Pike (weapon)

A modern recreation of a company of pikemen.

A pike is a two-handed pole weapon once used extensively by infantry principally as a counter-measure against cavalry assaults. Pikes were extremely long weapons, carried by infantry and resembled a spear between 10 and 14 feet (3 and 4 meters) long. These eventually grew in size both in shaft and head length; the longest pikes could exceed 22 feet (6 meters) in length. The extreme length of this weapon requires a strong wood such as well-seasoned ash for the pole, which is also made narrower towards the tip of the weapon to prevent sagging.

The steel tip was fairly long compared to the shaft, making the weapon most unwieldy in close combat. This meant that pikemen were often equipped with a sword, for close encounters.

In the Late Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, the pike phalanx formed the defensive part of the army with its staying power; the cavalry formed its offensive force.

In operation on the battlefield, pikes were often used in large square phalanxes or "hedgehog" formations. For example, the Scots used highly disciplined units of pikemen called schiltrons to defeat English knights and heavy cavalry at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314. The Spanish developed the tercio formation where arquebusier formations protected the flanks of the phalanx. Large pike formations, sometimes defending attached musketeers, were in use during the 17th century.

The landsknechts were pikemen of renown during the 15th to the 17th centuries, mercenaries of the European Renaissance. They were most skillful in their handling of the long pike. A Landsknecht phalanx also contained two-handed swordsmen and halberdiers for close combat against infantry.

Pikes as a main battlefield weapon were replaced by bayonets as firearms became more reliable around the mid 17th century. The popular ring bayonet of the late 17th century completed the transition of firearm and polearm into one weapon, and this transition began the end of the pike as a battlefield weapon. However, in Ireland, the pike was widely used by insurgents in the rebellion of 1798 and as late as the abortive Young Ireland rebellion of 1848.Pikes were even used by men of the Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers in the 1916 Rising. The demise of the cavalry charge in the face of more effective firearms such as the flintlock musket rendered the pike obsolete for warfare.

Most very long spears are now called pikes, such as the Macedon sarissa.

Pikes today are used to carry the colours of an infantry regiment.

Awl pike (Ahlspiess) is not a pike in itself, but a completely different weapon.

References

* McPeak, William. Military Heritage, 7(1), August 2005, pp. 10,12,13. (Military Heritage discussed a pike as a military weapon that was eventually replaced by the bayoneted firearm.)