Colunella

Pike and shot is a historical infantry combat formation that evolved during the Italian Wars before the late seventeenth century evolution of the bayonet. The infantry formations of the period were a mix of pike and early firearms ("shot"), either arquebusiers or musketeers.

By the end of the fifteenth century, those late-medieval troop types that had proven most successful in the Hundred Years' War and Burgundian Wars dominated European warfare, especially the heavily armoured gendarme (a professional version of the medieval knight), the Swiss and Landsknecht mercenary pikeman, and the emerging artillery corps of heavy cannons, which were rapidly improving in technological sophistication. The French army of the Valois kings was particularly formidable due to its combination of all of these elements.

The French dominance of warfare at this time presented a daunting challenge to those states which were opposed to Valois ambitions, particularly in Italy. In 1495 at the Battle of Seminara, the hitherto-successful Spanish army was trounced while opposing the French invasion of Naples by an army composed of armoured gendarme cavalry and Swiss mercenary infantry. The chastened Spanish undertook a thorough reorganization of their army and tactics under the great captain Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba.

Realizing that he could not match the sheer offensive power of the French gendarmes and Swiss pikes, Fernández de Córdoba decided to integrate the shooting power of firearms, an emerging technology at the time, with the defensive strength of the pike, and to employ them in a mutually-supporting formation, preferably in a strong defensive position.

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