disciplined pike squares unsupported by their musketeers. And undisciplined pike squares remained extremely vulnerable to cavalry attacks throughout the pike-and-shot period, in fact cavalry remained the most decisive element in European warfare until the 19th century.
I must support your assertion that a pike block required its "sleeves" of shot & maybe a few light artillery pieces to form an effective combat group. Without the shot the pikes were vulnerable to an enemy commander willing to shift companies of short and/or horse to immobilize and then pound the block into a fatal loss of cohesion, and thus prey for a final charge from somebody. The Swiss were the first to use firearms to supplement & then supplant crossbowmen in their formations, following a defeat in which Italian crossbowmen had shot away successive ranks of pikes & halberds.
Your examples of musket versus pike are examples of the phrase "fortune favors the bold", which has its own place in pike & shot warfare. If the battle is going to be big blocks of hard-to-collapse pike blocks with sleeves of shot, something needs to be done to change the situation if a decisive encounter is desired. In certain situations a select company of brave men bravely led could accomplish wonders. As always the psychological effect that a unit of brave or desperate men who knew what they were doing could exert upon opponents who were not so brave or desperate (or just not soldiers long enough for the drill to sink in) is hard to measure.
Observations from the Bunker
Well thanks. Yes the Swiss did employ some shot to support their pikemen, however they did not manage to get to the next stage of the development in increasing the number of their shot to equate that of the pikemen like other armies of the period such as the Spanish tercios. The Swiss arquebusiers were also typically only employed in skirmishing fashion in front of the pike blocks, not massed together for volley fire like later shot formations.
Throughout their heyday the Swiss relied entirely on getting their pike blocks in contact as quickly as possible with the enemy, and they were most successful when they could take the enemy by surprise such at the battles of Morat, Nancy and Novara. When faced with an alert enemy with combined horse, pike, shot and artillery the Swiss on their own were generally a lot less successful, though they were famous for being too stubborn to know that they have been beaten :)
Aart Bruneel
Well thats why I included the phrase 'during the heyday' didn't I? And my comment on the Swiss was meant to address not Lindy's comments but that of 'Observation From the Bunker'. Neither do I address the other armies that employ the Swiss, but only the Swiss contingents themselves. Even when fighting as mercenaries for the French the Swiss often exhibited arrogance and contempt for any tactic but the frontal advance of their pike block.
Hi. Can you suggest reading material on Pikemen in combat or tactics? Also, have you read anything on pikes marching towards the opponent formation with their pikes aimed? Can they turn a direction while having their pikes lowered and aimed? How fast is their marching speed, I'd also be interested to hear your own educated guess as I know these questions likely has no records to validate with.
Shock volley followed by charge was the most common tactic used by Japanese. Their whole firearm design evolved around it. You had armoured samurai armed with muskets, that had dry boxes and sites close in give a volley then charge. They would absorb fire closing in. For example see Korean invasion. Walk through composite bow fire close in, volley then charge. It is very effective but you need armoured musketeers who are proficient in melee combat, which is an issue
we are talking about several different time periods here. In ancient/classical times there were pike/spear on pike/spear, but they were complemented by armor and shieldwalls. Late medieval periods, english civil war, and italian wars all did have Pike on Pike clashes. They were very bloody and generally ended badly for one or both sides, but unless they were made of completely peasants the soldiers usually had plate armor, or at least a cuirass and helmet, so it wasnt instant death but the weight of all the rows behind them pushing until one side collapsed. This is why the swiss and german mercenaries complemented their pikes with halberds and zweihanders, after the initial clash they could rush the enemy ranks with impunity.
The few times it came to pike on pike action, it most likely meant that one side broke fairly quickly. The Tertio for example is described to have destroyed everything it came into contact with.
This is why we see armies like the dutch and swedish (under Mauritz of Oranien and Gustav II Adolf) focus on mobility and firepower, with lighter armour for their pikemen and a larger ratio of musketeers contra pikemen. Especially the swedish also put a focus on lighter and faster firing artillery pieces on a regimental level, which could easily (relatively speaking) be moved to where they were needed to counter Imperial pike formations.
This period lasted about two centuries (1500-1700). Any generalization is likely to fail to capture the changes to warfare from beginning to end. At its beginning, firelocks made up 1/10 of the formation, armor was plentiful, and artillery was woefully inaccurate, immobile, and slow to load. By the end, the ratio of pikes to muskets was 1:1, armor had all but disappeared, and artillery technology and doctrine had advanced considerably.
Certainly, unit will and cohesion played a significant role in deciding early modern infantry engagements, just as it did in Napoleonic bayonet charges (in which the rout was more common than the clash). However, to suggest that the famed push of pike is a myth seems to greatly overstate the case. The presence in sixteenth century formations of specialist greatswordsmen suggests that these clashes did indeed occur, as do the historical accounts of the battles of Marignano, Pavia, and Rocroi. This is not to suggest that such mixed infantry formations were the be-all-end-all of warfare, we know the opposite to be true. Combined arms engaged in mutual support was every bit as critical then as it is now. Likewise, while infantry on infantry clashes did occur, we know that they were far from ideal, often resulting in significant casualties; the Italians referred to it as “bad war.”
Pike units were likely strategic units - offering cover from cavalry, charging enemy lines to break up formations, and potentially being maneuvered to flank artillery.
The 1600's were famous for maneuver warfare so you may well be correct.
Pike on pike was generally a slaughter. Pikes, however, grew very long. Therein lay their disadvantage.
You often hear tell that men used very long swords called beidenhanders (not generally zweihanders) on the doppelsoldiern (those guys making double money) line. The trick was that, when facing a 20 foot pike, your average man can only draw it back so far. Of course, then you have another row of pikemen to get by, who also have their own range. However, that line can't just stab anywhere, they have to go around their fellow man. These men might all be standing in the way of their dragoons or musketeers.
Generally, you don't need a big sword or axe, you just need to stop some of these pike heads, then get inside the line of heads. Let's say you're very good at this (you've got that baseball player's eye for swinging things. Once you're inside the formation of pikes, you can rush the opposing line.
Obviously, this is all risky business. You have to be on the front line facing the muskets first (after cavalry, of course), then dodge or disable a few rows of pike heads, then probably make it through another line of melee men like yourself, but the object isn't really to KILL the other soldiers across the way. That was the direct action, but your job was likely to break the formation. You see, a pike formation relies a lot on drilling and discipline. If the line breaks and the formation starts having to cover holes and turns at odd angles (much less has people dropping pikes and deserting), you can turn it into a slaughter. That's probably what you mean with a particular band's "reputation" helping. It might, but the winner is often that unit which has more discipline. It only takes your pike formation wall buckling and bulging to put you at a significant disadvantage, and if guns don't do it, close quarters combat certainly might (this also happened during musket-and-bayonet periods with the same basic premise, just swap pike heads for reload times).
But yes, two well disciplined formations that don't buckle under the pressure? Where men are dying to hold the line and no one runs? It would be a blood-drenched massacre on both sides. And, from all descriptions of these types of battles, they were.
Didn't the doppelsoldiern rotate in front of the pike square as the musketeers rotated behind it?
Wouldn't a beidenhander be exactly the same thing as a zweihander though?
Definitely. If I may do a literal translation, "Bidenhänder" means "both handed (sword)" whereas "Zweihänder" means "two handed (sword)"
so it is basically the same thing. I guess "Bidenhänder" is the older term, but I am not sure on that one.
Archers destroy pikemen.
