Got a Real-World Weapon or Armor Question? Mk. IX

[Beleriphon]

Then there are the other cases. If pikes get close to muskets, the pikemen don't need to be good, its not even remotely fair in close range. Same thing with artillery, though at long range artillery has the capacity to devastate pikes.

Despite the somewhat absurd concept that sets up the story (it involves time travel, and an N-60 machine gun at one point) 1632 (the novel) presents some pretty good battles between pikemen and arquebuses, and later pump action shotguns fire deer slugs.

The Swiss pike squares are commented on as being exceptionally brave, even when facing a machine gun, and later German troops firing shotguns at a rate twenty times higher than an aquebus would have allowed.