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Daniel Staberg
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 Posted: Mon 20 Nov, 2006 3:16 am Post subject: |
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| Randall Moffett wrote: | Ben,
True but in the 16th the heavy cavalry trades in lances for pistols so they usually do not have to charge into pikeblocks until having blown holes into it. The Germans do this ealiest I think mid century. In the 17th pikemen are still the most numerous on the field initially and the numbers of heavy armoured cavalry is declining rapidly until by the 2nd half the cuiraiss and helmet with perhaps a guantlet is what a horseman wears usually at the most, pikemen continue on, heavy cavalry in very minute numbers. There are cavalry attacks on pikemen but I doubt this was a common occurance or when it did happen, intentional. What do you mean pistols did it? If anything to me it would be the long barrels of improved muskets that could blow holes in 4mm plus of metal with other improvements to firearms as well. But when the heavy cavalry was at its peak the pike's amde up the main percent of the armies not only to remove other pike formatiosn but cavalry as well.
RPM |
Pikemen were a minority in all armies before the end of the 16th Century, a larg eminority but a minority nonetheless.
Their numbers steadily diminished and the pikeman would periodically all but wanish from 17th Century armies, both the English Civil War and the Thirty Years War is full of examples of units or entire armies operating only with musketeers.
Heavy cavalry actually grew in numbers in the 17th Century, the armour became lighter but the role remained the same., by the 1640's many field armies were essentially cavalry armies supported by limited numbers infantry.
The musket had little impact on the balance between cavalry and infantry in the 16th and17th Centuries, before the reforms of Gustavus Adolphus musketeers were incapable of standign up to cavalry unless supported by pikemen or protected by terrain or fortifications. The Swedish invention of a highly disciplined form of salvo fire and platoon fire allowed well trained musketeersto repel attacking cavalry but unprotected or unsupported musketeers coudl still only do so for a limited time. It would take the introduction of the flintlock, paper cartridge, socket bayonet and iron ramrod to make the musket a fully effective ant-cavalry weapon in the open field. And these inventions were only introduced effectively in the 1690 the 1740 period.
/Daniel
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Daniel Staberg
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| Posted: Mon 20 Nov, 2006 3:50 am Post subject: |
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There were numerous battles involving archers and pikemen durign the various wars the Burgundian Dukes fought with the City States of the Low Countries in the 15th Century. Then you have the Valois-Habsburg wars over the remains of the Burgundian state in the 1470's-1480's, the battle of Guinegatte 1479 for example were massed pikemen made short work of (unsupported) French archers. Then you have isolted engagements such as the German pikemen at Stoke Field in 1487.
/Daniel
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Randall Moffett
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| Posted: Mon 20 Nov, 2006 5:10 am Post subject: |
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Daniel,
Could you point to where you got the information that pikemen were a minority? Who was then the majority of troops? The ratio I have come to figure was 2 pikes to one musket until mid 17th then it flips around after the wars of religion and the English Civil War. From all I have seen that is not how I understood it but as this is outside my major area of study it would not be impossible it is wrong.
Once cavalry ditches its armour for the most part I do not consider them heavy cavalry but just cavalry. So I see it as a decline of heavy armoured horsemen mroe than increase in heavy cavalry.
I was looking for examples of archers verses pikes excluding Charles the Bold but was vague so my bad. Sorry about that.
I have not read much on the Valois-Hapsburg wars but do seem to remember somewhat what you brought up. I will have to read some up when I have sme time. Any good sources come to mind?
Stoke is a good one as well, specifically emntioning archers and german pikes.
RPM
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Benjamin H. Abbott
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| Posted: Mon 20 Nov, 2006 9:44 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | True but in the 16th the heavy cavalry trades in lances for pistols so they usually do not have to charge into pikeblocks until having blown holes into it. |
That rarely worked very well. The still generally needed support, just like lancers. I think the main reason for using the pistol over the lance was to beat other cavalry. In period texts, it is a question of cavalry against cavalry, not cavalry against infantry.
