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Pikemen vs. knights
What kind of tactics did pikemen use against knights and cavalry?
Did they take the horse first, or the knight?
Pike v Horse
My period....ie late 16th Century early 17th. The Horse, which is partly why you get lots of Ritter with pistols who aim to break up the pike with shot.
At the battle of Kortrijk which is seen as important because militia won over mounted nobility the 'pike' was obviously used in any way possible but proved effective when used to push-pull the rider off his horse.

To me personally it is very good to read that the highly succesfull Mamluks avoided direct contact with massed infantry as a golden rule.

Peter
Quote:
What kind of tactics did pikemen use against knights and cavalry?
Did they take the horse first, or the knight?


Neither. If they were entirely successful, they would have kept the horsemen away. In other words, either the men or the horses or both would have been unnerved by the sight of the forest of pikes and wouldn't have dared to throw themselves into it.

When the man and horse had enough training and morale to make contact with the pikes, though, the equation gets very complicated to say the least. Usually the horse was the larger and less well-armored of the two, so it would have been the natural target--but then unhorsing the man could be an effective method too, if this was swiftly followed by a coup de grace while the man was still dazed from the fall. If both men and horses were heavily armored, it would have been a matter of hacking indiscriminately with pike, sword, axe, or whatever weapon you have and hoping that you'd be lucky enough to get at an unarmored bit.

The Mamluks were yet a different kind of thing, because they had bows.
The Swiss are said to have used halberd men mixed into the formations to dismount and dispatch any horsemen that made it past the pikes.
I've read a bit here and there about pike tactics, from the Swiss halberdmen to finish the fallen, to the Spanish Rodellos (spelling?) who broke up the "Push of Pike" if it ever arose.

One thing I've always wondered though...why on EARTH would cavalry EVER charge the formation? Why didn't they direct their archers to rout them instead?

M.
Because the head on charge still worked from time to time.
16th century plate armour is sufficient to take a pike in the chest at full speed.
In order for the pikeman to push you out of the saddle you need to be standing still. Most of the time, charging cavalry would break their lances on the fist rank of pikes, then retreat. Then the second wave of cavalry would hit.
If this works, the infantry will not have the posiblity to pull you of the horses, or finish you if your horse falls, because they'll be busy defending themselves against your friends.

Heavy lancers survived a hundred and fifty years of pikes and helbards; Widespread firearms, however, soon drove them from the battlefield.

And, while a pikeman might do bad things to a knight, its nothing compared to what the knight might do to HIM... ;)
Quote:
Mr. Pedersen: What kind of tactics did pikemen use against knights and cavalry?


Pikemen are cited as using a few different kinds of tactics, all have the same general concept though. Massed pikemen, untrained, and in unarticulated formation may have to fear cavalry but even half-trained, articulated (lines) formations have crushed cavalry time and again.

Probably the most famous and best example of heavy infantry (melee) defeating heavy cavalry (melee) are the Swiss Cantons, using the Swiss battle square. The Swiss were militia troops (thus not too highly trained) but make no mistake they were just as deadly as heavy cavalry in their correct situation. According to Brain Todd Carey in his exellent book, Warfare in the Medieval World, the Swiss "phalanx" had about 900 men in ranks 30 wide and 30 deep. (If you are looking for a book on strategy and tactics of the Middle ages nothing is better, this book is also the source of much of the info in this post.) The pikes were long enough that the first 5 ranks could attack an enemy, somewhere around 13 feet long, even up to 18 feet! As Mr. King has already stated in his post: Usually interspersed within the pikemen were halberdiers. These weapons, axe-like, also possessed a spike on the back and a spear on the top. They ranged from 5 to 8 feet long and were exellent for dismounting and then killing the dismounted, heavily armoured opponents. The Swiss battle square proved itself in many battles (Morgarten, Laupen and Sempach just to name a few) and was only phased out by good combined arms used especially by the Spanish. There are other examples (the ancient Macedonians, the Flemish, the Scots at Bannockburn, etc) but the Swiss illustrate the point the best.


