20 vs 20 Pikemen battle formation 

This video was all i needed to subscribe

Great channel hema mozart and medieval total war 2

We need so much more testing with this formation, more important being maintaining the formation and having longer pikes, then, testing how hard it was to melee infantry (such as legionaries) was to come into contact.

Dit is well cool om naar te kijken ik doe namelijk zelf ook zwaard vechten alleen kan ik zien dat deze mensen net nieuw zijn 👍😂

this was great not sure if you guys have spadone or montante trainer swords. supposedly they were used against pike formations so would be cool to see in modern testing how effective they were(granted many believe these specific soldiers wore more armor since they were apparently paid more according to sources i have found). during push of pike most of the soldiers wore usually at the very least a helmet that covered the top of the head and a breastplate with some metal hanging below protecting the upper leg. if you wanted to simulate that you could just make a rule in which you hits to the face and lower legs and arms are counted.

😂

Fuck 2 units dead

Depends...a flancking manoeuvre and it's 99% casualties for the Archer gang

*laughs in cavalry*

Laughs in Patay

Try to outrun this Lance peasant

Laughs in Mongol horse archer "You cannot catch me to stab me HA! But i can stab you in the face with arrows."

You and the Boys losing like 80% of your team

well, there where some girls in the video

You don't have a girlfriend if do this shit in your free time

@@TheMrcassina that’s probably true but definitely worth it

@@TheMrcassina sounds like some projection going on here

A true pro gamer move

Imagine this wall of pikes walking towards you! Shit!

Ah yes, the arch-nemesis of all polearms: A slightly longer polearm.

@@cass7448 *starts walking in with polearms that have to be carried by 5 men to be able to physically work*

@@freddiemercury8625 I have you beat! *starts walking in with polearms that have to be carried by 6 men to be able to physically work*

I think it depends on the situation. It was honestly painful to see that some were blatantly ignoring the cadence. Still though, I couldn’t imagine how cool it would have been to see a group of Landsknechte or a Spanish tercio maneuver on the battlefield.

@@bladfadsfblaadsfsadf900 in the case of the tercios, the "corneta" or little trumpet as well as the drums were a key element to print the rythm and cadence

It needs hours and hours, repeat after repeat to march in formation. I remember as Reserve Officer Cadet, we needed about 2 months to be in best shape for parade!

@@armatolos_1234 it’s hard work just to learn to not step on the back of the boots of the guy in front

My CAT drills occuring only once a week, shows that high school level intelligence can handle drill marching in a month or so (4 sessions). So I'd imagine the march can be taught to peasants in a week or so if trained daily. But just to be extra safe, I'd imagine medieval mercenary/men-at-arms instructors would do months of it to make the movements as mindless as possible. Though then again if you're training peasant militia, your priority is just how fast they can form up, not necessarily move with it. Which makes the movements of Tercio, Swiss, and Landsknechts more impressive.

Well this is a little bit miss represantative since actual Pikes would have been longer and therefore harder to control.

@@romanobritishhamster7912 obviously, but it's not like they are going to get an entire Tercio, or Brigade or whatever you want to call it of people that easily

@@juancarlosdegoya2757 has talking about the sticks they use.

@@uneducatedisnotstupidlol1504 oops misred that

@@romanobritishhamster7912 mainly its miss represantaive, because Armor plays no role in there. They didnt go into such battles, with attack as only defense, with a pike, thats far away from you and defending your body. They heavily relied on their Armor on chest, head and often partially even legs, taking a critical hit wasnt that easily done like shown here in the video. Modern movies are pretty bad showing of what armor was able to block. Either they always hit weakpoints or they act like, its totally luck, that Armor helped. But in history armor was very effective

Spanish girls on a trip to Italy still want to get “hit” with a pike...

chad spanish empire

Those Tileans and Estalians are at it again.

Screaming "Cierra Santiago "

Spanish boys under Captain Alatriste command )))

Yari-mazing, as a certain youtuber would call it

@@awhitebackground7069 a donkey, actually

Shimazu Heavy Gunners go Brrrrrrrr

French Pikemen? I only know the Swiss, who were the backbone of the French Army, according to Machiavelli. And yeah. The Swiss were insane. Someone once told me that they charged in complete silent, which, in my book, is more frightening than a horde of screaming men.