Only if the archers are behind fortifications of some kind. Otherwise the archers cannot inflict enough casualties before the pikemen reach them. Arrows just don't have the stopping power required to break a formation of heavy infantry.
"cavalry is never going to charge in against a well drilled forest of pikes"
...and then the winged hussars arrived
During the Italian Wars 1494-1559 pike on pike action was quite common. Marignano, Novara etc.
Spanish pikemen, armored, and equipped with sword, shield, and fairly short pikes, did indeed advance straight into opposing pike formations. The Spanish pikes handed the Swiss one of their few resounding defeats by using their shields to lift the Swiss pikes and get in under their points. The well-armored Spaniards wreaked havoc.
Othe pikemen did indeed have supremely bloody engagements - "willingness to 'push pikes'" was a key assessment of your foe, and a major factor to consider in any battle.
In the movie Alatriste (2006) pikes are shown to clash, basically keeping each other at bay and doing some of the killing, while the guys who usually would be using firearms dive below the pikes and do some in-and-out knife killing by stabbing a guy who's attention is elswhere. This seems to happen after hours of battle when both sides are low on ammo and gunpowder.
great movie eh? lots of historical accuracy (especially in costume and attitude) >dat beautiful velazquez inspired aesthetic, and a pretty sweet viggo mortensen performance if i recall correctly. of course in the american release they decided to change the title to "alatriste: the spanish musketeer" ~sigh~
Another night of Lindy beige binges. So many topics, all like mini lectures. how i didnt find this channel sooner i dont know
@LucanJacups Pikes are excellent cooperation weapons. A man approaching a pike block has to fight not just the man in front of him, but several others at the same time, just to close with one opponent. Some very brave men tried it, and some succeeded, but after a while, they stopped trying.
Okay, I was a re-enactor for the the English Civil War period, which is around the 1600's, and I started off in the pike block, so...
1) the pike 'push' (raised pikes) is not realistic at all. It never happened in history, it was stupid, it was dangerous (I suffered cracked ribs when a block went over, which was the usual result of a push, or 'boar snout'), and it was there to make the battlefield look busy for the crowd. Pike fought point to point. They advanced on the enemy and stabbed for a few seconds before the front rank dropped their pikes and drew their swords (the pikeman's tuck) and pushed through to butcher the enemy pike.
2) The front 1-2 rank of pike wore heavy back and breast plate armour with tassets to protect them from being stabbed by opposing pike. This was provided for them by their regiments (there are ample records of this if you look into regimental finances and stores). This back and breast could also provide protection against shot from musket. Limbs were exposed but the pikeman wore a thick woolen doublet which offered some protection. Pikemen could also wear buffcoats - thick leather doublets that could be worn under the plate or as its own armour. Latter ranks often wore this, although those at the very back might not.
3) A pike rank would have half-pike, partisans and halberds at the edges. These were held by nco's and their task was to order the ranks. They also helped protect the sides of the block from skirmishers, and... to intercept and break the enemy pike line. Experienced pikemen also knew how to dip their pikes under the enemy points and knock the enemy pikes up, disrupting the line and giving you the edge.
4) If all else failed, it was 'stab-stab-stab-drop-drawsword-advance-stab-stab-stab'. That was how pike fought pike. In one battle, as we didn't take the tuck in with us (too dangerous), after the initial point work, we closed to 'grapple' and I and my opponent decided to dance instead. Yes, we waltzed through the melee 'cause we felt like it. And no, we weren't told off about it, either - it was all a bit of fun :p
5) Pike's main purpose was to control sections of the battlefield by being a big spiky obstacle. They worked with musket by offering them protection and mostly marched around the field. Not because they were scared of fighting other pike, but because when they did, they would be vulnerable to flanking attacks and cavalry. A well drilled pike block could wheel quickly and flank an enemy formation, massacring them in seconds if the enemy formation didn't or couldn't respond in time.
And finally...
at one battle, we had the entire Royalist forces present march in column onto the field, then turn and wheel as one unit to face the enemy. That was a line of over 2000 men (and women), both pike and musket, keeping formation as they wheeled through 60 degrees. Afterwards, in the bar, those who had been on the parliament's side admitted they'd been a little intimidated by the display as they hadn't thought that a bunch of weekend re-enactors could pull something like that off.
Oh, and the crowd loved it.
Oh, and one thing you might be interested in: After the third civil war in England, Cromwell got approval for the New Model Army of professional soldiers. These people were trained based on tactics that had worked in the civil war, and this included pike drill. Might be worth having a look at that to see how pike fought and what they fought against.
I'd just like to commend you on a very interesting and amusing comment.
Hunter Cat
How about the faces? I noticed that English Civil War pikemen tended to wear open faced morions, wouldn't this leave their faces very vulnerable to thrusts? I just couldn't imagine anyone but a crazed berserker charging against a sea of sharp points with his face unprotected.
*****
Well I imagined anyone alive have never seen real pikemen closing :p. The historical sources such as Blaise Monluc did describe some pikemen like the Swiss rushing at the enemy. Now I understand that reenactors won't want to do this for reasons of safety, but thats exactly my point.
Even if pikemen approached each other's formation slowly and proceeded to 'fence' with their long poles, I would imagine that the faces of the guys in the front rank would be instant primary target in a real fight. With five pikeheads facing every face, I'd say that the math wasnt exactly in favor of wearing open faced helmets. Even wearing three quarter armor plus a helmet with a bevor or a falling buffe as shown by many period artwork of pikemen front rankers would still be scary. Which was why Lloyd's point about 'push of pike' being more of a game of chicken made a lot of sense to me.
Yeah, but how well can you aim with such a long and not very nimble weapon?
I think I read that the reason that pike formations were not blown apart by artillery at least early on was because artillery was still not very mobile in the 16th and 17th centuries, and that many generals did not understand the true value of artillery. Many of the armies of the period were lead by nobles with little military experience, commanding fairly untrained militias and often relying on trained mercenaries for decent soldiers.
*****
Well Paramecium914 was also partly correct, artillery during the 16th and 17th century until the coming of Gustavus Adolphus was generally not very mobile, had a very slow rate of fire, were serviced by civilian drovers who often fled at the first sign of battle and were in general not very influential on the course of battles unless there were field fortifications involved. Although yes you were indeed correct that many pike formations (the Swiss being famous) could indeed move at a very fast rate if necessary, and they often rushed slow firing guns. Later during the Napoleonic War it became a death sentence for infantry to try to rush guns, although it did happen.
*****
I said drovers, meaning people who managed the horses who pulled the guns, not the people loading and firing the cannons, who obviously has to be professionals. If your civilian drovers refused to get close to the scene of the fighting, you'd be mostly unable to reposition your massive 12 and 24 pounders to a new firing position. Which was part of the reason why field artillery before Gustav Adolph were not very decisive; since the heavy guns could not be repositioned, they would fire a few shots at the start of the battle and then play no further part. Gustav Adolph introduced ultralight 3 pounder regimental guns loaded with premade cartridges which could be wheeled forward to support infantry attacks, but his heavy guns remained immobile. During the Napoleonic era the civilian drovers were replaced by special corps of military drovers, often disabled cavalrymen, which solved the matter of mobility permanently. Big guns now regularly maneveured with infantry and even cavalry.
That's exactly my point isn't it? By the Napoleonic war the rate of fire and mobility of field artillery had made such a quantum leap that infantry could no longer rush them in the open with impunity, and military commanders has to take into account how the enemy will position his big guns. Before that period infantry could and did capture artillery frequently by frontal attacks.
