Pikes

The pike was a primitive weapon, consisting only of a sixteen A pike head in the seventeenth century style. foot long wooden shaft, steel shod at the tip. Its advantages lay in the ease in which it could be manufactured, and the minimal training needed to ready men for its use in combat.

Although all pikes should have been sixteen feet in length, industrious soldiers often sawed off a few feet at the end to make it easier to carry on marches. This was strongly discouraged by officers, since it gave the regiment a disadvantage in combat.

"...few exceed fifteen feet; and if officers be not careful to prevent it, many a base soldier will cut some off the length of that, as I have often seen."
Sir James Turner

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