Pike (weapon) - End of The Pike Era

End of The Pike Era

During the 17th century, improvements to the portability of the musket, combined with the invention of the bayonet, saw the obsolescence of the pike in most European armies. Furthermore, improvements in artillery caused most European armies to abandon large formations in favor of multiple staggered lines, both to minimize casualties and to present a larger frontage for volley fire.

Thick hedges of bayonets proved to be an effective anti-cavalry solution, and the musket's firepower was now so deadly that combat was often decided by shooting alone. Throughout the Napoleonic era, the spontoon, a kind of shortened pike with side-wings, was retained as a symbol by some NCOs; in practice it was probably more useful for gesturing and signaling than as a weapon.

In such an environment, pikemen grew to intensely dislike their own weapon, as they were forced to stand inactive as the combat went on around them as the opposing musketeers dueled, feeling that they were mere targets rather than soldiers, and that they were adding nothing to the battle raging around them. There are examples of pikemen throwing their weapons down and seizing muskets from fallen comrades, a sign that the pike was on the wane as a weapon.

A common end date for the use of the pike in infantry formations is 1700, although such armies as the Prussian and Austrian had already abandoned the pike by that date. Other armies, such as the Swedish and the Russian, continued to use it for several decades afterward (the Swedes of King Charles XII in particular using it to great effect until the 1720s). During the American Revolution, pikes called "trench spears" made by local blacksmiths saw limited use until enough bayonets could be procured for general use by both Continental Army and attached militia units.

As late as Poland's Kościuszko Uprising in 1794, the pike reappeared as a child of necessity which became, for a short period, a surprisingly effective weapon on the battlefield. In this case, General Thaddeus Kosciuszko, facing a shortage of firearms and bayonets to arm landless serf partisans recruited straight from the wheat fields, had their sickles and scythes heated and straightened out into something resembling crude "war scythes". These weaponized agricultural accouterments were then used in battle as both slicing weapons, as well as makeshift pikes. The peasant "pikemen" armed with these crude instruments played a pivotal role in securing a near impossible victory against a far larger and better equipped Russian army at the Battle of Racławice on April 4 of that year.

Peasant pikeman played a similar role, albeit with less success, in the Wexford Rebellion in Ireland 4 years later.

Improvised pikes, made from bayonets on poles, were used by escaped convicts during the Castle Hill rebellion of 1804.

Indeed, as late as the Napoleonic Wars, at the dawning of the 19th century, even the Russian militia (mostly landless peasants, like the Polish partisans before them) could be found carrying shortened pikes into battle. As the 19th century progressed, the obsolete pike would still find a use in such countries as Ireland, Russia, China and Australia, generally in the hands of (as usual) desperate peasant rebels who did not have access to firearms. John Brown planned to arm a rebel slave army in America largely with pikes.

One attempt to resurrect the pike as a primary infantry weapon occurred during the American Civil War when the Confederate States of America planned to recruit twenty regiments of pikemen in 1862. In April 1862 it was authorised that every Confederate infantry regiment would include two companies of pikemen, a plan supported by Robert E. Lee. Many pikes were produced but were never used in battle and the plan to include pikemen in the army was abandoned.

Shorter versions of pikes called boarding pikes were also used on warships—typically to repel boarding parties—as late as the third quarter of the 19th century.

The great Hawaiian warrior king Kamehameha I had an elite force of men armed with very long spears who seem to have fought in a manner identical to European pikemen, despite the usual conception of his people's general disposition for individualistic dueling as their method of close combat. It is not known whether Kamehameha himself introduced this tactic or if it was taken from the use of traditional Hawaiian weapons.

The pike was issued as a British Home Guard weapon in 1942 after the War Office acted on a letter from Winston Churchill saying "every man must have a weapon of some kind, be it only a mace or pike". However, these hand-held weapons never left the stores after the pikes had "generated an almost universal feeling of anger and disgust from the ranks of the Home Guard, demoralised the men and led to questions being asked in both Houses of Parliament". The pikes, made from obsolete Lee-Enfield rifle bayonet blades welded to a steel tube, took the name of "Croft's Pikes" after Henry Page Croft, the Under-Secretary of State for War who attempted to defend the fiasco by stating that they were a "silent and effective weapon".

In Spain, in the cities, beginning in the 18th century and ending about 1980, there were night guards called "serenos"es:Sereno (oficio) who carried a short pike (about 1.5 m) called chuzo es:chuzo.

Pikes live on today only in traditional roles, being used to carry the colours of an infantry regiment and with the Company of Pikemen and Musketeers of the Honourable Artillery Company.