I wonder why light fieldartillery was not used at greater scale...a wall of mobile organcanons and six-barreled fieldsnakes with chainballs or other volley-guns, mounted on light carts must be devastating at close range...was it the costfactor?
Mike Romney
Not sure about organ cannons and other multi-barreled weapons, the impression I had about them was that they were more effective in theory rather than practice.
But light cannons of about 3 lb ball weight were used extensively as infantry support weapon ever since Gustavus Adolphus introduced them, and used in truly massive scales in some armies (Gustavus' army had up to 12 of these light pieces per brigade of about 1,500 men). Their immense firepower contributed greatly to the Swedish victories during the TYW; a Swedish veteran described that each cannon could fire three shots in the time it took a musketeer (still armed with matchlock) took to fire two.
An eyewitness of Gustavus' victory at Breitenfield:
"...[Tilly's army] received a horrible, uninterrupted pounding from the king's light pieces and was prevented from coming to grips with the latter's forces." - Raimondo Count Montecuccolli, Imperial officer.
In fact it's interesting to note that many Swedish failures (Alte Veste, Nordlingen, Lutzen) coincided with them leaving their little guns behind, having attempted to 'surprise' their opponents by force-marching through rough terrain,
Many military commanders later did not consider them useful enough to issue, but up until the Napoleonic war and even later they were still quite widespread in many armies until the introduction of breech-loading artillery and machine guns.
Mike Romney With regards to multi-barrelled weapons it came down to them taking so long to reload. They do have a small place of their own in artillery history though as ribaults were part of Edward III artillery train a Crecy where it was used in a filed battle for the first time.
Yes. I'm not saying that pikes never clashed, just that it was probably rare.
my dad introduced me to this channel and 3 videos later I am in love with this man and his channel. How can one make, standing / sitting in front of a recorder whilst talking about a weapon (not many visuals) so enjoyable.
10/10 channel.
Learning post-Medieval warfare in depth gives you this sense of a very slow arms race. Of course everyone thinks of muskets and firearms, but muskets didn't have as great an impact immediately as everyone believes. They're not the predominant reason heavy cavalry went out of style, and in fact heavy cavalry didn't go out of style really until the 17th century, and even then it was gradual. No, pikes were a cheap answer to cavalry, and as Lloyd touched on they were great at protecting more vulnerable formations, but they didn't attack very much in open warfare. What you begin to see is rapidly evolving tactics throughout the Renaissance, such that units began to be mixed. Musket and pike went so hand in hand that the Spanish just combined the two into something called a Tercio.
skykid shoot, the crazy part is cavalry was still being used up until the beginning of WWII in some nations. And in WWI you saw it in the east a lot.
***** once tanks became a thing and fighter plains became a thing they really outlived usefulness in the modern era of warfare. Sadly while valiant the polish found this out the hard way.
***** I'll not deny that but never the less the cavalry had outlived it's usefulness in terms of combat effectiveness.
NERD IT UP The Poles never actually launched attacked tanks with cavalry, the idea that they did is a product of German propaganda. For the duration of the war, the Wehrmacht used primarily horses in their supply line, so the Germans were also very reliant on horses.
Adam Peretz interesting.
I've seen illustrations from the renaissance though of pike formations clashing.
Battles such as Naseby appear to have been won by the heavy cavalry (i.e. Cromwell) seeing off the other cavalry & then hitting the infantry - pikes- in the side. It must have been damn near impossible to reorder pikes around a 90 degree turn unless you wheel the formation, which the opposing infantry are not going to let you do or by swinging all the pikes individually to face the attack, which would result in utter chaos. Cromwell was a tactical genius & every battle he took part in was won by his individual initiative at a crucial point.
The swiss guys he is talking about had basically no flanks, they had pikes on all sides. This formation is called Gewalthaufen.
Wouldn't that formation make them an absolute nightmare to maneuvre and coordinate? Even for a well-drilled group of soldiers, having most of your guys walk sort-of sideways or backwards at significant speed seems quite hard to pull off (let alone having them change direction).
Unless they all faced forward while moving, then reformed as soon as they stopped, that might have worked.
Also, what happened if they lost the first few rows? Since the center had basically no pikes, and their other pikemen were distributed across the edges, it seems like a frontal attack from enemy pikes could easily disintegrate the whole formation and rout them.
sander heutink I s that like a schiltrom?
Kiani Francis Kind of. A classic schiltrom consists of only spear- and pikemen, and is more circle-shaped.
This has for 12 years been the best description of this on youtube.
@OzClawhammer There are circumstances in which long reach is an advantage, and circumstances in which it is a drawback. If longer reach were always an advantage, everyone would have made the longest weapons that they could lift. The Romans did awfully well with short swords. If you have a pike, and I get to within shortsword range of you, your pike is useless.
@FakeKraid Oh yes, in war things sometimes go very wrong. If both pike formations believe that their only choice is to press on with an attack, or that they are bound to win...
@GreenEyedSerb Yes, there were fights in the earlier part of this period between pikes and men with other weapons, like halberds, double-handed swords etc.
@WoodyHaroo Yes, many men would have a shorter weapon to back up their pike. In the period I'm talking about, the musketeers were usually in a block next to the pikes, rather than mixed in with the pikes.
If pikemen were cheap defensive units, a well trained and well *armored* one could be quite a good at offensive actions against everything.
canicheenrage" a well trained and well armored "
The first ranks were usually heavy armored
I remember reading one account of pike warfare, I believe from the 1600's, that basically spoke to this. There was much bluff charging and retreating, and in the rare cases where they did fight each other, it was bloody business if one side broke while already engaged. Imagine your front like breaking and trying to run through the tightly packed formation behind you while the enemy wall of pikemen advances on you.
Brilliant recruitment poster at the end!
I love your no nonsense way of reasoning about weapons and combat tactics. Keep up the good ranting.
@89MikeW I have been told about this, but have never tried it. It is not an easy thing to test with experimental archaeology, partly because it requires the destruction of a lot of kit, and a fighting method that would be difficult to keep reasonably safe. But yes - two-handed swords were supposedly used against pike formations.
Pikemen DID clash into each other in late medieval and early modern period and they were well documented in paintings and written records which is different in nature of Greek vase painting. But, the manner they clashed was different than people would had imagine too. They kind of slowly poke into the enemy formation and sometimes break ranks and attacking them from the flank and rear instead of charge straight in like Lindybeige discribed.
Maybe pikemen were used as shock infantry.
They'd simply attempt to scatter the enemy by charging and feigning, just like shock cavalry would. If the enemy didn't waver, the charge'd be called off and they'd try again some other time.
Interesting idea. It's easy to think of a long spear or pike formation as rigid and defensive, but the advantages Lloyd mentioned in the video can easily apply the other way around. Considering it takes quite a while for a 15th-16th century unit of musketeers to kill or rout anything, I suspect the pikeman's place was largely a matter of forcing enemy formations to reposition. Much like earlier medieval armies were comprised largely of conscripts (taking the place of the musketeers) who could be bullied into repositioning by men at arms with polearms (taking the place of the pikemen).
I think the simplest explanation is probably that pikemen in infantry formations in the sixteenth and seventeenth simply serve to protect against cavalry. Remember that the effectiveness of the former firearms was very low, and salvo of muskets had no chance to stop cavalry charge.
Also keep in mind that although the musket range reaches up to 250 meters but shooting at such a distance is a waste of powder. Effective fire started from 75 meters. From that distance the enemy infantry could launch an attack, so pikemen also protect against such a situation.
