[RMS]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Militia didn't use them because they were a good weapon; they used them because they were easy to use and cheap. Same is really true of the use of bayonet on weapons (the fact they'd do double duty as a dagger didn't hurt). Most of the others were using them during periods when the other weapon choices were, frankly, often substandard, and before breakout into specialized troops. I already acknowledged the benefit of the Pike, but notice its a specialized weapon in the end; it was designed primarily to deal with cavalry, which used lances.

You're all over the place here on how effective a spear is...

Obviously, militias use what is cheap and available. (Spears are no easier to use than a sword. However, they are inherently a defensive weapon, so are a natural for nonprofessionals.) Similarly, the bayonet is pretty much just the logical extension of what can physically be done with a rifle, and is the natural extension of pike and musket formations: combining the functions initially.

However, the part about spears being chosen because of a lack of other weapons is incorrect. Spears, of one sort or another, have dominated battlefields from the Bronze Age to the advent of the repeating firearm, and for good reason. Even you note that pikes (a spear) are developed (partially at least) to defend against the lance (a spear): so the two dominant weapons of the battlefield are both spears until the point when firearms become powerful enough to marginalize all melee weapons.

The spear is a good formation weapon, but once formations break up, its reach doesn't really make up for its limitations in other ways.

Once formations break up, one side is running away and it doesn't matter what weapon they have. The other side is chasing them down on cavalry (armed with spears ) to cut them down. There is no good weapon once a formation breaks in ancient or medieval warfare.

Its just got the virtue its cheap and easy to learn to use; it doesn't have the control issues you have to some degree with maces and axes, and even worse with flails, nor the cost associated with decent swords.

The spear has a lot of advantages beyond those. I find it interesting, that all the other weapons you mention have fairly limited eras they existed on the battlefield, and yet the spear was there at the beginning and end. Even the sword doesn't fair nearly as well historically.

(Though as an aside, an awful lot of early swords were largely either-or in terms of thrust versus slash; its hard to find one that was really good for both functions, and some were almost useless for one of the two purposes (usually thrusting)).

True. The concept of a sword being used for both is something that postdates swords actually being used to any large extent on the battlefield. Actual swords are designed to do one or the other and are not balanced properly to do both. I don't allow the option in my RQ games. Big swords are slashing weapons, strictly, and short swords are thrusting weapons...though they can be used either way.