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Short description

The freemen vanguard stands in the first line of the Germanic battle array. Covered from head to toe by huge shields, they employ long pikes to hold the enemy at bay, and strike them down from a distance.

Description

The freemen vanguard stands in the first line of the Germanic battle array. Covered from head to toe by huge shields, they employ long pikes to hold the enemy at bay, and strike them down from a distance. Germanic pikemen wielded their weapons with tremendous force and precision, and presented a forest of gleaming pike-points that could only be assaulted at great cost to even the most determined assailants.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Early Germanic society rested upon the freemen caste. The freemen enjoyed political enfranchisement, and were in return expected to fight for their nations whenever called upon. Essentially, the Germanic nations practiced a form of universal military service where all able-bodied men constituted their nation’s freemen militia. Germanic men were therefore not born as freemen, but were only raised to that status after reaching adulthood and being deemed worthy. At that point, a man would present himself before the whole assembly of freemen to receive his first weapons: A shield, and the traditional Germanic spear called framea – a spear of about a man’s length, which had a short, but very sharp, tip of iron, and was as suitable for thrusting as throwing. The one handing him his weapons was either his father, another relative, or one of the chiefs. Yet, who bestowed them was of subordinate importance. What mattered was that the gift of weapons was a national act of adoption, whereby the freemen received the man into their ranks and thus made him a full member of his nation: A freeman (Tacitus, Germanica, 13). Later on, the growing power of Germanic kings eventually caused a reversal of that relationship. Importance shifted to the giver of gifts, and the customary gift of weapons turned into a personal form of adoption, wherein he who received it became a son-in-arms of the bestower. Or at least that became the case among the Germanic royals themselves. Even the Byzantine court adopted the personalized version of the custom when dealing with Germanic royalty, and many Germanic leaders, such as the Gothic king Theodoric the Great, were made sons-in-arms of Byzantine emperors.Even if the bulk of a Germanic battle array was formed by freemen armed with shields and frameae-spears, Tacitus records that those in the vanguard carried much larger shields and wielded long pikes. Tacitus’ works in fact make numerous references to Germanics armed with very long spears; variously described as “hastae ingentes” (Tacitus, Annals, 1.64); “enormis hastas” (Tacitus, Annals, 2.14); “praelongas hastas” (Tacitus, Annals, 2.21); and “praelongis hastis” (Tacitus, Histories, 5.18). In constantly referring to the weapons as oversized hastae, he makes it clear that these spears were considerably longer than the Roman hastae of old. Cassius Dio even outright labels the Germanic polearms as pikes. Just as the more well-know sarissae of the Macedonians, the Germanic polearms were able to slay from a long distance, but became unwieldy in close combat and rough terrain (Cassius Dio, 38.49; Tacitus, Annals, 1.64, 2.14, 2.21; Tacitus, Histories, 5.18; Maurice, Strategikon, 11.3). Men armed with long pikes appear to have been a very old element in Germanic warfare, as already Bronze Age rock carvings from the Swedish west coast depict warriors very much resembling Tacitus’ description of the Germanic vanguard: Wielding long pikes and carrying huge shields that guard them from head to toe.

As an archaic artifact in Germanic warfare, the pikemen might have become somewhat obsolete by the turn of the second century AD; for Tacitus made no mention of them when describing the Germanic armies of his own time. Yet, pikes may still have remained in use among eastern Germanics – for Jordanes and Emperor Maurice recorded Germanic fighters armed with great polearms (Jordanes, Getica, 261; Maurice, Strategikon, 11.3). Even if those weapons might have been kontos-lances, it is remarkable how they suffered the same drawbacks on broken ground as the pikes described by Tacitus, which implies a similar usage.

Given their place of honor in the battle line, and that men’s first gifts of weapons consisted of shields and frameae, the freemen carrying pikes must have been veterans who had earnt greater gifts – or claimed them from fallen foes! Their relative fewness further corroborates that they did indeed form a veteran contingent among the freemen infantry of Germanic armies.

Available battle accounts suggest that the main tactical role of Germanic vanguard was to keep enemies at a pike-length’s distance, where assailants could be safely slain by jabs from the pikemen themselves, or by projectiles thrown from the more lightly equipped men behind them (Cassius Dio, 38.49; Tacitus, Annals, 1.64, 2.14, 2.21; Tacitus, Histories, 5.18). Meanwhile, the massive shields carried by the vanguard guarded the rest of the battleline against incoming missiles, but would have been somewhat unwieldy in melee-combat. Given their lack of armor or backup weapons, the Freemen vanguard were thus very vulnerable if foes made it past their pikes. That said, Germanic pikemen wielded their weapons with tremendous force and precision, and presented a forest of gleaming pike-points that could only be assaulted at great cost to even the most determined assailants.