<P> As late as Poland's Kościuszko Uprising in 1794, the pike reappeared as a child of necessity which became, for a short period, a surprisingly effective weapon on the battlefield . In this case, General Thaddeus Kosciuszko, facing a shortage of firearms and bayonets to arm landless serf partisans recruited straight from the wheat fields, had their sickles and scythes heated and straightened out into something resembling crude "war scythes". These weaponized agricultural accouterments were then used in battle as both slicing weapons, as well as makeshift pikes . The peasant "pikemen" armed with these crude instruments played a pivotal role in securing a near impossible victory against a far larger and better equipped Russian army at the Battle of Racławice on April 4 of that year . </P> <P> Civilian pikeman played a similar role, though outnumbered and outgunned, in the 1798 Rising in Ireland four years later . Here, especially in the Wexford Rebellion and in Dublin, the pike was useful mainly as a weapon by men and women fighting on foot against cavalry armed with guns . </P> <P> Improvised pikes, made from bayonets on poles, were used by escaped convicts during the Castle Hill rebellion of 1804 . </P> <P> As late as the Napoleonic Wars, at the dawning of the 19th century, even the Russian militia (mostly landless peasants, like the Polish partisans before them) could be found carrying shortened pikes into battle . As the 19th century progressed, the obsolete pike would still find a use in such countries as Ireland, Russia, China and Australia, generally in the hands of desperate peasant rebels who did not have access to firearms . John Brown planned to arm a rebel slave army in America largely with pikes . </P>

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