Fighting with Landsknecht Pikes

Pikes are potentially the coolest polearm in existence, but for obvious reasons very few people train with them. In order to help us understand Landsknecht pike combat, me and a few clubmates started a project to first learn about 1v1 pike techniques and then to later try and integrate those techniques into formation fighting. For now, we're really having a blast with 1v1 pike sparring, so here's a couple of bouts and some added context. Enjoy!
If you'd be interested in supporting the channel or are looking for extra content in general, have a look at Patreon: www.patreon.com/virtualfechts...
Fencers:
Alette, Tijmen and Oskar
0:00 Intro
4:06 Sparring: Alette vs. Oskar
5:34 Sparring: Tijmen vs. Oskar
8:56 Sparring: Alette vs. Oskar
Music courtesy of epidemicsound.com
Picture of Winterkamp by: Man met Camera
#Landsknecht #Pike #Combat #Messer #fencing #Spear #Sword #HEMA #Historical #European #Martial #Arts #Historical #Fencing #Historical #Fencing #Westernmartialarts #Middleages #medieval #Martial #Arts #Martialartist #Instructor #Athlete #Fitness #Fightingfit #Fighter #warriors #knights #Swordplay #machete #technique #Training #lecküchner, #history #historical #research #swordfighting #sparring #context #greatsword #montante #zweihander #knife #dagger #moustache #messer

[@theghosthero6173]

Fun fact, both in the 16th century, authors from the opposite end of the world made the same observation about the pike: in Europe, German authors seems to have thought that using the pike holding it in the end and not in the middle like the Swiss proved better in combat. Similarity, almost at the same time, Chinese authors were writting on how their pikeman were superior to japanese pikeman who traditionally held spears in the middle, and who were often outclassed by Ming pikes held at the rear. I find it pretty neat

[@VirtualFechtschule]

That is pretty neat! :D

[@a_ham]

Excited for the future video where you can get some formation sparring in!

[@VirtualFechtschule]

Same. It was already tons of fun, but I'm really quite excited to do that with a whole load of actually skilled pike people, rather than just people who are good at fencing but don't know the weapon. Looking forward to doing this. :)

[@arnekoets3085]

I noticed various things: -you are all moving too far to represent a fight in a block you might only have about a foot leeway before you break ranks - if you were to assume the main purpose of the game is to not get stuck with a pike (rather than hit the other guy) then you have many opportunities to control the weapons upwards like we see in the images of Holbein. - decades of re-enactment have shown that group specific trainibg can really improve things over many years, and can allow completely different tactics -close quarter pike work means pikes interact with multiple other pikes, so one person can bind several enemy pikes. This helps to make a concerted effort to keep all the pikes up to make the engagement less deadly. - pikefight description ofzen mention a bodily crush, rather than long distance shimming, which would support that, In the introduction i noticed that you saud 1477 onwards, this sounds odd in terms of pine being so widely used well before that... Or did you just mean to denote your period of interest? -

[@VirtualFechtschule]

Thanks for your observations Arne! The methodology here is to first get good at 1v1 pike before going into group fights. The ones at Winterkamp were fun, but it was too obvious nobody trained with these weapons before. By learning about binding the pike in a 1v1 setting, we hope to transfer those skills to bigger fights. I'm working on a publication about this transfer of skills, so I'll have to remain a bit vague about that right now, but there will be more details in the future! We did already try a few things in 2v2 bouts, and pretty much most of your points showed up pretty organically already. Finally as for the 1477, that's of course the start of my period of interest, but I also think that, despite pikes being widely used before, that year does mark a shift in both military practice and thinking, where pike armed infantry becomes the main type of soldier that forces get built around, with 1650 being the approximate end of that period due to the introduction of bayonets.

[@arnekoets3085]

@@VirtualFechtschule i really have to disagree on that last point. Pikes are clearly demonstrable as a mainstay of weapons issued to city militia for well over 100 years before. In the 13th c we see grouos as large as thousands. Halbard use probably rises by the point you mentioned to about half. Specific foot soldiers with pikes are named as such well before. I suppose the swiss thing is famous, but pretty ambiguous what it really was about. For instance... The wedge formation they used might be key to being mobile and agressive with formations over 5000 strong, where previous use seems less agressive on the battlefield, moving little and simpler movement. (the wedge might allow to aim where they go from the front, which was extremely well established for cavalry for several hundred years by this point) Pike length is already mentioned to be up to 450cm in the 14th c. And the really long 6 m pikes don't crop up until much later. I am puzzled what the 1477 date us supposed to be a watershed of? Attacking pikeblocks supported by south german cavalry in the burgundian wars? Italian forces not wanting to deploy because it is raining ?

