Something on early Renaissance Italian infantry tactics

[Erpingham]

Mmmm...link is broken for the second picture. Can you fix it?

Apologies. Not sure what happened there - I just repasted the same link and it worked second time.

[Andreas Johansson]

Indeed; the Macedonian sarissa phalanx was a very different creature in a very different time and system.

Is this supposed to be expressing agreement with something I said? I'm not sure what the "indeed" refers to.

It was, although it seems to have been agreement with a thought imagined rather than expressed.

OK - you had me somewhat confused.

It's notable that Renaissance theorists evidently thought Hellenistic phalanges usefully similar to their own formations, as witnessed by the popularity of the Hellenistic manuals. Not that they were necessarily very picky - Vegetius remained popular through-out the Middle Ages.

[Erpingham]

Foyning: done from just out of reach of enemy pikes, since it seems clear that the pikeman who foynes lunges forwards with his pike to strike the enemy pikeman then pulls back again. If you start out already within the pike reach of the enemy then you aren't foyning - you're dead.

I can see where you are coming from now but, if both sides can reach each other by lunging, are they really out of reach of one another?  But that's a bit nitpicky.  The real issue I think is this assumes foyning is static and a bit tentative.  This impression does follow from Smythe but less from Monluc.  Monluc rejects it for his attack not because it was ineffective but that his men were not highly trained enough to succeed with it.  Unless we see foyning as just a holding tactic before launching a decisive massed attack, it  must have been more aggressive with the stabbing men seeking to work forward and force the enemy back.

Incidentally, to add to our picture gallery, this picture by Hans Leonhard Schaufelein, appears to show foyning

[Justin Swanton]

Foyning: done from just out of reach of enemy pikes, since it seems clear that the pikeman who foynes lunges forwards with his pike to strike the enemy pikeman then pulls back again. If you start out already within the pike reach of the enemy then you aren't foyning - you're dead.

I can see where you are coming from now but, if both sides can reach each other by lunging, are they really out of reach of one another?  But that's a bit knitpicky.  The real issue I think is this assumes foyning is static and a bit tentative.  This impression does follow from Smythe but less from Monluc.  Monluc rejects it for his attack not because it was ineffective but that his men were not highly trained enough to succeed with it.  Unless we see foyning as just a holding tactic before launching a decisive massed attack, it  must have been more aggressive with the stabbing men seeking to work forward and force the enemy back.

Incidentally, to add to our picture gallery, this picture by Hans Leonhard Schaufelein, appears to show foyning

It does look like foyning. Notice how the front rankers are just out of reach of their non-foyning opponents and that neither phalanx is advancing against the other. The rear rankers look like they're having tea and crumpets. The two gents on the right seem to be engaged in conversation: "Spot of fine weather we're having.""Just the thing for a battle."

I imagine though that aggressive foyning would have had for effect to panic the opposing front rank, causing it to fall back and presumably panic the rest of the phalanx in consequence.

[Patrick Waterson]

I imagine though that aggressive foyning would have had for effect to panic the opposing front rank, causing it to fall back and presumably panic the rest of the phalanx in consequence.

This might depend upon the depth of the formation; if there are a dzen or more ranks engaged in serious tea and crumpets, they are probably going to stay put and let the front ranks get foyned.  Or the halberdiers are going to chip in, perhaps prompted by the unit officers who can see how things are going at the business end of the formation.

Anthony's nice picture gallery does show us the 'sleeves' of missilemen which came as standard with a late mediaeval-early Renaissance pike block, looking as if it is en route to becoming a tercio.  This leads one to wonder just how much of a gap existed between one pike formation and the next.  If mediaeval pike practice emulated that of the Swiss, then distinct blocks manoeuvring in mutual support (at least in theory) would be the norm.  (This is of course what we see in woodcuts of Thirty Years' War battles.)  Such practice would be distinct from the continuous lines of Hellenistic pikemen - and leads me to wonder whether mediaeval pike formation users simply found it too challenging to manage continuous pike lines.

It's notable that Renaissance theorists evidently thought Hellenistic phalanges usefully similar to their own formations, as witnessed by the popularity of the Hellenistic manuals. Not that they were necessarily very picky - Vegetius remained popular through-out the Middle Ages.

My impression - such as it is - is that they picked up the numbers and the general formation shapes, but missed out on the command, control and coordination side of things, a bit like (apologies for the out-of-period analogy) Soviet armoured forces trying to blitzkrieg German-style in the early part of World War 2, not succeeding, and eventually developing their own different, simpler, but nevertheless relatively effective approach geared to their own capabilities and limitations.