A Thicket of Spears

Never was the Scottish idiom "a poke in the eye with a sharp stick" meant so literally.

"Your father should have taught you how our phalanx works. We fight as a single, impenetrable unit. That is the source of our strength. Each Spartan protects the man to his left from thigh to neck with his shield. A single weak spot and the phalanx shatters. From thigh to neck, Ephialtes."

— Leonidas, King of Sparta, 300

The humble spear generally lacks the mystique of the sword or the couched lance. Historically it and weapons like it were the arms of the infantry: Boring, but Practical weapons that were cheap to produce and easy to train with. Massive stirrup-to-stirrup cavalry charges and duels between knights may have been more dramatic, but blocks of footmen armed with polearms—spears, pikes, halberds, naginata, you name it—remained a critical part of warfare well into the age of gunpowder, even outlasting infantry armor.

In some places and times they were called the phalanx; in others, the schiltron or the tercio. Even as far away as Japan, the elite samurai were always outnumbered by the ashigaru, professional soldiers armed with naginata or yari spears who ranked below them in the caste system but were no less critical in the battles of the Sengoku Period. In later years shields disappeared as armor improved, then pike formations evolved into shot-and-pike as firearms became more reliable and available, with the pikemen protecting the musketeers. Spears were gradually supplanted by the bayonet, which allowed musketeers to double as spearmen in close combat: one of the motivations for its invention was to help musketeers fend off cavalry much as traditional spears could. The last survival of the "thicket of spears" was the infantry square of the Napoleonic Wars, where as late as 1815, attacking cavalry would be confronted with a sea of bayonets whichever axis of attack they tried.

After the early 1800s, the widening adoption of explosive artillery shells and rifled firearms mostly put an end to this style of warfare; by the time of The Crimean War and The American Civil War, it had all but disappeared. However, pikes^note Officially the "half-pike", the "sergeant's pike" or the spontoon were still carried at this time by British infantry sergeants, who used them to goad sometimes reluctant troops onto line, to act as a visible rallying point for the men, and for last-ditch self-defence. The sergeant's pike of 1815 was the last survival of the phalanx of two centuries before.^note The spontoon was still used as a ceremonial parade weapon until the early years of the 20th Century, when the pike was finally retired from British Army service. Except for the emergency of 1940, when Home Guard units were issued with crudely manufactured pikes as an expedient - Germans invading in that summer might have been amazed to see determined old men presenting a Thicket of Pikes at them.

Formation fighting and troop morale are critical to this style of warfare. A block of pikes that maintained proper order could often repel cavalry charges, but any soldier who lost their nerve could jeopardize the entire battle. Quantity Versus Quality is very much in play here, as an individual spearman is almost defenseless without their comrades. Spear formations also were often cumbersome to maneuver and therefore vulnerable to being outflanked by more mobile troop types.

This style of warfare is not often depicted accurately in live-action media due to Hollywood Tactics. Battles between pike formations tended to resemble shoving matches with only the front ranks really engaging in close combat. It tends to be more exciting for casual viewers to see a chaotic melee, something to which spear formations are really not suited. It also tends to be expensive: you either need a lot of props and extras or a lot of CGI. Literary and animated media and video games have more flexibility here, and spear formations are especially common in strategy games as Anti-Cavalry units.

Contrast Naginatas Are Feminine for an entirely different view of polearms, and Javelin Thrower and Jousting Lance for other ways spears were used in war. Contrast with Low-Tech Spears, in which spears are associated with "primitive" peoples and cultures. Has no relation to the Shoot 'Em Up video game Phalanx.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Wolfsmund: During the chapters dealing with the Battle of Morgarten, the rebels of the Forest Cantons are shown struggling to slow down Austrian cavalry with polearms. Their formations aren't large enough to do much more than slow them down slightly: the heavy cavalry are shown either jumping over them or smashing through. Nonetheless, as shown in the epilogue, this presaged the dominance of Swiss mercenary pikemen on the battlefields of the Renaissance.

