Chris Lemens:
>Pike phalanxes typically carried big ol' heavy shields. Roman pila
>(javelins) had barbed heads so that they stuck in shields and had hafts of
>soft metal so that they bent on impact. The result was that they were very
>hard to remove from your shield before the legion smashed into your front
>line (especially if both your hands were full of pike). This made using the
>shield both awkward and tiring.
The defeat of the sarissa wielding phalangite by the legions was many due to the superior tactical flexibility of the manipular system.
The Macedonians had perfected the Sarissa Phalanx into a shoulder to shoulder steamroller attack with five pike points fronting the first rank and a forest of pikes behind that severely broke up missile fire, particularily javelins. The romans actually failed to penetrate the phalanx and were in fact being pushed back by it to the point where they were near breaking. However, they used their flexibility to flank the steamroller and that was its weakness. It was infelxible and easily disrupted by rough ground or flank attack - the legion wasn't.
I've always felt the pilum effect on shields to be somewhat overrated and picked up on by far to many fiction writers and military writers who think its a cool idea - if a normal javelin is stuck in your shield and you are in a pike formation -when do you get the time to clear it? considering you are holding in both hands, a twenty foot pike and have the shield on a shoulder strap? In fact, if the pilum penetrated the shield, its biggest effect was also penetrating the poor sap standing behind the shield at the same time! A wounded man in the midst of a pike formation is a lot more annoying than a shield with a spear in it.
The reason why the Pilum was so nasty is cos it was bloody HUGE. A very heavy throwing weapon that had such weight that if it hit squarely, it'd punch through you.
But, assuming that the legion threw their pilums and lots of shields were dropped, then they still have to get through five spear heads and shafts _each_ before they can close on the phalangite. All of this to be done while the phalangites are advancing forward with a steading pace and prodding you with the damn things? Easy? Don't think so.
>Note that cavalry at the time had not yet developed the stirrup, so lances
>were not nearly as effective as in medieval times. This is probably what
>the grounded pike was not as popular as in medieval times--it was much
>easier to push the rider off the horse.
The lance was used in an entriely different way to the couched lance but the opponent cavalry fought was also different - couched lances allowed the attacker to punch through heavy armour or dismount a very heavy individual but the overhand stabbing technique (used even by Napoleonic Uhlans and Lancers BTW) was highly effective against even well armoured troops as it had range, had considerable weight and was as sharp as any hoplites spear push. In addtion to that, the way cavalry worked best was in pursuit and the couched lance is very inefficient for that kind of work.
The medieval pike was a cheap way of giving troops solidity. In the roman era they armed their men with short swords but found no problem repulsing cavalry because they trained so hard for solidity - horse won't charge a solid line without considerable encouragement and won't do it every time so such a charge is fraught with risk. For the infantry, the problem was not pushing the horseman off his mount but actually standing to recieve the charge in the first place - mostly though the sheer fact that they were hard to charge meant they weren't - its almost unheard of to charge undisrupted infantry in _any_ era and considered an amazing feat when it succeeds.
Solidty stopped cavalry , however, such a training capability was beyond most troops in the pike era so they trained them in using something long, with a point, which they could stand in a clump with and present a frightening display to any crazy cavalryman- the Dutch were pioneers of this, given their milita based army. The Swiss were similar but their pikes were short and they too relied on solidity from unit bonds and discipline rather than the big pike.
Infantry then became king because they were so much cheaper than heavy cav, more numerous, multi-task capable and a lot easier to feed and keep functioning.
Martin Laurie
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #271
WWW at http://rider.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/Rolegame/glorantha.faq.html
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