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A modern recreation of a mid-17th century company of pikemen. By that period, pikemen would primarily defend their unit's musketeers from enemy cavalry.. A pike is a long thrusting spear formerly used in European warfare from the Late Middle Ages [1] and most of the early modern period, and wielded by foot soldiers deployed in pike square formation, until it was largely replaced by bayonet ...
However, the tactic depended on well trained and drilled troops who could move in unison while in close formation. While the use of pikes to fend off cavalry was common throughout the Middle Ages, such barricades were usually fixed in position. The Swiss pikemen were to bring a change of paradigm by reintroducing the offensive element into pike ...
The latter would originally have been 18 feet long but for reasons of practicality, 12-foot pikes are used today. Pikes were used to repel cavalry charges and swords would have been used for personal protection in the event of a pike being broken in battle. Musketeers wear a buff coat and wide-brimmed black felt hat.
By the 16th century, late-medieval troop types that had proven most successful in the Hundred Years' War, Burgundian Wars and the late phase of the Reconquista, dominated European warfare, especially the heavily armoured gendarme (a professional version of the medieval knight), the Swiss, the Spanish Tercio and the Landsknecht mercenary pikemen.
Pages in category "Cavalry charges" The following 29 pages are in this category, out of 29 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. ...
The term dates from at least 1000 AD and derives from Old English roots expressing the idea of a "shield-troop". [1] Some researchers have also posited this etymological relation may show the schiltron is directly descended from the Anglo-Saxon shield wall, and still others give evidence "schiltron" is a name derived from a Viking circular formation (generally no fewer than a thousand fighters ...
These arquebusiers and heavy cannons scythed down the close-packed ranks of the Swiss squares in bloody heaps—at least, as long as the Swiss attack could be bogged down by earthworks or cavalry charges, and the vulnerable arquebusiers were backed up by melee infantry—pikemen, halberdiers, and/or swordsmen (Spanish sword-and-buckler men or ...
The charge was the result of a misunderstood order from the commander-in-chief, Lord Raglan, who had intended the Light Brigade to attack a different objective for which light cavalry was better suited, to prevent the Russians from removing captured guns from overrun Turkish positions. The Light Brigade made its charge under withering direct ...