HAFTED WEAPONS IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE EUROPE

HISTORY
OF WARFARE
General Editor
kelly devries
Loyola College
Founding Editors
theresa vann
paul chevedden
VOLUME 31
HAFTED WEAPONS IN MEDIEVAL AND
RENAISSANCE EUROPE
The Evolution of European Staff Weapons between 1200 and 1650
BY
JOHN WALDMAN
BRILL
LEIDEN

BOSTON
2005
On the cover: The Kornmarktbrunnen, a potable water fountain in Basel, Switzerland. Moved from its original place near the old marketplace to its
present location, and commemorating a local Swiss captain active at the end of the 15th century. It dates from ca. 1525.
Brill Academic Publishers has done its best to establish rights to use of the materials printed herein. Should any other party feel that its rights
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ISSN 13857827
ISBN 90 04 14409 9
Copyright 2005 by John Waldman.
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CONTENTS
List of Illustrations .......................................................................................................... vii
Foreword ........................................................................................................................ xxiii
by Walter J. Karcheski, Jr.
Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... xxv
Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1
Chapter One General Background and Forerunners .............................................. 7
Iron .............................................................................................................................. 10
Chapter Two Halberds .............................................................................................. 17
Portage of Arms by the Untitled Swiss .................................................................... 20
Possible Early Halberd Forms .................................................................................. 21
Chapter Three Extant Examples of Halberds ........................................................ 33
Halberds Elsewhere in Europe .................................................................................. 63
Oriental Inuences .................................................................................................. 78
Chapter Four Dierent Styles in Simultaneous Use .............................................. 81
Chapter Five Fastenings, Poles, and Finishing Procedures .................................... 87
Chapter Six The Use of Halberds ............................................................................ 99
Chapter Seven Halberds: Details of Rapid Identication ...................................... 105
Thirteenth Century .................................................................................................... 105
Fourteenth Century .................................................................................................... 105
Fifteenth Century ........................................................................................................ 105
Sixteenth Century ...................................................................................................... 105
Seventeenth Century .................................................................................................. 106
Chapter Eight Glaives .............................................................................................. 107
Chapter Nine Bills ...................................................................................................... 115
Chapter Ten Partizans .............................................................................................. 125
Chapter Eleven The Morgenstern Group .............................................................. 137
Chapter Twelve Ahlspiesse ...................................................................................... 151
Chapter Thirteen Axes and Axe Derivatives .......................................................... 155
\
Chapter Fourteen The Guisarme and the Bardiche .............................................. 165
Chapter Fifteen The Brandistocco, Corseke, and Related Weapons .................. 177
Chapter Sixteen Vouge and Couteau de Brche .................................................. 183
Chapter Seventeen The Military Scythe ................................................................ 191
Chapter Eighteen The Jedburgh Sta and Lochaber Axe .................................... 195
Chapter Nineteen The Doloir .................................................................................. 199
Chapter Twenty Conservation and Restoration of Polearms ................................ 203
Chapter Twenty-One The Marketplace .................................................................. 209
Postscript .......................................................................................................................... 211
List of Marks .................................................................................................................. 213
Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 215
Index ................................................................................................................................ 219
vi contents
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Cover: The Kornmarktbrunnen, a potable water fountain in Basel, Switzerland; moved
from its original place near the old marketplace to its present location, and commemo-
rating a local Swiss captain active at the end of the 15th century. It dates from ca. 1525.
Fig. 1. Winged spear or Bohemian ear spoon, ca. 1500. Note that the wings arise from
the socket (see chapter 12), as opposed to the wings of partizans, which issue from the
bottom of the blades. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.460.
Fig. 2. Stone age axe; the shaft and thongs are reconstructions. If used under wet con-
ditions these thongs would tend to relax and loosen, allowing stress on the split upper
shaft portion. Private collection.
Fig. 3. The mass of this large axe found near London, and possibly of Viking origin,
hinges on the relatively small eye over the shaft making this joint unstable in a heavy
blow. Lengthening the blade vertically and bringing it closer to the shaft brought with
it greater stability. The guisarme, with the added feature of having the lower portion of
the blade attached to the shaft, was probably a later example of such a weapon. (See
chapter 14.) Courtesy of the Museum of London, inv. no. 887.
Fig. 4a. A pair of rare surviving ingots of Roman iron from Swiss mines in the Jura. They
are locally called masseln. Courtesy of the Cantonal Museum of Baselland.
Fig. 4b. Ingots of raw iron, a ground nd now in the Museum Ferdinandeum in Graz,
5th to 1st century B.C. Courtesy of the Museum Ferdinandeum.
Fig. 5. Scavenging the battleeld for armor and weapons with inghting (lower right).
From a panel painting of the victory of Louis the Great over the Serbs (? Turks), ca.
1430, by the Master of the Votive Panel of St. Lambert (Hans von Tbingen), Cloister
of St. Lambert, now displayed in the Steiermarkisches Landesmuseum Joanneum, Alte
Galerie, Graz. Note the sharpened extension of the pole above the upper eye of the hal-
berd in the right foreground and compare with g. 16. Courtesy of the Cloister and the
Alte Galerie, Graz.
Fig. 6. Page 172 of the Waenbuch of Hans Dring, 154455. Note the chronological
disparity between the arms and armor of the old man on the left and the soldiers on the
right. Note also the leather wrapped shaft of the long spear, as well as the capped shaft
of the halberd on the right. Private collection.
Fig. 7. German Landsknechts and their captain, with chronologically homogeneous arms
and armor, in the Kriegsordnung of 1545 by Hans Dring. Private collection.
Fig. 8. A German Landsknecht (in the waning years of this profession) carrying a halberd,
in the Kriegsordnung of 1545 by Hans Dring. Private collection.
Fig. 9. Chinese dagger axe known as a ji. Bronze Age, but designated halberd in
modern times. Private collection.
Fig. 10. A very early halberd closely related to a guisarme. Excavated in Alsace, near
Basel, middle to second half of the 13th century. Note that the upper end of the blade
is not yet particularly suited for thrusting, but a beak is already present, and welded to
the upper eye. Courtesy of the Historical Museum of Bern, inv. no. 13741.
Fig. 11. Betrayal and Arrest of Christ, Psalter, Germany, early to mid-thirteenth cen-
tury. MS. Lat. 17961, folio 113 verso. Note the halberd in the hands of the soldier on
the left resembling the ones in Bern and Basel (gs. 10 and 25). Courtesy of the Bibliothque
Nationale, Paris.
Fig. 12. Detail of a wall painting in the chapel of St. Nicklausen, Canton Obwald,
Switzerland, ca. 1375. The halberds shaft is capped, that is, the superior eye is inte-
gral with the upper back portion of the blade and is closed on top.
Fig. 13. Betrayal and Arrest of Christ, Trs Belles Heures de Notre Dame, 13801413,
France. Note that the left halberd, although resembling the one in the St. Lambert panel
(g. 5), is more slender and has no sharpened and protruding wooden shaft at the upper
end. These forms coexist with the more developed forms such as in g. 14. Courtesy
of the Bibliothque Nationale, Paris, MS. Nouv. Acq. Lat 3093 folio 181 recto.
Fig. 14. Reduced modern impression from the right hand wood block (one of the original
three) called the Bois Protat, ca. 137080. The halberd is capped as in g. 12 but appears
to have a longer shaft. The original woodblock is in the Paper Museum of the city of
Basel, Switzerland. Private collection.
Fig. 15. Early halberd blade resembling that in the foreground of the St. Lambert Panel
in Graz (g. 5) and mounted on a new shaft. Note that the St. Lambert halberds shaft
extends above the upper eye and is sharpened to a point, that is, into a wooden spike.
Private collection.
Fig. 16. Swiss warrior carrying a halberd with a ( presumably) sharpened extension of the
shaft above the blade and resembling that of gs. 5 and 15. Mid 16th century Swiss chron-
icle of Johan Stumpf. It is probable that the woodcut itself is from a slightly earlier period,
that is, early 16th century, but the halberd itself is of 15th century manufacture. Courtesy
of Karl Mohler, Basel.
Figs. 17a and b. Two representations from the Passion in Codex 339 Mystisches Traktat
zum Leiden Christi, Luzern, 1396, in the library of the Benedictine Cloister in Engelberg,
Switzerland. The halberd in the doorway of the building in 17b is a pure Sempach
form; the one in the right of 17a is described in the text as the capped form with the
spike in line with the shaft. Courtesy of the library of the Cloister.
Fig. 18. Partial view of the Swiss army in the large woodcut Dorneck 1499. Note the
profusion of Sempach type halberds with the spike point in front of the shaft axis.
Courtesy of the Kupferstichkabinet, Basel.
viii list of illustrations
Fig. 19. Thrusting with the halberd spike of a weapon contemporary with the woodcut.
Dorneck 1499. Courtesy of the Kupferstichkabinett, Basel.
Fig. 20. Dorneck 1499. Thrusting with a halberd. Courtesy of the Kupferstichkabinett, Basel.
Fig. 21. Dorneck 1499. Overhead swing with a halberd. Courtesy of the Kupferstichkabinett,
Basel.
Fig. 22. Dorneck 1499. Sideswing with a halberd and decapitation. Courtesy of the
Kupferstichkabinett, Basel.
Fig. 23. Martin Schongauer, Christ Taken from the engraved passion, ca. 1480. Note
the non-contemporary halberd shafted by eyes and the slightly forward curved spike.
Courtesy Vassar College.
Fig. 24. Early halberds in the Landesmuseum, Zurich. From an illustration in the 1928
article by E.A. Gessler on the development of the halberd. The individual blades are dis-
cussed in the text, and numbered left to right.
Fig. 25. This 13th century halberd in Basel (inv. no. 1873.24, neg. no. 12375) measures
47cm in length and has a greatest width of 6.5 cm. It is almost identical to the rst hal-
berd in g. 24, including the triangular top eye. Courtesy of the Historisches Museum,
Basel.
Fig. 26. Halberd #2 in g. 24, late 13th century, found near Rorbas, Canton Zurich. It
measures 42 cm. in length and has a greatest width of 7 cm. The upper eye is almost
completely broken o. Note that the blade back is now straight and useful for thrusting.
Courtesy of the Landesmuseum, Zurich, inv. no. 4327.
Fig. 27. Halberd #3 in g. 24. It is the rst to show a real indent between the blade and
the spike. The length is 43 cm., the spike is 15 cm., and its weight is 960 g. It was found
amongst the vine roots in Cormondrche near Neuchtel. Courtesy of the Landesmuseum,
Zurich, inv. no. LM6345.
Fig. 28. Halberd of about 130020, very similar to the one in g. 27. Note that both
edges of the spike are sharpened as well as the rear blade edge between the eyes. Courtesy
of the Historisches Museum Bern, inv. no. 3463.
Fig. 29. Halberd blade with a broken spike probably used at the battle of Morgarten in
1315 and excavated there in the 1860s. Note how compact and massive the weapon is.
Courtesy of the Landesmuseum, Zurich, inv. no. 13153.
Fig. 30. Reconstructed drawing of the halberd in g. 29, Landesmuseum, Zurich, inv.
no. 13153.
Fig. 31. Halberd blade closely following the Morgarten blade of g. 29 of ca. 1330,(?).
Note the very long lower eye. Ex. collection Charles Boissonnas, found in the river Broye
in the 19th century. Photo courtesy of Landesmuseum, Zurich.
list of illustrations ix
Fig. 32. Halberd blade on a new pole somewhat after the one in g. 31 (ca. 1350?). It
is larger and more slender. The blade is slightly drawn in at the base. Ex collection Charles
Boissonnas. Found in the river Thile in the 19th century. Photo courtesy of the Landes-
museum Zurich.
Fig. 33. Halberd blade of the middle of the 14th century, found in 1985 in 5 meters
(16 ft.) of water in the Greifensee (Switzerland) near the shore. Two small pieces of the
sta were trapped in the eyes but were lost during the process of conservation. It mea-
sures 37 cm. in length; the spike is 14.2 cm. and its weight 578 g. Courtesy of the
Landesmuseum, Zurich, inv. no. KZ 11476.
Fig. 34. Halberd blade found in the excavation of the castle of Hnenberg, Canton Zug
in 1945. Length 39.5 cm., weight 590 g. Second third of the 14th century. Displayed in
the Landesmuseum, Zurich, inv. no. Dep. 3453. Courtesy of the Landesmuseum Zurich.
Fig. 35. Halberd blade on a replacement sta and with a separate beak, the latter show-
ing the weld mark. End of the 14th century. The thick curved dorsal langet appears at
about this time (see also g. 37), the anterior one is sometimes a later addition. What is
novel in this weapon is that the spike point is in line with the shaft because of its slight
backward lean. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.35.
Fig. 36. Halberd blade on a new sta with distinct and partially dehiscent weld marks. A
posterior rounded langet is present as well as a small beak as part of the upper eye. Note
the slight forward curve of the beak edge of the at spike (vaguely like g. 23). This is
one of the last halberds before the change in hafting from eyes to a socket. Courtesy
of the Historisches Museum, Bern.
Fig. 37. Halberd of ca. 1400 with a long narrow blade and an angled convexity leading
to the spike which also leans backwards slightly so that the point as in g. 35 is in line
with the shaft. The spike tip is clearly reinforced and the last 3.5 cm. are quadrangular.
The blade measures 43.8 cm. in length. Only a short rear langet is present. It has possi-
bly the oldest surviving shaft, and one of the last of a round diameter, which measures
181 cm. in length and has a diameter of 3.8 cm. just below the langet. The shaft between
the eyes measures 3.1 cm. in diameter and appears to be made of a soft wood such as
pine. It is also among the last halberds before the appearance of sockets, but as shown
throughout this book, such types were probably made and used until late in the 15th cen-
tury and are shown in illustrations of ca. 1500 alongside later forms. Private collection.
Fig. 38. Schematic diagram illustrating the method of creating the eyes on a 14th cen-
tury halberd. A mandrel would have been inserted during the nal bending of the eye
and during the hammer welding process. The Morgarten blade in Zurich (g. 29) was
created in this way. Hardened steel might have subsequently been welded on the cutting
edges of the blade, the spike point and the beak, if there was one.
Fig. 39. Two photographs of the lower eye of the early Basel halberd in g. 25. The
retouched one shows that there is a single weld of a strap bent as in g. 38. The upper
(triangular) eye is welded on both sides.
x list of illustrations
Fig. 40. Detail of the hammer weld of the left side of the upper eye of the Morgarten
halberd in Zurich (g. 29). The eye is not welded on the right side, indicating that it is
a strap bent as in g. 38.
Fig. 41. Another view of a strap with a weld on the right side of the blade. It is similar
in appearance to the one in g. 39, but is of a later date.
Fig. 42. Detail of the weld on the bottom eye of the halberd in g. 37, which represents
a fusion of the two blade halves (see the diagram in g. 38).
Fig. 43. A 14th century halberd with a lower eye welded on both sides, showing early
dehiscence. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.35.
Fig. 44. The two blade halves, welded together over the top eye. Halberd in g. 37, ca.
1400. Private collection.
Fig. 45. Schematic diagram of the construction of the halberd in g. 37.
