[Benjamin H. Abbott]

In a recent video, Matt Easton claims that the pike is "awful" for single combat. He gave it one point out of ten. Period sources directly contest this notion.

I'm curious if y'all are aware of any additional historical texts that address the pike (in the broad sense, any long spear) in single combat.

Antonio Manciolino recommended the 12-14+ft lancia over the 8ft(ish) spiedo:

"Longer weapons are to be preferred to shorter ones: therefore, the spear is to be preferred to the spiedo, holding it against the latter not by the butt (dangerous because of the weapon’s length) but at mid-haft and with good advantage. Similarly, it is better to take a partisan rather than a two-handed sword."

A longer pike-type weapon would presumably be worse than Manciolino's lancia, but probably not dramatically so.

For unarmored single combat, George Silver gave the advantage to lighter 8-9ft hafted weapons like his short staff over anything longer but still gave pikes & other long staff weapons odds over anything shorter (including the halberd & sword & target). Critically, what Silver spilled ink arguing for gives us a window into what he thought would be controversial at the time. He went on & on about rapier vs. short sword, & justified his preference for buckler over dagger, etc. He apparently didn't believe many readers would take issue with the idea that long staves & pikes have the odds over shorter weapons like halberds. In fact, in felt it necessary to argue that staff weapons of his perfect length of 8-9ft have the advantage over long staves & pikes. This implies that some of his contemporaries believed these longer staff weapons had the advantage.

Pikes also saw widespread use fighting in loose formation in 16th-century European warfare; extraordinary pikers often defended the shot (arquebusiers, etc.) & in that role might have to face multiple foes in melee combat with some room to move around. In 16th-century China, soldiers likewise used pikes in small teams as well as in large formations. Qi Jiguang seems to have thought that a soldier armed with sword & shield was at a disadvantage against the long spear & needed to throw a javelin to create an opportunity to rush in.

Paulus Hector Mair recorded techniques on both sides for longspear against longsword. I'm still trying to make sense of Luis Pacheco de Narváez's long section on how the single sword (rapier) can defeat pike or any staff weapon. However, the extended treatment & lumping together of pike with other staff weapons seems curious if the pike is so bad in a duel.

Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography includes a number of small-scale encounters with pikes. In one case, he fought alone on foot with a "good pike" against a foe wielding a "lance." (There were others nearby on both sides but they held back out of fear.) Cellini described being "otherwise well armed" at the time, so I assume he was wearing some form of armor. (Mail appears elsewhere in the text.) The person he fought may also have been wearing armor, because Cellini wrote that he would have run his target through if the man had not fallen backward.

The text also describes arming relatively small numbers of guards or henchmen with pikes at various points. & there's at least one other fight involving a weapon called in pike in one version. However, translations do vary; one says the people opposed to Cellini in the above encounter had "pikes" while he had a "spear." Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a copy of the original to see what words are used.

Jean Chandler does analyze three examples from Cellini's autobiography as involving pikes, relating them to how George Silver thought pikes & similar long staff weapons were pretty good for single combat in the open.

None of this evidence from fencing manuals, military treatises, & other period texts makes much sense if pikes were awful in single combat.

[Ryan S.]

That is interesting. I wonder if Easton has done any sparing with a pike? I know he did a test with Lindybeige that showed that spears have an advantage over swords, but sword and shield have a slight advantage over spear, and at last sword in shield has a significant advantage over spear and shield. That is in single combat, if it is in formation spearmen then gain an advantage. I think this fits in with what Qi Jiguang thought because he was talking about fighting in formation.

Since a pike is a long spear, I don’t understand how Easton could give the two weapons such different ratings. He also ranks everything else pretty high. The flail gets 6! However, it seems that he likes shorter weapons for single combat, especially when one can use both ends. Still, I think that being able to do more moves with a weapon doesn’t make it better. I think Easton is being led astray here by his belief in the importance of context. The pike is very much a formation weapon, that is the context where it is its best. However, that doesn’t make it a bad weapon in single combat.

