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Timo Nieminen
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 Posted: Sun 05 Mar, 2017 12:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Benjamin H. Abbott wrote: | | Timo Nieminen wrote: | | So there will be an optimum thickness, a compromise between resistant to cutting off and weight. This optimum/compromise should be expected to result in some exceptional/occasional head-cutting-off, but to stop most attempts to do so. |
For 16th/17th-century European pikes, the optimum configuration appears to have involved iron/steel langets, as Lord Orrery and others recommended, and as you see on extant pikes. |
Which means langets offer better protection against cutting off the head for a given added weight than making the haft thicker.
The basic point still stands. You make the weapon strong enough for most purposes, not strong enough to make it indestructible. Weight matters. With langets, a key choice is how long you make them. You should still expect to see some head-cutting-off or head-breaking, even with langets.
I have seen spears with "langets" (spiral reinforcing straps, rather than normal langets) all the way from head to butt. Sometimes, somebody thinks the added weight is OK. They were shorter than pikes, though.
http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/26605
"In addition to being efficient, all pole arms were quite nice to look at." - Cherney Berg, A hideous history of weapons, Collier 1963.
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Benjamin H. Abbott
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| Posted: Sun 05 Mar, 2017 9:38 pm Post subject: |
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That's a good general principle, yes.
For the specifics, note that Lord Orrery claimed it was easy for cavalry to cut pikes without langets and impossible for them to cut pikes with langets. (He apparently didn't consider a sword cleaving through the langets to be a thing.)
I'm not sure langets were in common use on pikes in the middle of the 16th century when Fourquevaux was writing, though I suspect they were based on extant pikes. In any case, thanks to their shields, targetiers could potentially get past the 3-4ft of langets to strike bare wood.
I bet the pikes Lupton was talking about, assuming his story is true, lacked langets.
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Daniel Staberg
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| Posted: Sun 05 Mar, 2017 11:42 pm Post subject: |
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FWIW When Gustavus Adolphus laid down new specifications for the design of Swedish pikes about 1616-1620 the langets were made longer to give better protection against the Polish cavalry cutting off the heads of the pikes. Clearly there was a risk that was worth the money to protect against although battle accounts show that even with the shorter langets Swedish pikemen could hold of the Polish cavalry.
"There is nothing more hazardous than to venture a battle. One can lose it
by a thousand unforseen circumstances, even when one has thorougly taken all
precautions that the most perfect military skill allows for."
-Fieldmarshal Lennart Torstensson.
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Samuel D R
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| Posted: Mon 06 Mar, 2017 4:25 am Post subject: |
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Anyone who has sawed a plank knows wood is very tough. A thick pole would indeed last a very large amount of hits.
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Samuel D R
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| Posted: Mon 06 Mar, 2017 4:26 am Post subject: |
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| Dan Howard wrote: | | Benjamin H. Abbott wrote: | | Why would Lord Orrery lie about taking a fort by storm by [presumably cavalry) hacking the heads off of pikes with swords? There's no incentive, nothing to gain.. |
He saw a sword hit a pike and the head come off. He has no idea whether the head broke off or whether the shaft was cut. |
Not to mention people sometimes lie for effect. Despite them being formidable weapons, I do wonder whether Cortés didn't lie about seeing a macuahuitl decapitate a horse in one blow. That's hard enough with European swords (not that they're necessarily superior).
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Matthew Amt
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| Posted: Mon 06 Mar, 2017 5:39 am Post subject: |
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| Samuel D R wrote: | | Dan Howard wrote: | | Benjamin H. Abbott wrote: | | Why would Lord Orrery lie about taking a fort by storm by [presumably cavalry) hacking the heads off of pikes with swords? There's no incentive, nothing to gain.. |
He saw a sword hit a pike and the head come off. He has no idea whether the head broke off or whether the shaft was cut. |
Not to mention people sometimes lie for effect. Despite them being formidable weapons, I do wonder whether Cortés didn't lie about seeing a macuahuitl decapitate a horse in one blow. That's hard enough with European swords (not that they're necessarily superior). |
I dunno, I am uneasy with the idea of kings and seasoned generals "lying for effect", just for the sake of adding strips of metal to pikes for no other good reason. There are simply too many original sources from different times and places that agree with each other on this. I think we all agree that at least it was NOT EASY to lop off a pike head.
But the people who were there at the time felt it was enough of a consideration to mention, and to add a defense against it. We can't just dismiss the historical sources so readily.