Fig. 46. Weld seam of lower eye of right side of blade on the halberd in g. 35, after
the brazing repair to close it. The faint scratch marks on the blade and seam area are
not old. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.35.
Fig. 47. Corroded halberd found in 1908 on the shore of the Rhine near Rheinfelden,
13901400. The blade is double-leafed (see g. 44); it has the earliest socket and ange.
Courtesy of the Historisches Museum, Basel, inv. no. 1910.93. Negative no. 12373.
Fig. 48. 15th century halberd ( perhaps middle) showing the rather rare at spike with the
axis behind the shaft line. The mandrel used to form the socket was inserted fully to the
top of the blade. The nished halberd shows therefore a small hole on the upper blade
edge. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 52.208.8.
Fig. 49. Halberd, probably from the third quarter of the 15th century, showing large pro-
portions and mass. An identical one is present in the Museum Altes Zeughaus, Solothurn.
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 42.50.17.
Fig. 50. A mid-15th century halberd. Note the elongate blade approximately twice as high
as wide. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 42.50.18.
Fig. 51. On the left: detail of the top mandrel opening, in this case between the spike
base and the top of the beak, as in g. 52. Visible in the photo on the right are the top
of the wooden shaft and the weld mark between the hardened point of the beak and the
beak body. Private collection.
Fig. 52. Halberd of last quarter of 15th century. Note the pronounced concavity of the
upper and lower blade edges and the beginning slant of the cutting edge. This line of
development eventually leads to the 16th century triangular forms. Courtesy of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.74.
list of illustrations xi
Fig. 53. Sketch of what is possibly the earliest halberd with a shaft socket (Historisches
Museum, Basel, no. 1910.93). The dotted lines show the edges of the corroded right leaf
of the blade as well as the welded joint line at the front edge of the spike.
Fig. 54. Sketches of four halberd blades, displayed in the Landesmuseum, Zurich, show-
ing from right to left, the transition from the eye-shafting method to the socket form. The
blade on the left is roughly a decade later than the Basel halberd in g. 47. (Drawings
not to scale). Courtesy of the Landesmuseum, Zurich.
Fig. 55. Sturmhalbarte from the arsenal of the city of Vienna. The spike of this mas-
sive weapon is hollow-ground. Its great weight required skill and strength to manipulate.
Courtesy of the Museums of the City of Vienna, inv. no. 126011.
Fig. 56. Late 15thearly 16th century halberd with a at sword-like spike showing a strong
central rib. This type, commonly depicted by Drer in his woodcuts and engravings, may
therefore be of German rather than Swiss design and manufacture. Courtesy of the Metro-
politan Museum of Art, inv. no. 25.135.7.
Fig. 57. Woodcut by Hans Wechtlin (1480after 1526): Christ Before Anna, from the
series entitled The Life of Jesus Christ, 1508. Note the halberd like those in gs. 50,
52, and 56, as well as the Hngelaschen (hanging plates) covering the shoulders and
attached to the collar of the Maximilian-style helmet. (See page 147.) Private collection.
Fig. 58. Albrecht Drer: The Crucixion from the engraved Passion of 1511. Note the
halberd with a at spike on the right which appears to be more popular in Germany than
in Switzerland. Private collection.
Fig. 59a. A halberd in the Altes Zeughaus in Solothurn showing signs of use and wear,
and without 17th century marks, distinguished also by a dierent smithing technique, and
consistent with a 15th century date. Halberds like this one may have served as a model
for the 17th century types such as in g. 59b. Courtesy of the Museum Altes Zeughaus,
Solothurn.
Fig. 59b. 17th century halberd by Lamprecht Koller of Wrenlos, canton of Aargau,
166381, until fairly recently classied mistakenly as 15th century and called a Sempach
halberd. The shafting nails are sunk in conical holes in the langets and ground at. Private
collection.
Fig. 60. A halberd of ca. 1500 marked with a cross of St. Andrew on the right side of
the blade, probably German or Flemish (Burgundian) and of the type shown in g. 61.
Private collection.
Fig. 61. Woodcut by Wolf Huber for the Triumphal Arch of Maximilian, 15121515.
The Swiss and Imperial forces meet during the Swabian war of 1499. Note the halberds
and longspears on both sides, as well as the cross of St. Andrew and the Helvetian cross
(St. George) marking clothing and ags. The ready position of the longspears in the
foreground is also interesting. Private collection.
xii list of illustrations
Fig. 62. Large decorated Italian halberd, probably end of the rst quarter of the 16th
century and made for the bodyguard of the Emperor Charles V. (Several have survived)
Courtesy of Galerie Fischer, Lucerne.
Fig. 63. Italian halberd of about 1500. Both edges of the spike are sharpened down to
the beak-spike. Note the scorpion mark. Private collection.
Fig. 64. Italian scorpion of about 1530. Note that although the weapon is quite func-
tional, there are already many small attempts at decoration. The weld mark of the mid
back spike is shown in the detail photo of the scorpion mark. Courtesy of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.360.
Fig. 65. Italian halberd ca. 1500 with punctuate decorations on both faces. This side shows
a dog barking at a rabbit (the right world) as opposed to the other side, which shows a
fox barking at a dog (the world upside down). The at spike with the prominent rib is
similar to the one in g. 56. Courtesy of the Historiches Museum, Basel, inv. no. 1905.4142.
Fig. 66. Halberd of ca. 151020 with a quadrangular thickening of the beak tip (similar
to the spike tip). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 42.50.20.
Fig 67a. Early 16th century halberd with a convex cutting edge. The mandrel opening is
present between the base of the spike and the beak. Private collection.
Fig 67b. Typical triangular bladed halberd of ca. 1520, with a sharply drawn in cut-
ting edge. The spike is massive, as is the beak. Private collection.
Fig. 68a. Halberd of ca. 1520 with a concave cutting edge and a broken superior tip as
well as a weakened lower tip. The blade as usual is constructed of two leaves welded
together. The langets measure 76 cm. in length. Private collection.
Fig. 68b. Halberd of ca. 1520 with an unusual socket and central straight vertical rib
above it that is entirely solid. Probably German. Private collection.
Fig. 69a. Halberd of ca. 153040 showing ame shaped langets on an original ash shaft.
Private collection.
Fig. 69b. Detail of A. Drers The Great Cannon iron etching of 1518 M. 96. The
halberd held by the Landsknecht leaning against the cannon, though slightly indistinct
against the roof of the house, is typical during a relatively long span of time in the 16th
century. Private collection.
Fig. 70. Ash shaft of halberd showing a rough cut, as well as rened mark, 5. The
upper gure is possibly the arsenal mark itself. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, inv. no. 42.50.20.
Fig. 71. Saber-halberd, probably 19th century. The spike blade is too exible for eective
cutting and is not very useful for thrusting. The mass of the halberd head is not at the
list of illustrations xiii
end of the weapon, thus also reducing its impact. Although these weapons are well made,
they are in all probability products of 19th century romanticism. Courtesy of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, inv. no. 25.188.2.
Fig. 72a. Thrusting Styrian halberd of about 1575 by Peter Schreckeisen of Waldneukirchen;
the beak is still functional appearing, the blade less so. Courtesy of the Landeszeughaus,
Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz.
Fig. 72b. Etching by Jacques Callot of the Crucixion scene, ca. 1640. Note the halberd
as well as a morgenstern, roncone, and true pikes. Callot worked extensively in Italy, and
at this time, Italian halberds resembled those from elsewhere. Private collection.
Fig. 73. Detail of the bottom illustration of folio 28 recto by Drer in the Emperor
Maximilian Is Book of Hours. This scene shows a remarkable mixture of sta weapons
of diering epochs (see text). Courtesy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, L impr.
membr. 64.
Fig. 74. Detail of the bottom illustration of folio 55 verso by Albrecht Drer in the Book
of Hours of the Emperor Maximilian I. The contrast of the armamentation of the com-
battants is striking. It speaks volumes on the reversal of roles and warfare in general.
Courtesy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, L impr. membr. 64.
Fig. 75. Right hand page of The Battle of Grandson 1476 from the Diebold Schilling
Lucerne Chronicle of 1513, folio 100. As stated in the text, armamentation is with 15th
and 16th century equipment though some of the halberds shown are even earlier. Courtesy
of the Korporations Verwaltung der Stadt Luzern.
Fig. 76. A rear langet of an early 16th century halberd, both in place and by itself. Note
the small claw-like upper portion which anchors itself in the throat of the socket between the
ange leaves (and the blade leaves in case of the front one). It also wedges itself between
the cheeks of the socket, thus forming a rigid box and stabilizing the whole structure.
Private collection.
Fig. 77. A rapid and inexpensive method of stabilizing the union between the halberd
head and the shaft. The lower part of the socket, consisting mostly of a broad langet, is
hammered around the square shaft. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Fig. 78a. Opposing nails driven straight through and in two instances emerging through
the opposite hole and bent over, under the opposing nail head. Early 16th century halberd.
Private collection.
Fig. 78b. Nails driven against the opposing inner face of the langet and bent over for up
to 1 cm. This radiograph is of a Lucern hammer. Private collection.
Fig. 79a. A mid to late 16th century halberd fastened with hammer-driven screws. Private
collection.
xiv list of illustrations
Fig. 79b. A radiograph of the halberd in g. 37. Note the long dorsal nail through the
langet which has been driven into an ironed plate or an anvil applied to the front of the
shaft so that the nail curves back on itself to lock into place. Private collection.
Fig. 80a. A Lamprecht Koller halberd of the 17th century with peened over nail tips
ground ush with the langet surface. Private collection.
Fig. 80b. In this halberd the boltheads and the peened over points are not ground down.
Private collection.
Fig. 81. Halberd of ca. 1500, octagonal ash shaft with a shaft makers (?) mark burned
in at the base of the shaft. Private collecion.
Fig. 82. Halberd of ca. 1510 with two sets of opposing (three) marks burned into the top
of the shaft sides. They appear to be a letter M with a bar across the top. Private
collection.
Fig. 83. A shaft maker of the Eschental turning an ash shaft in a metal cutting die. Slots
are present either for various diameters or possibly to shape the sections of split ash sap-
plings gradually from square to round. From the Swiss Chronicles of Johan Stumpf,
1586, Book 9, p. 554. Courtesy of Karl Mohler, Basel.
Fig. 84. Detail of an early 16th century halberd showing th original grinding ( polishing)
marks as well as the smiths mark, an 8-pointed star. Private collection.
Fig. 85. Huge head wound on a fallen German (Imperial) soldier most likely caused by
a halberd. From the woodcut Dorneck 1499. Courtesy of the Kupferstichkabinett, Basel.
Fig. 86. Another detail of the woodcut Dorneck 1499 (during the battle) showing how
quickly bodies were stripped, but with possible exaggeration of the number of injuries
suered (13). Courtesy of the Kupferstichkabinett, Basel.
Fig. 87. Three skulls from the battle of Dorneck in 1499 recently studied and restored
(stabilized). These fatal wounds were probably inicted by halberds. Courtesy of the Museum
Altes Zeughaus, Solothurn.
Fig. 88. From folio 10 recto of the Maciejowski Bible. The soldier at the left border car-
ries a relatively short-shafted glaive. Courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library, M 638.
Fig. 89. From folio 10 verso of the Maciejowski Bible. The mounted gure in the center
foreground ( Joshua) is using a short-shafted glaive. Courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan
Library, M 638.
Fig. 90a. Sketches of two long-shafted glaives from an illustrated prayer book prayer book
of ca. 1380. They are carried by footsoldiers in scenes from the Passion, along with a
profusion of other sta weapons. Parma MS Pal. 56.
list of illustrations xv
Fig. 90b. An early Italian glaive, mid to late 15th century, the forerunner of the glaive
pictured in g. 92. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.259, gift
of Wm. H. Riggs, 1913.
Fig. 91. Two knights ghting at close quarters with a vouge Franaise and a glaive. Note
the roundels at the blade bases for protecting the hands. From the Caesar Tapestry, ca.
1470, taken as booty from the Burgundian camp in 1476. Courtesy of the Historisches
Museum, Bern, inv. no. 8.
Fig. 92. The most widespread form of glaivean Italian weapon of ca. 150020. Its over-
all length is 270 cm. (8 ft. 10 in.). It is possibly a guard weapon, but could clearly be
used for thrusting and cutting in the eld. Private collection.
Fig. 93. Venetian glaive, end of 16th century. Although the weapon is somewhat similar
to the one in g. 92; it is longer, more elaborate and has non-functional additions which
distinguish it from weapons of war. Its great length also makes it impractical to manipu-
late in a crowded eld of battle. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no.
04.3.103.
Fig. 94. This purely ceremonial glaive was meant mostly to impress and is also Venetian.It
was a type used by palace guards of such important gures as the Doge, has lost its thrust-
ing function and can merely cut. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no.
04.3.102.
Fig. 95a. Roman securis or roncola, with a tang instead of the usual socket which was
open on one side (see g. 95b). Other forms had a small upward-facing rear hook. The
shortest of these were purely tools and worn tucked into the belt. Private collection.
Fig. 95b. A Roman Securis recently excavated near Jerusalem, from between the end of
rst to the fourth century A.D. The inside of the socket contains fragmentary remnants
of the short wooden shaft and its securing nail. This grip was probably no longer than
ca. 12 cm. (4.5) Private collection.
Fig. 96. The Italian type of Roncola arma pictured here is also found in Merovingian graves
in the North. The actual weapon shown here is probably much younger, by virtue of the
marks. The original forms were made, more or less unchanged, until the 15th century.
Private collection.
Fig. 97. The Ronca, a much more rened weapon that the preceding Roncola arma, is fully
capable of both cut and thrust action and is widespread throughout Europe. It still shows
the presence of an open-throated socket for its shaft. Private collection.
Fig. 98. A Welsh bill which is described as a weapon, but appears to be too delicate and
frail to be successful as such. Its function is more likely to have been a symbol of author-
ity in the hands of a constable or watchman. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, inv. no. 14.25.155.
xvi list of illustrations
Fig. 99a. A fully developed Roncone of early 16th century Italy, similar to the contempo-
rary Rossschinder of the Germans. This Italian specimen has typical eyelash marks along
the lower rear blade. Private collection.
Fig. 99b. Closeup of another roncones eyelash marks. Private collection.
Fig. 100. An English bill of ca. 1500. Note the typically open socket which is a folded
triangle, the weld marks of the beak joints, as well as the grain of the blade steel at
the bifurcation of the spike and the bill hook. This last indicates that the smith split the
blade down to the bifurcation to separate the hook and the spike. Courtesy of the Board
of Trustees of the Royal Armouries, inv. no. VII-1493.
Fig. 101. Late 15th century spear with a heavy and elaborately worked head, resembling
a partizan. Courtesy of the Museums of the City of Vienna, inv. no. 686, from the old
city arsenal.
Fig. 102. 15th century Italian partizan stamped with a Gothic 4 and without langets.
The base of the blade is drawn in towards the socket at approximately 90. The blade is
55 cm. long and 10 cm. wide. Private collection.
Fig. 103. Early 16th century partizan with small side wings at the base of the blade and
a strong central rib. The blade, without socket, is 78 cm. long; the width without the
wings is 11 cm. Private collection.
