Why did pike formations stay dead for such a long time, Veeky Forums? Is it true that a feudal...

There's the point. Pikes could only have come to a rise with guns because a guy in full plate and an armored horse isn't going to care overly much about some spears glancing off him, not that he'd even charge it head-on in the first place. So it must have coincided with guns causing a lessening of armor due to the inconvenience of paying for and then wearing heavy bulletproof armor.

Pikes were used during the middle ages though see that shit even predated plate armor.

And Burgundian/Swiss pike use around 1470 preceded the abandoning of head to toe plate armor by about 100 years.

If anything i'd say Pikes started getting used more because of the way wars were fought. In the last decade of the 30 years war people went full cavalry again with armies typically having up to 40 or 50% of their army as cavalry.

Plate armor offered such good protection,heavy wooden shields could be abandoned and two handed weapons like pike could be used.

I strongly doubt that cavalry did not play a major role until the later middle ages.

From my current understanding - i may be wrong, is that in general pikes are superior against almost everything in a frontal engagement.

Given this I'm questioning how within nearly 1000 years nobody bothered to experiment with pike formations again.

Are there any attempts of pike formation revival before the mid-late middle ages?

>Given this I'm questioning how within nearly 1000 years nobody bothered to experiment with pike formations again.

Hurr the ignorance is strong or do you just have trouble reading the second post down?

As someone pointed out, various peoples never stopped use of pike.
I know pike formations require a lot of drilling and practice to maintain their primary strength of being a cohesive poking block, so that may be a factor; i.e it's a lot of time practicing walking in line that could be better spent farming.

Lots of reasons. Armor abscess made the threat of archer fire less deadly while reducing the cost of armor for the average Person making shields near obsolete leading to the rise in polearms to Crack armor leading to the natural evolution of a want for more range than the other guy so bigger polearms.

The increased pop ul and economic development of Europe made armies larger which caused a shift in formations toward larger simpler one while reducing the overall impact of cavalry. This the rise of the pike square. Simple, cheap, easy, resilient and big

Well men-at-arms of knights fighting on foot often opted to simply use their lance on foot, they essentially fought as really heavy armored pikemen too.

>According to legend, the Swiss initially could not break the close ranks of the Habsburg pikemen. Winkelried cried: "I will open a passage into the line; protect, dear countrymen and confederates, my wife and children..." He then threw himself upon the Austrian pikes, taking some of them down with his body. This broke up the Austrian front, and made an opening through which the Swiss could attack.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sempach

;_;7

Read some Roman primary sources too and you'll see time and again that centurions dived into an enemy formation to save their soldiers lives.

Pretty heroic desu.

There surely is a reason why people didn't just have their surrounding men cover them while they pushed a number of pikes to the side with their own.

...

Not sure I follow.

A guy places his pike somewhat perpendicular to the pikes to one side and pushes them, opening the enemy formation for others to take advantage of. You could have another guy near him do it in the opposite direction, spreading the thighs if you will.

And the next four pikes pointing at your face? Depending on the length of a pike the first three to five ranks can present theirs forward.

>tfw we were still fighting with pikes in 1798

The brave United Irishmen used what they had. In one battle, they defeated British line infantry with primarily pikes. Irish ferocity can only get you so far and in the end the French were not able to send the support that was needed and the rebellion ended.

what do you mean "for such a long time"?
they were used pretty much from medieval times until the 1700s
thing is they became obsolete once "modern" firearms (arquebuses "evolved" into muskets) artillery became more accurate since they had little firepower to fight back - even though they had some firearms merged among their ranks to prevent this
also, by having such a cumbersome and large weapon they didn't have the mobility or the versatility most people would want from a unit and was pretty much only used as a defensive formation against cavalry or light infantry

to resume: it was slow, sluggish, an attack from the rear would probably mean the whole destruction of the unit, week in offensive/hard as fuck to charge with, vulnerable to enemy fire whether bullets or arrows since they didn't care a shield or just had a small buckler and had to be extremely brave not to break under the sight of heavy cavalry charging

Once the bayonet came in to mass use in the 1670's, the mass pike formations were all but completley gone by the time of the Great Northern War in which the Swedes still loved the pike and continued its use considerably. However, with the invention and subsequent mass use of the socket bayonet (still in use today), the pike finally all but vanished. Only the spontoon or short pikes remained, being carried by color sergeants, etc.

Crossbows/longbows fuck pike formations up no end. See how the Scots schiltroms got BTFO by English archers. That's only a huge problem if you're defending though.

It also has to do with the centralisation of military power. If you want a centrally funded/equipped army you want fairly simple and cheap equipment, and since a lot of your money is going on cannon and firearms a pike is not only easy, in formation it provides excellent defence against cavalry and dismounted men at arms, who are nearly as vulnerable to musketry as your pikemen.

that works both ways.