Mind you, I'm not completely *happy* with that conclusion, but...
Matthew
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Dan Howard
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| Posted: Mon 06 Mar, 2017 5:55 am Post subject: |
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| Matthew Amt wrote: | I dunno, I am uneasy with the idea of kings and seasoned generals "lying for effect", just for the sake of adding strips of metal to pikes for no other good reason. There are simply too many original sources from different times and places that agree with each other on this. I think we all agree that at least it was NOT EASY to lop off a pike head.
But the people who were there at the time felt it was enough of a consideration to mention, and to add a defense against it. We can't just dismiss the historical sources so readily. |
No other good reason? Ken and I have already presented a more plausible reason. Langets were added to improve durability of the shaft - to make it harder to break after extended abuse during a battle.
Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen and Sword Books
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Matthew Amt
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| Posted: Mon 06 Mar, 2017 6:16 am Post subject: |
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| Dan Howard wrote: | | Matthew Amt wrote: | I dunno, I am uneasy with the idea of kings and seasoned generals "lying for effect", just for the sake of adding strips of metal to pikes for no other good reason. There are simply too many original sources from different times and places that agree with each other on this. I think we all agree that at least it was NOT EASY to lop off a pike head.
But the people who were there at the time felt it was enough of a consideration to mention, and to add a defense against it. We can't just dismiss the historical sources so readily. |
No other good reason? Ken and I have already presented a more plausible reason. Langets were added to improve durability of the shaft - to make it harder to break after extended abuse during a battle. |
Well, okay, but isn't most of that "extended abuse" due to weapon cuts? Sure, there'd be a certain amount of shafts wacking against each other, and a few klutzes who can't keep their points from hitting the ground. But with that many experts talking about the hazard of points being *cut off*, it seems to me that THEY felt that was a significant factor.
I certainly agree that one ninja with a katana couldn't run down the line sweeping off all the pike ends! I know how you feel about ninjas, eh?
Matthew
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Ken Speed
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| Posted: Mon 06 Mar, 2017 8:33 am Post subject: |
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Matthew wrote,
"Well, okay, but isn't most of that "extended abuse" due to weapon cuts? Sure, there'd be a certain amount of shafts wacking against each other, and a few klutzes who can't keep their points from hitting the ground. But with that many experts talking about the hazard of points being *cut off*, it seems to me that THEY felt that was a significant factor.
I certainly agree that one ninja with a katana couldn't run down the line sweeping off all the pike ends! I know how you feel about ninjas, eh?"
YES!!! That's what Matthew and I are saying! A swordsman cannot expect to cut through a fresh spear or pike shaft with one blow but multiple strikes with a sharp object will cut through wood over a period of time therefore langets are put on polearms to protect the pole from being cut.
Just as a modern soldier is expected to maintain his weapon I'm hard pressed to imagine that spearmen or pikemen would choose to go into battle with a damaged polearm if they could help it.
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Samuel D R
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| Posted: Mon 06 Mar, 2017 8:36 am Post subject: |
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| Matthew Amt wrote: | | Samuel D R wrote: | | Dan Howard wrote: | | Benjamin H. Abbott wrote: | | Why would Lord Orrery lie about taking a fort by storm by [presumably cavalry) hacking the heads off of pikes with swords? There's no incentive, nothing to gain.. |
He saw a sword hit a pike and the head come off. He has no idea whether the head broke off or whether the shaft was cut. |
Not to mention people sometimes lie for effect. Despite them being formidable weapons, I do wonder whether Cortés didn't lie about seeing a macuahuitl decapitate a horse in one blow. That's hard enough with European swords (not that they're necessarily superior). |
I dunno, I am uneasy with the idea of kings and seasoned generals "lying for effect", just for the sake of adding strips of metal to pikes for no other good reason. There are simply too many original sources from different times and places that agree with each other on this. I think we all agree that at least it was NOT EASY to lop off a pike head.
But the people who were there at the time felt it was enough of a consideration to mention, and to add a defense against it. We can't just dismiss the historical sources so readily.
Mind you, I'm not completely *happy* with that conclusion, but...
Matthew |
Oh, I wasn't suggesting in any way that he was lying. From what I've read in this topic (I know next-to-nothing about the period in question let alone the sources), it doesn't seem he was. But I think it's also very important to be cautious when reading historical authors. When they weren't lying, and there are cases of known lies, mistakes were very common. From memory, Cæsar makes a few assumptions in De Bello Gallico about the Druid class which are false. He absolutely can't be blamed for them, since he didn't speak Gaulish or understand their alien ("barbarian") culture, but they're still mistakes.