Fig. 104. Partizan or lingua di bue, ca. 1500, probably Venetian. Two round brass inlays
with seven perforations are present on the blade. The socket is hexagonal, and the tassels
are probably a later addition. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no.
1425.119.
Fig. 105. Spiedi da guerra, probably Bolognese, end of 15th century. Courtesy of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 04.3.76.
Fig. 106. The emperor Maximilian I, asleep in his chamber, about to be attacked by sol-
diers bearing various sta weapons. In this largely ctionalized book, his life guards who
were said to carry Austrian partizans, are not present. From the 5th edition of Theuerdank,
M. Schultes, 1679. Private collection.
Fig. 107. Austrian partizan, end of the 15th century, said to have been carried by the
bodyguard of Maximilian I. Note the solid construction and the ogival arch-like upper
end of the blade point, which it has in common with the Venetian types. This example
has a simple socket in the manner of an early ronca, but others in this group have care-
fully constructed hexagonal sockets. None have langets. The shafts, which are not origi-
nal, have a hexagonal shape. Courtesy of the Hofjagt- und Rstkammer of the Historisches
Museum, Vienna, inv. no. A117.
Fig. 108. Partizan of the second half of the 16th century, whose socket shows a nodus
between it and the base of the blade. Private collection.
list of illustrations xvii
Fig. 109. Partizan or Langue de buf , 17th century, appearing to have been altered by
drawing in the top of the blade (the slight asymmetry would suggest a post-manufacture
alteration). The weapon has a width-to-length ratio of 1 to 5.5. Courtesy of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.90.
Fig. 110. Sponton or spontoon from Brunswick, Germany, 1718th century. The weapon
is still clearly a short partizan with basal wings and added lower portions. Although its
primary function is rank associated, it could still be used as a weapon. Private collection.
Fig. 111. Sponton-halberd. This late weapon, a combination of a short partizan (sponton)
and a small halberd, is highly decorated. Although it was either a parade weapon or asso-
ciated with military rank, it could still have been used as a weapon. Courtesy of the
Museums of the City of Vienna.
Fig. 112a. Detail of the front carving on the Courtrai Chest showing the Flemish burgers
carrying their sta weapons, Godentacs or Planons Picot, with which they defeated the
French chivalry. Courtesy of the Warden and Scholars of New College, Oxford and
Bridgeman Art Library International.
Fig. 112b. Morgenstern from the arsenal of the City of Vienna, probably mid-16th century,
now in the depot. Courtesy of the Museums of the City of Vienna, inv. no. 126.207.
Fig. 113. This all-steel headed Morgenstern is from the arsenal of the City of Vienna. The
craftsmanship is striking and the weapon is well balanced. Courtesy of the Museums of
the City of Vienna.
Fig. 114. Detail of the Morgenstern in g. 113 showing the intricate smithwork used to pro-
duce a relatively light but stable and strong steel head.
Fig. 115. An all-steel headed morgenstern in the hands of a eeing soldier in Ariovistuss
army ( Julius Caesar is the mounted knight in the upper left corner, spearing an oppo-
nent). Detail from the Caesar Tapestries of Charles the Bold. Courtesy of the Historisches
Museum Bern, inv. no. 8.
Fig. 116. Holy-water sprinkler, probably English, early 16th century. This type of weapon
was very popular in England and was certainly made by expert smiths, probably in large
series. Courtesy of the Board of Trustees of the Royal Armouries, inv. no. VII-1642.
Fig. 117. Morgenstern, 15th16th century, probably Swiss. The shaft is pine. A weapon such
as this could have been made by a blacksmith. Private collection.
Fig. 118. A carefully constructed kettenmorgenstern probably 15th16th century, German
or Swiss. The pole, of ash, is worn between the top retaining band and the lower part
of the langets, which is the area that can be touched by the spikes. Private collection.
Fig. 119. A Kettenmorgenstern and a regular morgenstern, from a line drawing of a 15th cen-
tury polyptych fragment, possibly Czech. Note the similarity of the kettenmorgenstern to the
one in g. 118.
xviii list of illustrations
Fig. 120. The knight Debile in mortal combat with Philippe of Burgundy. Detail from
an anonymous woodcut of about 1485 in the poem Le Chevalier Dlibr by Olivier
de la Marche (Chiswick Press, 1898, London). Note that the knight has, slung over his
left shoulder, two Morgensterns, one almost identical to the one in g. 118 and the other
like in g. 119. Note also that he is about to strike with a dart. Private collection.
Fig. 121. Detail of a woodcut out of the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartman Schedel,
1493, German edition, showing the Pharaohs army being covered by the Red Sea. Note,
among the many and interesting sta weapons, the military ail. Private collection.
Figs. 122a and b. Two ahlspiesse, probably Austrian, second half of the 15th century. Three
marks are stamped into one at at the base of the spike, which is the usual place for
marks. The spike is usually longer than one meter and is sti (rigid). The rounded contour
langets are rough and unpolished. The presence of the roundel guard and its seating
grooves distinguish the ahlspiess from the breach pike or breschspiess (see text). Fig. 122a.
Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.396. Fig. 122b. Courtesy of the
Hofjagd- und Rstkammer, of the Historisches Museum, Vienna, inv. no. A85.
Fig. 123. Detail of the roundel guard of an Ahlspiess set into the special grooves at the
base of the spike. Courtesy of the Museums of the City of Vienna.
Fig. 124. Top view of the roundel guard of an Ahlspiess. Courtesy of the Museums of the
City of Vienna, one of a large unnumbered lot.
Fig. 125. 15th century pollaxe with inlaid brass punched and chiseled decorations. The
rear facing hammer head has a central steel quadrangular beak. The head is fastened to
the sta by laterally screwed in side lugs. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
inv. no. 14.25.288.
Fig. 126. Gilt and etched early 16th century pollaxe. The axe-hammer head is fastened
underneath the carefully constructed langets with pyramidal side lugs. Courtesy of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 25.135.21.
Fig. 127. Anonymous German woodcut of ca. 146070 showing a long shafted mordaxt.
A roundel guard is present a short distance below the blade. Private collection.
Fig. 128. Detail of the Caesar Tapestry in the Historical Museum of Bern adjacent to the
morgenstern in g. 114. The knight swings a mordaxt bearing a roundel guard which does
not appear to be steel (leather?). Courtesy of the Historisches Museum, Bern, inv. no. 8.
Fig. 129. Detail of the woodcut Dorneck 1499 showing a veteran Swiss soldier swing-
ing a short version of a fussstreitaxt. It cannot properly be called a fussstreitaxt even
though it has a hammer in back of the blade, because of its length, which appears to be
only a meter (39 in.) or so. Courtesy of the Kupferstichkabinett, Basel.
Fig. 130. Late 16th century fussstreitaxt by the Swiss weaponsmith Lerchli. The weapon
is part of a series delivered to the Zurich arsenal between 1585 and 1591. Note that the
list of illustrations xix
only dierence between this axe and the one in g. 127 is its length (ca. 1.5 m.) and the
presence of langets. Courtesy of Landesmuseum, Zurich, inv. no. K21263.
Fig. 131. A dierently shaped fussstreitaxt also of the same time period as the previous
one and in the Zurich arsenal. Courtesy of Landesmuseum, Zurich, inv. no. K2601.
Fig. 132. Bec-de-corbin or Lucerne hammer with a massive beak measuring 13 cm. in
length. End of the 15th century or 1500. The shaft is oak and is an ovalized octagon.
Private collection.
Fig. 133. Italian Martello darme or Fussstreitaxt ca. 1500. Note the three-pronged
hammer with the single prong on top. The solid langets t over the central hammer and
beak portion, which is slotted to receive them. Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art,
inv. no. 14.25.465.
Fig. 134. The classic Lucerne hammer which persists without much change from the early
16th century into the 17th century. Note the L on its side on the base of the spike.
Private collection.
Fig. 135. A very large Russian guisarme of 1530, whose blade alone is more than a meter
in length. It is fastened to the shaft by an elaborate system of nails which are themselves
decorated. Courtesy of the Tjhusmuseets, Copenhagen, inv. no. C50 (45).
Fig. 136. A near Eastern or Russian guisarme with a thrusting point and geometric par-
tially gilt decoration. Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 04.3.100.
Fig. 137. A somewhat smaller but still massive guisarme on what is likely the original sta
and showing a complex pattern of geometrically arranged marks (see text). The upper
point of the blade is broken o. Courtesy of the Kung. Livrustkammeren, Stockholm, inv.
no. 691020.
Fig. 138. A guisarme, Swedish or Russian, 15th century or earlier. Weapons similar to
this one are seen in illuminations as old as the 13th century. Courtesy of the Kung.
Livrustkammeren, Stockholm, inv. no. LRK GN 2403.
Fig. 139. Excavated guisarme blade with a variant of a rear-facing hammer and langets.
The inferior blade point is broken o but appears to have reconnected with the shaft in
the standard manner of a guisarme. Courtesy of the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen.
Fig. 140. Variant of a guisarme-like weapon with a long attened top spike. Courtesy of
the Kung. Livrustkammeren, Stockholm, inv. no. LRK GN 06:12.
Fig. 141. A Russian bardiche, possibly on the original sta and fastened to it by means
of the front blade extension and leather thongs. Rear perforations, almost a hallmark of
this weapon, are present. Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.463.
Fig. 142a. A 15th century cut and thrust weapon without a name and appearing to be
unique, it may or may not be related to the roncone, or an equally nameless weapon in
xx list of illustrations
the Maciejowski bible described in the text. Courtesy of the Danish National Museum,
inv. no. 212.
Fig. 142b. Detail of 142a, showing marks and the prole of the topspike.
Fig. 142c. Drawing of a vaguely similar weapon said to be early 14th century in a pri-
vate collection, and pictured in Trosos book Le Armi in Asta. It has no forward fac-
ing beak as in 142a. The blade and socket are 107 cm. long. Marks are not described.
Fig. 143. Detail of an altarpiece by Dieric Bouts of about 1450 showing the taking of
Christ. Note the weapon to the right of the aming torch which is almost identical to
the Copenhagen weapon in g. 142a and b. Courtesy of the Alte Pinakothek, Munich,
and Artothek.
Fig. 144. Small bardiche on a broken shaft. The shaft might have been short to begin
with, suggesting the possibility that this was a horsemans weapon. Possibly 15th century.
Courtesy of the Kung. Livrustkammeren, Stockholm, inv. no. LRK GN 5729:12.
Fig. 145. Early 16th century runka, also called brandistocco, with etched decorations at the
base of the blade and wings. The thick blade has a strong central rib. Courtesy of the
Museums of the City of Vienna.
Fig. 146. This large corseke, also called furloni as well as spetum in the North, although
dating to about 1500, is too long for eld combat. It was probably used against civil unrest
or for guard duty, and is Italian. Private collection.
Fig. 147. Friuli spear of the later 16th century. Note the long slender quadrangular spike
and the needle-like wing tips. Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 29.156.38.
Fig. 148. This Chauve-souris, or Pipistrello, is probably Italian, ca. 153040, and from the
Veneto region. It measures 246 cm. in length and the steel head is 59 cm. long. The
blade is thin but rigid because of the strong central rib. Courtesy of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, inv. no. 25.135.9.
Fig. 149. Military fork, or Sturmgabel, Austrian, early 16th century. The fork has a tang
inserted into the top of the shaft which is prevented from breaking by the presence of a
wide metal retaining band surrounding that portion of the shaft. Courtesy of the Museums
of the City of Vienna, inv. no. 410.
Fig. 150. A Vouge franaise of about 1500, on what may be the original shaft. Note the
heavy gauge of the steel blade. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no.
14.25.272.
Fig. 151. Massive vouge franaise, showing decorative nails in the upper shaft. Early 16th
century. Private collection.
Fig. 152. Couteau de brche, or Couse, end of the 15th century, with nailed-on langets. Note
the thin at blade. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.260.
list of illustrations xxi
Fig. 153. A sturdy but roughly made weapon of the early 16th century, somewhat between
a Vouge and a Couteau de brche. It has what would be unique for either of these weapons:
a beak. From the old arsenal of the City of Vienna. Courtesy of the Museums of the City
of Vienna, inv. no. 126094.
Fig. 154. A Gusya late 16th century weapon delivered in substantial numbers to the
armory in Graz by Peter Schreckeisen. The word relates to couse, but the blade is really
a vouge franaise, thus blurring the distinction. Coutesy of the Landeszeughaus, Landesmuseum
Joanneum, Graz.
Fig. 155a. Trabantenkuse of the Archducal guard of Ferdinand, King of Bohemia (1617),
King of Hungary (1618) and Emperor (1619). It has an overall length of 2.53 m. (8 ft.
4 in.). Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.383.
Fig. 155b. Trabantenkuse (also called Gardekuse) of the Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria.
Courtesy of the Hofjagd- und Rstkammer of the Kunsthistorisches Museun, Vienna, inv.
no. A 673.
Fig. 156. War scythe, 16th to 17th century. Note the rough workmanship and the crude
punched decorative pattern on the blade. One of a great number still preserved. Courtesy
of the Landesmuseum in Zurich.
Fig. 157. Special war scythe for cutting ships rigging or other rope fastenings. From one
of the Caesar Tapestries. Courtesy of the Historical Museum of Berne.
Fig. 158. Jedburgh sta, 15th to 16th century. Note the resemblance to 14th century hal-
berds and the prominent hook replacing the beak of a halberd, and welded to the upper
eye. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 29.156.10.
Fig. 159. Lochaber axe, 16th to 17th century. It is distinguished from the Jedburgh sta
by the more crescent-shaped blade, smaller lower eye and the hook that is mostly inserted
by a tang into the top of the shaft. The lower eye has been modied into two ear-like
lobes that are nailed to the front of the shaft, and a full length anterior langet is present.
Courtesy of the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. Inv. no. 925.49.9.
Fig. 160. Doloir or wagoners axe of ca. 15001550. Note the heavy hammer head and
the broad oset blade with punched decorations and initialed cartouches. The blade mea-
sures 44 cm. (17 in.) in length. Private collection.
Fig. 161. Detail of a woodcut by Albrecht Altdorfer out of the series The Triumphal
Procession of the Emperor Maximilian, 1517, showing a short shafted doloir carried by
a non-combatant accompanying a wagon train, who is probably a carpenter trained in
wagon repair. Private collection.
xxii list of illustrations
FOREWORD
Walter J. Karcheski, Jr.
Of the wide array of medieval European and Renaissance weaponry the category com-
prised of those arms with oensive elements axed to poles of various lengths is the one
of which there has been the least research and publication. Variously known as polearms,
hafted, shafted or sta weapons, these form an extremely varied, historically important
and intriguing family of arms. These include the spear, perhaps the oldest of all of Mans
oensive weapons, with roots that date back half a million years, and which in one form
or another has been used almost universally the world over.
Despite this great potential interest and historical importance, the study and publication
of European sta weapons has lagged greatly when compared to that of other weapons,
especially as regards those works published in the English language. Even in his monu-
mental, ve-volume magnum opus, A Record of European Armour and Arms through Seven Centuries,
Sir Guy F. Laking devoted only two quite modest chapters to his study of the weapons.
