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kronckew · 9th September 2019, 06:28 PM

I was talking more about English pikers. The Spanish/Portugese ones favoured the cup hilt swords, English, not so much. I note in Victrix's entry above the sword hilts do show a couple cup hilts, the rest were more open styles.

I read that the 17c english armies went with infantry about 1/3 pikemen, just under 2/3 musketeeers with a few miscellaneous other types. The drawing I posted would seem to indicate the officer is the armoured one with the sword, and the unarmoured ones were the cannon fodder.

but i suspect the armoured ones in front were being bossed about by the unarmoured older dandy hiding in the second rank pointing forward and the armoured ones were just lucky to have accumulated expensive armour. Alexander's sarissa pikemen probably were not quite so uniformly accoutored either. (They must have acquired the elephant along the way to India

)

I'd found a nice modern photo from the same perspective as the macedonian photo of a group of english re-enactor pike persons from the sealed knot, all in buff leather coats and morions, but the two most prominent were rather excessively heavy looking and even more obviously female. Didn't think they were quite representative for here. Mean looking tho. They were their own shield wall.

9th September 2019, 06:28 PM	#12
kronckew Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Room 101, Glos. UK Posts: 4,259	I was talking more about English pikers. The Spanish/Portugese ones favoured the cup hilt swords, English, not so much. I note in Victrix's entry above the sword hilts do show a couple cup hilts, the rest were more open styles. I read that the 17c english armies went with infantry about 1/3 pikemen, just under 2/3 musketeeers with a few miscellaneous other types. The drawing I posted would seem to indicate the officer is the armoured one with the sword, and the unarmoured ones were the cannon fodder. but i suspect the armoured ones in front were being bossed about by the unarmoured older dandy hiding in the second rank pointing forward and the armoured ones were just lucky to have accumulated expensive armour. Alexander's sarissa pikemen probably were not quite so uniformly accoutored either. (They must have acquired the elephant along the way to India ) I'd found a nice modern photo from the same perspective as the macedonian photo of a group of english re-enactor pike persons from the sealed knot, all in buff leather coats and morions, but the two most prominent were rather excessively heavy looking and even more obviously female. Didn't think they were quite representative for here. Mean looking tho. They were their own shield wall. Last edited by kronckew; 9th September 2019 at 06:46 PM.