4 ms·

Pikemen alone are not good enough against knights. Pepper pikemen with skirmishers (bows + thrown spears), and they'll eventually break. The pikemen cannot char

Pikemen alone are not good enough against knights. Pepper pikemen with skirmishers (bows + thrown spears), and they'll eventually break. The pikemen cannot charge the cavalry in open terrain, or they'll lose formation and get annihalated. If pikes worked well, the byzantine empire would have never needed cataphracts, just follow their Macedonian ancestors and revive the greek sarissas. Its pike and shot that pushed knights out. Only then did civilian armies have effective ranged options that could threaten knights. Also the byzantine empire got eventually destroyed by the turks The byzantine government which relied on tax collector->emperor->soldier was less efficient than the simplicity of the knight->king structure of the turks. The more aristocratic Franks and Spaniards had no problems pushing back the moors, because turns out the motley crew of vagrant crusaders were more effective than an easily corruptable bureaucracy.

jltsiren 4y ago
Pikemen dominated European battlefields after advances in infantry tactics made them effective. Pike and shot was a later development that replaced pure pike squares long after pikemen had ended the dominance of heavy cavalry. The key development in the pike square was mobility. Earlier infantry forces using similar weapons had more rigid formations, with a single direction that was supposed to point towards the enemy. That made them vulnerable to outflanking by cavalry / skirmishers / archers. Pike squares drilled rapid turns, which made outflanking them much more difficult. The Byzantine Empire remained capable and strong until around 1200, when a series of incompetent emperors destroyed it. In particular, one of them had the clever idea of using the Fourth Crusade in a power struggle against another. That resulted in the loss of Constantinople. While the empire eventually got its capital back, it never recovered. The empire that the Ottomans later defeated was only a shadow of its former self. As for the supposed effectiveness of the Franks and Spaniards: the Reconquista was a series of wars from 718 or 722 until 1492.

jltsiren 4y ago

Pikemen dominated European battlefields after advances in infantry tactics made them effective. Pike and shot was a later development that replaced pure pike squares long after pikemen had ended the dominance of heavy cavalry. The key development in the pike square was mobility. Earlier infantry forces using similar weapons had more rigid formations, with a single direction that was supposed to point towards the enemy. That made them vulnerable to outflanking by cavalry / skirmishers / archers. Pike squares drilled rapid turns, which made outflanking them much more difficult. The Byzantine Empire remained capable and strong until around 1200, when a series of incompetent emperors destroyed it. In particular, one of them had the clever idea of using the Fourth Crusade in a power struggle against another. That resulted in the loss of Constantinople. While the empire eventually got its capital back, it never recovered. The empire that the Ottomans later defeated was only a shadow of its former self. As for the supposed effectiveness of the Franks and Spaniards: the Reconquista was a series of wars from 718 or 722 until 1492.