Swiss infantry

It was actually due to a combination of Spanish sword-and-target men (rodeleros), supporting pikemen, and arquebusiers.

When Gonzalo de Cordoba invaded Italy in 1495 to counter the French, his army was composed mainly of sword-and-target men and light cavalry (jinetes), together with small numbers of heavy cavalry, crossbowmen, and arquebusiers.  At Seminara, his swordsmen were ground underfoot by the charge of the Swiss pike-block.  This was destined to be Cordoba's only defeat, for he reorganized his forces (adding many more arquebusiers), and 2,000 landsknechte from Maximilian joined him, to give his army a much-needed pike element. 

Cordoba's revised force smashed the Swiss at Barletta in 1502, and at Cerignola the following year.  His greatest victory, however, was at the Garigliano River, also in 1503.

In all these actions (especially Barletta), rodeleros played a decisive role in beating the Swiss.  Supported by friendly pikemen, these swordsmen were able to close the gap and slaughter the Swiss at close quarters.

The damage that such infantry armed with sword and shield could do to pikemen was noted again at Ravenna in 1512, when the Spanish swordsmen took a severe toll on their landsknecht opponents.  Even though the Spanish lost that battle, chroniclers seemed to remember the damage that the sword-and-target men did (Macchiavelli wrote about it in his Art of War).

By the end of the 16th century, firearms had really taken over, but sword-and-target men were still used in limited numbers for a variety of specialist roles, and as late as 1593, the Englishman Matthew Sutcliffe wrote that sword-and-target men were "mortal to pikemen".

And before that, they had smaller formations called colunelas ("little columns"), which had arquebusiers, pikemen, and swords-and-target men in a ratio of 2:2:1.

Hmm..according to my knowledge the main role at Cerignola was played by spanish arqubusiers...

Crawling under the pikes ? All in all spaniards not only loose the battle but also were beaten by landsknechts..

TJK,

At Cerignola that was definitely the case--the arquebus really won the day.  But sword-and-target men were used as well, and, as I mentioned already, were decisive in beating the Swiss at Barletta.

The Spanish were not beaten by landsknechts--on the contrary, the Spanish rodeleros executed massive carnage amongst the German pikemen.  The action was described in detail by Sir Charles Oman, in his History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century:

"Matters were far more serious further down the line, where the great column of German landsknechts under Jacob Empser delivered their assault.  Braving the fire that was poured upon them, they rolled up to the ditch, after passing a water-cut (not part of the Spaniards' work) which was found to lie across their path.  Jacob Empser was shot through the body as he scrambled over the ditch, but one of his lieutenants, Fabian von Schlabrendorf, made a gap in the line of Spanish pikes by taking his own pike by the butt and using it like a flail, whereby he broke down to the ground a dozen hostile weapons, and allowed his men to scramble in--though he himself (as was to be expected) was mortally wounded.  At several points the Germans crossed the ditch, and got to hand-strokes with the Spaniards, but could make no great way forward.  We are told that the sword-and-buckler men from the rear ranks slipped in among them, and did great damage with their short weapons--against which the pike was practically useless.  After a long struggle the Germans were expelled from the works--it is said that they and the French infantry lost another 1200 casualties in this storm over and above the men killed in the previous cannonade.  The Spaniards raised a loud shout of victory, but as two French narrators remark, the battle was already lost to them, for their horse, at both ends of their line, were at this very moment breaking up and abandoning the field."

So, far from being beaten by the landsknechts, the Spaniards in fact beat them outright in HTH, and forced them to withdraw.  Ravenna was lost because the French had superior artillery, and they did great damage to the Spanish cavalry.  Once the cavalry were driven off, the Spanish infantry were destined to be overwhelmed by infantry in the front, and cavalry in the rear.

My point in mentioning Ravenna, in fact, was that even though the Spanish lost the battle, the chroniclers couldn't help but still note the damage the Spanish swordsmen inflicted upon their enemies.  Niccolo Machiavelli, for example, wrote about it in his Art of War. 

Peace,

L_D

Did these "sword-and-target" men use rapiers or just plain broad swords?

There was a modification to pike tactics. Training men to use swords correctly was neither easy nor cheap, and many early pike formations were composed of men who knew how to wield the pike in formation (pun entirely intentional) and nothing else. True, many pikemen carried swords, but these swords were often worn only for the sake of style because their owners didn't really know how to use them. Obviously these men wouldn't have been very effective against real swordsmen even if they had enough sense to drop their pikes and draw their swords in face of such an assault.

The Spanish stood out in this respect because the circumstances of warfare in their homeland had forced their men to have at least a rudimentary level of proficiency in swordsmanship. I'm referring here to the frequent sieges and assaults and trench fighting they had had to face during the Reconquista and in their own internal struggles. If I'm not mistaken, there was a time when the Dutch tried to use Spanish sword-and-buckler tactics against the Spanish but their sword assault against the Spanish tercio failed because it turned out that "the damned Spanish pikemen knew how to use swords themselves." By the late 1630s, the Spanish (and their French, German, and Swedish counterparts) had so closely integrated their swordsmen into their pike-and-shot formations that the distinction was all but lost. The best swordsmen among the pikes and muskets were simply picked off from their companies whenever they were needed to launch an assault with cold steel.