[@VirtualFechtschule]

@@arnekoets3085 Good points! I'm mostly just approaching it from a force constitution point of view, as I feel that after Nancy major players in European wars would either want to base their armies around Swiss pikemen or make their own version. In fairness, in the war of the Public Weal there were also a fair number of them, and when Charles invaded Italy in 1494 his army was still for a large part organised around heavy cavalry, but if we have to take some sort of arbitrary point, I think 1477 would be it for me, with the battle of Guinegate being a good second. I feel the combination of larger fiscal military states, the popularity of pike armed mercenaries among those states and the start of a process of military professionalisation centered around infantry coincide in changing the way those in command approached force constitution around that time.

[@Ishpeck]

Can't wait for Oskar's complete pike square! All y'need is 100 people and you can have ten rows ten deep of pokey doom!

[@VirtualFechtschule]

I think 30 people may already be quite a lot, but getting that many people should already be pretty cool. :)

[@arnekoets3085]

Historically 'Gewalthaufen' are 200-8000 men, with multiple 'Fähnlein' constituting a unit. Those numbers really make a difference, as does the mix of weapons. Also formation shapes, like wedges mentioned for the Swiss, circular pikeblocks as far back as 1214, or squares with other troops encompassed in them (even a cavalry squadron) Many mixes of weapons are suggested, like 50-50 pike and halbard or machiavelli has a few different ideas. The mass of the formation is a big factor in some uses, in particular if the combatants are trained specifically to get the pikes offline, rather than going for hits.

[@elgostine]

also this stuff confirms a lot of what i suspected about mitigating that absolute lethality of impact, i.e the armour does a lot. and in the hellenistic era the armour plus the small pelta shield also does a lot. on myarmoury i posted a hypothetical scenario where landsknechts of 1525 faced against macedonians of the hellenistic era, both reaonably well equipped, both fairly well lead, just a way to see how close to 2000 years of technological development in armour metallurgy, sword design, armour engineering etc makes a practical impact and almost everyone agreed that., it would be tricky for either side to gain a major advantage due to the armour and other protection.

[@thescholar-general5975]

Nice vid! How heavy are the pikes that you are using? Also, what is your opinion on the one handed techniques sometimes found in manuals?

[@VirtualFechtschule]

You know, I haven't exactly managed to weigh them, but I just realised I might be able to use my airplane luggage hanging scales for that. I'll get back to you on that. As for the one-handed techniques, they're quite cool, but I think they'd be more fitting for a sportified context like the Fechtschule. It's pretty telling that Meyer has a whole load of such really cool pike techniques, and then a small addendum at the end about battlefield pike fighting, which is much more like what we do here. :)

[@ivobleijenberg3171]

Awesome!! Hmm. I cannot find the source yet, but I believe it was a habit for soldiers to shorten their pikes at times. It was theorized it was to make them more wieldy or more useful during smaller engagements or raids. But also possible to save weight or to create firewood just by sawing off a few inches. Why they did it, isn't known as far as I know. But I do know it was a punishable offense for soldiers to do if caught by their officers. 😂 Good luck with your studies! Really inspiring stuff.

[@VirtualFechtschule]

Thank you!

[@arnekoets3085]

Note that 'shortening' is used in the fechtbücher (for lances) to denote holding them shorter up the shaft, not truncating the implement. On the other hand, physically cutting lances shorter to use them on foot is explicitly mentioned in azincourt, apparently. So 'shortening' is probably gripping shorter, unless more elaborate description of cutting the shaft is used in the source.

[@treyhoward2053]

Really enjoyed the video. I love your content, especially your sparring videos, as they never fail to improve the day. Do you plan to release a video on the Katzbalger? I am curious about how they would be used in combat and their origins. I know Skal and Matt have videos on this subject, but you might have a different perspective due to your focus on 15th and 16th-century arms and armament and their usage. I really enjoyed the one you did on the Proto-Katzbalger. It was very insightful. Keep up the fantastic work!

[@VirtualFechtschule]

Thanks! Comments like this also always improve the day! I'd love to do something about Katzbalgers, but then I'd need to get my hands on one first. :P I do have a greataword with S-hilt coming in, which I'll do a video on, so there's that to look forward to. :D

[@treyhoward2053]

@@VirtualFechtschule I figured that might have been the case, but I didn't want to assume. Super stoked to hear about the new greatsword coming in. Looking forward to seeing that video!

[@stuffguru]

Beautiful foil fencing! 😂 But in all seriousness the was some beautiful fencing. Can't wait for more.