Comic Books

• Asterix: Roman soldiers are routinely depicted forming spear phalanxes. This does them absolutely no good against the heroic Gaul and his friends thanks to the Super-Strength granted by the magic potion they drink, it just bunches the Romans up to make a Foe-Tossing Charge more efficient.

Fan Works

• The Mountain and the Wolf: The Westerosi forces are unpleasantly surprised to find the Chaos invaders don't (just) rely on great big mobs to attack, as there are enough spears to prevent a straight-up cavalry charge. However, once the formations break apart they're able to charge, inflicting considerably more damage (although they still take heavy losses, as the Norscans' size, Scary Impractical Armor, and Chaos mutations give them huge advantages in one-on-one fights).

Film — Animated

• Wizards: The united elven invasion force that lands on the shores of Scortch is arranged in Alexandrian formation: shield wall with spears up front; combat swordsmen immediately behind them; and archers at the rear. Presumably, the spear line did well, as a large cavalry force attacked them, but none are seen in the inner ranks. Rather, all that fighting is one-on-one, mutant-versus-elf melee combat.

Film — Live-Action

• 300 does at some points show the classic Greek phalanx enacted by the Spartan hoplites, and King Leonidas explains how important the mutual support each hoplite provides to the next man in the formation is to its success. However, later in the film, the Battle of Thermopylae devolves into a more Hollywood-friendly melee of individual fighters.
• Alatriste: The final battle of the film depicts a pretty accurate reproduction of the Tercio formation working as they would have during the age of Pike and Shot, showcasing both the protection it gave to the Spanish soldiers against cavalry charges and the dreaded push of pike that happened when a pike formation attempted to dislodge another.
• Braveheart: In the Battle of Stirling Bridge, William Wallace's army forms a schiltron using heavy spears made from tree trunks as a defense against an English cavalry charge. The film inaccurately depicts this as a one-off incident: in actual fact, the schiltron was a core part of Scottish armies throughout the Middle Ages.
• Dune (2021): One scene in the Battle of Arrakeen shows Atreides legionnaires using a formation of swordsmen supported by pikemen behind them (similar to an early Roman maniple minus handheld shields) to defend the palace from Harkonnen soldiers (projectile weapons being mostly useless in the setting because of the ubiquity of Deflector Shields). They easily fend off the Harkonnens' initial charge, but this is only a diversion from the Sardaukar air-dropping in behind them: the ensuing two-pronged attack goes much better for the attackers.
• The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies: The armies of the Iron Hills differ from most dwarves by entering battle in phalanx formations, carrying heavy shields in one hand and spears in the other, with which they can hold the enemy at arm's length. This indicates that their military includes traces of a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of ancient Rome/Greece (even if their leader speaks and acts like a Violent Glaswegian). Of course, the Mirkwood Elves then ruin the whole point of their formation by just vaulting over the shields to attack the Orcs head-on.
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, when Eomer's army of renegades arrives to lift the siege of Helm's Deep, the Uruk-hai form a solid line of pike-orcs to meet Eomer's charge. Being orcs, however, many of them run in terror and the line collapses just as the Rohirrim reach them (helped along by Gandalf amplifying the light of the sun coming over the hilltop and blinding them).
  • In The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the Mordor-orcs besieging Minas Tirith try to meet the charge of the Rohirrim with a line of pike-orcs backed by archers. As at Helm's Deep, however, the Rohirrim scare the hell out of the orcs, and the line collapses as many of them turn and run.
• Tai Chi Master: Tienbo's personal army is armed with spears, which they use to form an advancing spiked wall when forcing Junbo, Miss Li, and the rest of the resistance into a retreat. The final battle between Tienbo and Junbo sees them fighting amidst a row of soldiers with spears held upright, with Tienbo at one point stealing a dozen spears and trying to skewer Junbo with it; the battle ends with Junbo instead flipping his opponent so Tienbo lands back-first into his soldiers' spears.

