Why do you need entire units of pole-arms behind the front row as a large spearwall block?

Griffith

Banned
This is something I've been wondering about.

Obviously spearmen, pikemen, and other pole arms were designed to fight cavalry and also they were cheaper weapons to equip and they were easier to train with. So it makes sense for militia.

With that said I am wondering about spear and other pole arm weapons used by professional armies that are armed to te teeth and train everyday such as mercenaries and Spartans- why you'd need an entire unit of troops armed with pole weapons (as in not only is the front row and perhaps the second row armed with spear or pike but every man behind the first three rows also have spears or pikes)?

I mean not only is the primary purpose of pole arms is because its a great weapon for men drafted at the last minute with no training, but the main reason why professional armies USE SPEARS AND PIKES is to counter cavalry.

But considering cavalry charges often break apart and fail at the first row of pike-armed troops this brings another point........

I read that once you start going up the foodchain and fight other professional and hardened armies, pole arms were quite vulnerable weapons against shorter arms. In particular the sources say that sword and shield men often not only counter but easily defeat entire units of pike and spearmen but also the Landskricht had shock troops armed with heavy two handed swords designed to cut off the sharp tips of spears and pikes to render them uselesss. The Japanese also employed a similar tactic with their NoDachi swords (less cutting off the pole apart and more parry in and kill an individual ashigari or Yari samurai).

Also because they generally are lighter armoured (especially militia and cheaper mercenaries), your rune of the mill spearmen and pikemen were more exposed to arrows, stones, and other range attacks unless they were armed with shields or had ridiculously long pole arms that were in the 10-20 ish feet tall range (because some sources state very long pikes have been known to intercept and stop arrows).


Hell you don't even need troops designed to counter spearmen to beat them- you can even get lightly armed soldiers such as random militia armed with heavy clubs and so long as a few units they don't rout and stand their ground, you can send other units who are not directly engaging to flank the spearmen (where they are vulnerable), rush in before they realize the flanking, and kill them before they grip their spear underhand or overhead.

In some cases because of terrain (such as a forest) they may not even be able to properly grip their pike because the spacing is too small, they might not even enter the area that is the field of battle (such as buildings in a city), because of how too large and unwieldy their pike and spears are.

So that makes me wonder........ WHY ARM THE ENTIRE UNIT with spears since spears have a lot of weaknesses and in the first place professional armies only even arm themselves with spears in the firstplace because of cavalry?

I know some soldiers such as the Spartans and Macedonians had mastered using pole arms so well that the second man in row can easily do an overhead attack over the first row of spearmen to aid in killing the enemy (as the Spartans frequently did) and int he case of the Macedonians, the front wars had ways of utilizing several rows at once ( man in front crouches while the man behind holds spears in a straight row and the third row angle it upwards when awaiting a charging enemy).

But this still goes against logic why you need to arm an entire division with nothing but pikes since there are so many weaknesses.

I mean can you have a first row with spears followed by a row of sword and shield troops followed by a row of halberd?

Or can't you have the first few men as pikemen with some archers concentrated in the middle of the formation?

I mean considering pikemen often clashed against each other, I'm surprised no one exploited the weakness of pole arms by having a a row of swordsmen armed with shield within to be used specifically against other units of spearmen by charging in first and creating a gap or softening the enemy pikemen's assault and than allowing the pikemen of his unit to quickly go in front and exploit the gap the swordsmen created.

Or (since they are so vulnerable at the flanks) why did no commander of a spear unit thought of letting the first few rows of pikemen clash against the enemy's ikes while sending some of the men at the backmost rows of the units to move out of formation and attacking the enemy pikemen (who are too busy fighting against the front row pikes) at his flanks?

Or even have some of the spearmen in the second row drop their spear
and pull out daggers or sords to exploid the pike's weaknesses.

So I'm wondering why unit needed to compose of entirely pole arms (especially very large units that are in the hundreds, if not thousands)?

I saw one Total War gamer claim the reason for the setup of whole pole arm unit was to prevent cavalry from jumping. He explained the men behind would hold their pikes upward so that if a cavalry man decides to attempt to break the gap by sacrificing himself by jumping his horse behind the first row, the pikes or spears being held vertically will impale the cavalry men and his horse and thus prevent a gap being created.