In the mid-1930s Charles Buttin prepared a series of important articles for the Muse de
lArme in Paris. While these covered many of the weapons and provided much useful
information that drew upon a number of primary sources, Buttins articles were not well-
illustrated, were available only via a limited circulation, and were published only in French.
Since the nineteenth century many articles have appeared in the specialist literature of
arms and armor journals and periodicals. However, these tended to focus on single types
of sta weapons, often focusing on a single aspect of their history, or military use. Such
articles were largely in languages other than English, limiting their value and usefulness
to many contemporary readers, who are also often without ready access to these relatively
obscure and often hard-to-nd works. In more recent years there has been only the occa-
sional, limited monographic study, and the only attempt at a serious overall survey, Mario
Trosos Le armi in asta delle fanterie europee (10001500), was written in Italian, and hard to
obtain. Some historians also appear to have considered sta weapons to be of secondary
interest. This was perhaps due to the fact that with few exceptions, they were not knightly
arms, and thus were perceived as less worthy of serious study. However, the role and
importance of certain sta weapons such as the halberd and the long spear or pike in the
rebirth of professional infantry forces in Europe during the fteenth, sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries has been long recognized. This makes the need for a sound, English-
language monographic study of European medieval and Renaissance sta weapons even
more critical.
The fact that sta weapons were for the most part the arms of the common foot sol-
dier, and sometimes of irregular troops or even the peasantry, adds to the complexity of
their study. A particular weapon might be referred to by several names, or erroneously
associated with another type, with the error perpetuated by generations of students and
scholars. Over the years many collectors and students of military history, and some English-
speaking arms historians have expressed their desire to see the subject dealt with in detail
in the form of a monographic study, and the fog of misunderstanding and misinforma-
tion lifted. Dr. Waldman is the rst to have taken on the task head-on. He has drawn
upon the best of the secondary source literature, but most importantly, the primary sources,
both written and artistic, and coupled this with his extensive personal knowledge of the
actual weapons themselves. He has consulted with curators and collectors internationally,
and visited the major (and some minor) public collections in the Americas and in Europe.
Many of the reference sources and images of the arms in use are little-known outside of
specialist circles, or have never been examined in this context. As evidenced in the chap-
ters of this well-researched, well-written and extensively illustrated book, he has, for many
readers, lifted the veil of the lack of knowledge of the development, manufacture and
use, and the period nomenclature of a great many sta weapons. He modestly states that
his is not the denitive work on the subject. Nonetheless, this important book will prove
of considerable value and interest not only to collectors of antique arms and armor, but
also to social and military historians, those interested in the historical technology of metal-
working, and art scholars of the medieval through Early Modern periods. Focusing on the
golden age of sta weaponsthose centuries of the Later Middle Ages until the dawn
of the seventeenth centuryHafted Weapons in Medieval and Renaissance Europe will be a valu-
able reference work to libraries, museums and a range of audiences.
Walter J. Karcheski, Jr.
Chief Curator of Arms and Armor
Frazier Historical Arms Museum
Louisville, Kentucky, USA
xxiv foreword
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply indebted to a large number of people for their help and encouragement.
Among them are, Jrg A. Meier, conservator and curator of the collection of the castle
of Grandson, Arms and Armor expert for Sothebys Zrich and formerly of Galerie Fischer
in Lucerne, whose scholarship is well known and who has provided me with valuable
information on early pieces, and taken the time to read and critique the manuscript,
Donald J. La Rocca and Stuart Pyhrr of the Metropolitan Museum of Art for their tire-
less cooperation and permission to examine the non-exhibited sta weapons at the museum,
and especially to Mr. La Rocca for his highly constructive comments and criticism on this
project, as well as his material contribution of articles and for facilitating the use of pho-
tographic material for the book. I am beholden to him also for proofreading portions of
the manuscript, and adding his very helpful and sobering comments. Ian Eaves, whom I
met through Mr. La Rocca, is a storehouse of information and encouragement. Dirk
Breiding, also of the Metropolitan Museum was responsible for the connection with Brill
Publishers and supplied me with art references with which I was not familiar. Claude
Blair, whom I had the great pleasure of meeting, pointed me towards some important ref-
erence sources that I was unaware of. The kindness of Matthias Senn of the Landesmuseum
in Zurich, in allowing me to examine and photograph the wonderful early pieces in the
collection, is very much appreciated. I wish to thank Marianne Berchtold, the curator of
the weapons collection in the Historical Museum of Bern for her time and cooperation,
also Franz Egger, curator of arms and armor of the Historical Museum of Basel, for per-
mission to examine and photograph groundnds in storage; and particularly Martin Sauter,
restorer in the Basel museum, for his time and patience in locating the o-site items, and
nding archival photographs with their histories. The kindness and continued cooperation
of Franziska Heuss in the Kupferstich Kabinet of the entliche Kunstsammlung Basel
is much appreciated, as is that of Dr. Marco A.R. Leutenegger, director of the Museum
Altes Zeughaus in Solothurn and his permission to use the museums photographs pro-
duced by its restorer and photographer. It was a great pleasure to meet and talk with Dr.
Sylvia Mattl-Wurm of the Historische Museum der Stadt Wien through whose eorts I
was able to see and photograph parts of the vast collection in storage (with the help of
the custodian, Herr Gapp). Dr. Gnter Driegl, the director of the museum was instru-
mental in connecting me with Dr. Mattl. Thanks also to Dr. Christian Beaufort-Spontin,
the director of the Hofjagd- und Rstkammer in Vienna for his suggestion to contact
Matthias Pfaenbichler, curator in the same institution, who shared his knowledge and
the museums inventory with me. I appreciated the cooperation of Dr. M.L. Schaller of the
Zentralbibliothek Luzern, whom I persuaded to send me its photograph of a page of the
Diebold Schilling Chronicle. Dr. Alfred Geibig, director of the Veste Coburg, although
not personally present, had the kindness to ask Mr. Wernhofer, the museums restorer to
host me during my visit. K. Corey Keeble, curator of Western Art and Culture at the
Royal Ontario museum in Toronto, was most kind, helpful and encouraging. Ms. Carla
Pirani of the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe in Bologna gave me her time in locat-
ing original engravings containing sta weapons. Mr. Jonathan Cotton, curator of prehis-
tory at the Museum of London, suggested relevant sources for Bronze Age halberds.
Mr. Walter Karcheski formerly of the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, and currently
chief curator of the Frazier Historical Arms Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, opened the
Worcester collection for me, and gave his valuable time and comments, and introduced
me (by letter) to Dr. Peter Krenn, director of the Landeszeughaus Graz, who was most
cooperative during my visit there. To him also, I owe special thanks for reading the nal
manuscript for the Leiden, Netherlands publishing house, Brill, and oering invaluable
advice and numerous corrections. Mr. Julian Deahl, Senior Acquisitions Editor for Brill,
was the rst to take interest in my work, and Mrs. Marcella Mulder, Assistant Editor, was
kind enough to walk me through the lengthy publication process. Ms. Barbara Edsall, reg-
istrar of the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, kindly supplied me with an impor-
tant photograph and information. Mr. Kent dur Russell, director of the Higgins, was most
cooperative as was Dr. Jerey Forgeng, its curator. Ms. Sue Reid and Ms. Page Hamilton
of the department of prints and drawings in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston were
helpful in locating relevant prints for my use. Father Sigisbert, the librarian of the Benedictine
cloister library in Engelberg, Canton Obwald, Switzerland, located codex 339 for me and
permitted the reproduction of illustrations from it. In the Scandinavian countries, Mr. Nils
Drejholt, curator of Arms and Armor at the Livrustkammaren in Stockholm was gracious
with his time, information on Swedish arms manufacturing and photographs, as was Ms.
Nina Heins in the department of photography for producing new ones. Mr. Fred Sandstedt
of the Armmuseum also in Stockholm provided printed materials, information on mili-
tary history and les on the collection, which was temporarily closed for restoration. I
could not avail myself of Mr. Bengt Kylsbergs oer to visit the collection at Skokloster
Castle for lack of time. In Copenhagen, Ms. se Hjlund Nielsen, curator of the medieval
collection at the Danish Nationalmuseet, helped me obtain photos of an unusual weapon
in that collection. Mr. Michael Hielscher, director of the Tjhusmuseet in Copenhagen,
arranged in his absence, access to sta weapons, and permission to use a photograph in
this book. Magister Karin Leitner of the Alte Galerie in the Joanneum in Graz helped
me secure an important photograph. Ms. Francesca Consagra, curator of prints and draw-
ings at Vassar College provided material for my use. Mr. Ian Ashdown of the Center for
Restoration and Conservation, in his capacity as restorer for the collection in the Castle
of Grandson, kindly showed me the weapons in the storage area and the main collection.
A debt of gratitude is due to my friend Evelyne Tiersky, who translated letters, dis-
cussed the text and made it more readable. My friend Dr. George Snook is partly respon-
sible for the inspiration to write this book, and has never failed in the early days, to prod
me into activity when I have lagged. His wife, Lee, was of help in locating books and
articles in libraries both near and far. Christine Pratt, of Dark Horse Photographics, devel-
oped and printed many of the black and white photos. Last but not least, the book would
surely not have been acceptable for publication without the careful editing by both Walter
Karcheski (as I previously mentioned), and Dr. Kate Sampsell, whose commands of the
English language, composition and history are profound.
xxvi acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION
This book deals primarily with the origins of hafted weapons and their development dur-
ing the expansionist and turbulent period in European history shortly after the turn of the
rst millennium. Some of the facts relevant to this period can be summarized, if only in
a brief way, leaving out specic political-historical references and emphasizing the social
and demographic ones.
Geopolitical changes during the period under discussion were rapid in the small and
not-so-small dynastic states, while population sizes, despite natural setbacks such as reduc-
tion by wars, the plague, and adverse climatic changes, were increasing. For example, the
population of the Helvetic tribes in what is now Switzerland doubled between the early
and late Middle Ages, from about 400,000 in the tenth century to 800,000 in the four-
teenth.
1
It is at this time that major eorts of intentional primeval deforestation were occur-
ring, and the resulting emergence of farmlands with their increased food supply, along
with increased utilization of the mining of ores as well as the improvement of trade routes,
helped to bring about these population growths and related migrations.
One nds already at about 1100 A.D. a rapidly improving infrastructure for travel, that
is, reasonably good roads that were physically safe from natural hazards in the mountains,
bridges to cross torrents, rivers, and chasms, and an evolving system of hostels and tav-
erns for comfort. These amenities decreased the high risk of traveling, especially for traders
and merchants. The newfound advantages were, however, somewhat oset by the institu-
tions of tolls initially set up to pay for improvements made, and soon corrupted by the
local lords or landowners as a means of monetary gains, with often no actual improve-
ments being made. Companies of bandits and armed robbers from all levels of social life
also constituted an ever-present danger to tradesmen, travelers and pilgrims on these routes.
In short, where in the early middle ages cities, towns, and hamlets were relatively iso-
lated, separated by vast forests, rivers, and mountains that were dicult to traverse, a few
hundred years later, with signicant reductions of those barriers, trading prospered. In the
late Middle Ages; circa 1400, the inhabitants of these rural and urban centers could now
count on an adequate food supply from the new farmlands created out of forests that now
produced opportunities for both agriculture and animal husbandry. Central Europe had
at last undergone the same changes that the classical world had, more than a millennium
before, and as a consequence of these changes, Europeans could look from the problems
of subsistence to those of expansion and might.
The major urban centers of the late middle ages began to accumulate vast wealth for
their ruling classes, who, impressed with their own power, expressed their greed for expan-
sion with military campaigns against neighboring states. One of the most typical examples
of such expansionist desire occurred in the latter part of the fteenth century in the duchy
of Burgundy under one of the richest men in the world; Charles the Bold. What Charles
tried and failed to do by armed conquest, his son-in-law Maximilian did by politically
advantageous marriages. Maximilian was far more successful than Charles in accumulating
territory, despite the fact that he was constantly at war and on the verge of bankruptcy.
1
Meyer, W., Hirsebrei und Hellebarde, Walter-Verlag, A.G., Olten, 1985, p. 42.
The political maneuvers typied by Charles and Maximilians ambitions necessitated the
use of armed force: in the period under discussion, Europe in one location or another,
was almost constantly at war. The empires of Alexander the Great and Charlemagne attest
to the fact that warfare and military conquest were not new to Europe, but that in the
early part of the second millennium, technology had reached a somewhat greater degree of
sophistication and craft in which the development of arms and armor was no mean part.
The war machine had evolved by circa 1350 from the pre-medieval and medieval form
of feudalism where landed knights had been led by nobility who had little regard, if not
utter contempt, for the concept of a peasant infantryto one in the later middle ages
powered mainly by a respected infantry. That infantry model provides the framework of
this book; it discusses the weapons most favored, and found most eective, by the foot
soldier. As the importance of the infantry increased, the peasant foot soldier and his
weapons, specically sta weapons, eclipsed the sword-and lance-wielding knightly horseman.
The book also concerns itself with not only the sta weapons impact on the structure
of armies, but also with their use and forms, and relies on the study of the surviving
objects, as well as texts and illustrations found in chronicles, manuscripts, and books.
As with many other objects throughout history, cultural artifacts change with time as
society itself changes. The purpose, and therefore the signicance of sta weapons, was
modied continuously from their inception throughout their rise and decline. During the
latter period, most of the weapons became ceremonial, that is, symbolic; they are known
for their decoration and the great variety. These surviving and mostly late forms are in
modern times much publicized and prized for their artistry and visual impact, both by
collectors and museums. They are not, however, the subject of this book, which will focus
on the often confusing nomenclature, military signicance, techniques of manufacture, and
above all chronological development of sta weapons, especially halberds, where this is
discernible, in the period up to circa 1650.
By far the greatest diculty, in writing a book of this sort, is the association of a
weapons name to a given illustration. That is to say that manuscript or other illustra-
tions, almost never have an accompanying text to identify or describe the particular weapon
in question. It is usually by the association of known historical facts with a contemporary
illustration, and series of similar illustrations that the rational identication of a given arm
is made. Even the best descriptions in the modern literature on sta weapons are usually
not specic enough to make positive identication, and often a work will add what pre-
vious authors consider synonyms at the end, thus muddying the waters even more.
When a reasonable association has been made, as is attempted in this book, one can
then work both forward and backward, relying on specic changes in the weapons mor-
phology that are expected, knowing general stylistic trends, and the related history. Using
this methodology, the book tries to be as specic as possible. Past works are quoted not
merely because they are in print, but to make a point and to extract from them signicant
observations.
Only the most widely used types of weapons are discussed. Many subtypes exist, which
are not really insignicant, but found limited use in battle, and lack the military impor-
tance of the major weapons which comprise the greatest volume in this work. So, for
instance, the sponton-halberd which is a very late combination of a diminutive partisan
and a halberd, having use only in the military ranking system of the seventeenth century
and later, is given little more than mention, as it has no real combative use, and as with
all other sta weapons of that period, had become obsolete in the eld of battle.