Here's my question though: why didn't they just use shock cavalry then? I tend to think that they were only there to protect the musketeers. Sure they could be useful in other roles, but I tend to assume that it wasn't the intention to end up in them.
101jir
A couple reasons come to mind;
- Cavalry was expensive and a lot less available than infantry.
- Cavalry was more susceptible to missile- and gunfire, because they were bigger targets and more valuable piece for piece.
- Cavalry could not stay in a prolonged melee. Infantry could.
- Pikemen could not be counter charged by shock cavalry.
On a note, there are accounts of pikemen being used as shock infantry. They probably had multiple roles.
Serge Hamelberg
"Pikemen could not be counter charged by shock cavalry." - First read something about the Polish hussars, the French "gendarmes" and swedish cavalry. Of course, that the formation of pikemens could be broken by a cavalry charge. Winged Hussars were specialized in this.
However, most types of cavalry was not able to do so, which is why the musketeers were shielded by pikemens. Without them, they would be smashed in the charge.
"Cavalry was more susceptible to missile- and gunfire, because they were bigger targets and more valuable piece for piece."
You forget about the mobility of cavalry which made them much less susceptible to fire muskets and cannons.
"Cavalry was expensive and a lot less available than infantry." - You generalizes it. It depends on the region, on the steppes of eastern europe cavalry was sometimes cheaper and more accessible than infantry.
@LucanJacups Yes, obviously there was always the risk that two units would find themselves obliged to engage. It would be pretty horrible if neither unit backed off.
from what I read it was the "Push of Pike" issue, where the focus of Pikemen was not to kill the other guy so much as to push them back to the gunner could hadle them, so you were mostly aiming for the other guy's pike
Swiss pikemen wouldn't just walk towards you. They'd run in full sprint, screaming like maniacs, sending absolutely everyone into rout. Their real trick however wasn't that, it was that they had a mobile Pikemen vanguard, that could turn on the spot, charge, flank, when undrilled Pikefolk would barely be able to stop and start moving again, much less turn against the swiss who would literally run circles around them.
Pikemen carried no shields (obviously), but a lot of period drawings show them as being quite heavily armoured, and given that you don't have a lot of play, it's quite possible that standing in the front row wasn't lethally dangerous, since yours is the piece of armour least likely to be punctured by the pike, as there's no 'focussing effect' of the pike travelling through a narrow gap and thus having limited lateral play.
+Matthew Marden But you have to consider that there's several intervenients in battle. Let's say there are two formations, both with Pikemen, Heavy and Light Cavalry, Light Infantry, Heavy Infantry and Archers/Longbowmen. To win the battle you need to route or kill the enemy forces. That means you need to get their general, and a lot of troops. Archers are going to be firing constantly, thining down the infantry. Which then prompts a cavalry charge, which is called off because there's a pikewall, making the cavalry charge suicidal. However, those pikemen are probabbly being shot by the enemy archers, exactly to allow the cavalry to go through, or even worse, to allow the enemy light infantry to charge, between the gaps, allowing for the heavy infantry to close in in the confusion, effectively keeping the pikes busy, while the cavalry just rushes to the archers, or the enemy infantry.
What if your pikes had armor? They're not going to be as easy to kill by the archers, and they'll actually stand a chance against heavily armored troops. Remember, your pikes are not meant to be attacking, but defending positions. If you want to attack with a decent melee range, that's what spearmen are for, a whole lot more mobile to reform and move around the field.
+Lue Lee Pikeman armours certainly vary- certainly by the English Civil War you see pikeman armours with breast and backplate, gorget and tassets, as well as breastplates made with a slightly longer fauld, but with no provision for the attachment of tassets.
+Lue Lee That's pretty much how the Scots, Swiss, and Germans did it. Give the front ranks armor and possibly a small shield like the targe and have bands of Cuirassiers (both mounted and dismounted) armed with short lances and shields, a claymore/greatsword, or a halberd/any of the Scottish pole arms that served a similar function, to stride ahead of the main formation to back up the light cavalry/infantry and disrupt the enemy in preparation for the heavy cavalry/infantry.
Pikemen get demolished by archers due to lack of shields.
***** Any archer can kill a slow ass pikeman. If you didn't know, there are different arrowheads depending on what your enemies were wearing. Gambeson? Use broadheads. Chainmail? Bodkins do them in. Most foot soldiers had little armor, and certainly not full plate, so if you're a good shot you can wedge an arrow in the joints and kill the pikeman. Pikemen are meant to kill cavalry, as cavalry trample swordsmen, and sword+ shield formation defeats archers, and archers defeat pikemen.
@JesiennyDeszcz Thanks. I talk mainly as most people do - about the familiar. People tend to be more interested in the history that led to their world. Britain was little affected by what was east of the Germans.
This came up on my feed as I have been looking at Silver's pike material. Or how to fence with the pike against an opposite number also armed with a pike.
As Lindy notes, the object is not to kill everyone on the field, but to make your opposite number push back against the people behind him. Threaten him, wound him, make him drop his pike. The retreat will start from the rear, but in a close formation that would be because the people at the front were breaking back in a way that communicates "We're in trouble."
Winged hussars did charge pike blocks on almost every ocasion during the Swedish Deluge and suffer almost no losses doing that
+turntablized Hussars lances were even longer than the Swedish pikes, therin lay their advantage. It's a shame Lindybeige didnt mention The Deluge though.
+turntablized Winged hussars seem to be like katanas, more myth than reality.
well you can read about them in wikipedia but go ahead and read a book Polish Winged Hussar 1576-1775 by Richard Brzezinski
turntablized
Of course they existed as the elite unit of the Commenwealth; but they are sorrounded by myths (like katanas can cut steel etc.). When people mention them at the secound seige of vienna they claim they won the battle, when this campaign showed how vonurable they are to "modern" military as they were almost completly destoryed when persuing the retreating ottomans. The same goes for "charge pikeformations and crush them", there might be circumstances when this was a good idea, but in general it is still stupid. Its funny how the fall of the great power Poland to a minor power was exactly the time when they used the undefeatable super-power winged hussars (if you believe all the myths). They were simply heavy cavalry, very expencive (especially all the dead horses) but strong shock units. (And because they were the last true (european) heavy cavalry they were the best).
+turntablized
If you did actually read that book, you would actually know that Mr Brzezinsky did not condone your view. In general he believed that hussars did not charge pike blocks head on on their own.
5:20 Yes they will. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had a cavalry formation called Hussars, which used very long laces (longer than pikes) to charge them with devastating effect.
Hm, please investigate before negating their effectiveness. Their string of victories speaks for itself, I'd say.
I'm personally a big fan of the Polish Winger Hussars (from someone who generally believes most cavalry units are overrated), but even they would not be able to charge a properly formed pike formation. They had long lances sure, but unless they were 5 meters or more longer than the enemy pikes then they wouldn't be able to move with enough speed towards their target and stop in time.
The Hussars were successful against infantry due to supporting units, the psychological factor of going up against such esteemed warriors (also their 'wings' made them seem more numerous and more terrifying), and because they had good equipment, not because they were supermen or their horses are pike-proof.
Michael Henman
Polish hussars lance (in the XVIIth century) had between 4.5 and 6.20 metres, exactly because of the fact they had to fight Swedish pike infantry. They many times succesfully charged Swedish armies using pikes and the Swedes were one of the best European armies at the time and famous for their pike infantry and musketers.
