"length of pikes?" Topic

As i come mostly from ancients, the pikes are supose to be 6.5 to 7.5 meters long, as the wire spears are 10cm, i normaly cut of 3cm. Giving ca. 7cm long pikes.

But were the renessanse pikes longers? How many cm do you use?

I use 7cm pikes for my renaissance figures.

I think pikes of the period were around the 16 – 17 feet mark, but there are plenty of arguments for soldiers shortening them to reduce the load they had to carry.

My pikes are all 80mm long.
They seem about right.
If you cut them much shorter they start to look like spears.

I like big pikes, if only to reinforce the impression of length. I use 80 – 90mm pikes. They are probably too long scale wise. But, this is war gaming, and the difference should be pronounced (IMHO).

Swiss should us pikes of 12 – 15 foot (they got longer later), but I chose 18 foot pikes because they are pikes!

Likewise my Italan pike

Go with what feels right (and looks good). No one is going to hang you for it.

To be accurate, can you stop using useless measurements?

Do tell – what's wrong with the measurements?

With no mention of scale?

I think 90mm pikes with 15mm figures would be extra impressive. 😃

I read (I think it was Gush) that the Swiss used 13' pikes and held them at the end while Landsknechts preferred 18' pikes and held theirs at the middle.

See some pikes:
link

5-6 m are correct, whatever that means for the minis you use. Imho the pike should be roughly 3 times the minis size for the right impression, which means 1510 onwards. I am not sure when exactly the pike got to that length, though. Depictions of earlier battles often show shorter pikes (Dorneck, eg), but that may be artistic leeway.

There is no hard indication that the Landsknechts and Swiss used the pike differently. Both groups (and others) used both grips depending on the situation. Gush must have generalized from insufficient data.

Having seen the 'pikes' in the photo from the HGM in Wien I can say with 100% certainty that they are not actual pikes but rather later day shafts fitted with preserved pike heads. They are way too thick and would be impossible to grip properly let alone fight with.

Hmm. That means that the length could also be off…

Daniel, are you aware of any surviving historical shafts?

I also assume that most surviving pikes will be 17th century rather then 16th.

Very few survive that have escaped the attention of the saw, for example Graz has some 2000 pikes most of which are dated to the 4th quarter of the 16th Century but all have been shortend to below 3 meters.

The Zeughaus in Solothurn does have a large collection of pikes which appear to be original lenght or near original lenght (over 4 meters long) but I'm sceptical about the dating of many of the "16th Century" pikes. And how does one tell which pike is a true 16th Century pike and which pike is a 16th century pike head fitted to a 17th century shaft?

Other collections which may have original 16th C pikes are the Landesmuseum in Zürich and the Rüstkammer in Emden though I have not seen those up in person or even in good quality photos.

Dating any kind of polearms is hard unless one is lucky to have detailed documentation and provenance. A classic example of how misstakes are made is the dating of a particular typ of Swiss halberd which "everyone" knew was from the late 15th Century. Then a intrepid research actually did the tedious work of identifying the "makers mark" found on all of the preserved halberds which revealed that they were made in the 17th Century…

I base my pike length on the depth of my storage boxes…..

Well, Emden is around the corner for me – I will visit them soon, then. Hopefully they allow to take photos :-)

And how does one tell which pike is a true 16th Century pike and which pike is a 16th century pike head fitted to a 17th century shaft?

Dendrochronology?