Description
Historians often characterize the 16th and 17th centuries as the “Era of Pike and Shot.” The Spanish were the first to introduce a mixed formation of arquebusiers and pikemen to the battlefield during the Italian Wars. The Dutch and Swedes would go on to perfect this formula until wide-scale adoption of the flintlock musket and bayonet by French and German armies in the late 1600s. Matthew Barbour looks at the military developments and conflicts which characterized the period.
Matthew Barbour holds BA and MA degrees in anthropology from UNM and works for the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. Barbour is the deputy director of New Mexico Historic Sites, while currently serving as acting director as well.