@@oof5020 the French adopted the Swiss pike formations, like most of Europe, and had its own backbone. You can't rely solely on mercenaries.

@@oof5020 silence in the charge is terrifying, I heard something about Roman legionarii sometimes winning battles because they were so disciplined they were silent as they charged the lines of the screaming barbarians, who were more terrified of the silence than of any battle cry

@@matthiasdarrington3271 @Matthias Darrington I'm just reciting, what Machiavelli said. For 400 years, the French were the most important partner of the Swiss Mercenaries, after all.

@@postacorona6746 Source for that? Thats pretty cool

yeah I imagine that, longl fev km long line of pikeman and hundreds war elephants in scale armours massive heavy cav formations

They didn’t use shields at all??

@@TheStonewall117 Under Phillip the 2nd and Alexander the great the pikemen did have a small sheild, almost like a buckler which was strapped to their arm. However, during the wars if the diodochi (the wars of Alexander's successors) pikes beggan to grow longer. This made the already unweildy like so difficult to carry and use that the earlier sheild was ditched. If your interested in the wars of the diodochi check out the king's and generals channel.

Pike and Shot times were much more harder than what you said.

@@raizox6134 85

I was imagining the Med2 or Rome1 soundtracks before clicking the video and was so happy to hear it actually imbedded

I love it too

Yes, but pikes pretty much like bayonets were primarly psychological weapons. The reality is pike pushes, i.e. pikes vs pikes prolonged combat was almost never a thing. Pretty much like bayonet combat during the 18th century. 95% of the time, one side would give ground to the other BEFORE the actual melee, or one would do so after a VERY brief engagement: the first rank dropping is enough to call off the engagement when real lives are at stake (but there are few exceptions or instances where it happened though, but only within a very short period of time, between the developpment of pikes warfare and the generalization of artillery and firearms combined within infantry tactics. The only reported evidences of madly prolonged pikes on pikes actions (precisely why the Italians called that the Bad War), was whenever Swiss faced German Landsknechten. These two groups of various regiments hated each other so much that it was neigh impossible to have them fight on the same side as mercenaries as they would usually pick the other side on purpose, hence why France used the Swiss so much while the Imperials, Italians or Spaniards used the Landsknechten during the Italian Wars. Breaking formation was punished by death within Swiss regiments and similar punishments was popular amongst the Landsknechten ones too. That explains why encounters between Swiss and Germans was recorded and depicted as absolute brutal and madness business, but that was the exception and still very rare. These occurences dropped again with the developpment of missile support doctrines, and more mixed units. Most casualties would be made by artillery and musketry while the pikes were there to protect from other pikes formation or more importantly cavalry. Advancing using a formation of pikemen was then meant to only seize the ground you already won using firearms.

True, i doubt that in a historical battle two units, especially pikeman, would just go head to head like brutes. It was more like no mans land, many skirmishes lasting days, and one on ones duels, until the odds changed a bit, then everyone just jumped in for the slaughter.

@Jews News they used them against horses, which the eastern empires used a lot

@Jews News Alexander never had to deal with meeting another phalanx of equal pike length and discipline. Phalanx against anything else is typically efficient. Phalanx against phalanx is not.

@Jews News Gun vs Gun is indeed, not efficient. Ideally it's Gun vs Enemy who is hindered from using Gun very well (artillery, defensive positions, armored support, etc). And indeed there was very much a pike arms race for that exact reason.

Other people?

bold of you to assume that pikemen wore armor

@@felipevillalba9311 the front ranks at least have 3/4 to half armour... Helmets, cuirass, pauldrons, gauntlets and cuisses. Just making the enemy needing to do a full power thrust to pierce your armour is usually enough to maintain morale.

@@felipevillalba9311 They did

They certainly had armour, but it wouldn’t matter when your 6 feet under after being crushed, suffocated and stabbed to death.

No wonder Spanish pike formation is 30 ranks deep

They all joined up to get paid, not to get killed.

I had this argument with my dad the other day. Imo, you’d move as close as possible and like you said, probe for weaknesses. Otherwise, you’d surely have a couple of dedicated shield bros to create some kind of channel for your boys to storm through.

Yeah it became arms races of who can build longer pikes to get the other side safely. Like medieval trench warfare. It until one side got missile weapons. It's all fun and pikes till one side pulls in their archers 😞

You have obviously never been in military. When their sergeant said "March Forward" pikemen had no choice but move forward. You cannot possibly disobey your commanders, while in such a crowded tight formation anyway.

