Greetings,

I found no thread on this exact subject, but if it has been discussed previously, feel free to redirect me and remove this thread. My friend (also an enthusiast in medieval warfare) once wondered to me that an engagement of two pike blocks seemed like a suicidal tactic, the first ranks would probably die within seconds. All I could say to him at the time that imho form follows function, and there was a reason for the widespread use of pikes in renaissance warfare.

This recent post reminded me of the psychological effects in medieval warfare

Lafayette C Curtis wrote:

But this does not mean that the heavy cavalrymen always have to actually come into contact with the infantry formation to break it. The psychological impact of a solid line of men and horses and steel hurtling towards the infantry line at high speed was often enough to break it before actual contact, and the moment of contact happened after the infantry had begun to run away. Some chroniclers actually mentioned this mechanics in their accounts of warfare. Procopius's account of Belisarius's campaigns comes to mind.

I am interested of to what extent were battles won by morale in a situation of two opposing units of hafted weapons. The age of pikes is to me the most fascinating time in western military history. As I am however uneducated on that specific question I decided to ask those wiser than I.

I've read from some online sites that in napoleonic warfare large formations in open terrain seldom met in hand to hand combat, instead the other line retreated before contact was made
http://napoleonistyka.atspace.com/infantry_tactics_2.htm (scroll a bit over halfway through to get to the bayonet section)
according to my limited understanding, in the american civil war, rougher terrain and smaller unit sizes lead into more frequent hand-to-hand engagements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_d...IAA#t=478s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLVwz2TeDn4
This program also backs the claim that large scale bayonet charges seldom struck the enemy, through human natural reluctance to kill another member of the species

from the swiss feature article:

Quote:

Against infantry, the Swiss nearly always took the offensive; their training gave them tremendous speed—they reckoned to charge artillery between the discharges and they liked to achieve surprise where possible, while the sight of that forest of spear-points coming down at a rush was often enough for the enemy

the difference between a 19th century bayonet charge and a swiss pike charge seems to have been that perhaps the swiss were swifter in their advance, although again I'm no expert. The quoted article implies that the swiss were very much into killing their opponents, and not just routing them. Perhaps being accustomed to violence and violent looting also helped them actually drive their spears into the flesh of their enemies, and not just to get them fall back.

Quote:

The Swiss troops of this period were remarkable both because of the terror they inspired in their opponents, and for their own extraordinary qualities. First of these was sheer courage—no Swiss force of this period ever seems to have been broken or to have run or surrendered; several literally fought to the last man, and the only concession they would make to defeat was a bitter and grudging retreat in good order, defending themselves against all attacks (for example, at Marignano, 1515, where their losses were over 50 percent). Perhaps their habit of hanging the first man to panic had something to do with this!

from the same article, I see a completely different world from the 2-5% bayonet casucasualtiesthe napoleonic wars. My first idea of the impact of extreme discipline would be to routinely be able to break the formation of the enemy, but it seems that hand to hand combat could very well ensue, and the engagement would turn to something like this
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/Bad-war.jpg

Should the swiss be considered as an exception (they certainly were exceptional to some degree), or do you think that it was common for an engagement of two bodies of pikes (or other hafted weapons) to end up as a messy close combat? The environment of 15th century was also more harsh than that of 19th century, but the extent of the difference and details escape me.
I also have personal experience from fighting in a spear formation in re-enactment, but the true fear of death, and true possibility to kill is never present. Because of that, and the aforementioned cultural factors, any simulations would be critically incomplete.

The historical warfare blog I started back when I thought I had more time on my hands contains a nice selection of primary source quotations on this subject. As far as casualties, Yuval N. Harari quotes a period memoir (Florange) to show that the landsknecht front rank at Novara experienced a death rate of about 98%. Almost no one survived. While some gunners participated, as noted in the quotation, the majority of the deaths presumably resulted from hand-to-hand combat. You're right to consider sixteenth-century clashes a different animal.

As a general trend, the amount of close combat and accosiated losses decreased throughout the 18th century. For instance, there seems to be more close action, both by infantry and cavalry, in the Seven Years War than in the Napoleonic wars.

As far as I can see, fighting in blocks or shieldwalls is a way of eliminating the effects of combat stress.
There is a lot of talk about the "initiate reluctance to kill." However, this might as well be seen as the innitate reluctance to engage in deadly combat.