The secret was the way hussars hold the pikes (the saddle had leather strap you put the dull end of the lance into, so the hussar only directed the pike, most of the force and weight was transfered to the horse through the saddle), and the fact that Polish pikes were empty (drilled) inside to be lighter. That made them very prone to breaking after impact, and they were much more expansive than regular ones, but it didn't matter - their effectivenes was great against infantry with pikes, and that mattered the most.
Their tactic was to charge, retreat and get new lances, charge, retreat and get new lances, etc, until there is no enemy :) They also often used pistols before retreating.
Usually the horse loses were very big (because horses were often wounded in charge), but human loses were surprisingly small, even fighting 10 times bigger armies - wounded horses can still get you back to your camp to get a new horse, lance and pistols.
Best known battle won by husaria against Swedish pike infantry was en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kircholm
Mr Odrzut
I think the Swedish historian Daniel Staberg has already expounded at length on the case of Polish hussars defeating pike blocks at Kircholm and Kluszyn. What essentially happened was that the hussars routed the enemy's own cavalry, which in their panic stampeded through their own infantry, disrupting the pike blocks. The hussars and their supporting light horse and infantry then fell upon these disrupted and morally beaten pike and shot and broke them.
The Polish hussar at Kircholm probably did launch a direct attack at the Swedish pike block in the center, the Swedish foot were exhausted from marching all night, were attacking uphill and were disrupted by musket and cannon fire of the Polish hajduks before the hussar charge hit them, and yet still this charge did not rout the pike block, although it did manage to pin them down for the (very short) duration of the battle. And the hussars paid a heavy cost in the lost of their very expensive and very difficult to replace stallions! So even if Polish hussars could theoretically charge through a pike block you wouldnt want to do it too often, it's a desperate tactic and even the Polish writers of the time period admitted that it to be so.
Remember that a pike block was a very resilient target, the deep ranks gave the men great moral fortitude and confidence in each other. At the battle of Ceresole, Marignano and Dreux French gendarmes too were described as repeatingly riding through enemy pike blocks (they had armored horses), and yet the Swiss and landsknecht were NOT routed! Just as it happened at Kircholm! Rather like hussars the gendarmes lost a lot of their horses, and only the arrival of supporting troops finally broke the enemy pikes. So simply impaling a pikemen on your lance and knocking his buddies by your horse's rush is in fact not enough to defeat a pike block - which was why pike blocks were adopted in the first place. Like Lindybeige said, missiles were the best counter to pikes, and it could work very well in combination with cavalry charges to pin down the pikes.
vgotnofingers Plus Pikemen are not alone. You might kill one but the ones beside dont simply disappear.
That ending phrase is gold.
@h1zchan Some had two-handers, yes, and it is said that they were used for fighting a way into a pike formation. How much chopping of pikeshafts they did is doubtful.
At the Battle of Marignano the French gendarmerie actually repeatedly charged Swiss pike formations and the Swiss were actually driven back. I can't imagine how they actually were able to do it, but they did. Although the Swiss blocks were heavily weakened by the point blank artillery fire and probably had a few gaps here and there.
The Swiss had insisted on advancing into the teeth of concentrated artillery fire, and refused to back off despite heavy losses. Marignano & Biacoccia were battles in which the Swiss beat themselves through pure obstinacy.
They are mentioned in some spaces as hacking their way into swiss pikesquares - nothing extraordinary, if someone believes it could be effectively done with tiny short sword on foot. (or rather extraordinary, as theres no evidence, that men armed with short weapons had any better chance to break into, let alone break up well ordered pikeblocks, than cavalry - very slim, btw. doppelsoldner is double pay man, or man paid twice as much as ordinary, generally taking up crutial roles in battle like being a part of forlorn hope, guarding standards, being in the leading ranks in charge, or defence - generally armed with a pike, similarly to anyone else, it has nothing to do with two handed swords - but that doesnt say some might not have used them.) Bayard is said to cut his way at least two times through the Swiss and Robert de la Marck is said to break into the Swiss formation and save his half dead sons, to name some examples.
While there are examples of few horsemen breaking INTO pikesquares and riding all the way through causing carnage, many times even surviving, thanks to their armour, these examples are rare and generally didnt lead to complete destruction of infantry formation - though its also true most examples to speak of are against the most elite infantry forces of their day, like Swiss at Dreux and veteran spanish/landsknecht infantry at the battle of Ceresole, while less well drilled, or less disciplined/wavering/whatever infantry was more propable to loose any order at such an event and and get cut down and dispersed. Still, of course, using horsemen as sacrifice to supplant, what could have easily been achieved by bombarding the hell out of tightly packed formation was rare.
As with Marignan, Id say despite no clear description of gendarmes breaking into Swiss formations, some might have tryed it, though even in abovementioned examples, it might be, they werent really ramming uninterruped wall of pikes and breaking into it. For most of the battle, as I understand, french cavalry would do massive damage to the swiss, but only, if they charged them dispersed and already engaged. They were maybe the only thing, that saved french infantry from being overrun and massacred, with their charges, that would force the disordered enemy to once again resume formation and defensive stance and force them from the ground they just got in infantry vs infantry battle. Compare Marignan to the battle of Novara, where french would be in the same situation, atrillery plus infantry in defensive stance against the Swiss - same setup except for feeble, or none cavalry support. Difference in results are staggering - at Novara most Swiss casualties were from artillery fire, which they quickly overran by rapid advance, infantry on french side was clearly inferior and once routed was simply massacred. At Marignan it returned several times from the rout and resisted in a battle lasting about 28 hours - the only difference being, that this time they had huge and bold cavalry support. So my own opinion is, gendarmes made the difference and most propably did much physical damage as well, actively mostly by engaging enemies, that were in disorder after gaining ground and proceeding to pursuit and passively by making them group tightly together to be pounced by missiles, something, that couldnt be done without them, as there was no force to stop charging swiss in more, or less open countryside from quickly closing in and capturing french artillery without field fortification and terrain obstacles, as at Biccoca. (Also, talking about infantry vs cavalry, especially in rennaisance, youre speaking about elite heavy cavalry being outnumbered by 10-20:1 - and this means locally, not as a whole, as infantry was in most instances packed in huge squares numbering 1000s, not stretched out on long lines - where only few would ever dare to actually ram into infantry, so you can clearly see, that potential to physically eliminate whole enemy force without breaking its order was converging to zero.)
gendarmerie are super heavy knights that even pike war cannot penetrate!
What about those "push of pike" situations where two opposing pike blocks are entangled with one another. That was the reason why halberdiers and rodeleros (sword and buckler men) were used alongside the pikes in order to break the deadlock of a push of pike. There were also the two-handed swordsmen who were supposedly used to break pike formations by cutting-off the tips of pikes.
+Demon Hunter
I suspect a lot of men in these formations were hesitant to kill even if engaged as killing would make you a target, and most people have trouble taking human life anyway.
I don't understand why they used swords to beat pikes. Muskets just seem so much better for the purpose. I guess swords were also somewhat useful against cavalry in an age before bayonets.
So my guess is,
Pikes > cavalry
Cavalry > muskets
Muskets > pikes
Swords > everything but master of none since:
muskets attack at range and retreat behind other troops
cavalry are fast and can run away (really!?)
Slow to beat pikes relative to muskets
While swords were relatively expensive and can take a long time to learn compared to muskets and pikes if not spear cavalry I don't think much skill would be required to kill pikemen or musketmen so long as you got in range first.
