pike-thrust

Updated: May 20, 2025

The least satisfactory evidences of the modern hand are the stained glass windows, which have been put up in the nave and transepts of the cathedral. The Puritan trooper had wrought havoc in the ancient glass, smashing it wherever a pike-thrust could reach; and modern piety has been almost as ruthless in erecting windows which are quite incredibly hideous.

Hartley Withers - The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.] : A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Archiepiscopal See

Certainly the human arm was of the same length then as now, a pike-thrust was as effective as the stab of the most improved bayonet, and when it came, as it was always the purpose to do, to the close embrace of foemen, the work was done as thoroughly as it could be in this second half of the nineteenth century.

John Lothrop Motley - History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Year's Truce — Complete (1600-1609)