If there were no guns, would these guys beat everyone?
>>66588
Guns were an integral part of the tercios.
>>66588
There is a reason the Macedonian phalanx fell out of favor. It was rejiggered for pike and shot due to tactical necessity re:light horse and grand formations.
>>66588
>Phalanx Formation invincible
>Forgets that Romans defeated Phalanx
>This is pre-marion rome too
>thinking smelly greeks are better than patrician romans
>>66588
Crossbows or longbows would tenderly love these guys if there were no firearms
>>66588
Polish winged Hussars.
English longbowmen.
>>66588
Depends on a multitude of factors of which terrain is especially important.
But yes the Swiss, Flemish and Scots used them before guns were around a lot and won a few battles.
>>67162
Name a single battle in which Polish hussars beat a formed pike block.
Longbows worked sometimes but in quite a few cases the pikes just steamrolled over them.
>>66588
You know arrows and rocks are still a thing right?
Archer riding horse backs.100s and 100s of archers.
Worked for the mongols. Would've workes with any civilisation doing the same thing.
Imagine if a state were the spartian type of culture mixed with mongols battle logic.
Name ONE thing that could stop it.
>>67506
How would you do that in Europe?
Ride a castle wall up vertically? How would you feed all those horses?
>>66588
People would just use cars for cavalry charges instead yah moron.
>>67506
Not being on the steppe
>>67261
Polish Hussars were pretty good at destroying pike formations, thanks to ultra long lances.
>>67261
Polish hussars used lances much longer than pikes. They are remembered because they won almost every engagement.
The point of longbows was to decimate infantry from a range, and I promise you can't name a single example of infantry alone even reaching a mass of longbowmen without suffering 3 casualties for every bow.
>>67506
>>67552
Worked well on the field. not so much for sieges, so the mongols had experts from lands they conquered build siege weapons. They are credited(?) with inventing biological warfare by flinging plague-ridden corpses from trebuchets into the confines of a walled city.
Another weakness could be the aforementioned longbowmen, whose bows had a far greater range than those fired from horseback.
While we're talking about types of troops, it's worth mentioning the field is more important. The high ground, the weather, a river - those can all be the deciding factor.
>>67672
I understand that the reason spears were generally favored over pikes was bows. Even slingers can fuck them up.
As a wise man one said on /his/.
Pikes and arrows.
>>67672
Remember here. Im talking about a theorical society who respects more their.horses than their slaves. Who trains the man for war from a very young age and thrives when confronted to new challenges ready to die in glory.
Longbowmen are only a problem for some time. long range also mean huge compensation when aiming, easily disturbed if your enemy moves in an unpredicted way.
Once close enough, i'd say...4-6 salves MAX. Your archers wont do much damage.
Recuved bows have pretty good range too.
Also, if the mongols had srsly attacked europe the only problem they could've had would've been heavy armors. Something i'm fairly sure would've been solved by making heavier arrowhead and more powerful bows. Which just seems like a logucal outcome.
>>67616
I can see dense forests being a problem. But coastline? fields? Even mountains seems to be ok since the mongols are rhe only obe who managed to beat the afgans on their own terrain.
>>67552
The french grand cavalry managed. Same thing but without the big armor, and bows instead of spears and shields.
>>67663
>>67672
That's neither a battle nor a source...
I've seen people (even academics) claim the Hussars could charge down pike blocks but not a single one managed to produce any evidence whatsoever.
The long lance argument is also shaky at best because the first five ranks could lower their pikes too.
>you can't name a single example of infantry alone even reaching a mass of longbowmen without suffering 3 casualties for every bow.
Battle of Flodden field
Battle of Grandson
Battle of Murat
Battle of Cocherel
Want me to find more?
>>67144
>Read the filename
It's a screenshot from a fucking movie about the spanish tercio. Like taking an anime picture, naming it "swiss pikemen" and being surprised nobody talks about swiss pikemen.
>>66588
Explosives.
>>66588
not smallpox
>>67506
>Would've workes with any civilisation doing the same thing.
