Pike Combat

[Casper Bradak]

Hehe I've tried that actually. From my bit of experience with that, I'd say the popular idea of greatswords whacking the heads of pikes is quite an exageration. That would seem more like a lethal waste of effort. What it seems to excel at is moving aside a swath of pikes and causing a lot of up close damage after it makes the opening.

[Guest]

Jamie said "My understanding is that once combat got too close for pike use (pikes were usually pretty darned long, 12-18 feet or so) the pikemen had a backup weapon"

according to Machevelli's "Art of War" at the point when the enemy closed with the pikemen the pikes would retreat, allowing the sword & sheild men to come foward and counter the now close enemy. after withdrawing from the front the pikes would then reinforce the flanks and rear where combat has yet to close. i am sure they had sidearms but the pike itself was too vaualble against a charge for it to be dropped except in the most dire circumstance.

off of the top of my head the pike row was 4 men deep when using 16-18 foot pikes(3 deep for standard spears). this allows all the ranks to weild the weapon at the same time. The first man held his pike low, and each behind him sucessively higher, forming a very comfortable wall of pointy steel. these figures may be a bit off, as i havent read through the book in some time.

[DavidEvans]

4 deep is very shallow with pike, there's no weight to shock an enemy line. Swiss pike formed into very, very deep bodies 20 men deep plus with pike growing from 16 to 22 feet. Spanish again formed deep bodies. The Dutch started to use smaller bodies in the 1560's ish, with the standard depth being only 6 men by the 1620's, by this stage the musket did most of the killing

[Jamie Fellrath]

Interestingly enough, I just got back from a trip to the UK where I was fortunate enough to be able to visit the Royal Armories at Leeds, England.

They had a life-sized re-creation of two knights' charging against a group of 3 pikemen and a matchlock in the War section, and interestingly, two of the pikemen were depicted with what seemed be arming swords. The other had a hand-and-a-half sword... perhaps 40-42" long at his waist. That surprised me, I was expecting something shorter. I took a few pictures of that display and will post them when I get some of that stuff on my computer (got in late last night and haven't had a chance to download the pics from the camera).