I think the most important factor is what weapon the opponent has. If both fighters have the same weapon, then it doesn’t really matter. If one has a spear and another a pike, then it seems obvious to me that the longer weapon has the advantage. The advantage of a spear is its reach and its ability to threaten the enemy from a distance. If you have a spear, but can't get in striking distance of your opponent, you might as well have a sword. On the other hand, with a long pike, you can threaten your opponent from relative safely. Just as long as he doesn’t get around your pike. If he does get by the pike, then the extra length might give you enough time to draw a side arm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLLv8E2pWdk

[Craig Peters]

I think clarification on some terms is important. When Matt mentioned pikes in the video, he specifically spoke about "sixteen to eighteen foot pikes". That's dramatically longer than Antonio Manciolino's recommendation, and changes the dynamics of how the weapon is used. Another element worth considering is what Matt means by "single combat". Is he referring to a skirmish or armed encounter with a number of men? Or is he--and this seems more likely given his background--referring to a one-on-one armed fight as is the typical treatment in fencing manuals? A group of five men with pikes and a good defensive position could create a fairly formidable challenge in a skirmish if their opponents lacked effective ranged weapons and pikes themselves. However, an encounter where only one pike is threatening the opponent is a significantly different situation.

One thing in favour of Matt's arguments, (assuming one man versus one man), is how appalling the leverage would be on a pike. If you can evade the point, which is a big "if", the ease with which you can displace the entire weapon would be terrifying for the pikeman. You can even see examples of this, albeit to a lesser extent, with long sword binds. There are tons of binding techniques from Liechtenauer (and here I am referring especially to the techniques of Ringeck and Pseudo-Peter von Danzig) that simply do not work unless you are stepping to close the distance and control the leverage. Many techniques are appalling easy to push aside at one measure but then require dramatically more strength if the attacker closes the distance with a single pace. One of the reasons you so rarely see good Liechtenauer techniques in HEMA tournaments, where you get a clean bind that leads to a decisive advantage, is because fencers are constantly stepping backwards and widening the measure, trying to evade and counterstrike. This makes exploiting leverage basically impossible. Of course, during an actual life and death duel with sharp swords it is suicidal not to gain decisive control of your opponent's weapon with a bind of some sort, but no one in HEMA faces the consequences of failing to do so. All this to say is that even with a shorter weapon like the long sword, the amount of leverage you have and how easily you can displace the weapon dramatically increases the further away you are from your opponent when you bind.

I didn't watch Matt's full video, but if he did say the pike was "one out of ten" then I think that is overstated, even in a one-on-one encounter. Any long weapon, whether spear or pike, presents a significant danger to a swordsman, especially if it is an unarmoured encounter. If I had a sword and heater shield with no armour and I was matched against a pikeman and it was a life and death encounter, I would not feel safe with the shield. With a long sword only, I would want to run away. The pikeman has to make the first hit count, but there's so many things that could go wrong in the first portion of the encounter that you cannot feel safe as the swordsman. Brazenly closing measure is exactly what you need to do, but with a weapon with the capacity to pierce like a pike it is suicidal to do so without having the right opening. Since so much is out of your control as the swordsman, the danger and difficulty is cetainly not one out of ten.

[Ryan S.]

Here is a video from a HEMA club that tried out various pike techniques. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD8VwVOP36E All of them are about getting past the pike, even the Pike vs. Pike. The pikes they use are wobblier than historical ones for safety reasons. I could definitely see the advantage of a longer weapon changing depending on the skill of the combatants involved.

[Sean Manning]

[Craig Peters]

Hi Sean,

Giovanni dall'Agocchie hails from the 16th century, and seems to have been a contemporary of Meyer. By the mid-16th century, significant elements of the approach to fencing have altered from what you find with many (though not all) 15th and 14th century masters. The fact that long sword training at this time has basically become an anachronism conducted with federschwerter means that long sword fencing is no longer being conducted in the same way. A modern day analogy might be the difference between Airsoft and military training. Airsoft training is not preparing you for life and death encounters, and while you can gain certain skills from Airsoft, you will also develop a lot of bad habits that would be dangerous in military situations. The same is true with federschwerter- how you approach fencing will be different than the mindset of training with a sharp. If you want evidence that such a change has occurred, look at Meyer's technique sequences versus those of Ringeck and Pseudo-Peter von Danzig. The sequences are much longer, have (if I recall correctly), no usage of thrusts, and Meyer's proliferation of strikes reflect a competive fencing context, rather than focusing upon a specific set of techniques and plays that can enable you to confidently respond to most situations in an encounter with sharp swords. This means that dall'Agocchie is of very limited value for interpreting Liechtenauer, or even many other earlier masters of the 15th century.

