Quote Originally Posted by Ultras DVSC
I think this screen was captured during a historical battle, by name at Crécy. The extremely wide fighting line (almost 2 km!), the slope which wasn't too favourable to the French, the pales sticking out from the ground (their aim was to inhibit the French knights from rushing the longbowmen) all prove that.
Except that was the sort of deployement the English adopted whenever they could. And pikes in practice weren't in offensive use outside the Swiss for the entire Hundred Years' War.

Wide front lines were the norm for major field battles - when you deploy tens of thousands of men and horses for battles, the frontage obviously tends to end pretty impressive. Anyway, as the English were habitually starkly outnumbered in the more famous battles (and not all that rarely in the smaller ones) they would attempt to force battle in conditions and terrain that forced the French to advance division by division, instead of the entire line abreast (so much as that now was really doable with feudal S-and-C anyway). That's basic tactics for countering numerical advantage really.