Literature

• Destroyermen: When the Americans start training and equipping the Lemurians to more effectively fight the Grik, they start out by reinventing the Greek phalanx with spear and shield for lack of resources to do anything else. This quickly evolves into shot-and-pike with the spears eventually supplanted by muskets as they're able to gradually reproduce more advanced Earth weaponry with the available resources, with the shields evolving into portable cover for musketeers.
• Goblin Slayer: During the battle at Cow Girl's farm in volume 1, the guild adventurers defending the farm quickly form a spearwall under Spearman's command to receive a charge by a platoon of wolf-riding goblins. The spearwall breaks the charge with only one casualty and the adventurers quickly counterattack and slaughter the survivors.
• A Song of Ice and Fire: The Unsullied of Essos are Slave Mooks trained to fight in Greek-style phalanges with spear and shield, and are the most feared soldiers on the continent due to their robotic loyalty and immunity to pain and fear. The story of the Battle of Qohor describes an army of Unsullied defeating a Dothraki raiding force seven times their size, though they took grievous losses doing so. However, the Unsullied are wasted off the battlefield, as Daenerys discovers when she tries assigning them to guard duty in captured cities: lone Unsullied are easily overwhelmed and killed.
• In The Stormlight Archive, this is one of the biggest advantages that the Alethi have over the Parshendi. In Warform, the Parshendi are incredibly strong, able to leap long distances, and covered in carapace armor as strong as steel. The Alethi counter this with disciplined shield and spear walls, which they use to mutually support each other against the physically-superior Parshendi, who tend to fight in loose groups of paired soldiers with heavy swords, maces, and axes.

Live-Action TV

• Game of Thrones:
  • The Unsullied, Slave Mooks who fight in phalanx, appear beginning in "And Now His Watch Is Ended". They get very little opportunity to properly strut their stuff in the series: most pitched battles involving them take place budget-savingly offscreen, and many are killed in guerrilla ambushes by the Sons of the Harpy, a style of warfare they're really not suited to.
  • In "Battle of the Bastards", the Bolton army uses tower shields and pikes to hem in and slowly kill the disorganized and worse-equipped army of Jon Snow. However, they're taken by surprise when Sansa Stark returns leading heavy cavalry from the Vale and are flattened before they can reposition.
  • "The Spoils of War": Jaime's army on the road between Highgarden and Kings Landing forms a spearwall to defend their supply wagons against a Dothraki charge. They have some success until Drogon appears and starts blowing holes in their lines.

Tabletop Games

• Spear units are common in Warhammer Fantasy, and most factions tend to have access to one. Spears allow the unit carrying them to fight in one more rank than normal, as long as it is attacking in the front and is not charging, which means an effective doubling (or 50% increase in the eighth edition) of attacks the unit can make. The Dogs of War faction has access to the Tilean pike, which is an extra-long spear that allows fighting in an additional two ranks while the unit stands still. Spear and pike units tend to have deep formations to benefit from their additional rank-fighting ability for as long as possible.

