Footsoldiers, generally not of the
knightly class, armed with a
pike or
spear , generally arranged into dense formations. These soldiers, when disciplined, were a potent defense against the heavily armoured
cavalry , particularly where missile weapons were scarce or where the field could be restricted, such as in the Swiss or Greek mountains (the swiss pikemen of the 16th century were as
renown as their predecessors in the Greek Phalanx had been two millennia before). 