I would say Fiore is a much more obvious parallel if we want to look at Italian masters. Notice, however, what we find: Fiore actually has a very similar approach to Liechtenauer. Fiore, like Liechtenauer, emphasizes gaining decisive control over the opponent's weapon in a bind so that you can safely attack without being hit. The main difference between the two seems to be that Liechtenauer's teachings focus on strikes and thrusts and slices made am schwert, while Fiore seems to prefer using wrestling techniques to decisively bind the opponent's sword or body, making them impotent. As rarely as you see classic Liechtenauer employed in tournaments, I'd argue you see even less classic Fiore, because it's pretty much impossible to wrestle with someone and bind them as Fiore does when people are constantly shuffling forwards and back, baiting and swooping and backtracking. All this movement back and forth means that gaining decisive control in a bind is nearly impossible, leaving your opponent's sword free to hit you.

I've noticed that a great number of HEMA tournaments are bedevilled by the "after-blow" and there are all sorts of different rules about how to handle it. Yet 15th century commentators on Liechtenauer and masters like Fiore are silent on the issue. It seems rather strange to think they'd neglect to write about something so glaringly obvious if it were an issue. The fact that they say nothing is a pretty good indication that their approach to fencing minimizes the chance of it being a problem.

[Sean Manning]

[Craig Peters]

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

Hi Craig,

I believe your assessment of the value of 16th century (or later) texts is quite unfair.

If anything, lethal unarmoured duelling with sharp swords peaked in the 16th century. While we have very few data points earlier than that, we have a huge amount of accounts in the 16th, culminating in France where it turned into a sufficiently accute problem to be discussed and legislated upon with some frequency. The Bolognese sources make an explicit distinction between parts dedicated to sharp swords (spada da filo) and parts dedicated to play swords (spada da giocco). Viggiani, a Bolognese master, is to my knowledge the only author recommending training with sharp swords and discussing why (although Manciolino also discusses, but disapproves of, that sort of training). Towards the end of the century, it's pretty obvious that rapier masters had lethal duelling in mind, although of course, all training would have been conducted with safety, and presumably with rapier foils, of which we have quite a few examples in museum collections.

The assumption that because they show how to play, they'd forgotten how to kill is completely misguided. It's analoguous to saying a master such as Fiore would not know what he calls "grappling for pleasure"; of course he did, he just didn't write about it. Monte, another author who had a lot of military experience, spends a lot of words on wrestling and the various rules used. So the correct view is that play-fighting was always around and useful, with swords or otherwise. Later texts just give more details about everything, including play-fighting.

Truth to be told, we have fairly little idea of the actual context of application of the early German texts. I've heard the point made that it was quite a bit more conventionnal than initially thought, and that our lack of understanding of the underlying convention was what explained some discrepancy in application. At any rate, I doubt they had any greater understanding of sharp sword use, lost thereafter.

About the afterblow: although the first explicit documentation of it used as a rule is in Manciolino, there is also an example of one in the very earliest European manuscript, I.33, folio 6r bottom, and 6v top. Here we see the priest thrust to the body, then carefully parry the afterblow. So yes, definitely a problem that was known about, and every style keeps it in mind, whether in play or in earnest. If there was an easy solution such as "just bind", you bet it would have stuck around.

I've played with pikes a little bit during the last Dijon event, although they were of shorter length - about 3.4m I believe? These wouldn't be easy to run around unpoked, the problem is if someone passes the tip, then you have a lot fewer options than you'd have with shorter poles. You can choke it up but then the trailing end restricts your angles. You can try to swing it around but it will be quite slow and hard to control. So really the best bet is to run back faster, which is problematic. Longer shafts would only make this more obvious. Wouldn't warrant a 1, but there must be some length where the trade-off length / manoeuvrability is not worth it any longer.