2 introduction
The arms that will be discussed most fully, are those used by the Swiss. This has two
reasons; the rst is that Swiss hafted arms have been the principal focus of personal studies
for many years. The second is that because of their particular political and geographic
history, the Swiss were at their greatest power using these arms against their continuously
invasive neighbors, the Habsburgs (as well as, early on, against each other), and much of
the development of some of the most important types of sta weapons occurred in this
very centrally located part of Europe. One must not, however, think of Swiss in the
modern concept; as in the formative years of the confederation that we are dealing with,
these tribes were anything but homogeneous, either geographically or politically, and often
sections (cantons) of the modern country were on opposite sides of the strife. The nuclear
states of the later nation, bound together by a treaty in 1291, added on additional states
for mutual protection over several centuries.
In theory, at least, a critical survey of all extant sta weapons in the world would nd
no two to be identical, minor variations being evident in weapons even from the same
workshops. If this sounds unreasonable, it should be remembered that all weapons of this
period were literally hand made, portions by master craftsmen, parts by apprentices or
journeymen, in workshops perhaps within one city, or perhaps hundreds of miles apart.
Countless small towns throughout Europe have small exhibitions in town halls or local
museums dealing with local history and mostly but not always using archaeological nds.
Those near castles, ruined or not, as well as those near sites of battles, or on the banks
of rivers are even more likely to have excavated ground or river nds of, among other
things, weapons. Although many of these weapons have been published, there is as yet
no mechanism by which these objects can be collated and studied as a group.
One would have to spend years traveling to see them all. The author has not gone to
this length, of course, but has made an eort to personally examine as many as possible
of these lesser-known but often very important examples. Early specimens in private col-
lections are important also, but are often inaccessible and their origins are mostly obscure;
doubtless they are not much more than a fraction of the material in the collective town
exhibits.
The length of chapters in this book is an indication of the assessment of both the impor-
tance of the weapon, and of the amount of surviving documentary evidence, including
contemporary pictorial material. This is not to say that other weapons were not impor-
tant, just that there is less available evidence concerning them, as well as fewer of the sur-
viving arms themselves. They may have been dropped from use, or been converted, with
changes, into guard or parade arms. Their importance in civil life is enhanced however,
because they often became a vehicle for the decorative arts, involving masters of not only
crafts such as goldsmithing, but also of the arts of engraving, damascening, etching and
silver inlayoften on blue black metallic ground.
2
Some of these masters; Daniel Hopfer
of Augsburg for example, were also skilled in the graphic arts on paper.
The principal weapon discussed is the halberd, because itin conjunction with the
longspear (Langspiess in German) was one of the primary weapons used by the armies
involved in the wide-ranging shifts of power that occurred across Europe between 1250
2
Niello; a technique dating back to the Romans and consisting of mostly linear decoration of metallic sur-
faces using both physical and complex chemical procedures, appears in Turkey and Russia in the period under
discussion. Axes decorated with the Niello technique are present in the State Armoury of the Kremlin in
Moscow.
introduction 3
and 1550. Firearms, to be sure, which were developing during the last half of this time
period, overshadowed hafted weapons by the mid-sixteenth century, although longspears
in a somewhat shortened version, at this time known as pikes, were used in the early sev-
enteenth century to protect the marksmen during the reloading maneuver.
Conservatives, nonetheless clung tenaciously to the belief that hafted arms as well as
some other non-rearms should be stocked in the town arsenals, and so in present times
we see some strange bedfellows in surviving arsenals such as in Graz, Austria and Solothurn,
Switzerland: halberds of a fourteenth century form alongside longspears of the fteenth
and sixteenth centuries 5 meters (16 feet) in length, matchlocks, wheellocks, intlock pis-
tols, and long arms of various periods, not to mention mail shirts and armor whose dates
of manufacture span more than a hundred years.
This all to our good fortune, as in so many other instances, intentional destruction of
outdated or archaic objects deemed useless, occurs, and we are left only with pictorial
and occasional written references to those objects.
Documentary evidence by such persons as ambassadors and other observers exists, to
what would appear to be large numbers of specialized weapons. Nicolo di Savri, the Italian
ambassador to England, noted in 1513 that 12,000 holy water sprinklers were carried by
the English at that time. Whether indeed such large numbers of this now rarely found
weapon did exist, is a matter of conjecture, as we can assume that no matter how impressed
di Savri was, he did not actually count those weapons personally. Where we nd greater
accuracy is in the logbooks of the arsenals and in town records, as these weapons had to
be paid for, and the books balanced.
3
Other diculties encountered in accurately describing weapons and their variations
include the liberties a given artist takes with his subject matter (not to mention the bias
in interpreting, say, the outcome of a given battle, or the guilt or innocence of a well
known and inuential person), and the degree of artistic skill, or the span of time elapsed
between the episode depicted and the execution of the work of art. One can, however,
draw rational conclusions after having studied enough of an artists oeuvre, and by know-
ing in whose employ or under whose patronage the artist worked.
Identication of the precise form of a weapon and tying it to a date may indeed place
it close to the time and place where a weapons smith created it, but this analysis cannot
be performed on the basis of merely nding it in a dated illustration. Weapons of a given
form may not only be manufactured unchanged over a very long period of time during
which newer forms are also being made, most likely by other workshops; but much older
forms may persist as well. Dating is therefore a dicult matter and it should be under-
stood that this book attempts to tie in the form with its earliest appearance, unless other-
wise noted.
A survey of various works of art shows that artists sometimes accurately depict weapon
forms some 100 years or so apart in design, as being used, at the same time.
4
That is,
they can; but just as often they do not, and depict historical events from remote times as
if they were happening in the latest style of their own time. This lack of historical and
stylistic perspective is readily understood when one realizes that printed matter was scarce
3
Many such logbooks or inventories of arsenals survive. A few examples are: the inventories of the Archduke
Ferdinand of Tyrolia of 1555, 1583, 1593, and 1596 (the last three under his son Ferdinand II). The 1485
inventory of the Vienna city arsenal (the oldest one) records all purchases since 1424 and was periodically
updated, as were those of Graz and Zurich.
4
See for instance g. 18.
4 introduction
and concerned itself mainly with religious, philosophical and moral issuesand hardly with
issues of style. The whole concept of style and art history is relatively modern. There is
however, a slow progression in stylistic accuracy by the seventeenth century; examples to
point to are some the Biblical works of Rembrandt in which pale robes clothe the gures
in the manner of the near East, but more often than not, seventeenth century styles are
seen on important gures to indicate wealth or prominence, and military clothing and
weapons are either sketchy and vague or more frequently distinctly sixteenth or seventeenth
century. The etching Ecce Homo of 1635, also known as Christ before Pilate is an
example of this. It is decidedly Oriental in character, and this is explained by the fact
that Rembrandt had studied the world of Orientalism both from books such as by the
historian Flavius Josephus, and by old pictorial representations that he had access to. Thus
the artist-scholar begins to incorporate history into art, which in turn depicts history.
As this material is put together, it appears that there are more unanswered questions
and speculation than one would wish, but the work does hopefully serve as a foundation
for future research and amplication.
introduction 5
COIOUR PIATES
Fig. . Scavenging ihe baiiIeheIu foi aimoi anu weaons wiih inhghiing {Iowei iighi). Fiom a aneI ainiing of ihe
vicioiy of Iouis ihe Gieai ovei ihe Seibs {TuiIs.), ca. 14Su, by ihe Masiei of ihe Voiive PaneI of Si. Iambeii {Hans
von Tubingen), CIoisiei of Si. Iambeii, now uisIayeu in ihe SieieimaiIisches Ianuesmuseum oanneum, AIie GaI-
eiie, Giaz. Noie ihe shaieneu exiension of ihe oIe above ihe uei eye of ihe haIbeiu in ihe iighi foiegiounu anu
comaie wiih hg. 16. Couiiesy of ihe CIoisiei anu ihe AIie GaIeiie, Giaz.
Fig. 6. Page 172 of ihe Waffenbuch of Hans Doiing, 144-. Noie ihe chionoIogicaI uisaiiiy beiween
ihe aims anu aimoi of ihe oIu man on ihe Iefi anu ihe soIuieis on ihe iighi. Noie aIso ihe Ieaihei wiaeu
shafi of ihe Iong seai, as weII as ihe `caeu shafi of ihe haIbeiu on ihe iighi. Piivaie coIIeciion.
Fig. 7. Geiman IanusInechis anu iheii caiain, wiih chionoIogicaIIy homogeneous aims anu aimoi, in
ihe `Kiiegsoiunung of 14 by Hans Doiing. Piivaie coIIeciion.
Fig. S. A Geiman IanusInechi {in ihe waning yeais of ihis iofession) caiiying a haIbeiu, in ihe `Kiiegs-
oiunung of 14 by Hans Doiing. Piivaie coIIeciion.
Fig. 11. `BeiiayaI anu Aiiesi of Chiisi, PsaIiei, Geimany, eaiIy io miu- ihiiienih ceniuiy. MS. Iai. 17961,
foIio 11S veiso. Noie ihe `haIbeiu in ihe hanus of ihe soIuiei on ihe Iefi iesembIing ihe ones in Bein anu
BaseI {hgs. 1u anu 2). Couiiesy of ihe BibIioiheque NaiionaIe, Paiis.
Fig. 1S. `BeiiayaI anu Aiiesi of Chiisi, Ties BeIIes Heuies ue Noiie Dame, 1SSu-141S, Fiance. Noie ihai
ihe Iefi haIbeiu, aIihough iesembIing ihe one in ihe Si. Iambeii aneI {hg. ), is moie sIenuei anu has no
shaieneu anu ioiiuuing woouen shafi ai ihe uei enu. These foims coexisi wiih ihe moie `ueveIoeu
foims such as in hg.14. Couiiesy of ihe BibIioiheque NaiionaIe, Paiis, MS. Nouv. Acq. Iai Su9S foIio 1S1
iecio.
Fig. 1S. PaiiiaI view of ihe Swiss aimy in ihe Iaige wooucui `DoinecI 1499. Noie ihe iofusion of `Semach
iye haIbeius wiih ihe siIe oini in fioni of ihe shafi axis. Couiiesy of ihe KufeisiichIabinei, BaseI.
Fig. 19. Thiusiing wiih ihe haIbeiu siIe of a weaon coniemoiaiy wiih ihe wooucui. `DoinecI 1499.
Couiiesy of ihe KufeisiichIabineii, BaseI.
Fig. 2u. `DoinecI 1499. Thiusiing wiih a haIbeiu. Couiiesy
of ihe KufeisiichIabineii, BaseI.
Fig. 21. `DoinecI 1499. Oveiheau swing wiih a haI-
beiu. Couiiesy of ihe KufeisiichIabineii, BaseI.
Fig. 22. `DoinecI 1499. Siueswing wiih a haIbeiu anu uecai-
iaiion. Couiiesy of ihe KufeisiichIabineii, BaseI.
Fig. 46. WeIu seam of Iowei eye of iighi siue of bIaue
on ihe haIbeiu in hg. S, afiei ihe biazing ieaii io
cIose ii. The faini sciaich maiIs on ihe bIaue anu
seam aiea aie noi oIu. Couiiesy of ihe MeiiooIi-
ian Museum of Aii, inv. no. 14.2.S.
Fig. 7. Righi hanu age of `The BaiiIe of Gianuson 1476 fiom ihe DieboIu SchiIIing Iuceine ChionicIe of 11S,
foIio 1uu. As siaieu in ihe iexi, aimameniaiion is wiih 1ih anu 16ih ceniuiy equimeni ihough some of ihe haIbeius
shown aie even eaiIiei. Couiiesy of ihe Koioiaiions VeiwaIiung uei Siaui Iuzein.
Fig. S. Huge heau wounu on a faIIen Geiman {ImeiiaI) soIuiei mosi IiIeIy causeu
by a haIbeiu. Fiom ihe wooucui `DoinecI 1499. Couiiesy of ihe KufeisiichIabineii,
BaseI.
Fig. S6. Anoihei ueiaiI of ihe wooucui `DoinecI 1499 {uuiing ihe baiiIe) showing
how quicIIy bouies weie siiieu, bui wiih ossibIe exaggeiaiion of ihe numbei of
in|uiies suffeieu {1S). Couiiesy of ihe KufeisiichIabineii, BaseI.
Fig. SS. Fiom foIio 1u iecio of ihe Macie|owsIi BibIe. The soIuiei ai ihe Iefi boiuei
caiiies a ieIaiiveIy shoii-shafieu `gIaive. Couiiesy of ihe Pieioni Moigan Iibiaiy,
M 6SS
Fig. S9. Fiom foIio 1u veiso of ihe Macie|owsIi BibIe. The mounieu hguie in
ihe ceniei foiegiounu {oshua) is using a shoii-shafieu `gIaive. Couiiesy of ihe
Pieioni Moigan Iibiaiy, M 6SS
Fig. 91. Two Inighis hghiing ai cIose quaiieis wiih a vouge Fianaise anu a gIaive. Noie ihe
iounueIs ai ihe bIaue bases foi ioieciing ihe hanus. Fiom ihe Caesai iaesiiy, ca. 147u,
iaIen as booiy fiom ihe Buigunuian cam in 1476. Couiiesy of ihe Hisioiisches Museum,
Bein, inv. no. S.
Fig. 112a. DeiaiI of ihe fioni caiving on ihe Couiiiai Chesi showing ihe FIemish buigeis cai-
iying iheii siaff weaons, 'ODENTACS oi 0LANONS0ICOT wiih which ihey uefeaieu ihe Fiench
chivaIiy. Couiiesy of ihe Waiuen anu SchoIais of New CoIIege, Oxfoiu anu Biiugeman Aii
Iibiaiy InieinaiionaI.
Fig. 11. An aII- sieeI heaueu moigensiein in ihe hanus of a Leeing soIuiei in Aiio-
visius`s aimy {uIius Caesai is ihe mounieu Inighi in ihe uei Iefi coinei, seaiing
an ooneni). DeiaiI fiom ihe Caesai iaesiiies of ChaiIes ihe BoIu. Couiiesy of
ihe Hisioiisches Museum Bein, inv. no. S.
Fig. 12S. DeiaiI of ihe Caesai iaesiiy in ihe HisioiicaI Museum of Bein au|aceni io
ihe MORGENSTERN in hg. 114. The Inighi swings a `moiuaxi beaiing a iounueI guaiu
which uoes noi aeai io be sieeI {Ieaihei.). Couiiesy of ihe Hisioiisches Museum,
Bein, inv. no. S.
Fig. 129. DeiaiI of ihe wooucui `DoinecI 1499 showing a veieian Swiss soIuiei swinging a
shoii veision of a `fusssiieiiaxi. Ii cannoi ioeiIy be caIIeu a `fusssiieiiaxi even ihough ii
has a hammei in bacI of ihe bIaue, because of iis Iengih, which aeais io be onIy a meiei
{S9 in.) oi so. Couiiesy of ihe KufeisiichIabineii, BaseI
Fig. 14S. DeiaiI of an aIiaiiece by Dieiic Bouis of aboui 14u showing ihe `iaIing of Chiisi.
Noie ihe weaon io ihe iighi of ihe Laming ioich which is aImosi iueniicaI io ihe Coenhagen
weaon in hg. 142a anu b. Couiiesy of ihe AIie PinaIoiheI, Munich, anu AiioiheI.