How legit is that reasoning?

I mean since professional armies and mercenaries already have the training in swords, etc that militia typically lack and are armoured fully as opposed to your run-of-the-mill militia, why do they need units of pikes? I mean the only reason they still retained spears despite being well trained in superior weapons is because of cavalry.

Since cavalry typically are stopped easily by the first row of pikemen in a direct charge, couldn't mercenaries simply have a unit in the aforementioned manner above (spearmen in front, swordsmen and/or everything else behind)? I mean this setup makes more sense than entire units since spearmen already have proven to be very weak against sword and shield and two handed sword troops!
 
With that said I am wondering about spear and other pole arm weapons used by professional armies that are armed to te teeth and train everyday such as mercenaries and Spartans- why you'd need an entire unit of troops armed with pole weapons (as in not only is the front row and perhaps the second row armed with spear or pike but every man behind the first three rows also have spears or pikes)?

Most units were always mixed you didn't had just one of x and another of y. Only with the advent of muskets did units begun to get standard equipment and even then there are specialists with some differences.

Another reason to place most pikes on several lines was because the phalanx was a battering ram and rellies on having them act as a ram and for that its better to have them all with pikes to replace losses.
or men drafted at the last minute with no training, but the main reason why professional armies USE SPEARS AND PIKES is to counter cavalry.

But considering cavalry charges often break apart and fail at the first row of pike-armed troops this brings another point........

Strangely enough the pike isn't just a defensive weapon to counter cavalry it's also a offensive weapon and a very useful one when used in mass, but they would be used with the support if the other arms.

I read that once you start going up the foodchain and fight other professional and hardened armies, pole arms were quite vulnerable weapons against shorter arms. In particular the sources say that sword and shield men often not only counter but easily defeat entire units of pike and spearmen but also the Landskricht had shock troops armed with heavy two handed swords designed to cut off the sharp tips of spears and pikes to render them uselesss. The Japanese also employed a similar tactic with their NoDachi swords (less cutting off the pole apart and more parry in and kill an individual ashigari or Yari samurai).

There were never units of just pikes or just swords, most generals would deploy in mixed order. The original tercio is a great example of mixed weapons a third, a third swords and a third firearms all in one.

Also because they generally are lighter armoured (especially militia and cheaper mercenaries), your rune of the mill spearmen and pikemen were more exposed to arrows, stones, and other range attacks unless they were armed with shields or had ridiculously long pole arms that were in the 10-20 ish feet tall range (because some sources state very long pikes have been known to intercept and stop arrows).

I assume we are speaking 15th and 16th century here. Usual body armour would be more than enough to stop arrows.
Hell you don't even need troops designed to counter spearmen to beat them- you can even get lightly armed soldiers such as random militia armed with heavy clubs and so long as a few units they don't rout and stand their ground, you can send other units who are not directly engaging to flank the spearmen (where they are vulnerable), rush in before they realize the flanking, and kill them before they grip their spear underhand or overhead.

Source please.
In some cases because of terrain (such as a forest) they may not even be able to properly grip their pike because the spacing is too small, they might not even enter the area that is the field of battle (such as buildings in a city), because of how too large and unwieldy their pike and spears are.

No one on is right mind is going to engage in battle on a forest unless he is force to, and if they had to fight in those places they usually had short swords to do the job.

So that makes me wonder........ WHY ARM THE ENTIRE UNIT with spears since spears have a lot of weaknesses and in the first place professional armies only even arm themselves with spears in the firstplace because of cavalry?

Spears weren't used to fight off just cavalry. They were good to pierce mail, something that swords have trouble doing, but most importantly most examples of armies that you gave, 15/16th century armies, Macedonians and Spartans, didn't used spears they used pikes and as I said before they were used alone and they weren't just to counter cavalry.

I mean can you have a first row with spears followed by a row of sword and shield troops followed by a row of halberd?

Or can't you have the first few men as pikemen with some archers concentrated in the middle of the formation?

Again most armies used mixed formations of troops and not just a single weapon. Also if you have halberds you don't need spears because the halberd is better to fight off armoured enemies.