By the way, I find it hard to believe that anybody would call the weapons of the rodeleros "early rapiers." These swords were so much more versatile and deadly than the "true" rapiers--calling them early rapiers would simply create unnecessary confusion in the nomenclature of blade forms especially in relation to the way they were wielded.

So the landsneckts were fighting for the french? I thought they were only employed by Holy Roman Empire.

I have the same describtion as TJK here...

evildoer, keep in midn that landsknechte were mercenaries and nationalities were of minor role back then...

Hyarmendacil,

What's your evidence for this?

You're ignoring (or are unaware of) the fact that many folks trained in the use of swords and polearms for civilian self-defense, as well as for war--it was a part of the culture at that time.  Look at the sword-and-buckler fencing, quarterstaff-play, and use of the bill by English yeomen--all traditional martial arts.  The German-speaking peoples likewise had various indigenous systems.  The use of various short swords--katzbalgers, sword-length baselards (aka Schweizerdegen), single-handed & double-handed messers, various types of bastard swords (some with rather short blades, as illustrated by Hans Holbein the Younger), and so on.  Fencing historian Egerton Castle noted that the wooden dussack was the training tool for the katzbalger, and it may very well have served in a similar capacity to the Swiss, with their Schweizerdegen.   The staff was likewise popular (it appears in several German treatises), and in addition to being a useful weapon in its own right, doubtlessly served as a base from which to learn other traditional pole weapons. 

And keep in mind that much of the above were plebian martial arts, that many of the common landsknechte and reislaufer would have been familiar with.

Again, where's your source for this supposed truism?

So where's that quote from?

By the time the Dutch were fighting the Spanish, targetiers were very much the minority in all armies, a trend which started as early as 1534, when the Spanish created the tercio.  This differed significantly from the earlier colunela, where a full fifth of the men were rodeleros.  By the later 1500s, targetiers were used only for specialist roles, and so the story sounds a bit suspect.

I'd love to see some sources on this too.  I realize that targetiers still saw limited use into the 17th century, but where are you getting this from?

It's still fairly common amongst curators, actually.  In Swords and Hilt Weapons, Donald J. LaRocca from the Met in NYC describes these complex-hilted espadas as "rapiers".   WMA practitioners like ARMA's John Clements have criticized this approach, saying that curators spend too much attention on the hilts, and not enough on the blades. 

The nomenclature is by its very nature confusing anyway, and there's really no way around that.  Part of the problem is that, in the areas where the rapier is said to have originated (Spain and Italy), the term "rapier" was never used.  Even the longest, thinnest cup-hilts of the 17th century were known simply as espadas ("swords").  However, there's still the issue of the civilian espada ropera (which is supposedly the origin of the term "rapier") from the late 15th century, which frankly appears similar to other cut-and-thrust swords of that period. 

In addition, the fact remains that stout-bladed, cut-and-thrust swords with complex hilts were sometimes referred to as "rapiers", in the 16th and 17th centuries!  Look at the swords shown in Joachim Meyer's 1570 manual, or Jakob Sutor's 1612 treatise--both show swords that any early rodelero would have happily employed.  Meyer calls his sword a rappier, and Sutor refers to his as a rappir, so you get the idea.  Sutor even shows his swordsman using the fairly broad-bladed "rapier" to completely sever his opponent's sword-hand in one of the plates, so clearly this was a different weapon from the one that was criticized by folks like George Silver and Sir John Smythe.

Peace,

L_D

Oh, and about the modification to pike tactics, I derived it mostly from my experience in training fellow high school students to act in the role of a riot squad. (Believe me, student brawls are that frequent here!) It was decided to give them  blunt pikes because a pike charge could be very effective (and very very intimidating) on the narrow, straight roads in our neigborhood, but we also gave them clubs (batons?) for close-range work. What I found out was that the first instinct of a man in close combat is to run. Having overcome that, the man would instinctively tend to cling to the weapon he's currently holding--in this case, the pike. We took only two weeks each to teach the use of the pike and the club but training the men in the first rank to drop their pikes and take their clubs took two whole months. That was when they faced a charge of a single line of us seniors. When we split them into two groups and told one to charge (with the club) and the other to receive it (initially holding the pike), the first rank of the receiving group clean forgot to drop their pikes, the groups got mixed up, and the thing ended in a big disorderly brawl. I believe I wouldn't have done any better than those men in the same situation. But I should also remark that when they finally got it into their habit to let the first rank drop their pikes in receiving a charge, the formation became impervious to any kind of attack short of a water cannon or lethal firearms. One single day paid off for the investment in six months of training--but that's another story.

The question is: even though armies of the 16th and 17th centuries could exist as coherent entities for years on end, how much effort was actually spared to overcome natural human laziness and instill the proper instincts into the heads and hearts of the soldiers? It is worth remarking that soldiers in general spent more time in feasts and looting sprees than in drills, even in the 20th century. Five years in campaign didn't necessarily provide an equal amount of man-hours in intensive training as what we gave to our juniors in three months. To give an example of the common man's tendency towards laziness, I never managed to do such a simple task as memorizing the lines of my former high school's official hymn even though I spent three years sitting in that school and listening to a recitation of the hymn every week or so. Worst of all, I actually wanted to memorize it but never did anything worthwhile in pursuit of that goal.