Only the mongols, actually, and that was because they
a) were willing to culturally appropriate styles of warfare they weren't used to and
b) had a great spy network so they knew exactly what to fuck up.
Take those away and horse archers are no different from the Tartars, Huns or Xiongnu. The Han and Ming had long since figured out how to wipe the floor with steppe horse archers, and the Romans could do the same with the parthians when led competently.
>>66588
no
>>70166
With the Huns I just feel that their success was only because the Europeans hadn't quite adapted to them just yet.
>>66588
Javelins beat pikes.
Pikes aren't actually good at killing things, they're good at stopping things so you can hit them with other things.
>>70281
>Pikes aren't actually good at killing things, they're good at stopping things so you can hit them with other things.
You should read some history man. Pike blocks literally steamrolled over enemy formations From the time of Alexander the great and the successor kingdoms until the Swiss.
>>70341
The successor kingdoms used the sarissa to pin infantry formations while infantry/cavalry flanked them.
I know much less about pike and shot warfare, but I've always been under the impression that pikes were meant more to stop enemy movement and that guns and horsemen did most of the killing.
German halberdiers. Landsknect.
>>70465
This, greatswords and halberds>pikes in formation combat.
>>70410
Medieval pike formations, at least with the Swiss and Scots, were aggressive and functioned something like a slower, cheaper heavy cavalry lance charge without horses. But other long spear formations were generally defensive so you're not entirely wrong.
archers in the front
cavalry on the flanks
there you go
>>66588
Pretty sure some precision bombing would wipe these guys out.
>>66588
There are three different zones of warfare - highly contested economic zones, its peripheries, and the rest. What works in one doesn't necessarily work in another because of logistics and geographically situational tactics.
So veteran pike blocks can dominate the Low Countries or Lombardy, but they become less capable when taken to North Africa for example.
>>70543
Marignan 1515
>>70410
>>70410
>The successor kingdoms used the sarissa to pin infantry formations while infantry/cavalry flanked them.
That was the standard formation but more often than not the finese was lost and it all came down to the pike block steamrolling the opposite infantry.
>>70612
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_Tunis_(1535)
Germans seem to have done fine.
>>70939
Like the Americans in Iraq. It's one thing to bowl over the periphery in a momentary show of force. It's another to then try to control that territory outside of a few miles of the outpost using that same force built around battlefield domination.
>>71065
That's plain logistics and I doubt it would be different if the Germans had dinner spoon armed landsknecht
>>71096
Like I said, logistics doesn't survive too far outside of regions where it specialized. It's not a question of landsknechts armed with utensils, but about lansknechts unable to defend territory beyond a mile or so from their outpost because of the speed of a light horse raider that doesn't have the same issues.
Even if the Ottomans never came into the picture, German Tunis would have turned out like Spanish North Africa - a poor collection of coastal forts no one wanted to for a post.
>>71195
So what you're essentially saying is that Infantry is shit for defending far flung reaches of an empire?
>>70710
Didn't the French use cannon fire to great effect in that battle?
Though IIRC their heavy cavalry and their king charged at least a dozen times through the swiss pikes which is fucking crazy.
>>71267
No, just infantry built and trained for a type of high intensity combat that doesn't work outside of a small zone of conflict.
>>71330
Ah I see, well I suppose they could use halberds for those jobs. Another thing to remember is that the early renaissance or late medieval pikes were only around 10 feet tall and supposedly usable in small scale conflicts too.
>>71295
Pretty much yeah, combined arms bro.
>>71388
>>71388
Your picture shows an unfair battle, the Swiss have Popeye on their side.
>>66588
they're still vulnerable to ranged weapons like bows. crossbows, slings, and javelins
pikemen weren't fully armored since it was the transitional period when guns were being integrated into armies, armor wasn't as necessary as it had been
they'd also be vulnerable to cavalry archers, and fully armored men in plate could probably break the formation with things like pollaxes and spadones
>>71517
puffed sleeves man.
Charles the bold actually banned those among his archers.
