In the hands of Flemish and Swiss, this was the weapon which helped to end the Middle Ages by making it possible for the despised and lower-class foot soldier to face his mounted, armoured, ‘betters’ in open battle.
Pikes had a long shaft, usually of ash, and a head which might be leaf or lozenge shaped, but could be just a spike, often square in section. The head was held on by metal straps or ‘languets’ running at least two feet down the shaft, to stop opponents chopping the head off.
At the beginning of the Italian Wars, pikes were usually ten feet long, but the Swiss then, or perhaps earlier, lengthened them to 18 feet. Others, including the Italians, followed suit, but Germans and Spanish preferred a shorter weapon, about 13 feet long. English pikes, at least in the 17th Century, were 16 to 18 feet long, and this probably represents the popular range, though pike-men were much given to hacking a foot or two off the butt end to lighten their burden.
For receiving cavalry, the pike butt was rested on the ground, steadied against the right foot, while the left hand supported the weapon with its point at the height of a horse’s chest; the right hand held the sword-hilt, ready to draw. Pikes could cover two ranks of shot — one standing and one kneeling — with their projecting points. In the attack, the pike was held more or less horizontally in both hands, about shoulder height, and about 2/3 its length back from the point (the Swiss, however, held it nearer the middle, and sometimes above the head.
The point sloping slightly down). While manoeuvring it would usually have been ’advanced’ in an upright position, on the march probably ’shouldered’ (like a musket at the siope).
Other staff weapons
As the illustrations indicate, there were a variety of these in use in the early part of the period. Most were mounted on shafts six to eight feet in length; their disadvantage was that men armed with them were much less able to stand against a cavalry charge than were pikemen, and this was why the Swiss, originally halberdiers, had adopted the pike. Their advantages were, firstly, their armour-piercing qualities (the tin-opener look of several is no coincidence!), and, secondly, their superiority to pikes in anything like an individual combat. Once pike-men were halted, or their formation broken, they could not defend themselves against these terrible blades, as the victory of English bills over Scots pikes at Flodden in 1513 showed.
Bills were the English weapon par excellence, and remained in large-scale use till late in the 16th Century (in 1584 there were 2,500 billmen on the Scots border, compared with 2,400 pikemen), and they were also used by the French and Italians. Glaives were particularly associated with the Welsh and the Spanish.
The ’berdische’ type of poleaxe was in use by the Russian Streltsi and some Polish infantry until late in the 17th Century, and some were eventually fitted with a spike on the butt so that they could double as musket-rests. Two-handed axes were also used by the Scots, and by Gallowgiasses in Ireland, until at least the early 17th Century. Otherwise, however, the more unusual weapons like the Lucerne Flammer had largely disappeared by the mid-16th Century.
The halberd was widely used to support pikes in the early part of the period, halberdiers in relatively small numbers guarding the colours in the midst of the pike mass, issuing out to attack the enemy flanks when the pikemen were halted. The n. umber of such men tended to be reduced, and by the 17th Century the halberd was mainly a weapon of bodyguards and NCOs; the partisan was used, again, for bodyguards, or as a symbol of an officer’s authority.
Infantry swords
The development of swords is a topic on its own and cannot really be covered here, but some characteristic types are illustrated; in general Western European infantry carried straight two-edged cutting swords, officers sometimes carried thrusting rapiers. The sword as primary weapon among infantry had largely vanished by the 1550s, but it had become more or less universal by the same period as a secondary weapon.
Two-handed swords deserve a mention; they were particularly popular with the Swiss and the Lansknechts (usually officers carried them) and the Scots claymore of the 16th and early 17th Centuries was aiso a two-handed weapon; their function was much like that of the staff weapons already mentioned.
By the 16th Century, the Turks and other Easterners usually carried single-bladed, curved, cutting swords, and these were also found among Poles, Hungarians, Cossacks and Muscovites.
Infantry shields
Large oblong ’pavises’ propped up or held to shelter crossbowmen, especially in sieges, were probably still in use at the beginning of the period. Otherwise, shields were beginning to disappear from the infantry, probably because both pike and firearm required the use of both hands, and because a shield offered little protection against a bullet. They were officially abolished in Germany by the Emperor
A Typical hilt and guard of Lansknecht sword, b 'Cinquedea' —a large dagger or short sword popular in Italy at the beginning of the 16th Century, c and d Typical 16th Century sword hilts, ‘d’ often found on East European swords, e A Venetian ‘Schiavona’ or Stradiot sword, f ‘Shable’ (sabre). A light cavalry sword copied from the Hungarians and Poles (both around 36 inches long), g Ferocious in appearance but ineffective in comparison with, for example, a bill, was the 'Morgenstern'. h Another weapon which had practically disappeared by the mid-16th Century, the Lucerne hammer.
A general survey of infantry organisation and arms
Maximilian when he carried out his reorganisation of German forces at the end of the 15th Century, and German shields of the type illustrated would probably be rare after this.
Surviving rather longer were the ‘buckler’, ‘target’, ‘targe’, and ‘rondarche’, all circular, usually convex, and intended to be used in conjunction with a sword; most were 20 to 30 inches in diameter though there were also mere ‘fist shields’ about ten inches across; a spike or even a pistol was sometimes fitted in the centre. Chief users were the Scots Highlanders, who carried their version into the 18th Century, and the Spaniards, whose agile sword-and-buckler men showed up the individual helplessness of pikemen in their victory at Barletta; at Ravenna too, disordered pikemen suffered from their attentions, but they were certainly not always victorious over the pike, and their uselessness against cavalry meant that after about 1520 ‘targeteers’ were largely confined to colour guards, though they could give good service in sieges or close country (the English using them in this way in Ireland, for example). The cavalry problem also doomed dreams of revived Roman legionaries with sword and shield, like those of Machiavelli and Maurice of Nassau.
Shields, sometimes of an oval shape, were often carried by (or for) officers in the 16th Century. This was probably mainly for show, but a shot-proof German buckler of 1603, in the Tower, was presumably meant for use. The earlier wooden shields were heraldically painted, but surviving metal bucklers are either plain steel, or have their surface engraved, or inlaid with other metals.
Eastern infantry still made some use of shields, similar to those of the cavalry of the same areas.
World History
