Arquebusier and Pikeman: Year 322 By Imperator-Zor Watch

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To deal with the knights of Haven the states of the coalition tried out various methods, these ranged from simple things such as caltrops and stakes to protect infantry formations and issuing war-picks to complex ones such as giant wombat drawn carts full of crossbowmen to absurd one such as releasing emus into their charges and one infamous case in which warriors smeared their armor in rat-lion dung before battle because of a superstition about it's smell being especially repulsive to horses. In the end, however, two weapons proved to be practicularly useful against the knights: pikes and firearms.



The development of pikes was an incremental process based off the fact that halberdiers were among the most effective soldiers against knights in the early clashes with the Kingdom of Haven and longer halberds were better still. Over a few decades halberd lengths were increased from an average of 1.5 to 2 meters to four to five meters. What they lacked in flexibility they made up for in the fact that all but the best warhorses shied away from charging head-on into a pike formation's wall of spikey steel and the fact that those which did try to do so usually got impaled. At the beginning of the wars with Haven firearms were still at best a secondary weapon used by militia and skirmishers, even so their ability to penetrate the armor of Havenese knights meant that there was a renewed interest in them. Armorers continued to refine their designs. By 300 the first firearms with rudimentary serpentine lock mechanisms began to emerge and step by step true arquebuses began to emerge. The Havenese eventually made use of swivel guns for defensive purposes and used cannons in sieges, but generally viewed handgonnes with disdain as being short ranged, unreliable and inefficient and seldom fielded them even among their serf levies.



Even so, it was not until 315 in which the result of seven decades of improvement would ultimately come together. During that time Sailven Kilner, First Captain of Darrenston brought these two elements together. With the backing of the First Citizen of Darrenston he hired a few pike-masters to train several hundred of his warriors in the use of pikes and devised a new formation to work alongside Darrenston's arquebusiers. Basically there would be a frontal formation of musketeers ahead of blocks of pikes with a few non-pike companies of self equiped swordsmen, axemen, halberdiers and similar held in the rear as a reserve, these would fire at the enemy in volleys then retreat behind the pikemen once the enemy got close. When war came in 319 this strategy proved to be devastating against Havenese knights in it's first trial by fire at the battle of Laymer's Lake. The effectiveness of these tactics were noted and Sailven freely shared notes to the commanders of other city-states and even sent a few of his drillmasters to help them adopt these new tactics. In any case they worked. Despite the fact that by this point the Kingdom of Haven had managed to assemble an army of some 1,500 knights and 8,500 levies strong the coalition was finally able to drive Haven to abandon it's territorial claims west of the Dividing Mountain Range by 322 thanks largely to the introduction of these pike-and-shot tactics.



However for the coalition the victory would be short lived as tensions between the city states and the 'liberated' peoples over who got control of these lands. The age of war would continue, though the nature of the weapons used had changed.

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