"Pikes in the '45" Topic

Been watching LOA's YouTube stuff on the Williamite phase of the Jacobite Rebellion & wondering where to get figures in 10mm especially now that Magister Militum have sold up & Irregular are scaling back operations. I turned to Pendraken but noticed in their Jacobite '45 range they have Scottish Pikemen.
Were such troops used in the '45 & by who?

Regards,

Jae

I have read a lot about the 45. I have never heard of pikemen. The clans did not have pikes. English army was not using them. Also, I believe Irregular is has stop doing their 2mm and 6mm figures. They are still doing 10mm.

Irregular 2mm and most of the 6mm ranges are now available from irregular2mm6mm.onlineweb.shop

I can only think that Pendraken included him for some of the much earlier Jacobite rebellions. I wonder that you looking at their Jacobite ‘45 range when their superb LOA range (bizarrely in the Renaissance category) has all you could want for the Williamite Wars.

No, I'm not ready for the Williamite Wars yet, just fascinated by them. I thought the pikeman in the '45 range was a wrong 'un but I'm always open to a good yarn & hoped someone, somewhere had been reduced to a few pikes then. Ah, well, back to the 3 pressing projects I have atm…

Jae

Yikes! No, pikes were not carried in the '45, not by any oddball units I've ever read about. Some very early clan units are described as having archaic weapons but they never go beyond swords or Lochaber axes -- I assume a pike would have attracted notice from contemporaries. But realistically, even had a pike or two survived in the glens, after two or three generations of active use, would it have still be in functional order? Wood rots!

I would be very intrigued to come across any documentation of a pike in the 1745 Jacobite army of rebellion.

I have seen period documents of "pikes" listed as weapons inventoried by the Texians at San Antonio after they captured the town in 1835 but never seen any reference to them being used at the battle of the Alamo, for example. Altho' that would be astonishing, to think of davy Crockett swinging a spear instead of a rifle.

Interestingly, the pike remained a principal weapon in Irish battles and rebellions from the 1500s to the 20th century and there are photographs of captured pikes from the 1921 rising. There is a wealth of documentation on pikes used in battles in the 1798 rebellion. Pike appears to be used as a term for a variety of weapons ranging in length from 6-12 feet, often with hooked or halberd shaped heads. There is documentation and illustrations showing them being used in mass formations against English forces in 1798.

That is true, the Irish kept them handy for a long while -- my impression is that they were more long spears than Macedonian sarissa types. I gave a few to a couple of country folk for my early 20th century Irish Wars armies, just out of nostalgia.

Interesting to think of a pike unit actually serving in the ACW -- that seems to have been the last time they were seriously (?) issued in a make-shift way, but far as I know, they didn't make it to the battlefield.

A spontoon is almost a sort-of pike! Those were carried in the '45. But mainly by some officers in regular line regiments, probably not by any Jacobites, unless some were captured and made use of. Could have happened.