Excuse me? You know what the purpose of the zweihänder was? To cut a way into pikewall of the enemy to let their own infantry engage.
zweihander (literally: two hander) mostly were not used solely against pikes. I'm familiar with the mercenary squad you are referring to though, but they are known solely for the fact that this kind of tactic/ability was incredibly rare.
lol sure they were big buddy, actually in history many swiss/german/italian mercenaries preferred twohand greatswords, my swiss ancestors did I know that for a fact, and they loved polearms too but the greatsword was a good weapon for attacking pike formations, because guess what IRL that wood is actually pretty worthless vs a cutting edge
First off, not
many, groups that could lop off a pike were very few and far between. Secondly: it depends on the wood. Some of you posters are under the impression that wood was as easy to cut as paper. This is treated, very dense wood.
I'd be glad to have you hold as strong a piece of wood you can find over your head while I strike it with a axe, lets see how long that lasts
Again, further ignorance. It was very rare that you would stop a blade dead with your own weapon. This would be absolutely exhausting, and technically very inefficient. A proper block
deflected the enemy's blow rather than stop it. This is a concept that martial artists all over the world have all unilaterally discovered and agree upon.
because lumberjacks actually don't cut down trees, they just yell "TIMBERRR" and they fall over
Again, this is untreated wood. Additionally, lumberjacks don't cut down trees with swords.
"The Italian humanist historian Paulus Jovius writing in the early 1500s also described the two-hand great sword as being used by Swiss soldiers to chop the shafts of pikes at the battle of Fornovo in 1495"
As previously mentioned, Paolo Givio makes note of the brigade because the tactic is very unusual.