Fig. 17. SeciaI wai scyihe foi cuiiing shis` iigging oi oihei ioe fasienings. Fiom one of ihe Caesai
Taesiiies. Couiiesy of ihe HisioiicaI Museum of Beine, inv. no. S.
CHAPTER ONE
GENERAL BACKGROUND AND FORERUNNERS
The rudimentary spear is perhaps the simplest and earliest form of a hafted weapon, being
an attempt to increase the thrusting length of the weaponed arm in combat and in the
hunt. Its typology and development during the millennia of its existence need not be dis-
cussed here at length, as detailed and excellent works exist concerning this weapon.
1
These
weapons include the winged spears ( gellanzen or knebelspiesse in German, epieu or espieu de
guerre in French, and derived from the Latin Spiculum) that are used throughout the period
under discussion, the so called Bohemian ear-spoons (g. 1), together with their relative,
the hunting spears, spiedi da caccia, jagdspiesse, epieu de chasse used mainly for boar and bear
hunting well into the seventeenth century.
2
Nonetheless, the spear being the rst sta
weapon deserves some discussion here.
Beginning with the fourteenth century, the infantry spear was known as a longspear
(Langspiess in German, Picca lunga in Italian and Pique longue in French). The English word
pike is not used here because it refers to a later type of weapon. The rst use of the
word pike is recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary as occurring in 1511. The longs-
pear was, from the fourteenth century on, commonly 15 to 18 feet (5 to 6 meters) in
length, and its major use was as a defensive weapon. It was very eective in dense mutu-
ally supporting masses and in combination with other weapons such as halberds and axes
and nally two-handed swords and rearms in combat with the old cavalry formations of
the medieval and early renaissance nobility.
The longspear, regardless of its length could only be used for a short forward thrust by
the combatant on foot but was able, if its thrust was well directed, to reach an equestrian
before being in range of his lance or other weapon. In contrast, the equestrian lance had
a long and sustained forward motion and had the advantage of tremendous momentum,
but one can imagine the accuracy needed to transx a target moving tangentially and at
a relatively short distance.
3
The length of the lance itself was limited by the fact that it
had to be held by only one hand, the other being needed to guide and control the horse.
Historically, the spear was used successfully as a thrusting weapon against such bodily
protection as bronze plate (Greek and Roman), leather or cuir bouilli, mail (from Roman
1
Ellehauge, Martin, The SpearTraced through its Post Roman Development, Mller, Copenhagen, 1948. Oakeshott,
R.E., European Weapons and Armour, Lutterworth Press, Guilford and London, 1980. Oakeshott, R.E., The
Archaeology of Weapons, Lutterworth Press, London, 1960. Wegeli, R., Inventar der Waensammlung des Bernischen
Historischen Museums in Bern, III Stangenwaen, K.J. Wyss, Erben A.G., 1939.
2
This weapon is seen not only in Bohemian illustrations, but also elsewhere in Europe. Surviving exam-
ples are diversely manufactured as well. The term is bhmischer Ohrlel in German and is derived from the
small instrument used to clean an ear, having a stop at its base.
3
The throwing version of the spear, the javelin and pilum were all but discarded by the early middle ages,
as bows and crossbows could have much more devastating eects and over much larger distances. A failed
thrust might be repeated, but a failed throw was the loss of the weapon, which might indeed be used against
one by the target soldier. A few javelin-like weapons continue to be seen into the sixteenth century, resem-
bling giant arrows, and javelins were for a time the designated weapon assigned to guards protecting judges
and magistrates traveling to their assizes. These javelins are often depicted as being thrust, rather than
thrown. (See p. 61).
8 chapter one
Fig. 1. Winged spear or Bohemian ear spoon, ca. 1500. Note that the wings arise from the socket (see
chapter 12), as opposed to the wings of partizans, which issue from the bottom of the blades. Courtesy of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.460.
to Renaissance), and reinforced mail (fourteenth century Europe).
4
For this last function,
the spear-head was long slender and quadrangular in shape, not unlike its dagger equiv-
alent used to pierce mail and known as Panzerstecher in German. The use of the spear
persisted well into the seventeenth century, not only on the battleelds, but also as the
favorite weapon in the exercise of equestrian tournaments in which it took on a very spe-
cialized form and function. But, the discussion in this chapter is meant to illustrate the
changes in arms and armor that led to the development of sta weapons other than spears.
Suce it to say that with other and later developed arms such as the halberd, the spear
was often used side by side with them, especially in the tight formations of the Swiss dur-
ing the Burgundian wars of the last half of the fteenth century, in the Swabian War
(1499), and throughout the battles of the rst quarter of the sixteenth century. Thereafter
hafted arms used chiey for thrusting as well as most other hafted arms found their use
limited and in decline. They were eventually replaced by rearms and by the resurgent
use of the sword.
Increasingly, however, with the continuous development of better and generally heav-
ier body armor in the late fourteenth century, the spear began to lose the surety of its
penetrating power, especially against plate armor. This last, a marvel in protective engi-
neering and technology, was the culmination of renements and experiments made over
long periods of time. Plate armor provided great security against such traditional weapons
as the spear and sword. This success in turn necessitated the development of new classes
of weapons that would be eective against plate armor, and is only one example of the
adaptation that was the chief hallmark of the ever-evolving ballet of battleeld strategy
and tactics. The rst of these was the cutting sta weapon (at least, certain of its sub-
types), the other being the portable rearm.
Success against armor-wearing opponents meant the successful penetration of that armor,
which in turn depended on hitting the opponent squarely, that is, perpendicular to the
plane of the protection, and even more important was the ability to catch into some
type of channel that would guide the weapon through the armor. Most of the success of
plate armor was in presenting rounded and glancing surfaces to a weapon, so that a thrust
would be deected. A more sophisticated type of weapon was needed which could not
only thrust, cut and hook, but which contained such great mass and momentum was such
that it could penetrate or disrupt the plate steel. Altogether sta weapons, and especially
halberds, were designed with such functions in mind. Other arms, such as hammers, maces,
Morgensterne (chapter 11) and various conguration of the axe family also found use against
plate.
All this is not to say that sta weapons are just redesigned spears. Far more so their
action is linked with an axe-like weapon, although early on, their action might have been
more like heavy knives. The axe is a weapon that is probably as old as the spear but has
appeared somewhat less regularly throughout the ages, except perhaps during the Viking
and Saxon age in Europe. In warfare it was used in conjunction with the sword and the
spear; in peace, it had many uses as a tool. Whereas in the Stone Age, axe heads were
hafted in the split ends of a stick and bound with hide strips (g. 2), they were later per-
forated in the center and the top of the shaft was inserted through them. The rationale
4
Besides Ailettes (shoulder defenses, also heraldic devices), various pieces of plate armor were added grad-
ually to the mail in the fourteenth century, in some instances even earlier, so that by the third quarter of the
century the plates were contoured and articulated, and by ca. 1400, fully covered the body.
general background and forerunners 9
of this step is of great importance in the use and eciency of this weapon and ultimately
in the design of all sta weapons.
As wood is composed of longitudinally arranged bers, its greatest strength and resis-
tance to disruption lies in maintaining the cohesiveness of its tightly cemented cell bun-
dles (the grain). A force directed at right angles to the grain meets the greatest resistance
to rupture, whereas one directed parallel to the bers tends to separate them. Thus the
splitting of the ends of a wooden shaft to accommodate an axe head for example, even
though it is intricately bound with hide or other material, breached the integrity of the
cohesive ber structure; subsequent blows tended to further disrupt the structure of the
shaft. The union of axe head and shaft was far more stable and long-lived if the shaft
penetrated the axe head. Whether the head was of stone, copper, bronze, or iron, these
dense materials had far greater internal cohesion than wood. Each blow delivered with
this design actually pressed the wood bers together, since the head acted as a rigid band
surrounding the shaft end.
Later with more rened shapes, the shaft hole became eccentric, and in order to pre-
vent inadvertent rotation of the weapon with the blow, the perforation tended to be of
oval cross-section rather than round. To further the ease of penetration, the mass of the
head, as well as its length, was increased, and in order to best utilize these altered dimen-
sions, the shaft hole was moved towards the rear of the axe head, much as is seen in the
modern single-bitted axe. This development was continued by increasing the size of the
blade in all dimensions and by moving the shaft hole to the rim of the back of the axe
head. Of course this last renement became possible only with the use of a metal blade.
Finally, the large blade, at at the cutting edge and narrow at the junction with the shaft,
was eectively joined to a ring or short tube (the eye), which tted over the end of the
shaft. The cutting mass was, by the time of the Bronze Age, almost universally of metal
rather than stone, except for such weapons that were used for ceremonial purposes.
5
These
metal axes tted on various lengths of wooden shafts were in use for long periods of time
and were a favorite amongst the Norse and Saxons (g. 3).
Iron
It is necessary, in order to fully understand and appreciate the capabilities (and limita-
tions) of sta weapons under discussion, to include a short discussion dealing with the met-
allurgy of iron and the process of making steel: the metal used almost exclusively at the
time hafted weapon blades were being produced.
Many dierent methods were already developed in antiquity for the hardening of iron
and to produce a more-or-less exible steel.
6
Steel is, roughly speaking, iron with the addi-
tion of a small percentage of carbon.
After the dissolution of the Roman Empire, the ensuing political chaos prevented the
development and expansion of mining operations, so smiths found themselves re-using and
re-working existing weapons, and the art of smelting ores and carbonizing iron into a
desirable form of steel for weapons declined.
7
Only after the ninth century did the situation
5
Such ceremonial axes are seen for example in Celtic Ireland, but also in China, made of exquisite jadeite.
6
Davidson, H.R.E., The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England, The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 1962 and 1996.
7
Also known as carburizing.
10 chapter one
general background and forerunners 11
Fig. 3. The mass of this large axe found near London, and possibly of Viking origin, hinges on the relatively
small eye over the shaft making this joint unstable in a heavy blow. Lengthening the blade vertically and
bringing it closer to the shaft brought with it greater stability. The guisarme, with the added feature of having
the lower portion of the blade attached to the shaft, was probably a later example of such a weapon. (See
chapter 14.) Courtesy of the Museum of London, inv. no. 887.
Fig. 2. Stone age axe; the shaft and thongs are reconstructions. If used under wet conditions these thongs
would tend to relax and loosen, allowing stress on the split upper shaft portion. Private collection.
begin to improve; new mines were opened and new procedures for producing steel were
established.
The Romans, as early as the sixth century B.C., had use of steely iron with a carbon
content of between 0.1 to 1 percent, and in some cases as high as 3 to 4 percent. This
iron in most instances was imported from India in two-pound blocks or cakes smelted in
sealed clay crucibles and later designated wootz.
8
Most of the local bog iron ores in
Europe and England contained traces of impurities such as phosphorus that rendered the
iron unsuitable for thin weapons such as sword blades but were probably suitable for axe
blades. Nevertheless, Celtic iron mined in central Europe (Styria for example) was also a
valuable source of high quality iron for the Romans. The smelting and forging process
appears to have been performed in this region as well. Finds of the La Tne period (ca.
550 B.C.1 A.D.) are exhibited in the Muse dUnterlinden in Colmar, France. Here the
ingots are slender, long and tapered almost to a point at each end.
It appears possible that mining localities can be identied by the shape of the ingots.
For example, recent excavations near the Swiss city of Liestal in the Canton Baselland
unearthed, among many other artifacts, a Roman smithy in which heavy hammers, tongs,
and other tools lay together. These nds are exhibited in the Cantonal museum. Two
blocks of raw iron (ingots) were also found. These blocks are much larger than the Indian
wootz cakes, weigh an estimated 10 kg. (22 lbs.) each, and are slightly drawn out cubes
with tapered ends (g. 4a). They are also, according to recent archaeological research, of
local origin, coming from ancient iron mines in the adjacent Canton of Jura.
9
The local
Swiss-German name for them is masseln. In the Museum Ferdinandeum in Graz Austria,
there are very similar ingots of raw iron (g. 4b) dating, however, to the earlier La Tne
period. Blade weapon nds of several epochs between the Roman and medieval periods
have been analyzed for structure and carbon content. One such dagger revealed a com-
plex makeup not unlike that of some of the early halberds. The soft pure iron core had
a carbon content of 0.05 percent, the harder mid-portion 0.5 percent, and the cutting
edge 1.8 percent.
The impurities in European ores cited by Davidson as being incompatible with high
quality blades had, it seems, by the eighth or ninth centuries been worked out of the iron
by processing it. Bog ores containing these impurities could also have been used for iron
and steel artifacts other than blades. The Swiss ores just cited are magmatic, (rock ores)
as are the Styrian, Lorraine, and other sources of Merovingian to medieval ores. Many
of the excellent sword and other weapon blades of this period were probably therefore of
European rather than of Indian origin, including possibly the damascened ones. Specic
information as to the origin of iron used for the manufacture of sta weapon blades in
the periods covered by this book has not yet been found, but given the above informa-
tion; it is likely that the ores used were from local sites as well.
As previously mentioned, by the late thirteenth or early fourteenth centuries, steel or
iron in the form of plates reinforced the quintessential mail defenses, which had formed
8
Most of the information on early iron and steel is taken from Davidsons book (see footnote 10). She
writes of the availability of Indian steel blocks in Europe as early as the sixth century B.C., and notes that
they were later called wootz. There is no conict with the statement by Bronson that steel made in India
from the second century onward was called wootz; as itor a similar metal, was also made earlier under a
dierent name. Davidsons second edition was printed and revised in 1996, well after Bronsons article in
Archeomaterials.
9
Bronson, B., The Making and selling of Wootz, a Crucible steel of India, Archeomaterials, Vol. 1, No. 1,
pp. 1351.
12 chapter one
general background and forerunners 13
Fig. 4b. Ingots of raw iron, a ground nd now in the Museum Ferdinandeum in Graz, 5th to 1st century
B.C. Courtesy of the Museum Ferdinandeum.
Fig. 4a. A pair of rare surviving ingots of Roman iron from Swiss mines in the Jura. They are locally called
masseln. Courtesy of the Cantonal Museum of Baselland.
the prime defensive armor for millennia before. Mail, even though relatively heavy but
extremely exible, was vulnerable, to well-placed axe cuts and lance thrusts as well as to
arrows and crossbow bolts. Plate-like additions in ever increasing sizes and shapes even-
tually supplanted mail; although as late as the fteenth century or even in the early six-
teenth century mail shirts or sleeves were worn under plate armor for additional protection.
This plate armor, a beautifully formed series of hinged, articulated, and strapped steel
plates, was signicantly developed by 1350 to 1380 and essentially covered the body by
ca. 1400. It could successfully stop the eects of most lance thrusts as well as sword cuts
and thrusts and tended by virtue of its rounded form to deect even most axe blows,
unless they were directed at a right angle to the surface of the plate armor. It is still some-
what controversial whether plate armor could resist penetration by crossbow bolts, but it
is likely that a direct hit at relatively short range would not be stopped by armor cover-
ing the extremities, as it was usually not as thick as the plate covering the chest and head
(breastplate and helm). Nevertheless, a fteenth century archers sallet in the historical
museum in Bern evidences several crossbow bolts having penetrated the helmet.
