HansPeterB | 23 Feb 2012 8:25 a.m. PST |
I've a question that's more about a detail of history than war-gaming, but I hopeful that one of you will be able to help me out. I am advising a student who is working with the sketchbook of a German Landsknecht named Paul Dolnstein, c. 1500. He kept a notebook with meticulous drawings of his fellow soldiers and their equipment, which has been used as a source by Osprey, for example, but has never been edited. He consistently shows pike men holding their weapons in combat with the right hand well forward of the left. This seems very strange to me, and quite different than usually portrayed. The minis that I've seen, for example, hold their pikes with their right hands back and left hands forward, in what would seem to me to be a more natural way. Does anyone know what was common practice? -- Hans |
MajorB | 23 Feb 2012 8:33 a.m. PST |
Maybe just artistic license, like the left handed caliver-men discussed here? TMP link |
HansPeterB | 23 Feb 2012 10:00 a.m. PST |
Possibly, but Dolnstein's drawings in other respects appear to be accurate and meticulously detailed. He is also not the only guy to show pikes being used this way. See for example the pikeman in the center of Hans Holbein the Younger's "Bad War" -- hpb |
Cyclops | 23 Feb 2012 10:56 a.m. PST |
No idea but maybe the right hand forward grip gave more precise control over the business end? Does seem odd though. I wonder if any ECW reenactors have an idea. Different period I know but a pike is a pike. |
just visiting | 23 Feb 2012 11:09 a.m. PST |
It must be accurate and not artistic "licence". Most of the unit being right-handed would be stronger on the right side; plus as already suggested, the right hand would be more immediately capable of accurate control over the point
. |
stecal | 23 Feb 2012 11:38 a.m. PST |
I was thinking it may have gave easier access to drawing their swords with the right hand. One pose I have seen is the pike held in the left hand with the right hand across the body on their sword hilt ready to draw. |
Ed Longshanks | 23 Feb 2012 1:03 p.m. PST |
Please excus my ignorance on the matter, but could this just be the printing process? Is the image simply inverted or do the soldiers have their arms crossed? |
Ed Longshanks | 23 Feb 2012 1:16 p.m. PST |
Stecal – the position in which the pike is only held in the left hand is explicitly so that the right handed pikeman can use his sword in the dominant hand when defending against cavalry. My recollection from reenactment is that the pike is grounded under the right foot and held in position by the left hand. The theory was that once the horse had obligingly impaled its self on the end of the pike, the pikeman let go, drew his sword and waded in. Can't help but think there are lots of flaws in the theory Ed |
xenophon | 23 Feb 2012 1:41 p.m. PST |
I would like to suggest that perhaps they simply have foreshortened their grip once they got close in. If you look at any of the 16th century manuals for fighting with polearms like Meyer, this show this technique. Besically, it lets you use your 18 foot pike after your opponent gets past the point. You can "shorten" the reach of the weapon by simply moving your right hand above your left and visa versa. |
Dravi74 | 23 Feb 2012 2:01 p.m. PST |
Is he going forwards or backwards? Our reenactment group is taught to swing pikes to rear when necessary and that results in the front hand going from left to right and vice versa. We keep the body basically still and swing the pike from the front, directly up and over to the rear. The way your body faces doesn't change direction. When we stand to horse, the idea is to hold with the left hand (with right supporting), the butt goes on the ground and is braced by the foot in a 'T' position and then if a rider is unhorsed and in close enough, weapon drawn in right and finish him off. |
RNSulentic | 23 Feb 2012 2:20 p.m. PST |
Hmmm
. Ok, looking through Thomas' "The Renaissance at War" and Hale's "Artists and Warfare in the Renaissance", Both right and left forward stances are depicted. Right forward is depicted in the Pavia tapestry, a big painting by Altdorfer, the relief on the tomb of Francis I, (although left hand first is also depicted on the last), and left forward is depicted on the dust jacket. From various pictures in Hale's book, I'm beginning to think some of it may be a result of the artist's perspective--that is, if the front of the figure is to be shown, it will be left hand forward if the figure is facing right, and right hand forward if the figure is facing left. But even in the Dolstein pictures in the Osprey "Landsknecht Soldier" He mixes the stances. On page 52, the Landsknechts are on the left side of the drawing facing the viewer, and their left hands are forward. On page 23, the Landsknecht is on the right, and with his back to the viewer, and is leading with his left again. On Page 10, both figures are leading with their right, the right hand figure facing the viewer, and the left hand figure facing away. On page 9, the four figures show a mix--three are leading with their right, one is leading with his left. Go figure. |