If the pistol had not been invented, I suspect lances would have remained on the battlefield.
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Gordon Frye
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| Posted: Mon 20 Nov, 2006 6:49 pm Post subject: |
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Ben and Daniel are absolutely correct on this one, that it was the Pistol, rather than the Musket, that drove Heavy Cavalry from the field and left Pistoliers and the relatively lightly armed Harquebusiers to rule the battlefield for the next century or so.
As Ben states, it was Cavalry against Cavalry that mattered, not Cavalry against Infantry. So against Muskets, with fairly limited range (even Sir Roger Williams doesn't rate a Musket as worth anything past 200 yards, and really, they were only barely useful at that range considering round-ball physics. So all a troop of Heavy Horse, fully armoured and carrying heavy lances had to do was just stay out of range until the Infantry unit had been softened up by artillery, or engaged by other infantry, then charge in (horses can cover a lot of ground in the time it takes to reload a musket...) with only one or at most two punishing volley's to absorb before slamming into the musketters, or when they run, the Pikes. As at Dreux in 1562, the Huguenot Gendarmerie went through the Swiss pike square several times, and it was considered a miracle that the Swiss didn't break. Other Infantry blocs, made up of native Frenchmen, did.
However, such Heavy Cavalry could NOT avoid Pistoliers, and could, fairly often, be defeated by them. It turns out that at least as far as the French Crown was concerned Pistoliers were no cheaper to find than companies of Gendarmes, but tactically they were the rising star. At such battles as Mookerheide Heavy Lancers defeated Pistoliers quite handily, but most of the remaining battles of the 16th Century saw the defeat of Heavy Horse by Pistoliers, such as Coutras, Ivry, and Tournhout. So the general opinion of the day was that Pistoliers could defeat Lancers, though it certainly wasn't concluded without plenty of argument! Lancers were still recommended by theorists until well into the 17th Centuy.
Cheers!
Gordon
"After God, we owe our victory to our Horses"
Gonsalo Jimenez de Quesada
http://www.renaissancesoldier.com/
http://historypundit.blogspot.com/
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Jean Thibodeau
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| Posted: Mon 20 Nov, 2006 7:28 pm Post subject: |
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Wasn't there a resurgence of lancers in the 19th century: " Bengal Lancers " to mention one instance I know very little about.  ( Mostly the Errol Flynn movie " Charge of the Light brigade " or some other film. )
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Charge_of_th...36_film%29
Early WW1 still saw some use of lancers and I think the Polish used Lancers against German Tanks early in WWII with the results we can expect. ( Very brave very foolish and ineffective. )
You can easily give up your freedom. You have to fight hard to get it back!
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Richard Fay
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| Posted: Tue 21 Nov, 2006 9:53 am Post subject: |
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Hello all!
| Jean Thibodeau wrote: |
I think the Polish used Lancers against German Tanks early in WWII with the results we can expect. ( Very brave very foolish and ineffective. ) |
Jean,
Yep! At least, that's the way the story goes, although it might be debated now. The Polish army did indeed include cavalry lancers amongst its ranks at the start of World War II. The Panzers became, in part, the "new cavalry". (I could look this up later, World War II is another historical period of interest to me, but I think it's drifting a bit off-topic. Then again, if it was a discussion about the late use of the lance by cavalry units...hmm)
Stay safe!
"I'm going to do what the warriors of old did! I'm going to recite poetry!"
Prince Andrew of Armar
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Felix Wang
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| Posted: Tue 21 Nov, 2006 9:56 am Post subject: |
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The light lance never went out of use in Eastern Europe, being used by the Poles, Cossaks, and presumably the Tatars. Napoleon reintroduced the lance to Western Europe when Polish cavalry were recruited into the Grande Armee. Other 19th century lancers were in imitation of these soldiers; and an expert user of a light lance had advantages over a man armed with sword alone; and was better equipped to deal with a foot soldier armed with bayonet.
