Pike
A long infantry spear three to seven metres long, on which the tight pike squares of Swiss mercenaries, German Landsknechte and Spanish tercios once stood.
Quick Facts
About the weapon
The pike is a very long spear of European infantry, measuring roughly three to seven metres. It gained its fame through the Swiss, whose pike squares defeated the Burgundian army of Charles the Bold at Grandson and Morat in 1476 and at Nancy in 1477. The deep pike square then became the main form of infantry combat for several decades; besides the Swiss it was carried by Landsknechte and Spanish tercios. The Scots' adoption of the continental pike brought them a humiliating defeat at Flodden in 1513. The pike weighed about two to six kilograms. The shaft tapered toward the head so it would not bend at the ends, and metal strips called langets reinforced it near the head. John Smythe, an English military writer of the 16th century, recommended lighter pikes and distinguished a cautious and an aggressive way of engaging two pike squares. Joachim Meyer included fighting with the long staff, that is the pike, in the fifth part of his manual Gründtliche Beschreibung der Kunst des Fechtens (Strasbourg 1570); it is the basis on which pike fighting is practised in historical European martial arts. The pike returned as an emergency weapon: in 1942 Britain's Home Guard received Croft's pikes, old bayonet blades welded onto a steel tube. Spanish night watchmen, the serenos, carried a short pike about a metre and a half long called a chuzo from 1715 to 1977.
Parts of the weapon
- Shaft
Related weapons
- Variants: Chuzo