J Womack 94 | 23 Feb 2012 4:58 p.m. PST |
Couldn't be as simple as southpaws versus normal people, could it? |
Daniel S | 23 Feb 2012 5:38 p.m. PST |
Dolnstein combines accuracy with leaving out some details and exaggerating others. For example few if any of the soldiers in his drawings of massed battles are shown wearing swords, in the Elfsborg battle scene he depicts the landsknechts with out any armour for the arms yet expressly states in the text that such armour was worn and so on. Some men are shown using the classic grip with the right hand back, this is the common grip used with pikes later on as well as how the Fechtbuchen taught the use of the spear in the 14th and 15th Centuries. However both styles can be found in the Weisskunig as well so this kind of depiction is not unique to Dolnstein. A key factor could be that Dolnstein shows pikes in use that are quite a bit shorter than the mid/late 16th Century pikes. They are much closer to the 10 foot pikes used by the Swiss in the last decade of the 15th Century than the classic 18 foot pike of the later period. The shorter pike allows for a much more active fighting style with diffrent grips used than when wielding the 16-18 foot pike. |
Ashurman | 23 Feb 2012 9:45 p.m. PST |
As a polearmsman in medieval recreation (from an 8 foot halberd to a roughly 6 1/2 foot "rhomphaia"-type thing
) if I wanted power in a swing the right needed to be forward. The butt end hand guides the point, which takes less muscle – thus the left hand. If indeed the pikes/half-pikes shown are shortish, that grip would let you swing and land a crushing blow. On the other hand (sic), if in a dense formation where the thrust of pike is the necessary strike at the enemy, putting the right hand back allows the thrust to be fastest, most precisely aimed, and hardest. When standing behind a line holding against the foe, and thrusting to catch folks in the facial area, the right was always (once I learned how) at the butt end
the left just being support and guidance. |
Woollygooseuk | 24 Feb 2012 4:11 a.m. PST |
This may be down to different fighting styles. Somewhere I've got a magazine article about Cerisoles in 1544. The French pike are told to fight like the Swiss rather than like Landknechts. The former held their pikes towards the middle and relied on mass & momentum of the pike block for effect. The Landsknechts apparently held their pikes further back and preferred to stab and thrust. This was considered more skillful but less effective overall for less well-trained troops. So, if the Landsknechts are more inclined to 'fence' with their pikes then a steadying (left) hand back and controlling (right) hand forward would make sense. |
Puster | 24 Feb 2012 12:29 p.m. PST |
Dolnsteins experience were (for Landsknechts) comparatively early, pre 1500, and much of his experience covers the northern wars, not the center of the developements. It may be that the enemies were sufficiently different there so that other ways to use the weapons were (thought to be) more effective. I am not sure wether "push of pike" was used in Sweden during this time. To add just another possible reason, without any claims that this is the real reason
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Lentulus | 24 Feb 2012 12:47 p.m. PST |
Is it worth considering that we might be looking at a period when pikemen were drawn from a population (Swabia and Switzerland) where pike use was traditional, rather than the case in later armies where pikemen were trained in a single fighting style from scratch? Different individual schools (as long as they managed to function in formation)would then be expected. |
Daniel S | 24 Feb 2012 2:23 p.m. PST |
Dolnstein served with the army of Maximilian in the Netherlands during the 1490's, his experience in the "Northern wars" was limited to single campaign and after than he took part in the Landshut war of Succesion which invloved large landsknecht formations, Maximilian himself was present as were men like Georg von Frundsberg & Götz von Berlichingen. While Dolnstein does not seem to have taken part in the Italian Wars I don't think one should underestimate his experience. Landsknechts saw plent of action elsewhere, particularly in Maximilians service. Here are the drawings in question btw
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Puster | 24 Feb 2012 5:07 p.m. PST |
