What kind of tactics did pikemen use against knights and cavalry?
Did they take the horse first, or the knight?

My period....ie late 16th Century early 17th. The Horse, which is partly why you get lots of Ritter with pistols who aim to break up the pike with shot.

At the battle of Kortrijk which is seen as important because militia won over mounted nobility the 'pike' was obviously used in any way possible but proved effective when used to push-pull the rider off his horse.

To me personally it is very good to read that the highly succesfull Mamluks avoided direct contact with massed infantry as a golden rule.

Peter

The Swiss are said to have used halberd men mixed into the formations to dismount and dispatch any horsemen that made it past the pikes.

I've read a bit here and there about pike tactics, from the Swiss halberdmen to finish the fallen, to the Spanish Rodellos (spelling?) who broke up the "Push of Pike" if it ever arose.

One thing I've always wondered though...why on EARTH would cavalry EVER charge the formation? Why didn't they direct their archers to rout them instead?

M.

Because the head on charge still worked from time to time.
16th century plate armour is sufficient to take a pike in the chest at full speed.
In order for the pikeman to push you out of the saddle you need to be standing still. Most of the time, charging cavalry would break their lances on the fist rank of pikes, then retreat. Then the second wave of cavalry would hit.
If this works, the infantry will not have the posiblity to pull you of the horses, or finish you if your horse falls, because they'll be busy defending themselves against your friends.

Heavy lancers survived a hundred and fifty years of pikes and helbards; Widespread firearms, however, soon drove them from the battlefield.

And, while a pikeman might do bad things to a knight, its nothing compared to what the knight might do to HIM... ;)

How tight where these ranks, exactly? That is, how much space where there between men? I don't immagine it would be much.

And when you say halberders are "intermingled" with the pikemen, does that mean they alternate within the rank (every third man has a halberd) or within the body (every X row has Y halberds)?

M.

Sometimes cavalry and infantry really did collide - I just cited a case in the thread on the "thrusting lance."

http://l-clausewitz.livejournal.com/141888.html

Very good stuff!

A non-expert comment about the japanese experience: As noted, the original primary weapon of the samurai was a long bow. This hardly lends itself to shock action, and certainly not to massed cavalry shock action. As time went on, the sword and spear (and polearms) become more important to the samurai, but it is never clear to me that they ever adopted the couched lance. Instead, they seem to have chosen a two-handed method of wielding the spear; which again doesn't particularly lend itself to massed cavalry action (just consider the clearance needed for each warrior!). I have seen a statement in a war gaming context that samurai horsemen rarely acted as purely horse units, but usually had infantry runners mixed in with them (like the ancient Germans and sometimes the Romans did). In such a case, the massed cavalry charge would be an unlikely event.

Precisely. And the thing about the mounted bushi being intermingled with (and supported by) foot retainers is not just a wargaming trick, but probably an actual tactical paradigm used on the battlefield. Just check Farris's or Friday's books.

I don't think a two-handed lance would have prevented effective shock action in close formation, though. After all, the Parthian, Sassanid, and Late Roman cataphracts all used two-handed lances and they were known as charging in a closely-packed formation, though they were also generally armed with bows and could engage in shower shooting. The Scythians, Sarmatians, or both also used two-handed lances for their armored horsemen, though we have less evidence about how closely their horsemen would form up in practice.

(And there is some evidence that many of the Germanic horsemen in the late Roman army--as well as those in some of the Romano-Germanic successor kingdoms--also wielded their lances two-handed!)

So, the Japanese horsemen's capability for massed shock action is still in dispute, but I don't think their method of wielding the spear two-handed would have been an issue. It's simply a lack of solid evidence for Japanese horsemen charging in solid, massed formations.

As far as I've gathered, most of the great cavalry mash-ups (Banocburn, Agicourt, Courtai, and so on) where the result of a lack of tactics.
This would either be because of the terrain, or because the attackers where so superior in numbers that they didn't feel that tactics was necessary.

Back on topic, it seems to me that targeting the horse would leave you open for the rider's attack, and thus be a bit counter-intuitive. However, well disciplined troops will do whatever they are told to do.
I'm under the impression that at least in Cav to Cav engagements, the comander would make the call on a case to case basis. Often ANY order is better than none.