Quote:
Mr. Evans: My period....ie late 16th Century early 17th. The Horse, which is partly why you get lots of Ritter with pistols who aim to break up the pike with shot.


Mr. Evans is spot on here; to break the pikemen's formation one would need some kind of ranged attack. A fairly successful group were the Reiters (Ritter would be a "Rider" aka: Knight) who fired their three pistols as they charged and then, as they retreated, they would reload them.


Quote:
Mr. Bosman: At the battle of Kortrijk which is seen as important because militia won over mounted nobility the 'pike' was obviously used in any way possible but proved effective when used to push-pull the rider off his horse.


This battle was significant as well because the Flemish were not, I think, as well disciplined and drilled as the Swiss and yet they were still successful.


Quote:
Mr. Curtis: If they were entirely successful, they would have kept the horsemen away.


Though I concede that heavy infantry pikemen were not entirely successful I would challenge anyone to find even one tactic/strategy which was/is successful all the time.


Quote:
M. Eversberg II: One thing I've always wondered though...why on EARTH would cavalry EVER charge the formation? Why didn't they direct their archers to rout them instead?


I would guess for personal glory or that commanders didn't want commoners to win the battle. But my question is: wouldn't winning trump pretty much any social issues? I guess not!


Quote:
Mr. Polden: Heavy lancers survived a hundred and fifty years of pikes and [halberds]; Widespread firearms, however, soon drove them from the battlefield.


Heavy lancers have survived since they were successful at the battle of Adrianople! They are good and effective when in the correct situation (charging wavering infantry) but could meet disaster when in the wrong one (charging pikemen.)Firearms, though they did help, were not the end of the knight. Society and the economy were changing from manoralism to urbanism helping undermine knights' funds. Tactics and strategies of commanders were changing too putting the knight where he was really effective (thus not the most glorious situations.) At best, I would say that guns just provided more psychological shock to ranged attack (and it was scary enough already!)


Yet, it should be noted that pikemen are only great when combined with effective cavalry and ranged units. Heavy Cavalry, even the most heavily armed and armoured knight, was not invincible nor was its downfall due entirely to gunpowder.
How tight where these ranks, exactly? That is, how much space where there between men? I don't immagine it would be much.

And when you say halberders are "intermingled" with the pikemen, does that mean they alternate within the rank (every third man has a halberd) or within the body (every X row has Y halberds)?

M.
M. Eversberg II wrote:
One thing I've always wondered though...why on EARTH would cavalry EVER charge the formation? Why didn't they direct their archers to rout them instead?


You get it!!
Look at the hun, mongol who were basically mounted artillery :lol:

That is why I understand the mamluks etc. só much better.
I also lóve the sentence Juilius Ceasar wrote about the Numidian Cavalry, 'They gave me wonderfull trouble'. :lol:

Sure I understand about the diferent tactics and the need for both heavy ánd light cavalry 'and 'formation manouvres' but it never stops to amaze me how the militairy very rarely seems to be able to think aroúnd the simplistic clash of frontal attack. Is it because they think it is about proving brute force? is it impatience or what?

@Kortrijk
This battle was significant because the Flemish landfolk militia on foot and armed with rather unsophisticated tool slaughtered the French(Walloon) mounted noblemen who were state-of-the-art army. Did not take them prisoner for ransom either. They 'collected' about 500 guilded spurs = noble knights.
It suddenly became clear that the miltairy balance was not a law of nature.
Again it goes to show the above. Why on éarth would those cavalrymen éver have wanted to risc the stupid frontal attack even on this untrained militia?!

HC
M. Eversberg II wrote:
One thing I've always wondered though...why on EARTH would cavalry EVER charge the formation? Why didn't they direct their archers to rout them instead?