This user is right but what made this possible was the mass production of cheap plate armor called "munition" armor.

>Mideasterners had their own philosophies regarding war
They had pikes, too.

I got it.
What about, a really big and heavy shield shaped like a wedge. Get enough of those in formation and you could split the formation.

>What about, a really big and heavy shield shaped like a wedge
Seriously, this so fucking stupid I don't know where to start.

You'd be impervious until you made it past the formation though.

...

>really heavy
>unwieldy
>pls rape me with cannon fire
>can't see where you're going
>extremely vulnerable to counter-attacks
>pls throw grenades at me
And that's just off the top of my head

Long spears never went away, but their use in tight, drilled formations with both hands needed something the feudal, decentralized army couldn't manage in large numbers: cooperative training.

The baron had his personal soldiers, and his knights had their own. In their youths the baron and his knights trained together which makes them an effective team, but their foot soldiers never did the same. They trained and armed themselves with their lord's help, but only with other members of their lord's retinue. Thus when a muster was called for an army, they were put into ranks with other troops they probably met once a year for a few weeks if at all. This led to what older military historians liked to call 'unarticulated heavy infantry'. Individually they could be very skilled and armed (or not) but working together is something they would have to learn while on campaign.

To train a pike block, however, requires common drill and unity, and that's something that can be found when recruiting by city, tribe, or household retinue. The latter were usually small in the West, but could be much larger in the East under Caliphs and Emperors. Meanwhile city and tribal militia were close-knit and easy to train together. Any time you encounter a pike formation in the Middle Ages, it was as one of these three kinds.

The Swiss were decentralized as a state, but each individual canton was a centralized body of towns and tribes who trained and fought under their own banners. Same for the Flemish, the Germans, the Italians, and the Saracens and Moors who formed pike militias.

Holy crap this thread is cancer.

>Early matchlocks loaded really slowly
>Could easily be trampled by cavalry

To prevent this you had a section of pikemen in the center or your formations with matchlocks on either side that way if cavalry tried to charge either side of the matchlock sections the pikemen can easily swing around and defend them.

As guns became longer in 1700's they just replaced the pikes by sticking a bayonet on everyones gun.

>week in offensive/hard as fuck to charge with
Weren't the Swiss famous for using pikes offensively though?

shit knowledge of 13th-15th century military history or bait?

Yep, they called their manner of fighting with pikes something like almayne style, it typically involved charging the enemy while holding the pike underarm and about halfway down the entire shaft. Swiss trainers were sent to Southern Germany, France and many other places.

Most pikes throughout history were about 9 feet long or thereabouts, and it's only in the late 16th century that they returned to being much longer like the Macedonian pike.

They also weren't offensively weak or better at defense - that had more to do with the kind of drill the pikemen had. Charging in formation, vulnerable to missile or artillery fire, and standing up to cavalry with discipline are all qualities of the soldier regardless of his weapon. The Swiss were quite aggressive with their pikes, but then again the Swiss were aggressive in general. Meanwhile the Brabantines and other Flemish troops could hold their ground against French cavalry even when surrounded. The Abbasids meanwhile could carry very large shields strapped to their back or shoulders to specifically stand up to arrow showers from an approaching cavalry charge.

Some years ago I read a first-hand account of a battle somewhere in Scandinavia if I remember correctly(pretty sure I'm not)

The opposing side loosed their arrows at a pike formation and the formation would raise their pikes/spears upward and stop or deflect most of the arrows. This happened repeatedly so the commander ordered a temporary ceasefire.

Anyone know what I'm talking about?

As I, sure as coitus, do not.

>its so heartwarming that no one got hurt in that picture

Upright pikes have always been noted as good at blocking arrows and light javelins, it was one of the reasons Alexander's sarissa-armed phalagites were well protected against skirmishers despite being more lightly armoured than a hoplite. Like Swiss pike squares, the Macedonian phalanx was an effective offensive formation. They were mobile both tactically and strategically; phalangites could even swim over rivers in full combat gear using their wooden shields as floatation devices.

Is the "chinese didn't have pikes" guy still here? I miss him

Also. Chinese didn't have pikes.

yes, but the swiss were mad and were unique at the time
like this guys says

but using swiss pikemen to explain how pike formations (should have) worked it's like using the highlanders at balaclava to counter-argument that square formation isn't the best way to defend against cavalry attacks

>Stay dead

Large groups of point sticks NEVER really went away. Its incredibly effective.

It just gets overshadowed by the more glamorous heavy calvary and bowmen.

People seem to forget there were full length pike formations at Wisby.

deventerburgerscap.blogspot.nl/2016/02/the-push-of-pikes-in-14th-century.html

deventerburgerscap.blogspot.nl/2016/02/the-14th-century-pike-and-its.html

deventerburgerscap.blogspot.nl/2016/02/the-pikey-wisby-project-phase-1.html

....cavalry was huge in the continent before fucking hastings, user.

