Hello Gentlemen.

I was reading about men-at-arms and i had problems with sources giving different information again.
Do you know when the fully armored Gendarme (French, Burgundian or Italian) with an armored horse, waffenrocks, lances, and all their weaponry like axes, maces, longswords, warhammers, etc... changed their usual style of fighting transforming themselves into a ritter like heavy pistoler unit?
Becouse i have found something about early gendarmes, and early ritters, saying that they threw away their lances during the first quarter of the XVI century for pistols, while other sources said that they did so around 1590-1600.

Thanks.

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"Discussions of general history and other miscellaneous topics relating to arms and armour that do not specifically fit our other forums"

Thank you.

Gordon's article here:

http://www.myArmoury.com/feature_lancepistol.html

actually covers the subject in some detail. But, honestly, it's neither a smooth nor uniform process, and the change proceeded at different rates in different places (where it happened at all). The Germans were among the first to adopt the pistol in preference to the lance while the Spanish would have fit the latter timescale since they only officially abandoned lances in 1601 or something like that. This simple comparison is deceptive, however, since for most of the 16th century the Spanish armies had heavy cavalry of both the lancer and the sword-and-pistol type.