Yes, cavalry can charge home again and again but you so much as nick their legs and they're down for the count. Horse armor was VERY expensive. Horses seem mostly useful for charging the flanks of a unit that's already engaged, and while there certainly is a force-multiplier in that..
2 formations of men>1
That should be apparent to everyone.
interesting and cool video again! i always wondered about the pike tactics of that time, your explaination is quite plausible.
btw, your chanel is the best on youtube, i love your videos very much and watch them again and again. i always learn something new. thank you for posting this stuff :)
@JesiennyDeszcz I have been to the museums in Poland and seen the winged hussar armours, and have often seen these warriors depicted on the wargaming table. Even these elite, though, would not choose to charge steady formed-up pikes head-on when there were other options.
Interesting points, but a few corrections. You should indeed call the macedonian formation phalanx. This formation has been labelled "The Macedonian Phalanx" ever since Phillp II re organized the macedonian army into this formation and introduced the sarissa, the very long, two handed pike. And that brings us to next correction. The foot companians of the macedonian army did not use shields. They had to use both hands to hold the long pike. Lloyd got it confused with the old style greek phalanx there, which used spears and shield. Luckily, at the end, Lloyd did arrive at the right conclusion, that pikemen during the renaissance were primarely to fend off cavalry, since musketeers were very vulnable to a cavalry charge.
The Macedonian phalanx used pikes and shields, eventhough the pikemen used 2 hands for the pike, the shield was attached to their arm.
They did use shields, albeit the smaller convex Aspis (hence the Macedonian foot guard unit known as the Argyraspids or silver shields) rather than the larger hoplite flatter faced shield the Hoplon. This was in effect strapped to the left forearm, which reduced its ability to be moved somewhat, but not decisively so. all laterv Greek and hellenistic pike phalangites used it. Later Macedonian units fighting the Romans were even called the Chalkaspds ( bronze shields) and Leukaspids ( white shields)
Didn't Machiavelli write about a battle where Spanish Rodeleros broke a German Pike formation by affixing their formation with pikes & wading in with their light swords? The Pisa Home guard was modelled on this very pike-&-sword concept. This wouldn't have happened if pike-vs-pike warfare never happened.
Then again- the Pisa Home guard was a miserable failure- so maybe Lloyd might be right after all...
Rohit Patnaik Well they did fought pike vs pike it's just that he did not research for this video at all.He also ignores that heavier armored troops were deployed in the front rows.Or is short he didn't bother to read anything about pike and shot warfare:
“As soon as you be within reach of the Canon you must go on directly
upon the enemie (unlesse you be sheltered from his Artillerie) by this
means your souldiers are encouraged, you avoid the danger of the enemies
Canon, and you leave behind the place where your Armie stood ranged,
which ground will serve to rally and order the Battaillons which shall
happen to be routed. You must not give on so hastily, as that thereby
the Battaillons be disordered; and on the other-side you are to use a
marching pace untill you come within distance of a Pistoll-shot, but
then to double your pace and charge furiously, the Pikes being close
ferried , and the muskets continually playing on the Flanks, having
certain Targetteers in front which may shelter the Battaillon and
disorder the enemies Pikes.”
*John Cruso The Art of Warre, 1639*
Just slowy advancing was a good way to get killed.
@Skalman91 I tend to shoot them in isolated bursts. I usually shoot three to five in one go. I have an old envelope with jottings of ideas. The jottings accumulate faster than my shooting crosses them off. It might take me half an hour to shoot 3-5 videos, but several hours to edit them (esp. if, like the dreams one, I go overboard with the special effects).
Pikes serve two purposes on the battlefield - (i) they provide defensive anchors on the battlefield around which muskets, cavalry and over infantry operate, and (ii) they can be used offensively.
The experts at the offensive pike formation were the Swiss who would have the more experienced men in armour up the front and would also have a sprinkling of men with halberds or other weapons inside the formation in case infantry like a Spanish buckler & sword man got into the formation. In fact the whole of Central European warfare had to adapt to the offensive Swiss Pikeman by either copying or coming up with counters like the Landsknechts. The wars of the Hapsburgs (HRE, Austrian, Spain, Italy) showed just how deadly pikemen could be and battles where Swiss faced Swiss (different cantons were happy to fight each other) were exceptionally brutal.
So pikemen did enter melee and could be ruthlessly efficient in doing so.
What about the "push of pike" tactics?
In which pikemen did fight each other in several battles? Several pictures show pikemen going in at each other (though a bit slow and pushy) to try and get a good edge, almost like a backwards tug-of-war. The group that killed the most men rapidly could then steamroll into the losing formation which had to flee or lose everyone in trying to resist.
UnrealVoicebox It was not a diserable way of doing things, hence Hans Holbein (16th centuy) gave it the name "bad war". The side that caved in was likely to be massaced, so you're essentially gambling all in and can lose it all for nothing.
The Sealed knot is NOT Historical re-enactment. And for pikemen dying quickly, Pikemen wear armour that does protect from other pikes. Dont ever get info from sealed knot ''reenactment''. Doesnt mean that I dont like Pike-rugby :D
+De Prins van Oranje the armour that pikeman had usually didn't cover their whole bodies though, from what I can work out it was a helmet and a breast plate in many armies, it would have been more effective to carry a shield. As they didn't have shields we can only really concur (at least from the 17th century anyway) that pikes were there to stop the musketeers being run down by cavalry (in other words, the tercio and other pike and shot tactics, only to be replaced when bayonets came to prominence meaning pikes were no longer required)
actualy we have tons of evidence for pike on pike, both acounts that claim one side ran away, acounts that talk about horrid mellee and ones that sound like pike fencing. granted we also know that as firearms became more effective they saw increaseing numbers and the pikes became defensive, but in the early periods all evidence sugests pikes were the primary tool and muskets were for supporting fire (to try and soften up the enemies pikes) later the muskets would try to break the enemy and pikes were there to stop cavalry.
"I'm probably going to die, but I do get paid double, so fair's fair..."
LOL!
Good video. Makes sense. Especially loved the recruitment ad at the end, with its disclaimer.
Actually it's wrong....and pikes regulary fought agaisnt each other they were also armored,especially in the front rows.
So that's WHY I have pikemen fighting against musketeers in my Civ 5 games :P So I guess it was more of a rock-paper-scissors mechanic, the musketeers beat pikemen, the cavalry beat musketeers and the pikement beat the cavalry lol.
Artillery beats everyone who is out of their range and get rekt by anyone who's in range to attack them
"The horses certainly wouldn't charge at them, they're not suicidal." Eeeeeehmmm..... If it was up to the horse, it wouldn't even be near a battlefield. The whole ordeal would seem crazy and suicidal in their eyes and it would run the hell away from it if it had any say in it! Hence the excellent running capability of horses. ;-)
Cavalry in that era rarely, if ever, charged against a well-ordered pike formation; the horsemen would basically stalk the enemy pikemen, waiting for them to lose their nerve and break formation and *then* they'd swoop down on them.
There's a difference between getting a horse on a battlefield (after getting it used to the sounds of guns from a young age, mind you) and getting it to kill itself charging a wall of spears. Horses really won't kill themselves that way. They won't run off a cliff, either. Maybe you've never ridden a horse? They're very smart animals and even well-trained ones have their own ideas about how to do things.
"'The horses certainly wouldn't charge at them, they're not suicidal.' Eeeeeehmmm..... If it was up to the horse, it wouldn't even be near a battlefield."
I LOL'd. True, but I think same goes for the soldiers.