Daniel, do you know which campaigns Dolnstein depicts? I had the impression that his illustrations all came from his early career and Sweden, but of course that might by just misinformation on my side. The images indeed look like some fought over the right rather then the left shoulder. The last picture with lances being hold in the right excludes the possibility of a mirrored depiction. The first image seems to show fighting against Swedes, but the hand position of the last three pikemen is simply impossible (while the second is hard to figure out). Other then that, they do seem to hold their left hand before the right. The second has two fighting over their right shoulder and naturally this puts the right rather then left hand to the front. In the third we have two on the right side in different styles fighting next to each other. Actually I am not sure what to think of these. The last may be artistic licence because its unattractive to show a unit with their backs turned towards the watcher, but the depicted individuals have no such problems. All the "pikes" depicted by Dolnstein are considerably shorter then I would them expect to be for Landsknechts fighting in Italy, though, and he only shows one rank in action. Afaik the battles during the Landhuter Erbfolgekrieg, especially the battle at Wenzenbach, did not include what we would call the "push of pikes" that often resulted in the slaughter of one or the other side. Naturally the style of warfare evolved pretty fast during these years. |
Mako11 | 24 Feb 2012 5:19 p.m. PST |
Those are great drawings. Thanks for sharing them. The pikes in most of the pics look quite short, but perhaps that is artistic license to get them to fit on the page. I do know they lengthened over time, but the ones shown in the first image look more like long spears to me. What I find interesting in the last image is the second row of gendarmes directly behind the first row of horse. Unless they are able to mow down, or push the pikes out of the way in their charge, they seem at severe risk of being trampled, or over-run by the riders behind them. Not sure how deep their ranks go, but it is interesting nonetheless. In a number of Italian Wars drawings, I've seen square, or rectangular blocks of gendarmes riding as a unit, but I've never seen a depiction of them just as they are about to charge home vs. the defending pikemen. Makes me wonder if we have their tactics all wrong, when depicting them in long, shallow lines of attackers in our wargames. Perhaps their units were deeper, similar to the pike, in order to be able to carry through on a charge, with greater impetus, and to be much more maneuverable on the battlefield as well, instead of being strung out in a long, shallow line, which would be very unwieldy. |
Daniel S | 25 Feb 2012 5:40 a.m. PST |
Puster, Only four images are from the Swedish campaign, the 'duel' between a Swede and a Landsknecht, the battle between the Landsknechts and the Swedish levy and the sieges of the castles of Elfsborg and Öresten. One is clearly dated to 1491 and shows Montfort were Dolnstein was wounded. Two are dated to the Landshut war in 1504 while the remaing 13 are undated but there may well be clues in the text. (I only have a part of the text) That would depend on how you define "Push of Pike" as it is a rather imprecise term to being with. In addtion you won't find it outside English sources so you won't find it in Swiss or German descriptions of combat. I would be very interested in the sources which show that the opposing landsknechts did not cross pikes with each and that combats between them were unbloody during the Landshut war. Given that Wenzenberg was fought between Maximilians troops and Bohemian mercenaries and took the shape of an assault on a partial Wagenburg it isn't odd that there is a absence "push of pike", the battle however certainly ended in slaughter as far as the Bohemians were concerned. |
Daniel S | 25 Feb 2012 6:21 a.m. PST |
Pikes were a lot shorter in first years of the 16th Century and only grew into the full lenght over time. Written descriptions of the Swiss from 1494-1495 shows that their pikes were only 10 feet long which is roughly the lenght seen in the engraving of the Swiss at Fornovo as well as in many of the chronicles showing the Burgundian War.
Dolnstein's pikes are a bit later but still roughly the same size. It is first in the years after 1504 that you being to find descriptions of longer pikes. Just when and why pikes became longer is probably never going to be resolved. It is worth noting that Swiss style grip when hled the piek in the middle would require a longer pike to match the 'range' you get with a German style grip. On the other hand the German style of fighting is actually well suited to be used with a shorter pike. As the pike becomes longer it becomes harder and harder to control in that manner, you can certainly not use a 16-18 foot pike effectively in the same manner as shown in Dolnsteins drawings. For comparison here is an image from the Weiss Kunig made between 1508-1519
Urs Graf's "Schrecken des Krieges" is dated to 1521 and was based on his experience as a Swiss Reislaufer at Marginano 1515
Erhard Schön made this print during the 1530's, again one can see how the lenght has grown compare to 30-35 years earlier.
