When the phalanx disappeared ?

[Barry Soteiro]

I wondered after the Romans conquered most of the Greek World, did the phalanx totally disappeared ?

Or did it survived in hellenic remaining kingdoms like Bosphore or Commagene ?

Thanks

[Eduorius]

It dissapeared somewhere after the Battle of Rocroi.

[pezhetairoi]

Yes. You still see a form of the phalanx existent all the way through the pike formations of medieval and post-renaissance eras, and reach a new heyday as a mixed-arms formation with pikemen phalanxes mixed with swordsmen and musketeers in the Spanish heyday. Only after Rocroi did you see it slowly disappear in favour of a full gunpowder army, as appeared at Blenheim/Culloden.

Though after the Romans took over the Mediterranean, to answer your more pertinent question, the phalanx did indeed disappear as first the legion, then heavy cavalry, took precedence. The revival of the phalanx, IMHO, was when Charles the Bold's vaunted mixed-arms artillery and cavalry army met its end at the hands of Swiss halberd-and-pike militia fighting in packed formations bristling with polearms - essentially a reborn phalanx. Following which, with their proven effect against the elite cavalry of the day, Swiss pikemen and their phalanx formation were exported across Europe as mercenaries, introducing and familiarising yet more people to the effects of formation and sharp pointy sticks.

Naturally, more people began to readopt this formation. Related formations, I may mention, were the Spanish tercios and the Scottish schiltron. And of course, the not-named English pike formations that fought the English Civil War in conjunction with cuirassier cavalry, and musketeers as part of Cromwell's New Model Army.

You could say the phalanx hadn't yet died in Napoleon's era, to a very small extent, because you had the French militia in the early First Republic, was it the federes? armed with halberds during the levee en masse, with only those in the field armies armed with flintlocks. But of course, these halberdiers (conceivably they would have been used in phalanx, meaning a tightly packed mass of troops in this case, to stop a Prussian/Austrian cavalry charge) were never used on the field of battle, only as garrison troops, so this is perhaps irrelevant, and we can point to the definite death of battlefield phalanxes at Rocroi, when Conde's cavalry broke the tercios.

[Gododdin O'Ceallagh]

The Scots Schiltron predates Charles the Bold as it is recorded being used in the 13th Century. In itself it was a development of the "shield wall" tactics of the Germanic and Celtic tribes.

Didn't Charles Martel use phalanxes at the Battle of Tours in 732 against the Moorish cavalry?

G O'C

[Leviathan DarklyCute]

What about the phalanx in the east hellenic world? when did the phalanx in persia and baktria disappeared?

[pezhetairoi]

I can't answer Leviathan's so I'll leave it for someone more knowledgeable about the MidEast. PCataphract, perhaps.

True about the schiltrons, they came before Charles the Bold. But they were omnidirectional hedgehogs, not phalanxes in the sense that we understand it, incredibly strong in front at the expense of the flanks. So while related to the phalanx (lots of long pointy sticks, closely packed formation, shieldwall), it's not a phalanx per se. To be fair, neither was the Swiss pike formation since it was a mixed-arms unit as well. But it did have much more similarity to the ancient phalanx than the schiltron, IMHO. This is not scholarly academic knowledge. Medieval era is not my strong suit, so probably patchy/assumptuous.

On Charles Martel at Tours, no idea either. I haven't actually found any good sources yet on the order of battle and the tactics used at that battle. Was Charles Martel's army at that time considered 'Christianised barbarian' or 'barbarised Christian'? I thought, being a Germanic (Frankish) army, it would most like have been a shieldwall rather than a phalanx...

[The Persian Cataphract]

What about the phalanx in the east hellenic world? when did the phalanx in persia and baktria disappeared?

It fell out of practical use when it proved far too clumsy to use effectively against mounted archery and combined tactical usage of heavy cavalry; By the time of the Parthian succession, the entire area had rather scaled up the use of heavy horse quite dramatically. In set-piece battles, relatively lightly armed contingents mustered by the Eastern nations, though brave, did not possess any tactical superiority given such conditions, instead since the age of Xenophon, he had warned about the lethality of the Iranian cavalry and wrote books on horsemanship based very intimately with the Achaemenid model; So we have a source where the Iranian empire basically reforms itself to a more extensivve shock role for the cavalry arm. These were the seeds that were planted.

By the time of the great conquests of Mithradates I and Phraates II, we already see nations such as Atropatene possessing an impressive heavy cavalry arm. There were instances where the Parthians indeed did use heavy infantry, including phalangites, and made use of prisoners of war (Which had earned Phraates much scorn as those same prisoners staged a mutiny and surrendered him to the Scythians), but the advantage of using an all-equestrian force proved to be a remarkably swift strategical deployment, kept small and organized in decimal order could actually prove itself, in optimal conditions as proven by Orodes' brilliant plan of swarming the Roman East; The battle of Carrhae proved to only be the first step. He had personally lead his own Arsacid retinue to consolidate Armenia, and continued to swarm over Caucasian Iberia, Colchis, while his son, Pacorus attempted to put Syria under the Parthian banner.

Pacorus was met with failure and lost his grand retainer, Osaces, but once Decidius Saxa was defeated at the battle of Apamea, we see a tremendous catalyst in the Parthian conquests; Thanks to Orodes' foresight, Quintus Labienus did not need to heed his rear as he marched over Asia Minor. Pharnapates probably went along with him. Pacorus and Barzaphernes however went south, conquering the entire Levant, down to Jerusalem. In a very short span of time, and with divided forces striking swiftly, the Parthian military machine nearly restored the Achaemenid borders: An empire stretching from the Indus, the banks of Oxus, and the river Kura in Caucasia, beyond Euphrates into coastal Arabia, and to the Eastern Mediterranean coast, as far as the Bosphorus. It was not for the keeps though, and after three successful decisive battles, Publius Ventidius Bassus had not only thwarted Orodes' plan, but killed Pharnapates, Labienus and Pacorus, the latest in an oft-forgotten battle in Cyrrhestica, 38 BCE.

With these merits, it is hard to go back to the preceeding model of using the phalanx; It simply did not fit the Parthian model of logistics, and they had more than enough merit to dismiss it; Instead, by continuous Roman influence, the infantry must have leaned towards less rigidity and instead with tactical flexibility. There are some implications of such infantry being used by the Parthians, such as early Sassanian combat infantry gear found in Dura-Europos (Which must have been late Parthian; Few in Iranology would argue that Ardashîr hux-flux reformed the Parthian military machine to encompass infantry), and some of Trajan's "Parthia Capta" coins. However once these factors come into play, the pikeman was no more in Iran. David Nicolle posits that in Soghdiana, much based on the late-Sassanian Kulargysh plate, that some sort of a Soghdian armoured pikeman was conceived, but it is purely conjectural, and would rather depict spearmen who also were armed with bows and swords. Deilamites equally were armed and armoured much like the late Roman infantry contingents. They were armed for a wide role of tasks, which is also reflected in the armoured cavalry where dîhqân were required to own a respectable selection of weapons, including bow, sword, axe or mace, and a spear. A universal cavalryman.

It's hard to see a pikeman fit in anywhere. The pikeman had the potential to be quite a decisive novelty on the battle-field, as in the cases of Alexander The Great or Scottish contingents or Swiss mercenaries... However in times when it was all too familiar and a set of weaknesses had been charted, it could be a liability to keep a tight, and slow-moving formation of infantry, say, against mounted archery. Seen with a generalized pathological appeal the Greater Iran has always favoured archery and equestrian sports more than infantry-based traditions.