[Sean Manning]

Fully armoured combats at the barriers with pikes were popular in the 16th / 17th century. The barrier removed the problem of the enemy closing in, but there may be writings abut them.

[Craig Peters]

Hi Sean,

I think there's two important considerations with nachreisen. The first consideration is where this principle is placed in Liechtenauer's teachings. To a degree, the ordering of Liechtenauer's teaching of various techniques and principles reflects how important that particular technique is. He begins with the funff haw because they are the foundation of his art. Early in the merkverse, Liechtenauer demonstrates this priority with the statement, "Learn five strokes/ from the right side against the opposition. Then we promise/ that your arts will be rewarded." (Tobler, Wiktenauer). Notice also the promise in the final sentence: your art [skill] will be rewarded by learning the funff haw. We might paraphrase this statement as saying, "Learn the five strikes because they are the essence of being a good fencer". The reason for this isn't merely because of the funff haw in and of themselves, but their ability, when struck in good measure and aimed for the opponent's body, to create binds. From the bind, we now have the opportunity to employ what the writer of MS 3227.a terms "the noble winding" (Chidester, Wiktenauer). As we have already seen, this same writer identifies that masterful fencing remains am schwert because of the fact that you bind the opponent's weapon while being able to strike him safely.

If we look at nachreisen's placement, it comes after all of the funff haw, the four guards, and the absetzen. Obviously it's still a fairly important set of techniques, because it appears fairly early after the funff haw. However, if you were to organize Liechtenauer's teachings based upon what is demonstrated in HEMA tournaments, you would need to move nachreisen to the very top of the techniques/principles. Nachreisen would become the foundational skill of HEMA, and indeed we would expect to see an extended exposition in the Liechtenauer glosses explaining how to avoid after blows and other things of this nature.

In actual fact, however, we see that staying at a wider measure to snipe, counterstrike, and move back and forth is antithetical to the core teachings of Liechtenauer. The funff haw come first, and the whole point is to bind at close measure so that you can control the opponent's weapon and hit him with the winden. That gives us a clue that how we practice nachreisen is probably not the same as what Liechtenauer has in mind.

This brings us to the second consideration, namely what is actually stated about nachreisen. There is a single play in nachreisen that ostensibly seems to match with what we see in modern HEMA tournaments. In Ringeck's gloss, it appears like this:

"When he begins to hew you downward from above, and if he then allows his sword to go down to the earth with the hew: so race-after him with an over-hew to the head before the moment he comes-up with the sword, so is he struck." (Trosclair, Wiktenauer),

The Pseudo Peter von Danzig gloss is this:

"When you come to him with the pre-fencing, then stand with your left foot before in the guard From the Day, and see well how he will fence against you. If he then hews long above in to you, then watch so that he does not reach you, and mark while his sword goes under you against the earth with the hew. Then spring to with your right foot and hew him above into the head before he comes up again with the sword; so is he struck." (Winslow, Wiktenauer).

The von Danzig gloss is more detailed, and therefore I will focus upon it. The von Danzig gloss is clear on the context in which this technique is used: your opponent has hewn-in long, towards you. In other words, your opponent has struck at you too early. He is out of measure, and his strike is long and reaching. The controversial phrase in the gloss is, "then watch so he does not hit you", but here it means "be careful that your opponent is not going to be able to reach you, that you have judged the strike is out of measure rightly." Then, you spring forward and hew to the head, probably with a scheitelhau, so you strike him.

A key part of this gloss is that you only employ this technique if you know the opponent is going to miss because he was the one who is striking in long. He is the one who is striking too soon. He is the one who is striking too far. His attack is out of measure. However, you want to be careful that the attack really is going to miss you; otherwise, you should strike to him and bind his sword. If the attack will miss, you must immediately aim to his head the moment his sword misses you and continues to travel downward. In that moment, because his sword is moving down and no longer presents a threat, it is safe to chase the opening.