It should be noted, however, that at this time, very few foot combatants in an army
would actually be using the latest defenses; this plate armor was very expensive and was
produced at rst only in relatively small numbers, largely for the titled and wealthy. Peasants
recruited as infantry had, as is seen in many illustrations, simple (sometimes non-metallic)
defenses and unsophisticated arms often converted from farm implements. Peasant tools
were transformed massively at the time of the crusades because it would have been impos-
sible to arm these soldiers with real weapons. Charles Buttin cites the conversion of such
tools as fourche, faux, couteau de charrue, hache, serpe, maillet, eau (fork, scythe, ploughshare,
axe, bill-hook, mallet, ail), as well as the conversion of hunting weapons.
There was a stimulus to develop new and better forms of weapons occasioned by mil-
itary success in the eld, such as the battle of Morgarten in 1315, where the soldiers of
the newly founded Swiss confederation, using the recently introduced halberds, established
their superiority over the mail-clad Hapsburg forces. This victory highlighted the sta
weapons used, and probably accelerated the evolutionary process of these and other sim-
ilar weapons, because the user was out of reach of the sword, mace, war hammer, or
dagger often associated with the wearer of plate armor. Halberds were also used, most
importantly, to complement the longspear.
The eect of improvements and additions to armor during the fourteenth century was
the continued development of these new weapons so as to be capable of penetrating the
plate armor reinforcements, but one must again bear in mind that in any given military
force only the uppermost echelons would be wearing mail and plates. The vast majority
of combatants, that is the common infantrythe importance of which became increasingly
apparent with the adoption of hafted weaponswould only have leather protection or
parts and pieces of plundered armor. Scavenging a battleeld was the most common way
for foot soldiers and peasants to acquire arms and armor. This activity is clearly seen in the
foreground of the painting of ca. 1430 showing the victory of Louis The Great (13421382)
over the Serbs (g. 5).
10
Already in a much earlier period, mail defenses, swords, shields,
and helmets were obtained in this way. A lower border scene in the Bayeux tapestry, now
more correctly called embroidery, of ca. 1070, shows, under the depiction of the death
10
In the Steiermarkisches Landesmuseum Joanneum, Abteilung Alte Galerie, on loan from the cloister of
St. Lambert.
14 chapter one
general background and forerunners 15
11
Despite Schneiders experiment described on page 99.
12
In the Landesbibliothek, Dresden.
13
He wears a kettle-hat with eye slits, a long mail shirt and a two-piece Gothic breastplate. His sword
has a wheel-pommel and straight at quillons. His shoes are pointed (fteenth century) as opposed to the
broad-toed shoes of the younger men (sixteenth century).
of King Harold, soldiers stripping mail garments from the fallen warriors and gathering
up swords from the battleeld. No doubt this method of acquisition has always existed. It
seems that the gathering of booty was often begun well before the end of a battle, although
eld commanders generally forbade this practice until its conclusion.
Against these foot soldiers, sta weapons were already quite eective. There is some
disagreement as to how functional fourteenth- as well as fteenth-century weapons such as
the halberd were against the new plate armor (see chapter 6); however, it is not true that
the famous hardening of the cutting edge of halberds made them as vulnerable to shat-
tering (like glass) on impact with steel armor as is generally claimed; nor is it true that
the lesser weight of the early forms, as opposed to the greater weight of the fteenth-,
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century halberds, should have caused them to be classied as
a knife-like weapon rather than an ax-like one. Extant war scythes, couteaux de brche,
couses, guisarmes, and vouges, are more knife-like, without question, but the fourteenth-
century halberd was used successfully in an axe-like way against the lighter armor gen-
erally worn in that time, as did the heavier and more compact halberds of later times
against heavier armor.
11
This does not mean that the function of spearing the opponent
with the spike of the halberd was not an important one nor was the swinging of the
weapon to use its beak useless.
We shall retrace some of this development as it applies to halberds. The rst experi-
ments of the thirteenth century probably proved rather quickly that a simple axe-like head
mounted on a long shaft would weaken or break the shaft just below the eye socket on
a solid impact unless the eye and shaft were of large diameter. A large diameter shaft,
however, was too heavy and unwieldy to swing quickly, no matter what type of wood was
used. The initial solution in the second quarter of the thirteenth century appears to have
been to add a small strap to the lower edge of the blade and to fasten this to the shaft.
This type of weapon is currently designated a guisarme (see chapter 16). Soon after, greater
stability was achieved by adding a second eye to the back of the somewhat lengthened
axe blade instead, which would distribute the shock of the blow along a greater surface
area of the shaft. These weapons were the rst halberds (see chapters 46). Many ideas
on the manufacture and development of arms were spontaneous, sometimes very local and
for a specic purpose. At times these experiments died quickly after their inception, but
often the typology, if successful, would spread rapidly. Coexistence over a long period of
time of widely varying designs of halberds was common. This last point is of great inter-
est because it can lead to confusion in dating and tracing the evolution of a design; there-
fore it is an important phenomenon of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance and
needs to be elaborated on.
In his Wappenbuch (Heraldry Book) of 15441555,
12
the Hessian painter Hans Dring
illustrates on his page 172, two groups of Swiss soldiers of the Canton of Appenzell, three
in armor of the period (mid sixteenth century) and a single gure of an older man wear-
ing armor dating to the end of the fteenth century (g. 6).
13
Both he and one of the
others carry halberds of a much older date than the book. Even allowing for some degree
of artistic license, the rst halberd is probably from the late fourteenth century and the
16 chapter one
other from the mid- to late fteenth. In each case they precede the date of the armor by
more than fty years. Once a weapon had demonstrated itself to be successful, its users
might be loath to change it for one of another design. This supposition is supported by
the fact that the manufacture of halberds persisted well into the seventeenth century using
the shapes of weapons that initially proved themselves in battles of the fourteenth and
fteenth centuries, as well as those that were newly designed but were constructed using
old manufacturing techniques. Furthermore, the town councils in some Swiss cities placed
large orders to restock the town arsenal long after the massive use of halberds had dis-
appeared from the battleelds.
In contrast to the heterogeneous armaments shown in g. 6, the illustration from a
related work dated 1545 (g. 7), shows a mounted knight armed with a lance, surrounded
by his retinue of foot soldiers, probably equipped by him, all wearing very much the lat-
est of 1545.
14
All halberds depicted in the illustrations are identical in form and of that
date. The soldiers only armor consists of bishops mantles (mail collars extended like a
mantle over the shoulders) and a few helmets. Two out of the eight soldiers carry what
appear to be matchlocks. Therefore, a wealthy knight or lord might outt his whole ret-
inue with recently made arms and armor, or a poorer or less generous lord might only
permit the scavenging of these. Economics and social conditions thus often dictated the
style and usage of weapons and defensive gear.
Finally, a word about the methods of carrying hafted weapons is called for. In g. 8,
the landsknecht carries his halberd slung over his right shoulder and grasps it over the
base of the spike. This may not have been as unusual as its awkwardness might suggest,
as this method is seen again in a single-leaf woodcut portrait of a sergeant in 1535 by
the artist Erhard Schn.
15
The illustrations that duplicate this method of carrying spiked
sta weapons, halberds as well as other spiked weapons, show them to be well-balanced,
light and easy to support, which would have been essential during the long marches
between countries. Doubtlessly a variety of positions were used for portage of these arms
depending on the specic weapon, its weight and balance, and the individual soldiers
strength.
Although spears were among the most ancient hafted weapons, and despite the fact that
they never completely disappeared, a process of oensive and defensive evolution, as well
as technological advancements and access to raw materials, both mandated and allowed
diversication in types of sta weapons, culminating in the Swiss type halberd of the late
15th- and early 16th-centuries, The success of the halberd led to its being a prolic and
oft-copied weapon that proved to be exible in battle and inspired condence in its users
as well as fear in their enemies.
14
Doring, H. Kriegsordnung of Count Reinhard the Elder of Salms, 1545in the Staatsbibliothek Munich
(Cod. Germ. 3663).
15
Erhard Schn, Sergeant, woodcut, ca. 1535, Gttingen, G. 1205 (Geissberg) Pass. 25, R. 214, probably
cut and printed by Hans Guldenmund.
CHAPTER TWO
HALBERDS
A halberd is dened as being a cut and thrust combination sta weapon, consisting at
rst of an elongated axe-like blade, early forms of which are sometimes described as knife-
like, from which a vertical spike of varying shape and length arises. It is fastened to its
shaft by two circular straps at the rear of the blade, referred to herein as eyes.
1
Later
forms have a socket in the center of the blade to receive the shaft, longer and thinner
spikes, and steel straps called langets (longue bandes de fer in French, and schaftbnder in
German) issuing from the base of the blade socket down the shaft. A rear-facing beak is
variably present in the early forms but is always to be found on later halberds. It had a
piercing function (see gs. 7 and 10). A ange is present after ca. 1400. This is a rear
facing at, mostly rectangular part below the base of the beak that extends down to the
level of the base of the blade, thus forming a rear closure for the shaft socket. Its edges
are often incised or scalloped. The ange disappeared from halberds again after ca. 1570.
The word halberd is derived from the old German Halm, a shaft, and Barte, an early
axe form, probably similar to the Viking ax blades.
2
According to the O.E.D., the word
halberd is not recorded in the English language until 1495. The Italian term is alabarda,
the French, derived from the Italian, has been hallebarde since 1448 but was originally
alabarde (after 1333). The Spanish word was originally alabardero, then alabarda,
and was taken from French and Italian.
3
The Portuguese appellation is the same as the
Spanish. The greatest variety of spellings of the word occurs in the tongue of its incep-
tion: German. They are helmbart(e), halbart(e), hellebarde, halparte, (1920s) and
stand apart from the medieval and renaissance terms that will be discussed later in this
chapter. The most agreed on modern term in the German literature is halbarte.
Two more terms should no longer be used because they are confusing as well as inac-
curate. The rst that should be excised from the lexicon is the term Vouge Suisse, or
simply vouge, and its various translations. Vouge refers to halberds before the use of a
socket, when the blade, hafted by means of two eyes, in eect, describes the pre-circa
1400 weapon. The term is modern, having been used for the rst time by Viollet-le Duc
in the latter part of the nineteenth century, although he quotes earlier unnamed sources.
The term Vouge was used in the Middle Ages for a dierent weapon, one that is described
in chapter 18. The second term is the German expression Hippe (dened in the dictionary
as a sickle, hedging or pruning knife, billhook or scythe) and short for Kriegshippe, (war
scythe) and also used to describe the pre-1400 halberds fastened to the shaft by eyes.
1
This term, used in Stone, G.C., A Glossary of the Construction Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor, Jack
Brussel, N.Y. 1961, p. 654, is probably modern but seems preferable to ring or tube. The German equiv-
alent terms vary in the literature, and are Stangenring, Tulle, or Schaft se, but they are also modern.
The French term frette was used by Viollet-le-Duc in 1875, but Buttin uses the term bague and oeil.
2
Gessler, E.A. Das Aufkommen der Halbarte und Ihre Entwicklung von der Frhzeit bis in das 15. Jahrhundert,
Revue Internationale dHistoire Militaire, Paris, 193940. Vol. I, p. 145.
3
Corominas, J., Pascual, J.A., Diccionario Crtico Etimolgico Castellano e Hispnico, Editorial Gredos S.A., Madrid
1980.
Clarication follows for yet another use of the word halberd in modern times. A small
to medium sized weapon of early Bronze Age Europe (ca. 2000 B.C.), called a halberd,
is discussed in the scholarly literature.
4
These objects were found in Irish bogs as well as
in Scotland and are made from Irish copper. They have also been found in hoards as
opposed to graves, and thus they show very little wear. This leads to the conclusion that
they were likely not ghting weapons but were more ceremonial in nature. Similar blades
are also designated Irish daggers, and one can be hard put to distinguish between the two
types of blades, except that most halberds have slightly curved blades. They both have
in common longitudinal ridges, a length of about 1025 cm., and a shoulder at their base
pierced for rivets, some of which have been found still in place. These rivets in the daggers
serve to attach the one-piece grip and pommel, still present on some of the nds. A very
ne example of a copper Irish daggera weapon designed to be used with one hand
is present in the London Museum, where it is mounted onto a modern shaft.
An example of a very similar bronze Chinese form was de-accessioned from a provincial
museum in China; also designated a halberd (g. 9), it is denitely not a dagger, and
can easily be pictured mounted into a slot at the head of a shaft. The more accurate
name of these archeological nds is dagger axe,
5
ji or ge in Chinese.
6
Only small number
of such blades were excavated in Hubei province, China, intact with their shafts; the
double and triple blade form bears the name ji, but single blades found elsewhere with-
out their shafts could have been part of either a ji or the single bladed variety; ge, some
of which were also found intact in the Hubei excavation. These shafted weapons, it is
believed, did have military use, the long-shafted ji as a charioteers weapon and the shorter
ge, as a foot-soldiers.
Reference is also made to the European early bronze-age halberd called Dolchstab
in German or hafted dagger in English. This hafting is done with a shafting plate (tang)
passing horizontally through the wooden shaft at a level with the main blade, along the
back of which are holes and slits for lashing. The actual shaft is relatively thin and bent
backwards on top. Shang dynasty pictographs (ca. 1400 B.C.) show this weapon being car-
ried over the shoulder, and in relation to the length of the person carrying it, some 4 feet
in length. The shaft base is knob-shaped, and one such pictograph shows a trident at the
base. The ge is not found outside of China, but analogies are seen in Oceania and Africa
in addition to Bronze Age Europe. Beautiful examples, some with inlaid sea-animal gures,
are found in Greece dating as far back as 1450 B.C.
None of these items qualies for the name, or function of a European halberd. Considering
the etymology of the word halberd, the use of the word in the association of this name
with the weapons just discussed is a convention adopted by historians and archaeologists
in the twentieth century.
Returning now to the early development of the European halberds, as well as other
shafted varieties; they appear very infrequently in the early wall paintings of Greek and
Byzantine monasteries (6th to 8th centuries) but are virtually non-existent in those of the
Cappadocian rock churches of the 8th to 12th centuries. A number of papers have been
4
Coles, J., Scottish Early Bronze Age metalwork, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 101,
pp. 1110 19689. Harbison, P. The Daggers of the Early Bronze Age in Ireland, Prhistorische Bronzefunde,
division 6, vol. 1.
5
Loehr, M., Chinese Bronze Age Weapons from the Chinese National Palace Museum, Peking University of Michigan
Press, Ann Arbor, 1956, pp. 49, 57.
6
Yang, X., ed. The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1999, p. 301,
no. 102.
18 chapter two
halberds 19
Fig. 10. A very early halberd closely related to a guisarme. Excavated in Alsace, near Basel, middle to second
half of the 13th century. Note that the upper end of the blade is not yet particularly suited for thrusting,
but a beak is already present, and welded to the upper eye. Courtesy of the Historical Museum of Bern, inv.
no. 13741.
Fig. 9. Chinese dagger axe known as a ji. Bronze Age, but designated halberd in modern times. Private
collection.
published using early pictorial references to show the origin of hafted weapons such as
the halberd to be a sta weapon whose metal head is a scramasax or a scramasax-like
blade with its tang centrally inserted into the wooden shaft end, and sometimes nailed to
the side of a shaft.