Some historians think that the pike formations rarely got into such fierce combat as shown in the video. There are intances of "push of pike" recorded in history, where two units were locked in tight melee, trying to push the other. Otherwise the two facing pike units propably stayed further away from the opposing force, trying to look for weaknesses. Men don't push against a wall of sharp pikes if they are not very, very fearless and well disciplined, so thatis why most pike formations had specialist close melee fighters with better gear and doubled pay, whose job it was to try breaking the wall of pikes, and to break the "push of pike" if it occurred.

I dunno. While in a shield wall your lower vision might be blocked by the shield and tight cluster of bodies. This video somewhat shows that in a pike block, you can still see everything in front of you - including a bogeyman/fool/mad lad crawling towards you on all fours with a knife between his teeth. I'm pretty sure he's dispatchable by pulling out your katzlbager. A rodelero managing to flank through a gap though is the real menace.

Alatriste film depicts this.

@@MbisonBalrog i watched that scene years ago. And young me found it rather cool. But older me now just thinks that the pikeman can easily see an enemy crouch running in front of him. Sure the enemy might have gone under the pike. But the pikeman can just pull out his side sword and do a swing. High attacks beat a lowered stance. A lot of disadvantage being crouched and on the offensive against a trained soldier.

@@carloreytansiongco8741 You overestimate the ability of men who are fighting for their life to quickly let go of their weapon to disarm / kill someone who quickly attacks and retreats.

@@Arcaryon you can focus on a pike shoving match, yes. But in formation fighting most likely, the trooper is focused on that small narrow corridor in front of him. He will see anyone trying to approach him, trying to get past his pike. Its so easy to drop his pike and pull his side sword. Its easy to couch the pike with one arm and with his other pull out his side sword. Its also easy to just lash out with a kick. Now imagine being the crouch fighter. You cannot quickly attack and retreat. Stand up, you can quickstep/dodge forward and backward. Now crouch, its now much harder to actually dodge backward. And being crouched your head and upper torso is more dangerously exposed. Your sword/knife arm pitifully either in a long guard or coiled to for a stab. Being hunched forward, there is a bad angle to launch hew/swing attacks. Attacks coming from below are distinctly disadvantaged from attacks coming from above. Against a shieldwall, perhaps their views are restricted and you can rush crawl/crouch up to their face. But against pikemen, they will see you coming. And "fighting for their life", they will prioritize the bigger threat of crouch assaults as compared to the enemy pike stabs they can parry and dodge from. All I'm saying is that crouch/crawl assaults against a pike formation is a terrifying thing for the performer. And requires the composure of berzerkers to carry out. Because any sane, life preserving person would prefer staying in formation with their buddies. Or let's say you have the supreme confidence in your skill to perform the maneuver against so many disadvantages.

yeah they were like a pretorians in Rome, they swithed sides multyply times and changed the war results

Pike warfare actually isn’t as deadly as you would think, definitely not as deadly as this video would make you believe, for a few reasons. Pikemen (at least in the classical era) usually had a sort of shield that they strapped to their arm, which added some protection. Formations were also much larger and spears longer, so it was harder to control the spears but there were also more ranks that could point the spears outwards and deflect enemy pikes. Also people would be much more cautious in real battle. If you did what is shown in the video it would basically be impailing yourself on the enemy pikes. Battles were usually just a poking fest, and the pikes usually didn’t have enough force behind them to penetrate armor. However, if cohesion is lost or the enemy somehow closes, that’s when the fighting becomes much deadlier.

@@jmenton5530 I agree-It is to some degree impossible to replicate real battle because there are no stakes. In a real fight the combatants would have some sense of self preservation and caution. Neither wide would be keen to throw themselves onto the others pikes until one side was left with a handful of men standing and the other side all dead.

well if they came in contact with other pikes, yes, but in a fight with the Persians, the sarissa was a perfect weapon. Normal Hoplites were good units, but pike formations are made to butcher the enemy.

@Jews News no i dont think even alexander could have defeated the romans. They were extremely tenacious against the Macedonian phalanx. I think even Alexander the great would have fallen victim to the roman legion and their number just like Pyrrhus of Epirus.