However, when we look at what is done in HEMA tournaments, there are a lot of additional elements added in that are not present in the original instructions. If we were to write the gloss based upon the HEMA version, it would go something like this:

"If he comes toward you in zufechten, then note: as soon as he is near and wants to strike, then step backward away from him, so that his strike misses. Then at once spring forward with your right foot and strike to his head with an oberhau".

My version and the von Danzig version might look similar, but they are actually radically different. In the von Danzig gloss, nachreissen is employed in the specific context that the opponent himself is the one who has struck long. In my version, you are trying to make the opponent strike long by stepping back during zufechten to deliberately increase the measure. The von Danzig version is limited to a very specific circumstance and context. However, my version becomes a deliberate fencing strategy that can be employed in every fencing encounter.

The difference in these two interpretations is not small. When I am stepping back in zufechten, I am missing the crucial window of opportunity to safely strike my opponent. That window is the very short time between my opponent missing me and him raising his sword back up in recovery. If I am stepping back as his strike is missing me, my increased measure makes it much harder for me to hit him during that brief opening. Even if I can hit him, my hew is going to be far weaker because my body is going to be moving away from the direction of my strike. Worse, because I am stepping away at precisely the moment when it is safe to strike, there is a much better chance that he can begin to recover his sword and either defend or strike back at me. Neither of us has control over the opponent's weapon, and because I have lost my safe window for striking, he can hit me or I can hit him. There is a much greater chance of both fencers being struck.

However, the consequences are greater than this. The general habit of fencers in HEMA is to constantly be shifting forward and back in zufechten. They do not want to over-commit to a strike and have the opponent step back as I have described above. They also hope to exploit the opponent using the same strategy. The end result of this is that we are keeping a wider measure so that we can play the "pseudo-nachreisen strike-sniping" game. But this means that the very techniques that form the core of a safe fencing strategy—binding at close measure and then using the winden—cannot work. It's impossible to commit to a strike and come close if your opponent is going to step back and snipe at you. The same is true for the opponent if you are going to step back from their strike and try to attack them.

This brings me to the final point of this essay. In modern day times, we have bias towards "unorthodox" approaches in martial arts. We tend to think "Well, if the core of Liechtenauer's strategy depends upon the opponent doing the right thing, then there's obviously a limitation with it. You need to train against an uncooperative opponent." The problem with this view is that it overlooks something that is eminently common sense. In a one-on-one, unarmoured encounter where an opponent is trying to take my life, the safest thing to do by far is to try to gain control over his weapon so that he cannot hurt me. It's not a matter of Liechtenauer's teachings being too restricted, but rather of them being the only approach that makes sense. If we had to sum up the entirety of martial arts in a statement, it would be, "I protect myself and stop you". The primary strategy to do this in an armed conflict with melee weapons is to control the opponent's weapon so that I can safely hit. That control could be gained by binding his weapon with a shield. It could be gained by wrestling to bind or restrict his sword or body so that he cannot attack. It could also be gained by binding his weapon at close measure and then attacking am schwert. But I must strive to gain control over his weapon. Not doing so with sharp swords is suicidal.

Therefore, we can see that the HEMA-approach fails woefully. It fails because real nachreisen involves, "My opponent's weapon is moving in a way so that it is not a threat to me in this instant; therefore, I can strike-in safely if I do it at once." By contrast, the HEMA version does not allow you to have the safety of striking at the right time because you are typically moving away from your opponent. Further, the reluctance of HEMA fencers to engage and to commit to closing in matches (for the most part, though not always) means that you cannot get close enough to bind your opponent's weapon and then engage in the winden—precisely the techniques that keep you safe and allow you to fence masterfully from the sword.

I know this has been a rather long essay, but I hope that clarifies why what is being done in HEMA is very different from nachreisen, and why the HEMA approach makes no sense.

[Ryan S.]

Hi Craig,

That is an interesting post, I admit that my knowledge of fencing means that I don’t understand most of it. However, you seem to be saying that because HEMA fighters aren’t in mortal danger, they keep more distance from their opponent. At the same time, you say the safest way doesn’t work because people keep their distance. I am not sure how much the mortal danger aspect is responsible for that. It certainly can change behaviour, but people are naturally scared of being hit and motivated not to lose. I would expect a novice or someone with no training to keep a distance, so that it would be the default way. From what you are saying, it also works in preventing closing, so maybe is the best option for those that can’t confidently close.