Lancers were used effectively up until the end of the Russo-Polish War (1922, IIRC); the story that lances were used against tanks in 1939 seems to be a myth. There were Polish cavalry and they likely met German panzer units, but those cavalrymen carried other weapons besides lances; if they charged the tanks it was presumbably to get close and shoot the tank commanders, or use grenades and explosives to try to damage the tanks.
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Daniel Staberg
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| Posted: Tue 21 Nov, 2006 10:45 am Post subject: |
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Randall, please se below
| Randall Moffett wrote: | Daniel,
Could you point to where you got the information that pikemen were a minority? Who was then the majority of troops? The ratio I have come to figure was 2 pikes to one musket until mid 17th then it flips around after the wars of religion and the English Civil War. From all I have seen that is not how I understood it but as this is outside my major area of study it would not be impossible it is wrong. |
The muster rolls, commisions and regulations of most of the major Eurpoea armies of the period. Either original documents or published by authors such as Wood, Heilmann, Barkman, Wimmer, Heath, Parker, Liljefalk, Lot as well as in various official histories published by General Staff historians in Germany, Austria, Sweden & Denmark.
Some information is online such as Dr. Pierre Picouet's fine website on the Spanish army
http://www.geocities.com/ao1617/TercioUK.html
(Do note that I was commenting/challenging your claim that the pikemen were in majority well into the 1650's, i.e I'm not discussing the armies of the early 16th Century.)
If we look at the muster lists of Spanish Army of Flanders we find the following ratios of pike to shot
In 1571 the (native) Spanish Tercios had 66% on their rank and file armed with pikes, by 1596 only 25% were armed as pikemen and in 1601 the number had risen slightly to 33,4%.
This was at a time when the official organisation for a Tercio in the Army of Flanders called for 72,4% of the rank-and-file in a Tercio to be armed with pikes. The slightly less pike-heavy organisation used in the Army of Italy only called for 48,9% pikemen in a tercio.
In 1632 the Tercios stationed on the iberian Penninsula get a new organisation in which 36% of the men are armed with pikes. The Tercios of the Army of Italy had only 35% of their men armed with pikes and following the the Cardinal-Infante's reforms the Tercios in Flanders ha a regualtion strenght of 30% pikemen.
A similar trend can be seen in the non-Spanish units of the Army of Flanders (which was a multi-national force), by 1617 the regualtions called for only 25% of a Wallon company to be armed with pikemen. The 1636 reforms lowered the number of pikemen demanded by regulations to only 23,5%.
Some units retained a higher proprtion of pikemen, at least on paper, The Burgundian Tercios ha a regulation strenght of 53,5% pikemen in 1598 but it's impossible to tell if that was actually the case.
This kind of variance within an army was typical of the more mulit-national armies of the period, in 1567 the Swiss regimetn Pyffer in French service fielded 87% pikemen while Never's native French regiment contained only 31% pikemen and his Italian regiment only had 10% of it's men armed with pikes. A year later Brissac's French regiement mustered at Paris with 47% of it's men armed with pikes.
In the 1560's the pike armed regiments of the Swedish army contained 36% pikemen, by the 1580's the few reamining pikearmed unit sonly hade 20% pikemen and by 1600 there was not a single pikeman in the army. The reforms of Gustav Adolf reintroduced large scale use of the pike, in theory each infantry company had 38% pikemen but the number actual fielded was invariably lower. In the summer of 1627 the field army in Prussia contained 34% pikemen, a year later the army had barely 25% pikemen. Despite massive reinforcements the number of pikemen had only increased to 29% of the infantry by the autumn of 1628.
Early in September of 1631 the Royal Field army held large review and muster a short time before the battle of Breitenfeld.
The 220 infantry companies present in the army contained 4578 pikemen and 10458 musketeers, i.e about 30% of the rank-and-file were armed with pikes.
Even the supposedly pike loving Germans fielded only a minority of their men armed with pikes by the 1620's, when Wurzburg raised troops for the army of the Catholic Leauge in 1625 each company recived 80 pikes and 200 muskets, another Leaugist regiment raised in that same year in Bavaria was issued 1000 pikes, 200 halberds and 1500 muskets. By 1641 barely 20% of the Imperial infantry was armed with pikes though it's commanders tried to increase this number back to at least 30%.