I also agree with Ken, I don't see why someone wouldn't repair their weapon after each battle, as long as time allowed it. We do have examples of weapons lasting very long times circulating in the family, usually being rehilted (reblading isn't worth it) every so often, and the blade repaired. It would be quite foolish to ignore the damage on a sword and eventually have to spend a lot replacing it. And it's not as if soldiers had many other preoccupations. A better-maintained sword or pike could well save their life.
It's the same thing with arrowheads. As far as I'm aware, these were regularly just wrenched out of the ground and corpses to be repaired if possible. It would be very wasteful to just leave them. And in the times of throwing spears (especially in Roman times), we have sources of people just picking the spears back up and throwing them at the enemy, and collecting all the thrown spears at the end of the fight.
That was a bit of a tangent, but just to point out that weapons were reused and maintained.
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Benjamin H. Abbott
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| Posted: Mon 06 Mar, 2017 9:28 am Post subject: |
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| Samuel D R wrote: | | Not to mention people sometimes lie for effect. Despite them being formidable weapons, I do wonder whether Cortés didn't lie about seeing a macuahuitl decapitate a horse in one blow. That's hard enough with European swords (not that they're necessarily superior). |
Amusingly enough, Francisco Lopez de Gomara claimed Mesoamerican obsidian swords could cut lances as well.
Note that Lord Orrery claimed it was easy to cut the heads off unprotected pikes, so it might actually have been so for cavalry to do, at least in that period (mid 17th century). And Donald Lupton's story isn't too far from the lone ninja slicing through pikes with ease. (As mentioned, Lupton definitely had an axe to grind. He wanted to make the pike look like a worthless weapon. If he recounted that incident accurately. It's probably because the pikers in question either weren't much good and/or didn't want to kill.)
Given how well Skallagrim did against that 1.25in hickory (hickory is quite tough, I have lots of experience with it) pole, I wouldn't be surprised if 1in of ash was significantly easier to cut. And Skallagrim isn't necessary as good at cutting as some historical soldiers, though certainly better than I am.
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Niels Just Rasmussen
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| Posted: Mon 06 Mar, 2017 11:21 am Post subject: |
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Just a speculation as I have never tried reenactment:
But if you have pikemen in very close formation then the overlapping pikes could sometimes cause individual pikes to become "fixed" and so make it possible to chop at them. (Probably with more unskilled groups not holding their structure - for instance following specific opponents, instead of keeping pikes in parallel lines?)
Chopping at an individual spear/pike being held by a single opponent sounds almost impossible; but a pike "caught & stabilized" by the mass of other pikes around it could perhaps make chops much more likely to cause breakage??
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Henry O.
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| Posted: Mon 06 Mar, 2017 11:51 am Post subject: |
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Getting away from the Renaissance for a bit. I seem to remember an account from Polybius where Roman soldiers were trying to force their way into a pike phalanx and he mentions that when the Romans did manage to break a spear head off they were still held at bay by the sharp, wooden shaft. Does anyone know which book this is from or am I confused?
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Lafayette C Curtis
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| Posted: Mon 17 Apr, 2017 11:50 am Post subject: |
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Polybius said nothing of that sort. The closest thing I can find is a couple of instances where he said that an enemy who could cut or beat aside the head of a front-ranker's pike would still have had to deal with those wielded by the rear ranks.
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Dan Howard
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| Posted: Mon 17 Apr, 2017 4:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Matthew Amt wrote: | | I certainly agree that one ninja with a katana couldn't run down the line sweeping off all the pike ends! I know how you feel about ninjas, eh? |
Well a ninjer could certainly do it becuz ninjerz are all kool and stuff.
Author: Bronze Age Military Equipment, Pen and Sword Books
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Gregg Sobocinski
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| Posted: Mon 17 Apr, 2017 7:45 pm Post subject: |
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How strong were the nails used back then? If you have two opposed iron nails in the tapered end of the shaft of the spear head, could they rust during the campaign and cause that area to weaken? Did they swell the wood or glue on spearheads to help them stay, or just pressure fit and nail them? I only have considered modern spear head attachment using epoxy. "Cutting off a spear head" might not always indicate a clean cut through a haft.
My thought being that langets also spread out the work of nails across a larger area.
I am in Timo's camp with the "didn't happen often" concept, but this conversation made me realize I lack knowledge regarding historical spear assembly.
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