>>71554
Without guns at play the effectiveness of ranged weapons is determined by the armor the pikemen wear. At Flodden the Scottish nobles formed the front rank(s) which according to eye witnesses resulted in scarcely any deaths due to longbow arrows. The problem was bad terrain and mediocre training which caused the formations to collapse and the Scottish were then beaten in melee combat.
>>71684
Yeah thanks, that's what I meant.
>>66588
If you're talking about Swiss pikemen, then the aura of invincibility around them is more the result of their enemies underestimating them than any particular prowess. If the Germans really wanted Switzerland, they could have taken it.
>>70265
On top of that, Europe didn't really make an attempt to fight them. If we recall, the Great Migration was a result of the small, splintered peoples of Europe fleeing the Huns.
>>66588
Densely packed formations of spearmen are always vulnerable to range weaponry like bows and catapults, this was common knowledge back then. Also if you hit them behind when you are also fighting them in the front, there's nothing they can really do and inevitably die.
>>68090
>easily disturbed if your enemy moves in an unpredicted way
try moving unpredictably in a block of hundreds of men all carrying 15+foot pikes.
>>71684
>What is Kircholm
>B-bu-but they weren't Gustav Adolf's finest
lmao
But i agree though, the real strenght of hussars lies in their heavy yet agile horse breeds able of performing complex manouvers, not ultra long lances.
>>67261
>>67663
>>67672
YOU FUCKING NIGGERS AND YOUR FUCKING HUSSAR BULLSHIT. I HAVE TO FLIP MY SHIT EVERY FUCKING TIME YOU REPEAT THIS SAME BULLCRAP.
/his/ is shit. It was bad enough correcting people in the occasional /tg/ thread.
>>73041
Lets bash poles some more!
>>66588
PIKE AND SHOT warfare
AKA the gay mans faggot ass dick sucking BORING FUCKING SNORE FEST OF A "warfare"
Seriously. I wish all spaianrds and faggots h who participated in this pike and shot warfare deserve the slowest death and their souls to be wandering around the site of their death for ALL eternity.
GAYEST fucking warfare ever!
>>74261
Why, what's wrong with it?
>>67162
Horsies fighting pikes?
Pikes would rek horsies
>>74392
not if you can pin them. A pike block is pretty shit if the pikes aren't facing the right way
>>74261
>I wish all spaianrds and faggots h who participated in this pike and shot warfare deserve the slowest death and their souls to be wandering around the site of their death for ALL eternity.
Still beats serving in a tercio m8.
And besides, modern day warfare is more boring.
Slings were some of the first weapons invented. They were extremely effective at plinking people off. The projectiles from them could dent iron, which made slingers extremely strong. Slingers were often mounted on chariots, which allowed them mobility and range. Of course, the chariots were eventually defeated by the Sea People and their spear tactics, because slings are hard to aim when moving, and the only ones with archer-mounted chariots were the Egyptians, IE the only ones to survive Sea People onslaught.
English longbow men were some of the most ridiculously OP medieval-renaissance era units. They would cull regiments down to less than half their original size before they even got close to the opposing army. No amount of armor accurately protects you from getting one-shot by the rain of arrows. Your only hope was to move out of the way, since longbows weren't notoriously fast. That is why mounted units became the answer to the longbow men
Longbow men > Pikemen > mounted units > Longbow men
The Polish Hussars would've throttled the English, had the English not developed muskets by the 1500-1600's. If the Hussars were around in the 1300's, the Poles probably would've pushed everyone's arsehole in in the Balkan and Baltic area. Swords, which were the primary weapons used in the Balkans, are shit weapons when you involve range. Either you get defeated by a slower, more heavily armed swordsman, or you get shot dead because lolnomobility.
Tercio was OP because they had the power of ranged combat, while also having good defenses due to the rest of the Tercio. Had guns not gotten any better, the Tercio would've been the strongest unit ever.
>>74766
Congratulations anon.
Rarely has anyone been able to put that much bullshit in so few words.
>>66588
>what are bows
>what are crossbows
>what are javelins
>what are peltasts, slingers, stones, any thrown object
The Romans beat pikes without guns.