"Who was then the majority of troops?" From the later half of the 16th Centry onwards the majority of the infantry were the arquebusiers and musketeers and of course in the logn run the musket completely replaced the arquebus. Some unit such as the Swiss and German Landsknechts would field predominantly pikearmed units in some armies for a while longer but much would depend on the army. In the same period when the Landsknechts in French servie are equiped with 60-70% pikes the Landsknecht sin Danish serive are almost all equiped with firearms and so on.
| Quote: | | Once cavalry ditches its armour for the most part I do not consider them heavy cavalry but just cavalry. So I see it as a decline of heavy armoured horsemen more than increase in heavy cavalry. |
It depends on wether one classifies heavy cavalry by it's battlefield roel and tactics or by it's equipment. IMHO the former is the most important factors. Heavy cavalry deliver shock attacks on the battlefield, it is is of lesser importance wether the trooper wears full harness of a gendarme or only the helmet and cuirass of the Napoleonic Cuirassier. They both fullfill a simialr role on the battlefield in the context in which they operate.
| Quote: | I was looking for examples of archers verses pikes excluding Charles the Bold but was vague so my bad. Sorry about that.
I have not read much on the Valois-Hapsburg wars but do seem to remember somewhat what you brought up. I will have to read some up when I have sme time. Any good sources come to mind? |
Well dukes other than Charles the bold foguht the predominantly pikearmed amries of the Femish Cities, John the Fearless foguth the at Othee 1408 while Philip the good faced them in several battles, notably Ruplemonde 1452 and Gavere 1453.
Verbruggen wrote about Guinegate 1479 as did Klaje but the struggle for the remains of the Burgundian state is an obsucure period despite the sheer scale of the conflict.
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Stoke is a good one as well, specifically emntioning archers and german pikes. |
Yes and the infamous Martin Schawrtz was a veteran of the Valois-Habsburg struggle.
/Daniel
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Randall Moffett
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| Posted: Tue 21 Nov, 2006 12:01 pm Post subject: |
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Daniel,
Thanks for the information and time it took to get it all up there! It was good reading and I am sure will be useful in the future. Thanks for the examples. It is curious to see the fluctuation in the types of soldiers being fielded.
RPM
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Stephen Hand
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| Posted: Tue 21 Nov, 2006 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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Hello,
As I'm being referenced I thought I should contribute. Basically I have written two papers on the use of shields. We have several 15th and 16th century sources describing shield use. These are remarkably consistent given the differences in date, geographical area of writing and vastly different size and shape of shield. My question was that given we have no source material for shield use when shields were popular, can we extrapolate this system back? Based on the appearance of the same guards and in some cases the same techniques explicitly pictured in earlier artwork, I think we can fairly safely say that the style of shield use throughout history was at least broadly similar to that described in the C15th-16th sources.
So, what is described. Firstly in mass melee the shield was a wall to hide behind. It doesn't seem to have been used very actively. However, in single combat it appears to have been used very agressively to strike and bind the opponent. I would NOT say that its use was primarily offensive, but the shield does not seem to have been moved at all in defence. The person moves around the shield, not the shield around the person. This is weird to most people who have played with shields, but is explicitly how defence with a shield is described in historical sources. It is also very effective. My two rules of shield combat are 1. you move around the shield, don't move the shield around you and 2. It's not a wall to hide behind, it's a ten pound knuckleduster.
Combat with large shields is primarily about the shield, as shields can be engaged and used to bind, strike and hook. The weapon is used sparingly, mainly when the maneuvering with the shields opens a line of attack. This fits very well with literary descriptions of sword and shield fighting from the middle ages, a few well selected attacks, not the flurry of attacks we commonly see from re-enactors.
I hope this helps.