[@VirtualFechtschule]

Hehehe, it does feel a lot like that.

[@stuffguru]

Here in the States my instructor does a spear basics seminar and it is literally the first few lessons of Italian foil. Translated into Fiore though to hide the veggies. Great class to take.

[@vukbabovic5031]

Bendy and Insane. :D Very cool "Du Hast" version btw.

[@MartinGreywolf]

One thing that really stand out to me, a high medieval spear kind of guy, is how comparatively easy it would be to grab the opponent's pike. Spears are far too fast to attempt it it a spear on spear duel most of the time, but these pikes are so damn heavy they move fairly slowly. Doing it in this sparring was obviously a bad idea - no sidearms - but I imagine it would make closing quite a lot easier. Another factor in favor of less deadly pike clashes is something that we can't properly simulate - pikes are sharp and that mean they tend to penetrate all sots of things and get stuck in them. Speared through a guy? You might be stuck. Stabbed through someone's flamboyant sleeve? You might be stuck. Some guy put his wooden shield in front of his face? You might be stuck. Your stab got parried down into the ground? You might be stuck. A knight on horseback who was very... brave charged you and got run through by you and your 7 mates? You may all be stuck.

[@DarkwarriorJ]

Where do your pikes balance? In making a PVC spear for friendly sparring with friends, I found that the point of balance really mattered a lot - I generally want the point of balance to be at my lead hand plus-minus one and a half hands (at most) in either direction. When retracted, the point is extremely maneuverable and the blocks are solid; if the point of balance was much past the hand, beating actions can cast aside the spear with contemptuous ease. Chinese Daqiang tapering seems to support this general balance, with the point of balance being a mere meter from the base of the three-meter sorta-pike... but those are spears. I'm curious if pikes completely violate this rule for rather reasonable reasons (such as simply being too darned long)

[@mandakhbaatar]

All of this is interesting but the point being missed is that the pike is a formation weapon, made for people who want to kill the enemy, to fight people who don't want to be killed. 1 on 1 can be entertaining and perhaps useful to understand how the weapon is handled, but there is no substitute for formation fighting if you want to really figure out what formation fighting is about. Also, one-hit-kills aren't necessarily reasonable - surely it isn't fun to be poked in the face with a pointed weapon, but it takes a little more than a gentle tap to skewer somebody

[@VirtualFechtschule]

I think that knowledge of how the weapon handles is crucial to understanding how to handle it in formation. This is just a first step towards group fights, but without it I think we'd miss quite a few useful things. As for incapacitating blows, taking a pike to the face with force would likely do it, wouldn't you think? The hits here look gentle, but that's because the pike heads have extreme flex, and they make sure the shaft behind doesn't transmit all the force to the face, precisely to make sure we don't give each other whiplash.

[@mandakhbaatar]

@@VirtualFechtschule Surely it is an important step, don't get me wrong, but chances are the average pikeman wasn't a duellist off the battlefield. An interesting thing other experiments on youtube showed is that while in a 1v1 you can essentially move as you please, when against a formation the people on the left and right of the guy you're fighting are as much of a threat to you as he is. Duels are rather quick, but battles could take hours or even days (as you pointed out) also because of this reason. Perhaps the people behind you could lift enemy pikes, perhaps your own pike would be lifted and you'd be forced to draw a sidearm, perhaps you'd be kept from advancing because of the people next to the pikeman in front of you... it's all scenarios that need exploring, but can't be done in single combat if the purpose is to understand how battles were fought

[@irfannurhadisatria2540]

>pike is a formation weapon. yes, but Meyer showed how to use it 1-on-1 in his 1570 book. Surely primary source trump almost anything else? 🤔

[@VirtualFechtschule]

@@irfannurhadisatria2540 Meyer even teaches people the difference between Fechtschule pike fencing and battlefield pike fighting, indicating that as late as 1570 people thought it worthwhile to learn 1v1 pike to be better ok the battlefield.

[@VirtualFechtschule]

@@mandakhbaatar Hey, sorry about not coming back to this earlier. You raised some valid points, but I think you missed the part of the video where I announced I would be getting back to precisely that. We have done a lot of work on small. group fights, and I have also set a few dates for larger filming some larger group fights, so expect me come back to the topic and talk about your points in detail. :)

[@snakeoveer1046]

The pike does not seem to ve a very mneuverable weapon. Do you think a shorter polearm, such as a 8ft long halberd, would have an advantage or disadvantage over a pike in single combat ?