In short, drill is efficient ways to panic. By means of drill, you replace the natural reaction pattern with some other, reflexive action.
As a pikeman, this is to stand in you spot, move with the group, and thrust. A musketman does the same, but loads and fires instead.
Thus, even those that would not engage in a loose skirmish become efficient fighters by engaging as part of a group.

For unarmoured, unshielded infantry in the line, losses are horrible. Thus this style of fighting becomes efficient only when drill enables the unit to remain standing even if losses are high.

Personally, I don't think a head-on clash between two pike formations had to be very deadly at all. For one thing, the front ranks were normally the most heavily armoured in the entire formation, and thus the least likely to be hurt by any weapon to begin with. Then pikes are pretty awkward weapons--it's not easy to see where your pike-head is amidst a forest of shafts projecting ahead of you, even less so once the enemy pikes also get into the equation, so you're essentially charging blind with your pike pointed in the general direction of the enemy formation. All in all, I see more men falling down from being knocked over by the non-penetrating impact of a pikehead against armour or clotheslined by a pikeshaft than actually killed by a penetrating thrust to the face or to a gap in the armour.

That's if both formations had the balls to charge flat-out into each other. Contemporary authors complained all the time that, instead of charging in, the pikemen would slow down to a halt just inside the reach of their pikes and "fence" with the enemy at a pikeshaft's length, which is obviously not a very effective way to use the pike (what with the wobbling of the head at the end of such a long, elastic shaft) even though it gives the appearance of busy and noisy fighting.

Yes, the initial thrust might not be terribly lethal - the following melee presumably accounts for the extreme death rate at Novara. Sir John Smythe wanted to soldiers to drop their pikes and immediately engage with swords and daggers against a resolute foe. He also had halberdiers to follow the first few ranks of pikemen, as both the Swiss and landsknechts practiced in the early sixteenth century. Florange's account specifically has Swiss halberdiers routing gunners and falling on the landsknecht flank. Perhaps the most incredible detail is how Florange's father rode into the press with a few other men-at-arms to pull his badly wounded son from the piles of the dead.

Lafayette: As I understand it, these where instances where the troops did not follow the intended tactic?

Also, where not pike tactics developed to enable lightly armoured swiss militias to defeat heavily armoured invaders?

In such a battle, having reach (by longer spears) and momentum could be used to force the heavy troops on the defensive.

Smythe condemned pike fencing on the battlefield, but some commanders as well as soldiers favored it. Note that, contrary to popular belief, the pike functions just fine as individual weapon held at length. It could deliver a might thrust; you even have various accounts of pike penetrating armor. I suspect Smythe's method worked better but required considerable discipline and fortitude pull off successfully. Who wants to advance into a hedge of points when you can hang back, use your pike to ward, and hopefully land a telling strike?

thanks for the replies, I'll have to get a copy of Harari's book.

Charging to close combat seems like a faster way of defeating an enemy, and in my experience from fighting with a spear formation in re-enactement, taking initiative and trying to conclude battlefield situations as quickly as possible can win an engagement. We don't have to worry about getting killed, so the mental threshold to get into the fight is incomparable to what it really was back then. Still, I see lot's of people sluggishly pushed back by a more aggressive opponent.

As for stopping to fight at pike's length sounds safer than engaging with shorter weapons, and reasonable from the point of view of a soldier fearing for his life and probably showing some level of reluctance to kill, I'm seeing a bit of a parallel to the napoleonic bayonet "charges." A commander willing to conserve his resources would probably see the benefits of this kind of fighting, and according to my understanding Flemish pike formations were more successful when fighting defensively.

Does anyone have numbers on pike weight? My fencing instructor has got the opportunity to handle some extant pieces (i'm not sure about the dating, but within our scope of interest), and he was surprised by the lightness of the weapons and their shafts. Then again I've been told that macedonian phalanx charges got a lot of energy from the momentum of the heavy sarissa moving towards the guts of the enemy. Sarissa were generally longer than late medieval/renaissance pikes, and I'm not sure about the similarity between macedonian phalanx tactics and pike block tactics.
In the end, the difficulty of wielding a weapon is relative. If the opponent is armed similarly (with long pikes) no matter how awkward the weapons are, there's no clear advantage to either side, if both sides choose (or bog down to) "fencing" distance.