Also, no. Pikes fucking shit all over other infantry. Hence men with pikes conquering greece, persia, egypt, and part of india, and then killing people for a few centuries before one crazy fucker said "what if I go west" and handed the Romans a string of nasty fucking defeats with his pikes.

Medieval forces were too decentralized for pike to be feasible. In addition, actual cohesive forces were small. The kingdom didn't raise 11,000 men, it raised 1,000 men who raised another hundred who raised another ten.

The Byzantines, who still had a centralized military, were fielding infantry who fought in squares (and may or may not had had pikes) with integral archer support in the square well into the middle ages.

This stop as the military becomes decentralized.

Even if all your constituent parts trained with pikes, why bother?

90% of war was raiding, skirmishing or sieges, and pikes are shit for all of those.

In addition, pikes are exponentially better thr more of them you can field. Small armies are better off with more versatile infantry.

>it must have
And yet, it didn't.

You can use a pike and a shield.

Centurions were absolutely fucking insane.

The other guy pulls his point back, thrusts forward, and you die.

Pike fencing was very much a thing. Especially with the comparatively short pikes used in the medieval era. It isn't a static object that you can freely fuck with.

Thank you for your ignorance.

Only if they don't wear armor. Flodden is a great example ofthe scots NOT being dirt poor (for once) and wearing good quality armor-the longbows didn't do shit.

Knights traveled between households when they came of age-the men they served with would likely not be the men they had learned with.

That said, heavily armored lancers from a similar culture will not generally have much variation in tactics.

They WEREN'T more lightly armored than a contemporary hoplite. The armor was identical, with greave(s), helmet, and curiass. The shield is 2ft instead of 3ft in diameter, but that is not a huge change.

>>Thank you for your ignorance.
no prob, m8
i can see you have a lot of that to offer too, since half of the post is bullshit and the other half romaboobabble

RIP Winkelried. A real human being and a real hero.

>and handed the Romans a string of nasty fucking defeats with his pikes.
You do know that Pyrrhus ultimately had to give up and leave right? And macedonian pike formations didn't save what was left of the macedonian kingdom from roman conquest.

Phillip actually made his hoplites even MORE armoured when he reformed them into phalangites, they only reduction was in the shield they carried

That's just completely wrong. Philip II's Macedon was a poorfag state and couldn't afford to arms its soldiers with heavy metal cuirasses like the richer Greek city-states. Macedonian phalangites who fought in the front ranks wore the light linothorax, constructed from glued layers of linen and metal, which was also cooler in hot weather than a full metal cuirass. Soldiers in the center often went to battle with little chest protection, carrying only helmets, greaves and shields. Greaves were the only mandatory piece of armour worn on the body, and soldiers who lost them would be fined.

The armor and sarissa length started to increase after Alexander's death in the armies of the Diadochi, which killed the mobility of the phalanxes and turned battles between the successor kingdoms into pushing contests. In Philip II and Alexander's campaigns the phalanxes relied on speed and stamina.

Yes, after mauling several field armies made up of heavy infantry. Attrition did him in. That, and stupidity.

>And macedonian pike formations didn't save what was left of the macedonian kingdom from roman conquest.

They didn't cause it either. Useless cavalrymen did.

Oh, look. A wild retard. The linothorax had been the dominant armor among hoplites for quite sometime by this point, and not wearing armor was also becoming common-greek war had become far less ritualized and more mobile, and a hoplite needed to be lighter as a direct result.

>That's just completely wrong. Philip II's Macedon was a poorfag state and couldn't afford to arms its soldiers
Well, it's a good thing they armed themselves then, isn't it?

>>They didn't cause it either. Useless cavalrymen did.
Except the problem here is that this reveals a severe weakness of pike formations, without their cavalry or some sort of firearm equipped infantry protecting them, heavy infantry can destroy them.

Muhfuggen rhodoks vs an unhorsed Swadian lmao

No, that's a weakness of the phalanx, be it pike or spear armed.

Later pike squares could and did readily defend in all directions, and would not fall to simple assault by heavy infantry-or even to cavalry on the flanks.

Fuck, even Hellenic formations could do this-romans were totally unable to break Seleucid squares by direct assault at magnesia.

Second-virtually any force that is totally abandoned by their flank guards is in serious danger.

Not quite correct. While the linothorax was certainly in use in Greece, Greek hoplites started reequipping themselves with heavier armour in the 360s BC. In the decades leading up to the battle of Chaeronea when the Greek alliance was beated by Philip II, we have ample evidence that bronze cuirasses were back in style in Greece, especially in Athens.

>Deventer

Shit city desu.