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Bowman | 25 Feb 2012 6:48 a.m. PST |
Please excus my ignorance on the matter, but could this just be the printing process? Is the image simply inverted or do the soldiers have their arms crossed? Good question. Probably not, however. Someone's sketch that would end up in a book would first be traced on thin paper. This would then be glued to a wood block like sycamore and pear or apple. A reverse image would be incised into the block. When inked and pressed on the page you would get a proper image. Later, during the time of the illustrations above, a sheet of soft metal would be used instead of a wood block. Small awls could scratch a much more detailed design than one could cut into wood. Either way, the printers would take the effort not to reverse the image. |
Bowman | 25 Feb 2012 6:57 a.m. PST |
Please don't disregard artistic license or problems in forced perspective. For example look at the etching from Der Weiss Kunig (Koenig?) from Daniel A close look at the background shows pikes taller than the ladders used to scale the walls of the castle. How should we interpret that? |
Daniel S | 25 Feb 2012 9:46 a.m. PST |
"König" would be correct modern spelling but the work was published in 1775 as Der Weisskunig using the irregular spelling found in the original text. The work was never published due to Maximilians death but thanks to a stroke of luck both the text and the wood cuts survived to be rediscovered in the 18th C. In the Weiss-Kunig it usually the large objects which are reduced in size i.e walls, ships and so on. The men and their ge ar are usually shown in 'true scale'. I chose one image from the work rather than spaming the thread with dozens ;-) You are quite right that one must keep the use of artistic license in mind. I try to verify details of equipment and gear by looking at surviving pieces of arms and armour, written sources on the subject and a look at the artists background. It is here that men like Dolnstein and Urs Graf get more points due to them having served actively in the wars. |
Crumple | 25 Feb 2012 4:48 p.m. PST |
I know very little about this period , but could it be a cultural heritage thing . ie. A professional trained band gets trained with a 10ft pike and uses right hand to the fore ( as a modern professional way ) A levy of pike is trained in the way that all pike and shield levy were trained – shield arm to the fore , except there is no shield . Pure conjecture on my part . |
Puster | 26 Feb 2012 4:36 a.m. PST |
Looking at the pictures of contemporary battles, it seems that the pike was indeed much shorter in the conflicts up to 1500, and more often then not wielded with the right shoulder towards the oppenent ( ie right hand in front ) , rather then the later left hand. A good example among many others is here: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/Dornach-1499.jpg ( no http in front, because the picture is rather big ) There are, however, a good deal of examples for the other side to the front, too. Reasons may be that a shorter pike can make use of the main hand in front ( near the center of the pole ) , and since the pike showed up in the Swiss army who traditionally used helbards putting the main hand in the center may be tradition. Older depictions of battles during the 15th century show both ways being used on the same image. When the pike became longer it may have become more usefull to put the control arm beyond the holding arm, so the right went beyond and the left shoulder was turned towards the enemy. With dense pike armed infantry formation becoming more common on the battlefield, longer pikes offered an advantage. My best guess would be that the decisive defeats during the Swabian wars made some Landsknechts think on how to defeat the Swiss ( or other such armed formations ) the next time they clashed, and longer pikes might have been one of the attempts that actually worked and thus became common. Daniel, regarding the "push of pike" I realize that its not a historical term and highly inprecise. I use it to indicate the decisive clash of densely packed infantry formation that are used predominantly with pikes – the archetypical clash of the Italian wars, often between Swiss and Landsknechts. Imho a type of encounter that only dominated for around 40-50 years and became obsolete with advances in tactics and technology ( or at least it lost the *decisive* aspect ) . For the Landshuter Erbfolgerkrieg, I will have to look for the source – as far as I can remember these are from a biography on Maximilian or Frundberg or a treatise on the war, though for now its just from my memory that there were no major engagements save between mounted troops and infantry, and assaults by infantry upon fortified positions. I will dig it out. While we are at it, do you know of a good source for the collected scenes of the Ehrenpforte? There is an article on this by Eduard Chmelarz from 1886, but I found neither an affordable reprint nor an online version of it. |