Peter Connolly's ash sarissa reconstruction weighed about 9lbs. Given that sixteenth-century manuals from the likes of Silver and Meyer at times instruct you to thrust and ward single with the pike, I suspect the weapons of that era weighed even less. As far as awkwardness goes, Silver gave the pikes odds over anything and everything up to weapons of his perfect length of 8-9 feet. Antonio Manciolino wrote that "longer weapons are to be preferred to shorter ones" and recommended his spear (a 10+ft lance/pike) over shorter staff weapons like the spiedo and partisan.

But still single targeteer would have several points aimed at him at once. Was his armour so compete as to feel completely safe? Im not sure if its valid but if my understanding is right against horse pikemen would stand their ground and close ranks while against foot thed try to approach in more open formation - could this be the factor as well?

Regarding flemmish approaching horse and piercing them all the way through from the side - might I ask if this refers to any specific event or account? Was there even a battle when flemmish actually met gendarmes of ordonnance companies rather than feudal host? I know about Guinegate, but than doesnt seem to have much with cavalry being repulsed or defeated by pikemen as most french men at arms left the field in pursuit of their routed counterparts. As far as I know in heyday of flemmish pikemen and their victories (mostly early 14th century) knights horse was generally not wearing too much plate armour protection (caparisons with some mail or hardened lether augmentation augmentation and occasionally some full mail covering, or plate chamfron and crinet perhaps? Thats just my imagination)

http://l-clausewitz.livejournal.com/133036.html
http://l-clausewitz.livejournal.com/156201.html
These are links to the blog of a writer that includes his very informative discussions on the subject of pikes. Especially the second link nicely explains how to fight as a pike block and what options you have.

Macedonian pikes and Renaissance pikes are two different animals. The sarissa presumably was redeveloped from large boarding pikes, Egyptian .marines - Iphikrates - Phillip is a discussed connection. We have an archeological find interpreted as a sarissa with a very large and heavy spearhead and corresponding sauroter. The pikes of Alexander were a lot shorter than the versions of his successors who fought sarissa unit versus sarissa unit. So I would count the sarissa among the long spears and in my opinion some suggestions that they could be separated during the early Hellenistic times into two parts means a sauroter end that is similar to a goedendag for use at shorter ranges or in more flexible formations (with additional javelins and the other end as a spear).
The Renaissance pike has a very small warhead in comparison to the sarissa that was unlike the pike as well suited for slashing as for stabbing (probably changing with the lengthening of the weapon). I would consider the Polynesian and Papua pikes much closer to them than the Greek versions with demands on unit cohesion increasing due to length.

The most recent scholarship on the sarissa rejects the heavy, blade head as misidentified and employs what we know about fifteenth- and sixteenth-century pikes as a basis for understanding. The epistemological validity of this approach remains controversial.

As far as the linked posts go, I'm under the impression that Macedonian phalanxes rarely if ever matched the valor or ferocity of the Swiss. (By most accounts, no contemporary pikemen from other nations did either.) While Alexander relied on his cavalry, the Swiss won their fame almost strictly through the pike and halberd.

Also, "push" just means "thrust." I doubt pike blocks ever engaged in the bizarre manner Clausewitz describes. (Why in the world would pikemen choose to not employ their primary weapons?) And, as I've mentioned repeatedly, Florange's account of Novara shows pike combat could be exceedingly lethal. Pike thrusts hit as hard as or harder than other staff weapons; di Grassi went so far as invoke geometry to explain the pike's potency. Commanders didn't universally oppose the fencing method: some encouraged it.

If we want to examine the armour piercing capabilities of the pike, it might be helpful to look at weapons who do a go job at piercing armour.
The pollaxe and halberd come to my mind there, heavy weapons distributing their force over a small point of impact. And essentially the pike fulfills both those criteria; it is rather heavy and has a small point. Thus I don't think there is reason to assume it did a worse job against plate than a halberd or pollaxe did.

Another point I would like to adress is the targeteer: Analyzing the interaction of pike armed troops and sword fighters, why not look at the Macedonian Wars? And here we see a similar pattern as in the 16th century; romans only breaking up pike formations that already are disrupted or are being attacked at the flanks...