What necessitated the transition of European late middle ages warfare into the pike and shot style?

>Anybody got a good book/documentary on pike and shot warfare
Several, can you read german?

Asymmetric warfare. Muskets are good but can be run down by cavalry, while pikes can hold against cavalry but aren't as effective otherwise. Combine the two and you have something that doesn't have an obvious weakness while making most effective use of both weapons.

Gonzalo De Cordoba

>doesn't have an obvious weakness

>something that doesn't have an obvious weakness

Artillery, fucks up pikeblocks hard.

Pikes and primitive firearms were already becoming a big deal in late medieval warfare

Artillery.

Also pike and shot was toppled by thin lines of musketmen which had better firepower with less men. The pike and shot columns fell in 30 years war and later on pikes were replaced all together.

OP is asking why

It was fashion and supply and demand pressure, not really necessity.

More like knights realized it could btfo halberdiers. Shorter polearms came about first and already were wrecking cavalry in the hands of the Swiss, and it took fighting with dismounted knights using their lances as pikes for the Swiss to begin changing from mostly using halberds to eventually mostly using pikes.

Pike and shot became popular because it happened to be the fighting style popular among both the Spanish and the Rhinelanders, the two most widespread infantry soldiers of the era due to the wars of the Hapsburgs. The Spanish developed it as a large, combined arms unit in which pikes formed a hollow square for other soldiers, a style of warfare popular among the Moors they were fighting still, and the Rhinelanders shoved in pikemen, other polearms and swordsmen, crossbowmen, and later arquebusiers into a single block of men who were all part of the same town or canton.

Firearms could drive away cavalry as long as there were pikemen to protect them from being overrun as the Spanish learned, while the Rhinelanders knew how effective the pike could be when used offensively against other infantry formations.

Nah senpai, just English

cause they were effective like every weapon/style of warfare that became prevalent.
No-one should need to be told what pikemen are good for but I honestly can't say why guns were better than crossbows

I'd persume it got to a stage were armour was too thick for crossbows but not for guns

Guns are cooler.
t. American

They weren't, not for centuries since they were first introduced to the Battlefield, but they were cheaper and easier to produce than good bows or crossbows, and it was much easier to train someone to use a firearm.

Bowmen were also worthless if they were not accurate or couldn't seriously damage their targets, which comes down to a number of factors: skill of the user, quality of the bow, quality of the arrows/bolts, materials used for the arrowhead, strength required to use them (plate armour required more punching power which required larger weapons which required stronger operators), etc etc. At least with guns there was the understanding that they were shit weapons and probably wouldn't hit anything anyway.

Also, while crossbows are much easier than bows to use, it still required a great deal of strength to operate and training to be used effectively. A soldier half-dead from dysentery could still load and fire a musket competently. Speaking of which, more soldiers died from disease and malnutrition than on the battlefield in those days, and a regiment of gunners was far easier to replace than a regiment of crossbows. A gunner could carry more ammunition on him than a crossbowman, the weapon also being easier to carry. I could go on and on.

>The pike and shot columns fell in 30 years war and later on pikes were replaced all together
it wasn't, it was abandoned by most at the start of the xviii century

Firearms became reliable and available enough to be effective in formation fighting, but were not yet effective enough to be safe from melee formations, so pikemen were necessary to defend them.

>They weren't, not for centuries since they were first introduced to the Battlefield, but they were cheaper and easier to produce than good bows or crossbows, and it was much easier to train someone to use a firearm.
No they weren't. A harquebus easily cost more than double what a crossbow went for. Bernal Diaz put the price of a harquebus in the 1520's at 100 pesos, 50-60 pesos for a crossbow and 50 for a sword.

A harquebus had a longer range, was easier to aim and had far greater killing power. Simply, it replaced bows and crossbows because it was a better weapon.

>No they weren't. A harquebus easily cost more than double what a crossbow went for. Bernal Diaz put the price of a harquebus in the 1520's at 100 pesos, 50-60 pesos for a crossbow and 50 for a sword.

Does that include the cost of ammunition? Or that arrows were produced individually while shot and powder could be produced in large quantities relatively quickly? Or the cost of paying highly skilled crossbowmen as opposed to peasants carrying muskets?

Those guys have helmets like the Boltons

I wish there was a good rts for the warfare of that period. The old cossacks games are getting old.

Crossbowers would receive the same wage or less than a harquebusier. Harquebusiers in this period were considered skilled experts and often were better paid than other infantry, contrary to the baseless le peasants with guns meme.

Sword was replaced by hammer and hammer by pole arm (Longer Hammer really). Calvary was huge back then and having a wall of pikes defending Arquebus support made a solid wall of death that was hard to beat around. The old pin my opponents weapon while my friend attacks no longer was possible as pikes were much longer than any other weapon on the field. Suddenly farmers and other untrained militias could form a solid defense at little or no cost to a lord or earl.

>Suddenly farmers and other untrained militias could form a solid defense at little or no cost to a lord or earl.
Pikes require more training for infantry to use effectively than literally any other weapon, and far more regular drill. Oh, and YOU have to provide said training-Fencing guilds existed, and even commoners practiced with arms for self defense.

There was no equivalent for pikes.

Why weren't pikes more popular before this time and the late middle ages if heavy cavalry was so dangerous? Were arrows and bolts too damaging to the formations before armor had improved?

Drop them books. I can read german pretty good

I would say the rise of European city states rich enough to fund militias that could be regularly trained to work together in pike formations and to economically support gun makers/clock makers.

How does that contradict the point? He said columns were abandoned in favour of lines in 30 years war (True, especially due Dutch and Swedish) and later on pikes saw less and less use up to and following the turn of the century.

30 years war happened in 17th century.

need a lot of gas to run that amerilard.

Not many competent archers during the time pikes took prevalence, remember archery had a significantly higher rate of fire than firearms right up until the invention of magazines and clips.

>Bayonets
This kills the pikeman

I do wonder why it took 200 years to invent the bayonet.

There's a mod for Medieval 2 called For King or Country. It's really good.

To have armies of pikemen you need a strong central authority with the wealth and knowledge to acquire large numbers of men, feed, house, equip and train them, and keep them standing around for a while.

It was only in the late middle ages did Europe become developed enough again for this to happen.

It's the same with the ancient pike phalanxes, people wonder why small Greek nations like Rhodes or Massalia didn't have pikes. Simply because you need a lot of infrastructure to have them, for small states, light versatile troops are much better.

One does not simply spawn an army of pikemen.

Patch 16.4.6.8 was à mistake

Europe's Tragedy by Peter H. Wilson gives a really good overview not only of the political situation in Europe up to and during the Thirty Years War but also a detailed examination of the pike and shot warfare of that period.