[Sean Manning]

Dear Craig,

I told you two times that I do not consent to talk about tournament fencing. Could you tell me why you ignored me and tried to talk about it a third time?

I gave two examples in the Merlverse where you riposte without binding, and two examples where you strike, are parried, and leave the bind, to show why I don't agree that the Merkverse teaches to always bind and wind.

Four respected fencers in the 16th century (Manciolino, Marozzo, dall'Agocchie, and Silver) say that people often retreat from a bind they don't understand, and three of them add that this spoils many of those clever actions on the sword, so I do not agree that "strike and fly out" is a purely modern tactic which the old fencers could easily defeat or would never dare to use. Whether its good form in your style is for you and your teachers to decide.

Edit: Moving back on topic, one of the examples of passing back with a parry is in Fiore's spear section, and he explicitly says its because the opponent is too close to use the spear without passing back.

I am not a very good fencer, but fencers who say "not fair! she came from another school, responded in a way I did not expect, spoiled my technique, and hit me" usually need to train better. One way of showing your skill as a martial artist is finding a way to apply your art against someone trained in a different tradition (and modern HEMA schools can absolutely be different traditions, even if they study the same fencing manuals). That probably will not look like your tradition's ideal fight but it can still show skill.

[Graham Shearlaw]

A full 16+ foot pike is less a weapon an more a mobile fortification.
You have a limited ability to thrust but can't quickly shift to a target that is off line, any target that gets past the point can close quicker then you can choke up for a second strike.

Now its historical users where well aware of this, swords or really large daggers was given to all pikemen as a matter of course.
And for a long period there's a melee protection detail that's organic to the square as a unit.

[Craig Peters]

Hi Sean,

I assume when you mention saying twice you don't want to talk about tournament fencing you are referring to, "I have THOUGHTS on tournament fencing but the Internet does not need them" and "I can't comment on the specific strategy for HEMA tourrnaments within your art". From my point of view- and please keep in mind, from my perspective- the first comment came across more as a backhanded way of you telling me that you didn't think the internet needed to read my comments. If, rather, your primary intention was to say, "I don't really want to discuss this further," or “I don't want to discuss HEMA tournaments; it's too political” etc., it was not clear to me. For the latter comment, it seemed that you did not have enough expertise about HEMA to want to comment upon it. If I have missed another comment that you made about not wanting to speak about tournaments, my apologies.

Part of the reason I am continuing to comment here is that some of your statements misrepresent what I am trying to state. This includes my next part, in the paragraph below.

I think it's important to be clear that I have not stated you must always remain in the bind. If you look at my statement about nachreisen above, it is clear I do not subscribe to that view. Liechtenauer's teaching makes it clear that there are certain contextual situations when you should leave the bind. With nachreisen, you strike at the opponent because he has created a momentary opening by moving his sword into a position where he is not a threat. With uberlauffen, it's broadly the same thing. If the opponent tries to strike to your sword rather than directly at you, or he tries to forcefully displace you, his sword will not be a threat in that moment because his weapon is not aimed at you, and you can use durchwechseln. If he goes really high in a bind to forestall you, you slice in to his arms. My argument has never been "do not leave the bind". Rather, my point is that the goal in Liechtenauer is to use the funff haw and hit from the winden where possible, using other tactics like nachreisen, uberlauffen, and durchwechseln only in the appropriate context. My concern is that nachreisen is being employed in a way that goes far outside of what the text teaches.

[Craig Peters]

[Anthony Clipsom]

[Sean Manning]

[Anthony Clipsom]

[Raman A]

I haven't had time to read through the thread yet, but a quick ctrl+f seems to show no one has brought up di Grassi so I wanted to point out that he has a section on using the pike in single combat:

https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Giacomo_di_Grassi#Pike

It's not clear to me what length he's talking about here, but he makes mention of them being used in wars so I assume he's talking about the standard long pike of pike squares as we would understand it. He also mentions how difficult and tiring it is to hold it near the end so it seems he's talking about a fairly long and heavy weapon.