Video Games

• Age of Empires II: Steppe Lancers and Kamayuks have a range of 1, allowing multiple ranks to attack a group of enemies at the same time.
• Crusader Kings II: Pikemen levies are available and are at their best in the melee phase of a battle, good for both attacking and defending. The Defense retinue allows a ruler to hire higher-quality pikemen (mixed with archers), and the unique retinues of several cultures, notably the Scots, Italians, and Romans, consist largely of pikes.
• Dark Souls: The Phalanx found in the Painted World of Ariamis is a Mini-Boss and an obvious Production Throwback to Demon's Souls, as it also consists of a mass of formless blobs each of whom points a very long spear at you the moment they see you.
• Demon's Souls: The Phalanx is one of the early bosses, comprising of a mass of blob-like Hoplite enemies who are armed with spears and reasonably good at holding their formation to keep you away.
• In Diablo IV, the Knights Penitent form a shield and spear wall to meet a charging horde of demons. The knights' shields even have grooves built in so massive spears operated by several knights together can put in the needed force to pierce demon flesh while keeping the front line safe.
• Extremely Realistic Siege Warfare Simulator: While most melee units will pursue and attack enemies individually, Spearman units prefer to stand in one place and stab at enemies that approach them. A lone spearman is an easy target due to its slow attack rate, but a whole squad of them can take turns stabbing at approaching enemies, making it near-impossible for most melee units to get through them.
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: In a cutscene depicting the fall of Hyrule Castle, Princess Zelda's knights are shown presenting a rather ragged wall of pikes to Zant's Shadow Beasts during their Last Stand. They're rapidly overpowered anyway, and Zelda, wielding a sword behind them, surrenders to avoid further bloodshed.
• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous: The battle to defend the Defender's Rest tavern in chapter 1 features NPC crusaders under the command of Irabeth presenting a wall of longspears to any mooks that get past the Player Party. This frees the player up to deal with the more dangerous arsonists and fiendish minotaurs.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic takes this a step further with lightsaber pikes, literally a spear shaft ending in a shortened lightsaber blade. In cutscenes, these are sometimes used in spear-wall formations by Knights of Zakuul, though since the game mechanics revolve around individual combat this doesn't carry over to gameplay (lightsaber pikes are only available to PCs as a cosmetic variation on double-bladed lightsabers).
• Total War:
  • Rome: Total War: Greek hoplites and pikemen can form the classic phalanx formation, while Roman Republican triarii gain bonuses against cavalry. Pictish spearmen in Barbarian Invasion can form schiltrons but are weaker than other spearmen.
  • Medieval: Total War and Medieval II: Total War: Spear units of some sort are available to nearly any faction, and allow both the front and second ranks of a unit to attack. Several factions also have Pike units, whose much longer spears can form phalanx-like spear walls 4 ranks deep. Scotland has a specialty here.
  • Total War: Rome II: Much like in Rome: Total War, the game features a variety of options between the many hellenistic factions to use either hoplites or phalangites, with other factions like Rome featuring formations also able to counter cavalry. The sequel Total War: Attila on the other hand doesn't feature as many options of pike infantry, which actually reflects how pike formations disappeared in the face of the Roman Maniple, though spears are still aplenty.
  • Total War: Shogun 2: The greatest strength of the otherwise humble Yari Ashigaru is their ability to employ the aptly named Yari Wall defensive formation, which allows every member of the formation to stab at anything in front of them. The sheer number of long spears involved makes any sort of direct attack a suicidal prospect. Yari Samurai, meanwhile, are unable to form such a wall but are still credible anti-cavalry threats thanks to their damage bonuses and Sprint ability.
  • Total War: Warhammer onwards: Units armed with spears and other polearms usually have a damage bonus when fighting "large" units, which in the Warhammer trilogy range from mere cavalry to Giant Mooks and colossal monsters. They also have the ability to negate the charging damage bonus of large units, so long as the spearmen are holding still and facing their enemy. The third Warhammer title also gives spear units "charge reflection", providing a damage bonus against charging units while braced.
• Wargroove: Spearman units gain a damage bonus if there is another Spearman unit in an adjacent square, so the player is encouraged to send them out in groups.

Web Original

• A Dynasty of Dynamic Alcoholism:
  • Being based off the armies of Renaissance Germany it is only natural that Imperial spearmen, pikemen and halberdiers employ this tactic.
  • This tactic is also employed by the Eternal Guard of the Wood Elves, as well as their variants such as the Wildwood Vigilants of Cythral and the Brightspears of Laurelorn.

Western Animation

• Castlevania (2017): In Season 1 Episode 4, this trope shows up with salted spears in order to combat night creatures.

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