Daniel S | 28 Feb 2012 7:28 a.m. PST |
As possible explaination for the pike being wielded with the right shoulder towards the enemy is that most of the men are shown using the "Unterstich" (a thrust from below) which is executed with the right hand closest to the enemy. The "Oberstich" om the other hand which is used by 3 of the 4 landsknechts in Dolnstains drawing of the two pairs of men fighting is delivered from above and should be delivered with the left shoulder towards the enemy for control and power. When using a pollaxe you switch between these two attacks by turning the body with a step forwards or backwards as the oberstich is delivered with the queue spike rather than the front spike used for the Oberstich. That kind of manouver would not be possible with a pike due to the lenght of the weapon, the tight formation and the lack of a butt-spike. Instead you have to change the grip by moving the hands and arms while standing in place, without turning the body. As the art of pike fighting develops and experience is gained the pike is used with the left shoulder towards the enemy as this is the most efficient use, particularly as the pike become longer and heavier. (Bu the 1540's this is clearly the case as we see men having the left arm full armoured but little or no armour on the right arm. This is only a theory and one would have to study the Fechtbucher and how they taught the use of the spear, pollaxe and other polearms to find clues as to how the use of the pike changed and evolved in this period. Dense infantry formations with pikes and polearms had been an increasingly common feature in warfare in the last half of the 15th Century with significant parts being poorly studied. Often the narrative jumps swiftly from the Burgundian war to the Swabaian war with little or no examination of the wars & campaigns between 1477 and 1499. Yet that time was clearly crucial in development of the "New" infantry in the Empire and elsewhere. (You have the French experiment with Swiss trained pike & halbered infantry on a large scale at this time also) I think that the "how", "why" and "when" of the pike becoming longer and longer will elude us unless a researcher stumbles across detailed records of the pikes purchased and issued during the decades in question. Alas so far we a stuck with little hard data and must resort to educated guesswork. |
Puster | 28 Feb 2012 11:46 a.m. PST |
As it happened with had some 3m wooden poles for out home lying around, and I did some experiments wielding them left and right sided. Both worked quite well, though I had better control when the right hand was in front. I am sure it is hard to change hands, however, when in densely packed formation. Regarding its usage, I am not sure wether any "Fechtbücher" were released on pike use for formations during that era, at least I am not aware of them. I certainly do lack knowledge on the campaings in the 1480-1500 era, let alone weapon usage, and will see wether there is literature out there to redeem that. What I found is that sometimes there is informaton still out in detail that defeats believe. A treatise just on the Reichstag of 1505 in Cologne – covering among others the diplomatical solution to the Erbfolgekrieg – has some 1500 pages, and there are several other Reichstage similarly covered. Alas, these are out of my price class (200€+) and I need some cooperative library to get them sometime. The book regarding the battles during the Landshuter Erbfolgekrieg was actually one I borrowed ("Der Landshuter Erbfolgekrieg", Schmit) and have not in my own library, so I have to rely on my memory – sorry. I will have to grab it anew to re-read the accounts. I am sure I will find you somewhere in these forums when I do so. On ZVAB there is one work from 1881 available currently: link But while I am at sniffing in old books
one interesting snippet I found in a history of Frisia from around 1790 covers the fate of the "Black Band" (Schwarzer Haufen) that was used by the Count of Geldern in Frisia until early 1515 – it actually states that when disbanded a good deal of its members went directly into French service (while others, though less, retired or went into imperial service). If this matches, they showed up in time for Marignano. When I have some time I will adjust the Wikipedia entry on the French Black Band accordingly. |
Daniel S | 28 Feb 2012 2:38 p.m. PST |
Puster, Regarding the Ehrenpforte I have not had a good source for it until today when I turned up what seems to be most of it in superb detail at link Just search for "Die Eherenpfote" and it should turn up 53 images. |
Puster | 28 Feb 2012 4:42 p.m. PST |
Thanks! That one is near perfect :-) Great find, and great work from the organization. I just wish I could download the images in high quality without going through screenshots. Looking at what they all have in their archive, I fear that I will spend a good deal of my time there for the next days and weeks. |