I'm going mostly from later-16th Century manuals such as Robert Barret, Thomas Diggs, William Garrard and Sir John Smythe. As memory serves, they all are recommending keeping the "short weapons" (halberds) to the Ensigns Guard. Of course by then there was a much higher proportion of Shotte to Pike as well, even in Continental armies, so the need for such weapons was somewhat reduced.InsaneIrish wrote:Can you point me in the direction of where you saw this?Rittmeister Frye wrote:... According to my research, there were generally only 8 of them in a regiment, protecting the Fähndrich (Ensign), ...
This being said, it is entirely possible that the German and Swiss regiments of the earlier part of the century had a much higher proportion of Double Pay men in their ranks armed with "short weapons" (zweihanders and halberds). I'll have to bug Matthew Kelty on that, he's far better read than I am on the earlier treatises on the Art Militarie. He showed me a rather nifty painting of the defense of Castel San Angelo during the "Sacco da Roma" of 1527, with Swiss with zweihanders are using them rather as crowbars against the German Pikes. Pretty nifty.
(BTW, the Spaniards, or more properly the Aragonese very early in the Italian Wars had hordes of targeteers and pole-axe men in addition to pikes and arquebuses, but it was discovered that while they were quite effective against other Infantry, their vulnerability to French Heavy Horse was a liability.)
Allons!
Gordon