Horses meant for war PROBABLY weren't skittish when it came to the battlefield--why would anyone use skittish horses for fighting. But hey you probably know better. So anyways, no horse and no rider is going to say "welp, today's a good day to die, and that pike looks mighty shiny, let's go, Bullseye!"
FloppyHares I recall the standard roles for cavalry prior to Gustavus Adolphus was: 1) Mass Pistol Volleys using rotating "Caracole" 2) Chasing down enemies that have broken formations and/or are fleeing. Eventually you get something like what Gustavus Adolphus did in Breitenfeld; he had a contingent of musketeers for every group of Cavalry who would break the impact an enemy's" Caracole" through musket volleys, and would then send his cavalry with cold steel to break up the opposing cavalry. On the same battle, said cavalry captured the opposing side's artillery and turned them against their previous owners. You also get stories of Gustavus Adolphus also sending contingents of Finnish light cavalry to capture towns, whether or not they were saddled..
IMHO...
The pike had a long history of evolution like most other weapons so one cannot "generalise" how it was used unless you break it down into specific time segments.
The flow of availability of certain military assets seems to have driven the pike evolution. For instance the sword, shield and bow were great when armies could not field significant numbers of Calvary, but once the wealth of nations allowed greater Calvary numbers history saw the lengthening of the spear to pike lengths to limit the flanking movement of Calvary.
Then someone had an idea that a big porcupine-tank like formation of pikes could be used to force dynamic movement on the battlefield, and it became a very effective strategy.... Until everyone else made their own formations at which point the advantage was lost.
The pike formation seemed to be strong while armies had small numbers of artillery and good long range muskets. The first field artillery were only a handful per side and more of a terror weapon than actual killing machines. Once nations had the wealth to field larger quantities of accurate artillery is when large tight formations of all kinds seem to be discontinued.
I would not anticipate any good leader planning to put pike formations versus a pike formation... primarily because it is always a bad idea to fight a fair and equal battle. Most strategic planners would want some guarantee of superiority which meeting same formations would not give you unless you had vastly superior numbers.
My thought is that an army would only move a pike formation toward another pike formation as a reaction to block the pikes until your artillery or other counter troop could provide some flanking fire regaining the advantage.
Often it is better to be the underdog than to be equal to your opponent so you rarely see a troop type in direct engagement with it's opposing match, except in art.
Thank you all!
Great videos, and the posted comments from others are awesome as well.
@FaakedLillebror Yes, I was talking solely about the post-musket invention pike.
"A point about pikes."
I see what you did there...
Talk about pistol daggers and stuff.
I love the pikemen running from the other pikemen part. Funny!
According to illustrations produced during the 16-17 Centuries that I have seen, units of pikemen were interspersed with units of matchlock musketeers. Apparently the musketeers were the offensive portion of the line, while the pikemen were the defensive portion. It took a long time to load matchlock muskets and, presumably, the pikemen kept the enemy off the musketeers while they were reloading. Bear in mind that the musketeers did not have bayonets, which were not invented until the late 17th century. Once bayonets were introduced onto the muzzles of muskets, there was no longer any need for pikemen, and they disappeared from armies pretty quickly.
Why do you choose not to use the term "Phalanx" about Alexander's troops?
+Gabe Freiman The Macedonian Phalanx did in fact exist, but rather than hoplites they consisted of phalangites, (which is just an ancient Greek term for "lightly armoured man with a pike and a shield.").
+Myes Just adding to Gabe's point here. The reason it worked so well was because archers were rare, expensive, and took a long time to train. Pikes were generally screened with skirmish units prior to the melee stage of battle being joined, so it was difficult for another javelin, or slinger formation to hit them.
Also, I'm not sure what evidence there is that ancient armies used bows like the english used their longbows which I liken to a sort of artillery. They may have generelly had individuals picking their shots as opposed to a group of archers being told to fire in a certain way without nessecarily even being able to see what they're looking at.
Personally that sounds like it could be just hyperbole to me, but it does make it seem more likely.
Perhaps he was simply saying the Persians were cowardly? I've heard the greeks believed archers were cowardly but I don't know if that was true or on what levels of society etc.
@@albrechtshnoodle1128 The phalanx worked so well because archery was **** at Thermopylae they ran out of arrows before inflicting any casualties
in pike vs pike, wouldnt the guys with the longest pikes win?
Gustavus Adolphus shortened his pikes from the traditional 16 feet to around 11, while simultaneously improving the neck of the pike, making the spearhead less susceptible to being cut off.
that is a fact yes, but when you include other factors like terrain and quantity and quality, weight and how long you have been awake and so on...... long pikes are heavy, and must/should be used two hands on, which makes you vulnerable. So when all comes to all, longer pikes might have a advantage, but also a disadvantage :)
SpiritCock
Where did you read that Gustavus Adolphus ordered his pikes to be shortened? As far as I knew this only applied to his Foot Guards which carried half pikes, the rest of his foot retained their long poles.
SirFuzzyTheWUzzY
During the battle of Ancrum Moor the Scots were said to owe their victory partially due to the fact that their pikes were quite a bit longer than the English. I am sure there were other examples from history.
Lindybeige mentions several times that pike blocks were quite vulnerable to artillery. I would like to point out that in the time pikes were ascendent, artillery was primarily siege equipment, and rarely played a part in field battles. The existing guns were very heavy, slow firing, and mounted on clumsy carriages; any pike block could simply walk out of range, or charge the crew and kill them, in the time it took to ready a gun to fire. The introduction of effective, maneuverable field artillery, first used in large numbers by the Swedes in the 1620s, spelled the end of pike blocks as effective field troops.
I remember playing Cossacks: Art of War, and that's precisely what happened. Pikemen would kind of just awkwardly fight against other pikemen. Decimate cavalry units. Would get somewhat gunned down by musketeers but not for long before musketeers started backing off, spreading, and fleeing a bit left and right. But then artillery would just massacre them horribly at range.
cavalry won't charge pikes? clearly you've never played Rome II: Total War, they always charge! and die...
Horses aren't as dumb as humans. They will NOT advance against something obviously dangerous. They wil shy, buck, even throw their riders is someone is stupid enough to try to force them
@@colbeausabre8842 This was a joke about the AI in Rome II: Total War. I'm well aware that charging pikes with cavalry is a terrible idea in real life.
pikes were the ak-47s of their time. they weren't the most effective but most certainly the cheapest to manufacture and arm a mass of troops with plus the most reliable they poke holes 100% of the time. certainly less expensive than arming everyone with muskets. lets not forget that manufacturing wasn't at it's most efficient in the renaissance it took a lot of time to make a musket in those days. so do you send your troops out with half nothing half muskets not you send them with half pikes and half muskets until such time you could arm all your troops with muskets.
There were battles, particularly in the early part of the 16th century, describing "the terrible push of pike." But in the 17th century as a larger portion of infantry were armed with arquebuses and later matchlock muskets, there were fewer clashes between the pike blocks in battle.
@papaburger If pikes were to fight pikes, then perhaps they would have carried shields, but if they were for holding off cavalry... fits the theory.
Sorry, Lloyd, but your rationale here makes no sense to me. By this logic, no two groups of soldiers with any sort of two handed pole arm would ever had clobbered each other. But pole arms dominated the battlefields of Europe (and one might argue, of the entire world) long before fire arms got remotely efficient. How? Were all battles not involving shields just games of chicken for centuries on end? Or did human psychology take a radical shift starting with the Renaissance?
