[Gordon Frye]

Greetings:

I would like to announce that we are holding the "School of the Renaissance Soldier: Actions of the Lowe Countries III" near Sacramento, California April 20-23 2007. We've had two successful schools so far, and look forward to this one being bigger and better than the last.

We have people traveling from as far south as San Diego, north from Seattle, and east from Wisconsin, and perhaps from further afield as well. Join us at our school as either Foote (Pikes and Shotte), Horse, or Camp. Here's the website:

http://www.renaissancesoldier.com/

Cheers!

Gordon

[Peter Bosman]

Wow Gordon, a réaly nice advance on your site. Enjoy the gallery too and not a single percent as much as you guys seem to be doing.
Your horses seem realy into it too being relaxed but fully attentive. VERY nice to see this and quite a welcome change from 'serious' riders in 'sporting' events.
I woul lóve to be able to participate with my horses. They would need a fair bit of extra fencing around their paddock but would REALY lóve it too.
Great!

Peter

[Chris Last]

Gordon-

We should have our official participating numbers by early March, which I will send on to Patrick. Its looking better and better for me coming out as well! Now we just have to figure out tent space!

Best-

Chris

[Gordon Frye]

Peter;

Thank you for your complements! Especially on the horses. There are a lot more things I'd like to do with them in an event such as this, but unfortunately what with having a number of rather novice riders and horses, I can't do some of the wilder things that I'd LIKE to do (like full-on cavalry charges at "Full Career"). But it sure would be fun! I may well split up the class to facilitate doing some of that sort of thing, though... And if you wish to join us, I think I can find you a finely trained mesteño to ride (belongs to a friend of mine who participates, who is decended from an old Californo family, and they train their horses in the Old Style) so you'd be more than welcome to join us one of these days.

Chris;

I'm really looking forward to your coming out. It will be great having you fellows participate, and we can swap lies about different outlooks on Digges, Barrett and other writers of the day. That will be too cool. And we'll find tent space for you one way or another, no worries. Just bring a cassock and a bedroll! Might get chilly in the evenings.

Allons!

Gordon

[Allan Senefelder]

Every year Gordon does this,then posts the pictures that are better than the year before and every year I say "damn! why don't I have more time!?". Have a great time with this fellas, it looks like so much fun. Looking very much forward to the after action pics.

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Peter Bosman]

Thanks Gordon. You are so hosiptable you make me blush! Really wish I could and combine a few more visits to some horse people who've invited me.

I've got simple but effective trekking gear. Am used to not taking a tent, just a bit of tarpaulin and a bit of night chill just makes you sleep well

But alas.

Meanwhile I checked with the local huntsman and there are like you said indeed seperate regulatings about muzzle-loaders albeit not necessarily less strict he said. I was to check back with him tonight but just came in and am too knackered. I have to go and get some building material so will go down to the village in the morning.
Checked on the Denix replicas too and no thanks.... Even if the license will prove too much of a hurdle I would still rather covet the 'real' thing.

Have fun with yours and I have no doubt you do

Peter

[Gordon Frye]

Thank you, Gentlemen, for you kind words. Come on, Allan, break away for just a couple of days! You know you'll love it! You too, Jean... (Don't worry, I won't hold you to it, but I know you'd enjoy yourselves.)

Peter, I'll send you some links for arms that may pass Spain's red tape...

Oh, so far we have almost as many folks pre-registered (two months out) as we had total for our first foray two years ago. Not bad!

Cheers!

Gordon

[Chris Last]

Gordon-

You should be seeing a few more of my folks registering ove rthe next week as well. Looks like we'll have a contingent of 7 coming down! Now to see if we can get a bulk discount for airplane tickets...

[Gordon Frye]

[Chris Last]

We'll see if we can work out a telescoping system for our pikes. It does look like we'll have two caliver men to join the ranks though!

[Gordon Frye]

Chris;

Wow, more Caliver-men! Thanks GREAT! The more Shotte, the merrier. ;^D

No worries on the pikes of course. As of now we have 30 pikes in hand without me pulling out the "sequoia gigantea" pikes of renown... But I'd just as soon not have to drag those down from Washington if I can avoid it. Somehow I suspect we'll have sufficient pikes for a good, solid pike square. Since I'm looking at again mustering about 16-20 Horse, that's a good thing.

Allons!

Gordon

[Lafayette C Curtis]

[Gordon Frye]

[Daniel Staberg]

The extant Swedish 17th Century pikes I've studied were all tapered at both ends, the thickest part was around 3.5-3.6 centimeters in diameter. I sure wouldn't call the shafts dainty ;-) even with the taper. The fact that the top 10-20% of the shaft is reinforced with iron strips would IMHO compensate for most if not all of the weakness created by the taper.
But more research is clearly need on the subject, a problem is that so many of the extant pikes have been shortened to make them easier to store. Still there are complete pikes in Sweden, Switzerland and Austria to name the places i know of and I would be surprised if the Royal Armouries didn't have some in their vast collection.

I tend towards the opinion that when used against heavily armoured cavalry on barded horses the pike was in many ways regarded as a expendable weapon. If you halted the charge the broken pikes could always be replaced by passing forward pikes from the rear ranks. The sheer depth of early 16th Century formations assured that there was an abundance of pikes available to replenish the front ranks that did the actual fighting.
Another question is how many pikes that were actually broken when a Gendarme company charge into a pike square?Each Gendarme would hit 3 or may be even 4 files at the same time so the force of the impact would be distributed over more than one pike.

Cheers
Daniel

[Chris Last]

Official count looks to be 7 of us, 5 pike - 2 shotte. Airline tickets are being purchased by the end of the week, only $220 per person roundtrip!

[Gordon Frye]

Daniel;

Thank you, as always, for your input. And as usual, the probable "truth" to matters is somewhere in between the extreme theories posited by the so-called "experts" (including me... )

David Evans, who posts here often, has pointed out the existence of the tapered pikes in the Royal Armouries collection, but as I recall, most if not all have been shortened at some point in their working life, so it becomes hard to tell what was what, and when. But I hadn't been aware of the Swedish pikes that are tapered, that brings a whole new spin on it, since it would seem to be a major increase in the numbers still in existance. Thank you for bringing that to my attention!

A friend of mine who has posted here, Matthew Kelty, did a survey of such European pike collections, or rather tried to, a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, not a great response from the curatorial staffs, but most were of the opinion that the tapered shafts were almost impossible to pin down as to date, being that almost all were shortened. Some day I'd love to do a tour of European collections in person though, with a measuring tape in hand, to do a more "formal" survey. As you point out, LOTS of room for more research!

You're definitely right on the other points, as well. The "push" (or rather "crash") of a company of Gendarmes against a square of say 3-5 thousand pikemen would tend to be absorbed by more than a single rank. And indeed, LOTS of "spare" pikes in the center that could easily be sent forward, whether by passing them up, or just as likely, men moving forward with their fresh pikes to replace the men who were downed in the contact. All the more reason for such huge masses of men in Tercios etc. when combating fully armoured companies of Gendarmes! Besides, broken pikes make for such handy tent-poles...

Thanks!

Gordon

[Gordon Frye]

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Ah. I thought they were something like 300-foot-long pikes...

[Gordon Frye]