I mean considering pikemen often clashed against each other, I'm surprised no one exploited the weakness of pole arms by having a a row of swordsmen armed with shield within to be used specifically against other units of spearmen by charging in first and creating a gap or softening the enemy pikemen's assault and than allowing the pikemen of his unit to quickly go in front and exploit the gap the swordsmen created.

You are basically describing one way the tercio worked. Pikes, swordsmen and firearms acting together with the likes fighting the other pikes while swordsmen went to create gaps.

Or (since they are so vulnerable at the flanks) why did no commander of a spear unit thought of letting the first few rows of pikemen clash against the enemy's ikes while sending some of the men at the backmost rows of the units to move out of formation and attacking the enemy pikemen (who are too busy fighting against the front row pikes) at his flanks?

The the other side is going to do the same and in the end only thing that happened was that now you have a bigger battle line. Also most of the times you have units with orders to protect the flanks.

I saw one Total War gamer claim the reason for the setup of whole pole arm unit was to prevent cavalry from jumping. He explained the men behind would hold their pikes upward so that if a cavalry man decides to attempt to break the gap by sacrificing himself by jumping his horse behind the first row, the pikes or spears being held vertically will impale the cavalry men and his horse and thus prevent a gap being created.

How legit is that reasoning?

Are you basing yourself on the Total War games? I ask because on TW you only have units with a single type of weapons each and that while good for gaming purposes is good it wouldn't work real life.

On the suicide horse attack I leave for those that study cavalry tactics to explain but it sounds a bit stupid to expect someone to charge to his death.
 
The anti-cavalry square bristled with spears because horses really don't like the idea of impaling themselves on pointy sticks. Every unit ever carried a mix of arms where possible (which was all the time). There was a reason for two to three rows of spearmen though in pike formations; when the first line broke (which happened despairingly often) the second and third were there to blunt the already slowed cavalry charge. Beyond the third line though you usually saw swordsmen and such. Edit: Don't try and get your information from video games, they're evil pits of misinformation 99.98% of the time.
 
Along with what was stated above, note that even if an armored man on a huge warhorse decided to make the unlikely (and rather suicidal) charge a cavalryman won't necessarily be stopped by one line of spearmen, even if you kill the horse the momentum of the horse falling can still disrupt lines leaving an opening for the closely following cavalry to exploit (cavalry would get really close to one another just before impact) that is why you have multiple lines so if the first line breaks the second or third can stop the remaining cavalry. (Edit: There is also the issue of cavalry are not really going to sacrifice themselves, they are more likely to turn at the last minute if they don't see the line wavering) Also having multiple lines of pikes can maximize how many are hitting an enemy the pikes one or two rows back can potentially reach their opponents, make the line too long and it becomes hard to maneuver and vulnerable to a concentrated enemy force (you mentioned TW, problem is while they are fun games, in TW thin lines that cover more ground tend to be better, unlike real life) also if you have multiple lines if someone dies another guy can take his place rather than just leaving a huge hole in the line.

There is also the issue of units had multiple types of weapons, combined arms was very much a thing in the past, during the early days of pike and shot pikemen would have arquebusiers and halberdiers/swordsmen (to clean up enemies during a push of pike situation or to break through other pike formations) supporting them in a formation such as a Spanish Tercio not to mention pikemen tended to carry swords or knives already (The first line of pikemen would already have them drawn or have their hands on their hilts, ready to be drawn for when the enemy hit)

Pikes and spears are very versatile weapons, they have far far more uses than just to fend off cavalry, they had a great deal of offensive value as well, not to mention much further reach than a sword.

Edit: as for your talk on terrain, many battles of this time were open pitched battles, not encounter battles, both armies would have to agree to engage, if an enemy army had too much of a terrain advantage the other wouldn't attack, that is why you sometimes see an army coming down a hill or out of a forest to convince the enemy army to risk engaging in battle (see Napoleons decision to move down from the high ground to lure the coalition into attacking at Austerlitz, it also was to make his army seem more disorganized and weaker than it actually was).
 