As for the ancients, the shield covered their left side, so they would constantly wheel around the enemy, trying to get at their exposed flank! They put their best troops on the right to compensate. Alexander the Great also used what is called an oblique formation, where the left side had more ranks so it could overcome the enemy's flank and they could wheel into their right and usually rout the enemy.

Usually, one side would break and run.

Who said medieval pikes didn't have shields? I know two 14th century Munster sources which required the militia to come with both pike and shield. Edit: muster, i.e. requirements for combatants, not munster.

@@darkmattergamesofficial Would you mind sharing where you got this information from? I really haven't heard of anything you have said before.

@@nodachibull8342 That is all from my professor at university. I am currently taking a course on Alexander the Great. If you look up the Battle of Leuctra, that is the first time they used an oblique phalanx I believe. After that, Alexander used it again and again. As for Greek Warfare in general, Wikipedia might have some good stuff. The gist of it was everyone carried their shield on the left, so the right side was considered exposed, and they would try to exploit that. Later on they started using more types of skirmishing troops, like slingers, javelin throwers (peltasts), and cavalry (effectiveness disputable), which mixed things up. It was no longer just the classical phalanx-on-phalanx battle.

They got paid twice as much I think, if they live.....

Don’t worry, you still got hand gunners deployed in front of you

usually they would have linebreakers mixed in - big men wearing heavy armour with shields or a two handed sword, that would be used to charge the enemy pike line to break its cohesion. These men got double pay

Most Pikemen in the Front are either Landsknecht or Swiss Mercenaries. Handgunners,Swordsman (For the Eventual Push of the Pike) and Cavarly are Mostly State Troops and For the Cavarly Nobleman.

@@sparkieT88 those twice-paid fighters (Doppelsoldners) are not pikemen. They were marching ahead of the first rank, armed with Zweihander swords or halberds. Their mission was to attack the enemy lines first, cutting and pushing the pikes, to break the breaches for their kameraden equipped with katzbalgers and other weapons of close combat.

XD

Everyone stays in distance and casually pushing opposite soldiers with a pike... Until Swiss guys incoming to the battlefield. Since that moment, forget wealth, money, and other bullshit. And better run as fast as you can, until their pikes and halberds are not too close. Or it will be too late very soon.

Also wounded people too ... unless no one recover the wounded in time, so they would be corpses soon or later.

I don't think girls keep sticks at all It's more like a sacred bond that unites male and stick. Same thing hapens with rocks.

Many of those fencers under the mask are women or girls....

@@AlyxAu I dont think so like That would not be safe.

@@Ligerbee How? I'm a woman, and I currently hold the top space for women's longsword in the UK in HEMA, and sit comfortably in the top half of the open catagory. We do HEMA, we are good at it, and we are probably more safe than a lot of testosterone hopped up idiots that compete.

Nah. Armor goes a long way towards protecting you. Likely took multiple wounds for a single soldier to go down. Cattle prods would one-shot you. Not realistic, imo.

@@tomgjgj The video shows a game in which a hit is an instant kill, precisely because it isn't possible to properly simulate armour without something, like electric shock, to tell when the aforementioned has failed. Even if they didn't use any armour in conjunction, the very real risk of shocks would encourage people to act in an appropriately death-fearing manner, and as such would be more realistic.

@@melanoc3tusii205 That's actually a pretty fair point. Problem is, armour can be used offensively as well as defensively. Pikes can break, get stuck, get grabbed and tugged, the pikeman himself is actively trying to jab the weapon as forcefully as possible straight into the weak points of his enemies armour... If you're looking for realism, it's impossible to simulate it properly without doing it properly... which naturally cannot be done.

Imagine combining this hema pike formation with singleshot paintball guns.

@@piggypoo PLEASE

@@piggypoo that would be amazing

Watch the ending episode (battle of Rocroi) from Alatriste movie. Literally what you said above ⚔⚔⚔

@@WeltSchmerz1349great recommendation!

They're dumb and broken but you can actually get them to work as intended. Try putting them in pike wall with guard mode off, then hitting backspace while simultaneously ordering an attack once an enemy gets close. Locks them into using pikes and they actually get kills. Or do the Spanish tactic and use the pikes mainly to stop cavalry charges with gunners inside the pike block to do most of the work. Works with halberds too.