Cheers
Stephen
Stephen Hand
Editor, Spada, Spada II
Author of English Swordsmanship, Medieval Sword and Shield
Stoccata School of Defence
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Michael S. Rivet
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| Posted: Tue 21 Nov, 2006 5:52 pm Post subject: |
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| Stephen Hand wrote: | | I would NOT say that its use was primarily offensive, but the shield does not seem to have been moved at all in defence. |
Ha ha! Very well, since I am corrected by my teacher, I have no choice to concede. And I apologize if I misrepresented you in any way. I was reacting primarily to the notion of the shield as a cumbersome piece of armor that knights happily cast aside when plate armor became available. I tend to feel that the shield is often misunderstood and undervalued in these discussions and I might have indulged in a wee bit of hyperbole.
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Michal Plezia
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Sun 30 Aug, 2009 6:57 am Post subject: |
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It's an old topic, but I have something interesting to share.
I was in Croatia last week. I found this statue of a mid 15 century knight in a italian style full plate armour with shield. It is in Dubrovnik.
www.elchon.com
Polish Guild of Knifemakers
The sword is a weapon for killing, the art of the sword is the art of killing. No matter what fancy words you use or what titles you put to
it that is the only truth.
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Luka Borscak
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| Posted: Sun 30 Aug, 2009 8:14 am Post subject: |
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It's a statue of Roland, we call him Orlando. 
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Michal Plezia
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Sun 30 Aug, 2009 8:18 am Post subject: |
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Your country is beautifull. Dubrovnik is the most beautifull city I've ever seen(those great city walls!!!) and the plitvicka jezera national park is more beautifull than Rivendell in the LOTR movie!
www.elchon.com
Polish Guild of Knifemakers
The sword is a weapon for killing, the art of the sword is the art of killing. No matter what fancy words you use or what titles you put to
it that is the only truth.
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Luka Borscak
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| Posted: Sun 30 Aug, 2009 8:23 am Post subject: |
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Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed here. 
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Kel Rekuta
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| Posted: Sun 30 Aug, 2009 8:50 am Post subject: |
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| Michal Plezia wrote: | It's an old topic, but I have something interesting to share.
I was in Croatia last week. I found this statue of a mid 15 century knight in a italian style full plate armour with shield. It is in Dubrovnik.
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Michal, thank you for sharing that! I've been looking for a better photo of that statue since I first saw the poor B&W image of it in an Osprey book. Do you have any other views of it you would be willing to share?
Luka, could you tell us a bit more about the statue, when it was made and so on? It is very difficult to find such information in English.
Thanks again to both of you. 
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Michal Plezia
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Sun 30 Aug, 2009 11:21 am Post subject: |
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I've made one more pic. I'm giving a link to the full size photo like the previous one:
http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/4738/p8260233.jpg
According to the tourist guide it is original 15th century... Well I believe it- the armour looks authentic- not like many 19th cent interpretations.
I hope that helps.
www.elchon.com
Polish Guild of Knifemakers
The sword is a weapon for killing, the art of the sword is the art of killing. No matter what fancy words you use or what titles you put to
it that is the only truth.
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Christopher VaughnStrever
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| Posted: Sun 30 Aug, 2009 1:46 pm Post subject: |
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Through summary, the shield could and was utilized for certain circumstances in different battles. And some knights prefered the use of the shield whether it be a large target or a small buckler.
To add to the discussion, I was under the impression that "a" (and perhaps the main reason) reason for the use of a large shield, would be in the instance to stop those armor crushing weapons such as a war hammer, flail, or Halberd. If I were suited in a full suit of armor and I knew my enemy were wielding war hammers. Then I would be sure to carry a shield into that battle.
Experience and learning from such defines maturity, not a number of age
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Luka Borscak
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| Posted: Mon 31 Aug, 2009 7:08 am Post subject: |
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The statue is probably first made in 1396 when King Sigismund of Luxemburg, King of Hungary and Croatia, retreated to Dubrovnik after defeat of the Crusaders at Nicopolis. For an unknown reason (at least to me ), new statue was made in 1418 by Bonino of Milan and it was a replica of the first statue. I don't know about the sword, it doesn't look original to me.
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