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Pike

An extremely long spear for massed infantry formations

The pike is the longest weapon in the history of the infantry, reaching about 400 to 600 cm. A weapon for the mass alone, held in both hands and used only in dense formation, it carries a relatively small steel head on a shaft of ash. The pike square developed by the Swiss mercenaries was a vast hedgehog of a formation with hundreds of points bristling on every side, the most effective means of stopping a cavalry charge. The men of the rear ranks thrust their pikes out over the shoulders of those in front so that four or five rows of points faced the enemy at once. The Spanish tercio of the 16th and 17th centuries joined these pikemen with arquebusiers to perfect the strongest infantry tactic in the Europe of the day.

Origin

The root of the pike is the sarissa of ancient Macedon, the two-handed pike about 5 to 6 m long carried by the phalanx of Philip II and Alexander the Great. This long pike, which had vanished after antiquity, was revived by Swiss infantry in the 14th century. The Swiss peasant and citizen levies, who had no other way to meet knightly cavalry on open ground, broke the charging heavy horse again and again with the pike square, and with the victories of Sempach in 1386 and the Burgundian Wars of 1476 to 1477 the pike infantry became a thing all Europe feared. By this the age of the knight set, and the trend by which disciplined infantry became the master of the battlefield took firm hold.

Features

The longest of infantry weapons, about 400 to 600 cm
The pike square, a formation that guards on every side
Four or five rows of points facing the enemy at once
The most effective means of defense against cavalry
The Spanish tercio, a tactic joining pike and arquebus
A weight of about 3 to 5 kg

Stories

The pike could not be used alone and gave its power only within a formation. When densely ranked men thrust their pikes out slantwise to the front, the horse of the charging cavalry stopped before that wall of points or was run through. When pike squares met, the issue was decided by the push of pike, each shoving against the other with pikes leveled. In the Spanish tercio the pikemen guarded every side to shield the arquebusiers within from cavalry, and the firepower of the gun joined with the wall of the pike to make an infantry block that would not break.

Weakness

The weakness of the pike is the other face of its extreme length. Too long and heavy to be used in individual combat at all, it is useless one on one or in a narrow space. Above all, once the formation breaks, the pikeman is practically defenseless and is cut down one-sidedly by an enemy with a short weapon, which is why pikemen usually carried a short sword as a sidearm. The square, moreover, demanded flat ground and the keeping of firm ranks, so it lost its power on broken ground or in confusion.

Cultural Significance

The pike is a weapon symbolic of the infantry revolution, in which disciplined foot soldiers pushed aside the knight and became masters of the battlefield. The event of the Swiss pike square, made of commoners, breaking armies of noble knights again and again announced the start of a new age in which the discipline and formation of the group, rather than the valor of the individual, decided war. The Swiss mercenaries and the German Landsknechts were hired across the states of Europe and won fame with this pike tactic, and the pike-and-shot tactic of the Spanish tercio upheld the military supremacy of the Spanish empire in the 16th and 17th centuries.

In Popular Culture

The pike is a weapon never missing from strategy games that deal with Renaissance and early modern war. In games such as Total War and Age of Empires the pikeman appears as the anti-cavalry unit that neutralizes a cavalry charge, and the dense pike square and the tercio are often depicted. In period films too there are scenes of a bristling pike square stopping cavalry in its tracks. In works that deal with flashy individual skill, however, the character of the pike as a weapon of the mass, shining only in formation, is often not fully shown.

Trivia

The pike derives from the sarissa of ancient Macedon, the pike about 5 to 6 m long carried by the phalanx of Philip II and Alexander, and after vanishing in antiquity it was revived by Swiss infantry in the 14th century, whose pike squares broke knightly cavalry again and again (Sempach in 1386, the Burgundian Wars of 1476 to 1477).
The pike-and-shot tactic, in which pikemen held off cavalry while arquebusiers added firepower, is typified by the Spanish tercio and dominated the European battlefield in the 16th and 17th centuries.
What ended the age of the pike was the bayonet: fitting a blade to the muzzle of a musket turned every musketeer into his own pikeman, so that by around 1700 the dedicated pikeman had vanished from European armies.