Daily Press

The Pikeman and His Weapon.

The pikeman was covered with defensive armor, an iron headpiece, iron "back and breast" and "tasses," a kind of iron apron protecting him from waist to knee. He carried a pike sixteen feet long, with an ashen shaft, an iron head and a blunt, iron spike at the butt end, whereby to fix it in the ground, and, besides the pike, a rapier. The pike, from its great length, was a weapon which required deft handling in order to be of effective use and, as may be imagined, was excessively showy on parade. The modern lance exercise is a pretty sight enough but the old pike exercise, perfectly executed by a large body of men, must have been superb. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that the postures or instructions for this exercise are extravagantly minute.
To give one example, at the close of the instruction, on the word "Order your pikes," we find after a mass of complicated details the following conclusion: "You place the butt end of your pike by the outside of your right foot, your right hand holding it even with your eye and your thumb right up; then, your left arm being set akimbo by your side, you shall stand with a full body in a comely posture."-Macmillan's Magazine.