Well in the Musket era the bayonet charge was essentially a game of chicken - people generally over-estimate the amount of fighting people do when they know they're probably going to die. Spear formations aren't really deadly for guys with shields and armour and lots of friends - but pikemen as we imagine seem to have none of these things. We tend to get so caught up in history we forget that the average soldier is just a guy with a wife and kids a long way from home - he's not going to throw himself into his death if he can possibly avoid it.
+Ameretat010 It seems to me like there are a lot of variables you may have overlooked here: before the industrial revolution, most combat was sieges, not battles, because battles were dangerous and impractical. By the same token, there were relatively few professional armies in the middle ages, with most soldiers being conscripts or volunteers with little or no training, who likely chose the weapons that they thought would give them the best chance of either avoiding a fight altogether or not getting hurt if they were in one, meaning range and intimidation likely contributed to the choice. Given a lack of training and experience, it's unlikely many would have used sophisticated tactics such as maintaining formation - hence Arnaud Amalric's advice to the Crusaders: "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius", popularly interpreted as "Kill them all, let God sort it out". You seem to be assuming that medieval warfare consisted primarily of battles between disciplined, well-equipped units in tight formations, rather than sieges between panicky messes of people running every which way, throwing everything they can at anyone who they think might kill them.
notoriouswhitemoth What does the frequency of battles or the ratio of battles per sieges have to do with anything? Of course battles have always been few compared to sieges, but that's not the point. The point discussed in this video is what happened when there actually was a battle - under specific circumstances (pike square vs pike square) in a specific era.
What Lloyd is saying (what doesn't make sense to me), is that pike vs pike virtually never happened during the pike&shot era. We know pike vs pike happened during the Hellenistic period - why would they not happen in later eras? Because later pikemen stopped wearing shields? Well if those small shields strapped to the soldiers arms in antiquity made so much of a difference, I think they would have reappeared at some point, don't you think?
Would the use of soldiers in formation, armed with spears, be viable - or even possible - in a siege? *That's* the relevance of the rarity of open battles. The video is specifically about "pike and shot", a strategy that was only in use for about 200 years, whereas your counter-arguments seem to come from outside that fairly short period.
The ancient Greeks used spears, yes - they also used *shields*, shields that were much more effective against swords, spears, and arrows than they would have been against muskets and cannon. Those shields, especially in formation, severely limited mobility, though. The phalanx formation would have been worthless after the advent of cavalry and firearms.
Polearms did dominate much of the world through the middle ages. Through that period, there were very few battles, most of which weren't so much 'games of chicken' as bloody, aimless free-for-alls.
I like Lindy, but his logic is flawed here.
Pike on pike did happen, hopefully not often, but when it did it wasn't a game of chicken. It might not have taken very long before one side would break formation and flee, but that's another point.
Pikemen, or any phalanx trough history, isn't something that you used on its own though. It's terrifying to meet head on, but it's quite slow and would need protection on the flanks and back.
But anyway, did pike fight pike?
It's still a matter of keeping the center just like with any fencing. And then it's the whole matter of desertion which would be fatal, (more fatal than fighting), so you'd have to wait until your whole unit broke at least.
Hi Lloyd just started watching your videos and they are pure fun. I do think that the pike push while it did occur was something that was actually avoided by commanders because of the immense casualties and your right who wants to lose all their soldiers. yet we do know it occured in battles such as pavia where French casualties were very high. there's even a famous engraving by Hans Holstein illustrating a viscous pike push and it was titled bad war. so we can infer that it was a sort of bayonet charge that was to be avoided.
Sekunda, "The Sarissa" Acta Universitatis Lodziensis Folia Archaeologica 23: 13-41 collects a number of early modern sources and manuals on the use of pikes. From what I recall one British (or possibly English) general was very critical of troops who advanced to just within poking distance and "fenced." He preferred his men to advance boldly and unflinchingly as a spiky steamroller. One of the key factors seems to have been how far troops had to march before a battle and therefore surreptitiously cut their pikes down to make them easier to carry.
lovely ranting as usual Lloyd! Good show!
Always when fighting in blocks formations the tricky bit is not upfront but at the end of the formation. I think the fhalanx, roman legion they all had rows of veterans in the last lines to prevent the formation from breaking from the hind.
First line guys simply had nowhere to hide so it was fight or fight for them.
During the wars of Italy Carlo V and François I had both swiss pikes and Landsknechts and i'm pretty sure they did come to fight piketopike
Don't forget the sword and buckler men who hid in pike formations for the express purpose of weaving through enemy pikes once pikes had met, so as to deal close-in death to the enemy, nice and personal!
Sounds like a confusing version of Historical ‘Rock Paper Scissors’ is in the making! 👍🏻😃
Very long spear - two-handed.
@PaulkyArcher In the earlier days, yes. I didn't deal with these.
That situation is called the push of pike, and it happened pretty much as you described. Cavalry faces cavalry, muskets face muskets, and pikemen face pikemen. Sometimes they really got struck in, and people would work to create openings to run forward and kill a person or two, then return to the lines, but most of the time one side or the other just wasn't having it and just sort of stood there, at pikes distance parrying and giving a good show for the commanders. Most of the time very few people died in the push of pike, and casualties came when the musket or cavalry came around the flank and demolished pike formations, if the opposing pikemen ran first, you would turn and could do the same to musket formations. Check out Revolutions podcast where battles from the English Civil Wars are described (admittedly musket and artillery poor, but hey. Pikes).
The observation did not disappoint.
@Gilmaris If you train your men to engage with pikes, then all going well they will never have to. If they are not trained and the opposition is, then they may find that they DO have to melee (or run away).
I really like your videos and their subject matter.
That's an interesting explanation. My immediate thought regarding the mutual raising of the pikes as the blocks closed together was a psychological resistance to stabbing another human being. For a variety of psychological reasons (if anyone is interested, Lt. Col. David Grossman explains this quite well in "On Killing"), soldiers tend to avoid thrusting attacks at all costs. Most soldiers instinctively go for a throat slit as a stealth kill with a knife as opposed to the much more effective thrust through the back into the heart/lungs. When bayonet charges were common, the two sides would often break off their charges just before closing to bayonet range (or one side would turn and flee), and if they were forced to engage, the majority of the soldiers instinctively used their muskets/rifles as clubs rather than penetrate another man with the steel. All that to say, my first thought was that both pike blocks would instinctively prefer to push against each other rather than stab each other.
I could listen to him all day.
The first video of yours I watched it I thought u were a nutter but now I logically think about the things u talk about I realise that u are actually pretty intellectual so much respect goes to u and u have a new sub ;D
A pike is too big to wield in one hand. One technique was to hold a pike in position, butt end on the ground, and right hand ready on the sword. If a foe gets into the formation, draw the sword. You would always use both hands to fight better with a spear if you had no shield and could keep foes at a distance. With time to swap to a sword, then you would, for use close-in.
Spear + sword together was not what people chose, but might in desperate circumstances be better than sword alone.
@imperialus11 I doubt that you are suggesting that the cavalry charged headlong into steady formations of pikes, though.
i really like what you are doing good work :) . for the video i have to say that i have seen a painting of a battle in italy were pike formations were facing each other it was a massacre yes but they did it i think some times pike men will face each other
Regarding pike blocks and artillery, what I've heard in military history podcasts is that artillery at that time wasn't so deadly. But as it improved it was the actual think that made pike formations obsolete and soldiers started to form in lines to not offer a so easy target to canions.
On the other hand this made caballery charges usful again after more than a century of obsolescence. Apparently.
@Royalemperorblue To avoid confusion with hoplite phalanx.