Because there's no guarantee that the pikemen would have the moral resolution to hold out against the charge, even though they had all the weapons they needed. Not to mention that archers and horsemen were most effective when employed together against a pike formation than either could have done alone--just look at the battle of Falkirk.

Archery aside, 16th-century horsemen at least were quite aware that corners were the weakest points of a pike formation, and they generally directed their charges against these corners--preferably one of the rear corners. All the examples I can recall of horsemen cutting their way through pike formations, whether at Ravenna, Ceresole, or Dreux, were cases where they charged against either a corner or a temporary gap in the pike block.


M. Eversberg II wrote:
How tight where these ranks, exactly? That is, how much space where there between men? I don't immagine it would be much.

And when you say halberders are "intermingled" with the pikemen, does that mean they alternate within the rank (every third man has a halberd) or within the body (every X row has Y halberds)?


Whose ranks? The horsemen or the pikemen? Pikemen could get quite heavily bunched up with each other--very much cheek-by-jowl. As for the horsemen, it depends on how we interpret their charge. At a distance, when they were still going at some speed, there would have been quite some space, but once the two formations had collided the horses would probably have crowded in against each other too.

If they collided at all.


John Bax wrote:
Mr. Curtis: If they were entirely successful, they would have kept the horsemen away.


Though I concede that heavy infantry pikemen were not entirely successful I would challenge anyone to find even one tactic/strategy which was/is successful all the time.[/quote]

My point exactly. No tactical system ever was entirely fool-proof.


Peter Bosman wrote:
Sure I understand about the diferent tactics and the need for both heavy ánd light cavalry 'and 'formation manouvres' but it never stops to amaze me how the militairy very rarely seems to be able to think aroúnd the simplistic clash of frontal attack. Is it because they think it is about proving brute force? is it impatience or what?

@Kortrijk
This battle was significant because the Flemish landfolk militia on foot and armed with rather unsophisticated tool slaughtered the French(Walloon) mounted noblemen who were state-of-the-art army. Did not take them prisoner for ransom either. They 'collected' about 500 guilded spurs = noble knights.
It suddenly became clear that the miltairy balance was not a law of nature.
Again it goes to show the above. Why on éarth would those cavalrymen éver have wanted to risc the stupid frontal attack even on this untrained militia?!


Frontal attacks were (and are) always considered as one of the possible options since it is much simpler to do them than the maneuvers needed to get one's troops into the enemy's flanks or rear--or to combine two different arms together. In many cases, the training of the troops, the situation at hand, or a combination of both would have rendered complex maneuvers impossible, with the result that all the possible attacks must be some form of frontal attack.

Of course, it would be naive to say that there is only one kind of frontal attack. A general attack all along the line is different from a breakthrough, and a breakthrough is different from infiltration.

As for Kortrijk/Courtrai, I suppose it's because of faulty timing. The French commander saw the Flemings getting the worst of the missile exchange at the beginning of the battle, and I suppose he thought the Flemings had been sufficiently weakened for a mounted attack to be effective. As it turned out, he was wrong. But remember that the French chrage actually made considerable headway in the center of the line, and only the presence of a Flemish reserve saved the Flemish line from being broken there.

The Flemings were hardly "untrained militia." They were militia all right, but they were among the most well-trained of the trained militias that existed all over the French dominions at that time. You can check with the archives themselves, and you'll see the details of the royal edicts demanding the cities to provide trained militiamen, the cities' administrative efforts to procure and maintain the training of these militiamen, and the like. They weren't always good or reliable troops--at Bouvines, for example, they broke under the Imperial assault in the center--but when they were good they were very good indeed. Like the Flemings, who (if I remember correctly) also made a famous last stand by forming an infantry hedgehog at the end of that very battle (Bouvines) and held the French attacks for a long time until they were broken by the overwhelming weight of numbers.
Lafayette C Curtis wrote:
As for Kortrijk/Courtrai, I suppose it's because of faulty timing.


