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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheAuldGrump" data-source="post: 2354670" data-attributes="member: 6957">Given the pissing contest I am beginning to hope that this thread gets closed. I have used both sword and pike in a recreation group (historic rather than SCA), both of the sides are exaggerating their cases far beyond reality. And spending way too much energy insulting each other. (Though Andor is closer he still exaggerates.) Pikes were used against infantry, but were much more effective against cavalry. The swords were used on those people who had gotten inside of the pikeheads, where the reach actually counted against the effectiveness of the pike.By the time of the Romans adopting the long sword the bulk of the Roman army was no longer what the Romans themselves would call Roman (which was only those people who came from the city itself), and yes, discipline suffered.In the end it was a combination of armor for those who could afford it (a warhammer with 'beak' was better at getting through armor than a sword was) and a movement towards missile weapons that could be fired en mass that ended the use of the sword as the primary weapon. Armor itself was swept aside by the massed missile fire. While armor could protect against the missile fire to an extent it did much less to protect the horse, and the best armor relied on the horse for mobility.The key to both the sword v. the pike and the dagger v. the sword is to to be close enough to use them effectively, and yes, more knights were killed by knife strikes to the bowels than sword strikes - but these were generally done after the knight was down, surprised, or held in a clench so that neither his sword nor his shield came into play. One of the primary uses of the pike on the other hand was simply to keep the enemy from coming at you in a tight wall, those who did get through the pikes were handled better by the sword.The Auld Grump</blockquote>

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