X-Nico

unusual facts about pike and shot


Pike and shot

By the end of the fifteenth century, those late-medieval troop types that had proven most successful in the Hundred Years' War and Burgundian Wars dominated warfare, especially the heavily armoured gendarme (a professional version of the medieval knight), the Swiss and Landsknecht mercenary pikeman, and the emerging artillery corps of heavy cannons, which were rapidly improving in technological sophistication.


Rodeleros

When the Spanish adopted the colunella (the first of the mixed pike and shot formations), they used small groups of sword and buckler men to break the deadlock of the push of pike, as the Swiss and Germans used halberdiers, comparable to the role of the German Doppelsöldner during the same period.


see also