..and trying to charge up a washed out rise in the terrain across a swollen stream.

They lost about 80 barons and hundreds of knights.

The militia was definitely out of control as otherwise they would never have killed áll instead of collecting the ransom for at least a significant part. This heavy loss of blue-blooded life must have echoed through western-europe.

I guess that a pike-formation would indeed as you poit out be quite vulnerable at the rear corners and by the nature of it not at all flexible enough to be able to respond.

Anyway, áll strategies, tactics, manouvres and weapons evolve together over time as measures and countermeasures.
It therefor never stops to amaze me that 'attack and withdraw' especially if combined with patience has remained so effective over the millennia.

Peter
Peter Bosman wrote:
M. Eversberg II wrote:
One thing I've always wondered though...why on EARTH would cavalry EVER charge the formation? Why didn't they direct their archers to rout them instead?


You get it!!
Look at the hun, mongol who were basically mounted artillery :lol:

That is why I understand the mamluks etc. só much better.
I also lóve the sentence Juilius Ceasar wrote about the Numidian Cavalry, 'They gave me wonderfull trouble'. :lol:

Sure I understand about the diferent tactics and the need for both heavy ánd light cavalry 'and 'formation manouvres' but it never stops to amaze me how the militairy very rarely seems to be able to think aroúnd the simplistic clash of frontal attack. Is it because they think it is about proving brute force? is it impatience or what?

@Kortrijk
This battle was significant because the Flemish landfolk militia on foot and armed with rather unsophisticated tool slaughtered the French(Walloon) mounted noblemen who were state-of-the-art army. Did not take them prisoner for ransom either. They 'collected' about 500 guilded spurs = noble knights.
It suddenly became clear that the miltairy balance was not a law of nature.
Again it goes to show the above. Why on éarth would those cavalrymen éver have wanted to risc the stupid frontal attack even on this untrained militia?!

HC


At Courtrai, the Flemish position had no open flank. The only options open to the French were frontal attack, waiting nearby but not attacking (stand-off), or marching somewhere else to try and lure the Flemings away from the town. The latter two options are weaker ones, in terms of politics and psychology (as well as pride!). So the French attacked.
Sometimes cavalry and infantry really did collide - I just cited a case in the thread on the "thrusting lance."
Felix Wang wrote:
At Courtrai, the Flemish position had no open flank. The only options open to the French were frontal attack, waiting nearby but not attacking (stand-off), or marching somewhere else to try and lure the Flemings away from the town. The latter two options are weaker ones, in terms of politics and psychology (as well as pride!). So the French attacked.


And, seen in retrospect, it wasn't really such a stupid choice. I've mentioned before that both sides opened the battle with a missile exchange between their crossbowmen, and the Flemings got the worst of it. If I'm allowed to advance a personal interpretation, I suppose the French were trying to do something like Falkirk--breaking the pikes with a combination of missiles and mounted charges. The difference between them and the English experience was that the French charge probably began way too early, when the Flemish were not yet sufficiently demoralized and disorganized.

Quote:
Sometimes cavalry and infantry really did collide - I just cited a case in the thread on the "thrusting lance."


Well, there is no doubt about that. I'm also quite familiar with Churchill's account of the Sudanese war--I actually used it as an example when I made a post on my journal about the problem of contact in cavalry charges:

http://l-clausewitz.livejournal.com/141888.html

Although it still has to be emphasized that even Churchill himself explicitly mentioned that such a collision was a (relatively) uncommon thing that was both an unnerving and an exhilarating experience for those involved.

Incidentally, that post also mentioned the Battle of Courtrai!
http://l-clausewitz.livejournal.com/141888.html

Very good stuff!