[@VirtualFechtschule]

Reach is still a ridiculously big advantage, but once a shorter weapon is past the point, it does tend to win.

[@josephdedrick9337]

Based on george silvers writing, a polarm of the "perfect length" beats on of imperfect length(aka too long/short like a pike) in a duel scenario. "The short staff or half pike, forest bill, partisan, or glaive, or such like weapons of perfect length, have the advantage against the battle axe, the halberd, the black bill, the two handed sword, the sword and target, and are too hard for two swords and daggers, or two rapier and poniards with gauntlets, and for the long staff and morris pike. The long staff, morris pike, or javelin, or such like weapons above the perfect length, have advantage against all manner of weapons, the short staff, the Welch hook, partisan, or glaive, or such like weapons of vantage excepted, yet are too weak for two swords and daggers or two sword and bucklers, or two rapiers and poniards with gauntlets, because they are too long to thrust, strike, and turn speedily. And by reason of the large distance, one of the sword and dagger-men will get behind him. The Welch hook or forest bill, has advantage against all manner of weapons whatsoever. Yet understand, that in battles, and where variety of weapons are, among multitudes of men and horses, the sword and target, the two handed sword, battle axe, the black bill, and halberd, are better weapons, and more dangerous in their offense and forces, than is the sword and buckler, short staff, long staff, or forest bill. The sword and target leads upon shot, and in troops defends thrusts and blows given by battle axe, halberds, black bill, or two handed swords, far better than can the sword and buckler." - www.aemma.org/onlineResources/silver/silver5_body.htm#:~:text=The%20battle%20axe%2C%20the%20halberd,or%20the%20rapier%20and%20poniard.

[@snakeoveer1046]

@@josephdedrick9337 Yet Manciolino says the opposite. He asserts that a pike held close to the middle to make it more nimble and retain more reach has an advantage against shorter polearms.

[@elgostine]

heres a hought, to simulate being part of a block, fight on one of those lines on the floor, i.e your feet have to be straddling or on that line the whole engagement , i.e you can ONLY move back and forth

[@VirtualFechtschule]

Ooh, yes. We already do this 1v1 in a pretty linear fashion, but in 2v2 we found that trying to stay together becomes more difficult if you don't stick to the lines. :)

[@Isaac_howell]

You should try hook up with Björn Rüther, he's doing lots of very interesting work with pike stuff too!

[@VirtualFechtschule]

I know! We've been trying to make sure we're both at the same event with our pikes, and I think at the Hamburg event I'm going to in August we might just succeed. :D

[@smokerxluffy]

Disappointed I didn't see a single "one-handed twist it from the ground up and backhand it into their face" technique in the whole video. You know, the Meyer one?

[@VirtualFechtschule]

I know that one. There's plenty of Meyer's field pike techniques though. :)

[@wizewizard1840]

alas not a single person in this whole video knows how to use a and fight with a Pike

[@VirtualFechtschule]

Alas, you need to get a life.

[@mikelewis7405]

This is an excellent video except it should be done in a tight formation (at least 6 guys and 15 would be better) Second, four meter pikes 13') pikes are too short. Theyt should be 16 or 18 feet long.

[@VirtualFechtschule]

The pikes are absolutely the right length for the early Landsknecht period. 4 meters is already somewhat on the long side. 5 meters becomes more common between 1530 and 1550 as far as I can tell, but from what limited sources we have, 4 meters seems to be pretty representative for 1477-1525. We will definitely be doing stuff in groups, once I have enough fellow pike peeps who can do 1v1 and then 2v2 well. We have some cool ambitions in this regard. :)

[@ScottGrow117]

All y’all fighting Osker need to get better so he’s not winning all the time! Watch what he’s doing to y’all, start trying to do that to him!

[@VirtualFechtschule]

The problem is that teaching is the best way to learn. Everyone I fight with continuously gets better, but I'm still very much on the upwards learning curve too. :P

[@TonySwallow]

I'd also be interested in the weight of the pikes. I've been working on a set as a "wouldn't it be cool if" project. I "threw" one together at a medieval festival as something to do in front of the crowd, this was made of pine and was 3.6m long. Since then I've made a set of four from Australia hardwood 4.5m long (Living in Australia makes it a bit harder to lay your hands on the odd bit of European ash). They are probably a bit oversize, 32mm at the head and about 44mm at the midpoint. and the timber has a density approximately 20% more than ash. so all up probably 50% heavier then the real thing. The difference in handling of the 3.6m pine shaft to the 4.5m hardwood shaft is chauk and cheese. But they are monsters! There is no question that if you got the point into a squishy bit it would drive straight through!