Swiss infantry, XV century

In box 12 metal unpainted figures in 12 different poses.

The whole 15th century was marked by the process of rising the role of the infantry, and it was the pike that more than once or twice helped common infantrymen repulse fiercest attacks of the heavy cavalry, and all sorts of missile troops, as soon as they caught sight of pike formations, quickly left battlefield. Though the Swiss were not the first to use the pike in battles, they were the first to perform a new tactics the central idea of which was the usage of pikes in tight formations. And this tactics helped them defeat any enemy under any conditions.
Before the pike, the halberd was the basic weapon for the Swiss infantry and it was largely with its help that the battles of Morgarten, Laupen and Sempach were won. But when the Swiss barely escaped a defeat in the battle of Arbedo in 1422 (the main reason, as military leaders of the Confederation found our afterwards, had been the halberd not long enough to prevent Italian knights to come closer), a crucial decision was made: to adopt the pike as the basic infantry weapon. The first to start the introduction of the pike was Lucern. Nevertheless, rearming with pikes was going slowly, largely due to the fact that this weapon demanded persistent mass training. So, the lists of Zurich of 1443 showed that pikemen made only one fourth of all the soldiers (in Lucern their number made 38% the same year). But regular training starting in early childhood allowed after some time to increase the proportion of pikemen .
The length of Swiss pikes reached 5 meters. The pikemen had various swords as auxiliary weapons. They could be long swords, or typical Swiss short swords with H-shaped handles. As Swiss armies were large enough by medieval standards, it wasn"t always possible to equip absolutely all the soldiers with armor. An interesting feature of the appearance of Swiss soldiers which set them off from others was their head-dresses: turbans with feathers. They were so wide-spread that you could see them not only during civil events, but in action too.