A non-expert comment about the japanese experience: As noted, the original primary weapon of the samurai was a long bow. This hardly lends itself to shock action, and certainly not to massed cavalry shock action. As time went on, the sword and spear (and polearms) become more important to the samurai, but it is never clear to me that they ever adopted the couched lance. Instead, they seem to have chosen a two-handed method of wielding the spear; which again doesn't particularly lend itself to massed cavalry action (just consider the clearance needed for each warrior!). I have seen a statement in a war gaming context that samurai horsemen rarely acted as purely horse units, but usually had infantry runners mixed in with them (like the ancient Germans and sometimes the Romans did). In such a case, the massed cavalry charge would be an unlikely event.
Precisely. And the thing about the mounted bushi being intermingled with (and supported by) foot retainers is not just a wargaming trick, but probably an actual tactical paradigm used on the battlefield. Just check Farris's or Friday's books.

I don't think a two-handed lance would have prevented effective shock action in close formation, though. After all, the Parthian, Sassanid, and Late Roman cataphracts all used two-handed lances and they were known as charging in a closely-packed formation, though they were also generally armed with bows and could engage in shower shooting. The Scythians, Sarmatians, or both also used two-handed lances for their armored horsemen, though we have less evidence about how closely their horsemen would form up in practice.

(And there is some evidence that many of the Germanic horsemen in the late Roman army--as well as those in some of the Romano-Germanic successor kingdoms--also wielded their lances two-handed!)

So, the Japanese horsemen's capability for massed shock action is still in dispute, but I don't think their method of wielding the spear two-handed would have been an issue. It's simply a lack of solid evidence for Japanese horsemen charging in solid, massed formations.
As far as I've gathered, most of the great cavalry mash-ups (Banocburn, Agicourt, Courtai, and so on) where the result of a lack of tactics.
This would either be because of the terrain, or because the attackers where so superior in numbers that they didn't feel that tactics was necessary.

Back on topic, it seems to me that targeting the horse would leave you open for the rider's attack, and thus be a bit counter-intuitive. However, well disciplined troops will do whatever they are told to do.
I'm under the impression that at least in Cav to Cav engagements, the comander would make the call on a case to case basis. Often ANY order is better than none.
Elling Polden wrote:
Back on topic, it seems to me that targeting the horse would leave you open for the rider's attack, and thus be a bit counter-intuitive. However, well disciplined troops will do whatever they are told to do.


You stop the horse, you stop the man. He will likely be thrown and stunned for a minute for an easy finish off.
Elling Polden wrote:
As far as I've gathered, most of the great cavalry mash-ups (Banocburn, Agicourt, Courtai, and so on) where the result of a lack of tactics.
This would either be because of the terrain, or because the attackers where so superior in numbers that they didn't feel that tactics was necessary.

Back on topic, it seems to me that targeting the horse would leave you open for the rider's attack, and thus be a bit counter-intuitive. However, well disciplined troops will do whatever they are told to do.
I'm under the impression that at least in Cav to Cav engagements, the comander would make the call on a case to case basis. Often ANY order is better than none.


A lack of tactics? We can make a case for Bannockburn, since the English (whether foot or mounted) mostly waited passively for the Scottish charge to roll them up. Courtrai, however, was definitely not lacking in tactical sense--like what I've said above, the French commander there was probably trying to accomplish something similar to Falkirk but overestimated the effect of his missiles upon the Flemish formation. And Agincourt was one of the most sophisticated tactical interaction in the European Middle Ages--both the French and the English had simple but excellent plans, with the only difference being that the English plan successfully forestalled the French one.

Now, like you said, let's go back to the original question--that is, whether a pikeman should target the man or the horse when fighting against a mounted opponent. I'd still say neither. Just consider how it feels to be fighting in a tightly-packed pike formation. You're not even sure of getting a clear line of sight to the enemy--what with all those pikestaffs sticking out in front of you--let alone be able to target a specific point. So most pikemen probably wouldn't have bothered to target the man or the horse. They probably would have targeted on the huge lump that is the sum of man and horse without bothering to distinguish which is which.
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