Although no arm causes as much fear and trembling in the hosts of the ancient wargames table as the sight of a deep mass of eighteen foot stickers moving purposefully towards them, the owners of such troops periodically write in to W.R.G. complaining about them not being completely irresistable. They invariably cite as evidence the opinion of Polybius, a contemporary of the Macedonian versus Roman wars who was quite well informed on military matters and whose views demand to be treated with respect. Polybius' justification was based on simple arithmetic. He expected the phalanx to oppose two files to each Roman, and since it was armed with long pikes, each Macedonian file to bring the points of five ranks against a single legionary swordsman. With odds of ten to one against the men doing the actual fighting and the extra disadvantage of being outreached by the enemy weapons, how could the legion resist? The first thing to do is to check the arithmetic. Polybius said that the Romans fought with a frontage of six feet per file and the Macedonians with three feet. Other sources quote the Roman fighting frontage as three feet, and phalangites as using a three feet frontage when advancing and half that when halted to receive attack. As six feet frontage would deprive the Roman line of any solidity at all, it seems probable that Polybius misunderstood. His Roman friends describing the battle probably told him that their opponents formed up twice as close and he naturally assumed that the Macedonians had been in the normal attacking formation. This is not an original suggestion by the way; it has in fact been generally accepted since Delbruck advanced it in 1920. There seems no reason to doubt that the Macedonians had on this occasion adopted the closer formation, in which case they had deliberately sacrificed their impetus in favour of the extra number of spear points. The extra ranks may also be over-rated. If all the pikes were the same length, then only one could reach the enemy. If those in front were shorter, the outreaching advantage is reduced. In any case, rear ranker's ability to aim their thrusts must have been limited with such a tight packed front rank. The next thing we must do is look at actual battles, surely the crucial test of any military system. In no ancient battle do we find a convincing demonstration of an overwhelming superiority. In two battles against Greek hoplites with long thrusting spears, Chaeronea 338BC and Issus 333BC, the pikemen won only with difficulty and after supporting troops had broken the Hoplite's flanking neighbours. In the first of these battles, the Macedonian general is said to have initially refrained from taking the offensive with his pikemen, while in the second the pikes were disordered by crossing a minor stream bed. At Issus 333BC, Persian armoured cavalry broke completely through one phalanx unit, and at the Hydaspes 326BC, the phalanx fought a long battle against elephants supported by archers before securing a points decision. We have to ignore battles like Raphia 217BC in which pike phalanx met pike phalanx, except to note that it was always a long struggle, frequently decided by what happened on the flanks. We have, though, a whole series of battles against Romans. The first of these were those of Pyrrhus, Heraclea 280BC and Asculum 279BC. These were again long drawn out battles with heavy losses on each side. The phalanx could not beat the legions and both battles were finally decided by Pyrrhus' crushing superiority in cavalry and elephants. We then have Cynocephalae 197BC, Thermopylae 191BC, Magnesia 189BC, Pydna 168BC, Chaeronea 86BC and Orchomenus 86BC, when the Roman legions in turn faced the phalanxes of the later Macedonians the Seleucids and Mithridates of Pontus. These were again all long slugging matches, the decision in each case going to the Romans when the phalanx fell into disorder or had its flanks uncovered and enveloped. To find a crushing victory of pikes over other troops, we have to pass on 1500 years to the Swiss. At Laupen 1339, Sempach 1386 and Novara 1513, Swiss pikemen attacked with impetus and rolled over the opposition. At Morgarten 1315, Granson 1476, Morat 1476 and Nancy 1477 they ambushed, outflanked or frightened off their opponents. At Arbeto 1422 the Swiss pikemen were halted by a cavalry charge, then pushed back by a charge of dismounted men-at-arms. At St.Jacob 1444 they were stopped by cavalry charges, then shot down by missile troops. At Marignano 1515 they were stopped by a minor obstacle and cavalry charges and at Biocca 1522 by a deep ditch and massed firearms. At Pavia, they came on slowly and were beaten back. At Flodden 1513 Scots pikemen were crushingly beaten by English bills, possibly because their impetus had been broken by archery or rough terrain. There were many confrontations between pike and pike in the next 150 years, which as in ancient times were long pushing matches usually ended by the intervention of the other side's cavalry. Pikemen were not invulnerable to cavalry and were sometimes ridden through, though usually safe enough. This does not sound much like the capability that Polybius thought a pike phalanx should possess. Let's see what other contemporaries of the Macedonian and Roman clash thought. Well, first of all, the Romans did not abandon pilum for pike. What is perhaps rather more to the point, their Seleucid and Pontic opponents reacted to defeat by converting large numbers of troops into imitation Roman legionaries! Let's now try to establish whether any pattern emerges from these battle results. Well, firstly, when a pike phalanx wins quickly it is moving at speed and strikes with.impetus. When it fails, it has often lost its impetus by halting to receive a cavalry charge, slowing to cross an obstacle, of flinching from missiles. What then is the likely result when a phalanx meets a legion? First of all, the phalanx receives a dense shower of pile just before contact. Unable to use their shields effectively with pikes levelled and possibly lightly armoured, the front ranks of the pike formation go down in heaps. Rear ranks stumble over the bodies the impetus is checked, and each Roman shield has one or more pike heads thud into it but without the force to knock its owner down and trample him under foot. Some unlucky individuals get the pike in their throat or guts instead of in their shield. The rest start trying to hack off the pike ends with their swords and a few possibly dive under the pikes to get within sword reach of their owners. Rear rank pikemen can't reach the main body of the Romans but try to spike the extroverts. They can't see much and are blocked by the men in front, so don't have too much luck with this. An occasional man may drop his pike and try to discourage a too aggressive Roman with his sword. This is a forlorn hope, as the Roman has a bigger shield, better sword which he is trained to use, better armour, and more freedom of movement. In short, the confrontation becomes a stationary scrum with a low killing rate. Does this fit the known facts? I think it does. How Simulate? So how do we simulate this in a set of wargames rules? It must be possible for pikes charging with impetus to roll over and instantly break opponents, but at the same time we must acknowledge that it didn't happen often and that a long indecisive struggle is rather more likely. This is pretty well what already happens with the 5th edition of our W.R.G. ancient rules, but 6th edition will incorporate a new mechanism that fits historical reality a little better. Under 5th edition, a pike-armed unit counts all of its first rank figures and half the figures of its next three ranks as fighting. The pikemen count as shieldless, giving +2 to the opponents of MI pikes and +1 to those of HI . However, the opponents count -1 for facing longer weapons. If pushed back, the pikes only count one rank and at a factor generally 1 lower, but are no longer shieldless or with superior length weapons. Under 6th edition, a pike-armed unit counts all its first and second rank figures. If it is advancing, it also counts half the figures of the next two ranks. The pikemen always count shieldless, but this is now +1 for both MI and HI. The same basic factors are used as under 5th, but they are no longer reduced when pushed back. Opponents count as facing longer weapons only during the first period of a melee. The end result is that pikes that charge have a reasonable chance of breaking their opponents or starting them fatally rolling back. If they fail to achieve this, there will usually be a stalemate until one side is outflanked or disordered. Back to Table of Contents -- Courier Vol. 1 #6 To Courier List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1980 by The Courier Publishing Company. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com