Ah I see. My first encounter with that word was in the game "Medieval 2: Total War" and was suspicious as to why my units of spearmen would ever want to form a circle of spears -- I couldn't protect anything with them and only seems to serve the purpose of letting my units be surrounded.

M.

Schiltron may not have been the best choice of term for what I meant, it's just what came to mind. I think the actual shape of the formation is not terribly important to this term, it would have varied acccording to terrain, enemy movement, any flanking obstacles, etc., but may be distinct from a square or rectangular formation of ordered ranks or lines (not sure here, going mostly on context and inference).
Where I said "schiltron" you can probably interpose any term for a closely ordered, mostly static infantry formation.

Well, a schiltron is primarily a formation to resist heavy cavarly.

Infantry that is not deply ranked up will have a very hard time resisting heavy cavalry. If in skirmish order or a single line, the cavalry will simply hit a flank, ride it down, and move on before the infantry can mount a counterattack.
Once the infantry is deeply ranked up, well disiplined, and/or dug in, the Hit, buldoze and run tactctics of the cavalry no longer works.

In small scale engagements it works extremely well, though. Which would explain why early medevial knights developed "Attack at once no matter the numerical odds" doctrine, which would lead them to such humiliating defeats in the early 14th century.
By that time they had been doing it quite sucsessfully for almost 200 years. Otherwise, they would have developed more advanced tactics.
The french knights charging 15 times at Crecy, uphill, against prepared defenses, heavy infantry and about 7000 archers, is reminicent of infantry squares walking into machinegun fire during WW I.
It USED to work very well, so one keeps doing it...

Since heavy cavalry was more cost effective to maintain as feudal troops, infantry was largely ignored by the elites of the major high medevial kingdoms.
The exceptions where the scandinavian countries, which lacked a knightly elite, and based their armies on mass levvies, and the italians, which, being mostly smaller city states, fielded milita armies.
The result was a circle effect, where cavalry is more usefull, thus the infantry is downlplayed, making the cavalry even more dominant.
The factions that started fielding effective infantry in the 1300's didn't have heavy cav, and so had to prioritze infantry, which came as a shock to the knightly elite, that where used to riding down brigands with little resistance.

Jean
I don't know if this will help or not on your commit on group cohesion.

We trained as a small group of three shields and a spearman. We were then attached to 2 other teams of three and one whom in turn was attached to a line. Any time we became separated, we made sure to find our teammate/ or the other two teams and then the line. We had squads on the opposing side that did nothing but breakup lines and open up holes. Closing those holes was imperative. Death of members also made us re-team with other teams and keep the line intact.

It was not easy when so many people were all around you swinging and it was hard to tell who was ally and who wasn't. Thus you got to know your teams/ groups/lines very well.
You train in small teams then train with other teams and then with whole lines consisting of multible teams.
This worked very well.
I always got front and center teams to hold against opposing line chargers. That always hurt and more than once found myself flat on my back and scrambling to get back to my team. If I didn't get up fast enough, I was asked if I was dead to which I promptly replied, "No, but if let me get up I'll buy you a beer!" Beer always saves the day! :lol:

I've often wondered how two formations of spears would fare against each other. I am assuming a levy spear man would have some sort of backup weapon, no?

M.

Ah yes, the push of pike. I figured early medieval spear combat would have been similar to that.

Also, a "shield man" mentioned above -- do they simply carry the shields for the soldiers? I know of middle-eastern shield bearers who carried large wicker shields for archers in the bronze/iron age.

M.

Shield man in this sense is an SCA term, not a historical term; though military riot police use the same setup with batons and shields. The concept is the same in both contexts. Shieldmen form the front rank, and carry no weapon of only a sidearm (pepper spray, short sword, etc.).

The shieldman's job is not to kill per se, but rather to dig in behind his shield and protect the second and third rank but staying alive and fending off charges. The second rank is comprised of spearman wielding twohanded spears, who do the actual killing.

In the riot version of this, the shieldman has no weapon at all, because he is likely to get sucked into the crowd, and we don't want to arm the rioters. He carries only a scutum, held in both hands. The rank behind carries long batons. These were about for feet long if memory serves. I was a shieldman, so I never really got familiar with the baton. This was several years ago, so I don't know what they use now.

It is a good system, but was this ever done historically?

I'd think dedicated shield bearers would mean less stabbing power in the front ranks.
Also, even two handed spearmen might carry shields, on guiges.

If you are going to carry shields, you might as well carry a spear, and throw it on contact before getting out your swords.
There are however litterary sources that talk about shield carriers. The one instance I remember is from a naval engagement, though.

Well, my theory is that the romans discarded their spears exactly to force their legionaries into decisive close combat.

The norwegians laws at least state "spear, shield and axe" as the minimum requirement, from the late viking ages, up to 1278, where the law is updated. The basic kit remains the same, but in addition one starts to demand better kit for those with higher income.

I'd just like to point out that no matter what the minimum requirement for the militia, If I were called up, you'd be damn sure that I would have carried a small sidearm in addition to the spear. Probably some small hafted weapon like a warhammer.

Could it be that the carrying of such an additional weapon was such common practice that it wasn't mentioned in the laws?

I do know the Greeks basic unit was their spear men, with their swords being a weapon of absolute backup. I have never tried spear fighting myself, but I had imagined that a unit armed with said swords could "slide" into the enemy and take away the usefulness of a spear, and turn it into a liability. Actually, I'm pretty sure that happened in may cases, as it makes so much sense to me.

M.