This year in August our group Deventer Burgerscap will attend the Battle of Wisby event in Sweden, reenacting the famous battle that took place in front of the city walls in 1361. We have chosen this epic event to try and create a proper pike block as it might have looked around 1360-1370. We are gathering a great bunch of people to make...
Now that we have established (in this blogpost) the fact that pikes were certainly used in the 14th century, we can try to fathom what they looked like in this period. Text sources From an entry in the accountbooks of Ghent in Flanders of 1353, we learn that the pike is counted among the langhe wapine (long weapons) next to staves, axes and lances....
Pikes (very very long spears) are often associated with the Swiss in the late 15th century and even more with the armies of the Early Modern period. But they were already around in the 13th century and, more important to us, well used in the 14th century. This blogpost shall talk about the general sources we have for this for the region of the...