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First of all, a moving horse with a rider has some mass and speed. Physics tells us that this has a high inertia, so even if the horse or the rider is killed (which is highly unlikely, usually just injured) in contact with the first row, the moving body would hit and smash about 4-8 rows of standing men. Inertia, that simple.
Second, there are second, third, etc rows of attacking cavalry. The has to be someone letf in your infantry unit to counter them.
Third, if your unit had only the first (or even first few) rows armed with spears or pikes, then is would be obvious to attack them with something thrown or shot to disable those able to counter a cavalry charge and make the rest vulnerable.

Historically, pikemen militia was usually very well armed, because unwilling to die in the field (and who does want to?) they pay all they can for the best armor and weapons they can get.
 

Deleted member 97083

Spearmen and pikemen are effective against cavalry, but the advantage is not as extreme as commonly thought. Dozens of armored knights on armored horses charging at you with giant steel lances would have been a terrifying sight, and it was more than possible for a line of spearman to break into disarray and rout out of fear or lack of discipline--even if they rationally have the advantage--leading them to be destroyed by a even a direct, frontal cavalry attack.

Most of the time of course, cavalry didn't take the risk of charging frontally toward spearmen, preferring to flank as one would expect. But that "killer advantage" of spearmen over cavalry is often exaggerated.

Why did polearm formations have units behind the front row? So they could pull in fresh reserves as the guys at the front got killed. Cavalry is irrelevant to this--it would apply even if both opposing forces were composed entirely of spearmen.
 
Most units were always mixed you didn't had just one of x and another of y. Only with the advent of muskets did units begun to get standard equipment and even then there are specialists with some differences.

Another reason to place most pikes on several lines was because the phalanx was a battering ram and rellies on having them act as a ram and for that its better to have them all with pikes to replace losses.


Strangely enough the pike isn't just a defensive weapon to counter cavalry it's also a offensive weapon and a very useful one when used in mass, but they would be used with the support if the other arms.

There were never units of just pikes or just swords, most generals would deploy in mixed order. The original tercio is a great example of mixed weapons a third, a third swords and a third firearms all in one.

I assume we are speaking 15th and 16th century here. Usual body armour would be more than enough to stop arrows.

Source please.

No one on is right mind is going to engage in battle on a forest unless he is force to, and if they had to fight in those places they usually had short swords to do the job.

Spears weren't used to fight off just cavalry. They were good to pierce mail, something that swords have trouble doing, but most importantly most examples of armies that you gave, 15/16th century armies, Macedonians and Spartans, didn't used spears they used pikes and as I said before they were used alone and they weren't just to counter cavalry.

Again most armies used mixed formations of troops and not just a single weapon. Also if you have halberds you don't need spears because the halberd is better to fight off armoured enemies.

You are basically describing one way the tercio worked. Pikes, swordsmen and firearms acting together with the likes fighting the other pikes while swordsmen went to create gaps.

The the other side is going to do the same and in the end only thing that happened was that now you have a bigger battle line. Also most of the times you have units with orders to protect the flanks.

Are you basing yourself on the Total War games? I ask because on TW you only have units with a single type of weapons each and that while good for gaming purposes is good it wouldn't work real life.

On the suicide horse attack I leave for those that study cavalry tactics to explain but it sounds a bit stupid to expect someone to charge to his death.

Spearmen and pikemen are effective against cavalry, but the advantage is not as extreme as commonly thought. Dozens of armored knights on armored horses charging at you with giant steel lances would have been a terrifying sight, and it was more than possible for a line of spearman to break into disarray and rout out of fear or lack of discipline--even if they rationally have the advantage--leading them to be destroyed by a even a direct, frontal cavalry attack.

Most of the time of course, cavalry didn't take the risk of charging frontally toward spearmen, preferring to flank as one would expect. But that "killer advantage" of spearmen over cavalry is often exaggerated.

Why did polearm formations have units behind the front row? So they could pull in fresh reserves as the guys at the front got killed. Cavalry is irrelevant to this--it would apply even if both opposing forces were composed entirely of spearmen.

Don't forget that all well equipped pike/spear units would have had swords, axes or large knives as backups that could have been pulled out as soon as they ended up in a situation where their main weapon is a liability, as well as soldiers with dedicated close-combat weapons fighting in support. Another advantage of depth is that it makes it easier to defend the flanks without being overrun.
 
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