@@SGWeber idk seems like too much investment and micromanagement for a unit like that

@@distilledwater8871 It is. They should have made it work better. Just sharing the tip bc a lot of people don't know they can even work at all

I used a pikemen army against a Mongol cavalry army and I won, but 90% of my pikemen died.

Feudalism babey

Well this is a 16th century pike block who were professional soldiers and mercenaries. You couldn’t rely on an untrained farmer to do complex manoeuvres

Most Pikemen were mercenaries and professional soldiers.

Not in this case. That's like saying the modern soldiers are conscripted peasant-farmers.

Nope. In those good old days, you could have been a Swiss carpenter, a Bavarian swineherd or an Italian ploughman - but then you made a decision and absolutely voluntarily enlisted in the army as a mercenary. And now you fight for the lord who pays your condottiere. Moreover, if your side lost, it was quite common to be hired by the former enemy.

Looking for a hema club? What city do you live?

they don't come in contact. Swords are too short to bypass pike walls, you know.

@@hector-nu6gl wait ill find the timestamp where i saw it. 2:30 no im talking about the recreational, not realistic. 😅

@@hnnggg5001 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-16U82cmYkEw.html

@@hector-nu6gl yea. cavalry sucked at some point.

@@hnnggg5001 Well, no they always had their use until the great war. But they weren't longer as overpowered as they were in early medieval warfare that's for sure. But cavalry means mobility and mobility was often crucial for victory.

I do not know the exact rules anymore of the fight. But how would you do it? 3 hits = kill...5...10? Because one solid hit in unarmoured combat could already kill you they decided to go for that.

Surely that's dependent on the century in question, as I thought until the Swiss pike became premier mercenary infantry (read: until they started making that big boy cash) they were essentially a tightly packed group of mountain dwelling peasant farmers with not very much in the way of plate armor. I think by the 17th century, a breastplate with tassets became standard issue for most European pikemen. Would still be very interesting to see how it pans out, or even how many you need armored to be relatively effective, just the first rank perhaps?

@@Wordragen I completly agree. Just the historical nerd in me has to find something. Sorry. I understand that this is suppose to be representation of unarmored combat. How would I do it? I guess I would try to find some cardboard or something that would clearly distinguish parts of body that would be covered by armor on most soliders (especialy the first line). Things like breastplate and helmets of this era would for the most part be able to deflect or at the very least redirect the attack by pike so I would not count the hits into these parts. It is a small thing, it is just that it would be interesting to see the more common use of pike square (armored combat). Unarmored combat would exist of course, but if you have to aim for the gaps to kill the oponent the outcome can be very different.

Ja! Zwaardkring Winterkamp, georganiseerd door de Zwaardkring (www.zwaardkring.nl)

@@chopstick1671 gaaf tnx!

@@securemindsetofficial graag gedaan!

there's a minimum effective depth for a phalanx, which i think is like at least 8 men deep...any less and the phalanx is just not as effective.

Not much carnage, they were protected by shields and armour and combat like that in the video wouldn't occur because the soldiers actually had their lives at stake. The pikes were mostly meant to pin down the enemy and maintain a presence on the battlefield while cavalry and skirmishers fought to render the flanks vulnerable, not decisively engage their counterparts on the enemy side.

WHO CALLS?

Sadly a consequence of the 'pikes' being short and super light. A full length and weight pike cannot be cast forward so easily.

@@MichaelGThomas true true.

Yea, a lot of warfare was (and often still is) about morale. You don't have to kill the opponent, just make him think that he can't win and he'll give up. This isn't always true of course.

Yep

Yes, walking right into each other in unarmored pike combat with no shield is basically suicide if you’re in the first rank (though not as exaggerated as in the video, some people just drop “dead” to some strikes that look so weak it would struggle to penetrate a t-shirt, let alone any type of protective clothing). Depending on the time period, pikemen had at least some form of armor and helmet (even a shield worn on the forearm in some cases) which would greatly reduce casualties.

Apparently it did happen a number of times (though generals were generally reluctant to utilize such tactics unless the opposing pikemen were already at some sort of disadvantage), but only Swiss and German mercenaries seem to have been insane enough to make it a semi-habit (especially if they were fighting each other).

@@umbrellashotgunman It definitely happened, im just saying it was probably very rare. Its not a way those formations were designed to be used.

To show you the power of zweihanders, I sawed this pike formation in half!

well, i like pikes in this game. They butcher knights, normally knights butcher everything else.