Talk:Pike and shot

message: I was poking around and came across this fine example of what the wiki can be. Maury 04:20, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just saw your comment, Maury.  Thanks, I appreciate it.  The bastions could flee back to the square, and hide under the pikes.  It was also difficult for a large body of cavalry to selectively charge the muskets without hitting the pikes as well, something they wished to avoid. Larry Dunn 00:57, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

text: No formation is perfect, and they probably did not look as nice and neat as they are shown!  We should probablt not use the discussion section for this purpose, though -- it's really for discussion of the components of the article. Larry Dunn 16:18, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wow great article 

message: "... Fernández de Córdoba's colunellas at the Battle of Cerignola, ..., in which the heavily-outnumbered Spanish pike-and-shot forces," - the problem with this article is that most of the pike infantry of Cerignola was a block of Landsknechts, not Spanish Colunella. When the Spanish fought alone at Ravenna their army was destroyed. At La Motta, Bicocca or Pavia they always cooperated very closes with Landsknechts (Pescara with Frundsberg,in all three battles). Only the divergence of the Spanish and German forces after the end of the hot phase of the Italian wars saw the introduction of the Tercio with serious Spanish pike formations - while at the same time the Landsknecht did not manage to up their handgun contingent, mainly due to tradition but also to limits on getting more then 10% arquebus paid for. 
So in the early 16th century we see Spanish and Italian forces more geared for the mobile war and usage of handguns, while Germans and Swiss were the heavy battle blocks. The coordination between landsknecht and Spanish just worked out far better than for other armies, even before Charles unified both under one crown.
Question: is there any hard (or soft) data out there on how a Colunella worked out on the battlefield? How many reports do exist of Spanish pikeblocks in any "push"?ASchudak (talk) 15:00, 13 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: A lot of people get confused by the Spanish army's make up. So instead, I'll talk about the British army. Half of the British troops commanded by Wellington at Waterloo were not Britons. A very large percentage of the red coats fighting in the American Revolutionary War were Hessians and other mercenaries from continental Europe, not Britons and so on. This sort of thing was common and not only for the British and Spanish militaries. When the Spanish general Gonzalo improvised the first pike and shot forces, he used what men he could get at that moment - Spanish and Italian arquebusiers and German Landsknecht pikemen and it didn't happen accidently, Gonzalo was the most capable general in Europe.  Later there'd be trained Spanish, Flemish, Waloon, Italian, Irish, etc pikemen and arquebusiers/musketeers. For all this, it was still the Spanish army. The highly developed "tercio" formations appeared much later. Provocateur (talk) 08:57, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cerignola, the Colunella and the Pike & Shot in early (Spanish) armies