Spear

Humanity's oldest weapon

The spear is the oldest and most universal weapon in human history. A simple thing of a wooden shaft about 150 to 250 cm with a metal head, or in the Stone Age a head of stone or bone, it was so easy and cheap to make that it was the first weapon any civilization took in hand. The simple act of thrusting alone was enough to be effective, so the training was short, and used in a dense formation it let the strength of the group make up for the want of individual skill. Above all, the essence of the spear lies in distance: the long shaft reaches first, before the enemy can close, mastering by reach a foe armed with sword or dagger. From the Greek phalanx to the Viking shield wall to the medieval militia, it was the core weapon of nearly every army in history.

The cavalry charge weapon of the mounted knight

The lance is the core weapon of the medieval cavalry charge: a horse-only spear of a long wooden shaft about 300–400 cm tipped with a steel head. A vamplate (conical hand guard) at the middle of the shaft absorbs the shock and shields the hand, and the shaft is locked into a grapper (lance rest, the arrêt) fixed to the breastplate. This 'couched lance' technique gathers the rider's weight and the horse's full speed into a single point at the tip, creating a shock penetration that no infantry or cavalry can meet head-on. After the first impact the shaft usually broke or, having run a foe through, was dropped for a sword or mace. In the joust, deliberately frangible lances were used to reduce injury.

The straight-bladed Japanese spear

The yari is the straight-bladed spear of Japan, the main weapon of the battlefield in the Sengoku period (1467 to 1615). Its head is a straight, double-edged point forged by swordsmiths in the same way as a sword, joined firmly to the shaft by a long tang, the nakago, driven deep into the wood. By the form of the blade there are several variants: the su-yari with a single straight blade, the jumonji-yari with cross-shaped side blades, and the kama-yari with sickle-like curved side blades. The blade runs 15 to 90 cm and the total length with the shaft about 250 to 650 cm, and the especially long nagae-yari, the long-shafted pike, was wielded en masse by the ashigaru, the foot soldiers. The shaft was lacquered and the blade covered with a saya, a protective scabbard.

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.