7
These publications base their conclusions on the examination of a
Carolingian wall painting originally found in the Cloister of St. John in the town of Mstair
in the Grisons, Switzerland, and which has been transferred to the Landesmuseum in
Zurich. The weapons do have a long blade with a slightly convex cutting edge but are
clearly not scramasaxes. The scramasax is a Frankish weapon; the long version of which
was used as a sword in combat. It was common between the 4th and 7th centuries, had
a single cutting edge, grooved sides, and a length up to 40 inches. The short version out-
lived the long one and was used as a knife. As Schneider pointed out, it would be curious
indeed to see a scramasax, which is a sword, suddenly transformed into a sta weapon;
there are, he concluded, cheaper ways to produce a cutting weapon than to ax an expen-
sive sword to a sta.
8
In all probability there were multi-centric eorts to create such a
weapon during the centuries following the turn of the rst millennium. Even the devel-
opment such as we shall try to reconstruct it, ran in parallel series: some early forms
having had long thin blades, angular and curving as in the Mstair painting; others had
nearly untransformed squarish axes, and so on.
Portage of Arms by the Untitled Swiss
It is signicant that the use and development of arms, including sta weapons, was accel-
erated in the peasant population of the old Swiss forest cantons, as opposed to peasants
elsewhere. One major reason for this distinction is the fact that before the rst millen-
nium they had been declared free, subject only to the royal person. King Louis the German
initiated this situation by donating lands to the convent of Sts. Felix and Regula in the
year 853. The important corollary to the donation mandated that all persons associated
with the convent and area were given the privilege of enjoying what was called Reichsfreiheit
in German or freedom of the realm. Soon thereafter, inhabitants of the neighboring districts
in Uri began to commend themselves to the abbey, thus obtaining the same privileges.
This freedom included the right to bear arms, and this in turn allowed a familiarity with,
and possession of, weapons that was forbidden elsewhere to persons without rank. The
general oversight or rule of this original free territory was given by King Louis to an
advocatus in Latin
9
or vogt in the German vernacular, somewhat similar to the func-
tion of the English Medieval Shire-Reeve or Sheri. Soon after their creation, how-
ever, these overseers began to restrict the customs and habits of their charges to the point
of unjust repression and taxation, as is so well illustrated by the legend of Wilhelm Tell,
so that these transgressions upon this system and its freedoms earned for the thirteenth
century Habsburg family; the vogts of that time, the wrath and enmity of the free Swiss.
7
Gessler, E.A., Schweizerisches Landesmuseum. Fhrer durch die Waensammlung. Zurich, 1928, p. 52. Wegeli, R.,
Inventar der Waensammlung des Bernischen Historischen Museums in Bern. Bern, vol. III, p. 45. 1939. Bosson, C. La
Hallebarde. Genava, Muse dArt et dHistoire, Genve. Ash, D., The Fighting Halberd, The Connoisseur, May
1950.
8
Schneider, Hugo, Zur Fabrikation der Halbarte, Zeitschrift fr Schweizerische Archologie und Kunstgeschichte,
Vol. 19, 1959, pp. 6065.
9
Literally; the voice for another (the Kings).
20 chapter two
The Emperor Frederick II, in 1240, granted the same freedoms to the inhabitants of
the community of the Canton of Schwyz, which is adjacent to the Canton of Uri. For
mutual protection, mainly against the Habsburgs, knowledge of ghting tactics was encour-
aged in Uri, and as a result an informal voluntary part-time standing army was cre-
ated. So engrained was the use of weapons in the population that a multitude of restrictive
decrees were later issued by the townships limiting the use of these arms in an attempt
to curb the brawling and violence associated with their portage. Thus in the same vein,
and possibly as a protective measure, a decree of 1438 in the canton of Schwyz required
every citizen earning twenty to forty pounds a year to purchase a breastplate and addi-
tional breastplates for every multiple of forty pounds earned in a year.
10
This decree how-
ever, probably served a dual purpose in that it also prepared the population for the
eventuality of war. Reichsfreiheit in another form came as late as 1511 to the peasants
and other folk in Tyrolia as a consequence of the general order by the emperor Maximilian,
binding all eligible men for military service, but only for the defense of national bound-
aries. Ancillary to this was the permission to possess weapons at home.
Possible Early Halberd Forms
Rudolph of Habsburg, leading troops from Strasbourg in 1262, defeated the bishop of
Basels forces in the battle of Hausbergen using weapons called Haches Danoises, Danish
axes.
11
These Danish axes, survivors of the Viking Age in Scandinavia, were long shafted
weapons for two-handed use. The English called them broad axes, as the cutting edge of
their convex blades could measure up to 30 cm. (g. 3). The form was triangular, that
is, narrowing down sharply towards the haft portion, and ending as an eye just as the
two eyes in the later halberds. Their construction was somewhat awkward and the mas-
sive axe blade might have been broken o just below the shaft eye after a heavy blow.
It is also possible that some forms resembled either guisarmes, which were probably derived
from Danish axes, or early halberds such as the groundnd in the Historical Museum of
Bern (g. 10) that was excavated in Alsace near Basel and dated from the time of
Hausbergen, or the Basel blade (g. 25).
12
Similar weapons were carried by soldiers from
Canton Schwyz in 1289, in the service of Rudolph of Habsburg.
13
It is likely, therefore,
that this form of early halberd was adopted by the soldiers of Basel and possibly devel-
oped by them, as well as by soldiers of the original Swiss cantons, in those intervening
years.
These hafted weapons had changed forms rapidly during the next quarter century as
evidenced by the results of the use of the deadly halberds in the battle of Morgarten in
1315. Certainly, if the Habsburg forces carried halberds during this battle, the weapons
were a small minority compared to those of the Confederation and possibly still in the
undeveloped style of the hache Danoise. This line of development paralleled another one
typied by the squarish axe-like form seen in the St. Lambert panel, and the surviving
10
Laont, R. The Ancient Art of Warfare, ILTE Turin, 1966, p. 451.
11
The discussion and facts are in part taken from: Schneewind, W., Sonderabdruck aus dem Basler Jahrbuch,
1957, pp. 99100.
12
There is evidence that will be discussed in a later chapter, that there were halberdseven earlier than
1250.
13
Schneewind, W., ibid.
halberds 21
example, as well as the sixteenth century woodcut seen in gs. 5, 15, and 16. This form
had, by the late fteenth century, metamorphosed to the same form as other Swiss hal-
berds. In any case it seems likely that one particular form of an early polearm such as a
Danish axe, or a gisarme derived from a Danish axe either in one or several localities,
developed into what eventually became a halberd, and another developed into an elon-
gated cutting arm such as a fauchard, vouge, couteau de brche, or bardiche. Some became
percussive weapons, but most evolved into some form of combination weapon designed to
cut and thrust. Even in late periods of development, such as the end of the fteenth and
beginning sixteenth centuries, the distinction between the weapons is sometimes blurred,
and the nomenclature in both old and modern literature even more so.
According to the article published in 1928 and expanded in 1939 by E.A. Gessler, the
rst mention of the word halberd is in a text by the poet Konrad of Wrzburg, who
died in 1287.
14
He uses it in a poem on the Trojan War, stressing its deadly nature and
writes in Middle-High German:
Sechs Tusend Man Ze Fuoz Bereit . . . Six thousand ready men on foot . . .
Die Truogen Hallenbarten They carried halberds
Ser Unde Wol Geslien So well sharpened that those
Swaz si Damite Ergrien Who were hit by them
Daz Was Ze Tde Gar Verlorn. Were lost to death.
15
In 1348, the Franciscan, John of Winterthur, described the battle of Morgarten (1315) in
his chronicles in which battle his own father was a combatant. He commented on the
deadliness of the halberd:
Habebant quoque Switenses in manibus quedam instumente occisionis qesa in vulgari illo appellata helnbartam
valde terribilia, quibus adversarios rmissime armatos quasi cum novacula diviserunt et in frusta conciderunt.
The Swiss had in their hands a terrible sort of weapon called a halberd in the vernacular,
with which they cut through their enemys armor as though with a razor, and reduced them
to pieces.
16
And again, reiterating the description by the king of Bohemia of the mercenaries of Glarus
serving in the army of Ludwig of Austria in 1330 at Colmar, John said:
Rex Boemus pertransiens per circuitum castrorum ducis et perveniems ad aciem virorum de Glarus vidensque
eorum instrumenta bellica et vasa interfectionis gesa dicta in vulgari helnbarton, amirans ait: o quam terribilis
aspectus est istius cunei cum suis instrumentis horribilibus et non modicum metuendis.
As the King of Bohemia passed through the camp of the Duke and reached the battle lines
of the men of Glarus, he saw their ghting equipment and the murderous weapons, the Gesa,
in dialect called halberds, and said with amazement: What a terrible sight this wedge for-
mation is, with its horrible and frightening instruments of death.
17
14
Gessler, E.A., ibid., footnote 15.
15
Der Trojanischer Krieg von Konrad von Wrzburg, A. Von Keller ed. Stuttgart 1858 p. 358, v. 30050,
as quoted by Gessler, E.A. In Das Aufkommen der Halbarte von ihrer Frhzeit bis zum Ende des 14.
Jahrhunderts, Stans, 1928. English translation by the author.
16
Johannis Vitodurani Chronicon, Archiv fr Schweizer Geschichte, vol. II., Zrich, 1846, Gessler E.A.,
ibid., footnote 15, English translation by the author.
17
Johannis Vitidurani Chronicon, Mon. Germ. Hist. Scriptores III, Berlin 1924, quoted in Gessler, E.A.
ibid., footnote 15, English translation by the author.
22 chapter two
An illustration in a German Psalter stylistically relatable to the early thirteenth century
(g. 11), shows a halberd in the hands of a soldier in a Betrayal and Arrest of Christ
scene.
18
Several groundnds exist that mirror this precise type. The fact that they have
been thought of as somewhat later creations (ca. 1280), will be discussed in the next
chapter.
An early but indisputable halberd is depicted in an al secco wall painting in the choir
of the mid-fourteenth century chapel in St. Nicklausen, Canton Obwald in Switzerland,
executed ca. 13701380. It is held by a sleeping soldier, as a part of the Resurrection
scene (g. 12). The soldier is dressed in a full suit of mail including a coif and chausses,
over which he wears a surcoat, perhaps of leather. This defensive armor style is that of
the early fourteenth century.
19
His halberd blade is short, massive and almost square, ris-
ing to a relatively short obtuse point. The short shaft appears to be only 34 feet long
and passes through a lower eye into a socket integral with the superior part of the blade.
The point (which cannot yet be designated a spike) is in line with the shaft in contrast to
most early halberds where the point is in front of the shaft.
Two halberds from a Book of Hours of about 1380 seen in g. 13 (contemporary with
the battle of Sempach of 1386), show little change in style from the far earlier type rep-
resented in the previous illustration from the early thirteenth century German Psalter
(g. 11).
20
The left one of the two in g. 13 is quite distinct from the other in that the
lower part of the blade extends itself to a point well below the lower eye. It is therefore
a still more elongated and less massive halberd than the type seen in g. 12 and that in
the St. Lambert panel in Graz (g. 5). The other is very similar to the one in the early
thirteenth century German Psalter, and to the earliest ground nds of Basel, Bern, and
Zurich.
A similar halberd with a slightly more elongate blade and more acute point is present
in the hands of the Legionary behind the Roman captain in a crucixion scene, the sub-
ject of the oldest pictorial woodblock known: the Bois Protat (g. 14). This block, one of
three used for the print, has survived from the second half of the fourteenth century.
Although no original prints survive, modern prints have been pulled from the block. The
short ared cu of the captains gauntlet with what appears to be a brass border is con-
sistent with a date of about 13701375.
21
Because they appear to be rough and primitive, two halberds in a panel painting of
1430, by the Master of the Votive Panel of St. Lambert that is now hung in the Alte
Galerie in Graz, Austria, are most interesting. The rst is in the hands of the man on
foot involved in recovering arms and armor from the dead in a battleeld scene; the sec-
ond is a similar weapon in the right upper corner in the midst of a mle (g. 5). These
two weapons appear simply as large axe blades mounted on a pole, each with two large
eyes. Both appear to be far older in style than the date of the painting.
22
The upper and
lower ends of the blade are pointed and similar, but the upper is more acute and slightly
18
Betrayal and Arrest of Christ, Psalter, Germany, thirteenth century. Paris Bibliothque Nationale MS., lat.
17961, folio 113, verso.
19
The armor is very similar to that shown in an illustration in the Sachsenspiegel of ca. 1330 of Eike
von Repgow.
20
Betrayal and Arrest of Chris. Trs Belles Heures, France, 13801413, Paris Bibliothque Nationale MS. nouv.
acq. Lat. 3093, folio 181, recto,
21
Boccia, Rossi, Morin, Armi e Armature Lombarde, Electa Editrice, 1980. gs. 12, 13.
22
However, it should be noted that simple forms such as these, made by local blacksmiths working in rel-
ative isolation, might look quite dierent from contemporary weapons of urban centers.
halberds 23
24 chapter two
Fig. 12. Detail of a wall painting in the chapel of St. Nicklausen, Canton Obwald, Switzerland, ca. 1375.
The halberds shaft is capped, that is, the superior eye is integral with the upper back portion of the blade
and is closed on top.
halberds 25
Fig. 14. Reduced modern impression from the right hand wood block (one of the original three) called the
Bois Protat, ca. 137080. The halberd is capped as in g. 12 but appears to have a longer shaft. The orig-
inal woodblock is in the Paper Museum of the city of Basel, Switzerland. Private collection.
longer. The uppermost portion of the shaft is shaped into a spike and protrudes some 30
cm. or so above the upper eye. A halberd blade like this one is illustrated in g. 15,
mounted on a new shaft. A similar weapon is illustrated in a much later woodcut in the
mid-sixteenth century Swiss chronicle of Johann Stumpf (g. 16) on p. 647 of the second
edition. The illustration is meant to depict a late-fteenth-century combatant and uses
what is likely a much earlier surviving weapon as a model. The halbardier wears a Swiss
dagger, or more probably a Basilard (only the pommel and part of the grip is visible) worn
as a sword on the left side, both of which were typical weapons of the rst half of the
sixteenth century, along with a long-sleeved mail shirt.
23
The backward facing plumes on
his cap help identify him as a Swiss reislafer or soldier.
24
This rather primitive form of a
halberd relied on a sharpened wooden sta for thrusting rather than a modied upper
blade portion as in all other halberds. Unless a lance-like point was fastened onto this
spike, it could not have been terribly eective against armor. In the St. Lambert illustra-
tion, no such metal point is seen. The blunt axe-like halberd with a wooden spike, per-
haps of peasant manufacture, had probably fallen out of use by the mid fteenth century
and was certainly a less capable weapon than the all steel head type present since the
thirteenth century.
In contrast to this type, there are illustrations in the cloister library in Engelberg,
Switzerland, in Codex 339, that dates from 13801390, and that depicts the Passion of
Christ (gs. 17a, 17b). In these pictures, the soldiers carry halberds that are in a form
essentially like the one in the National Museum in Zurich, LM 13675 (g. 29) that was
excavated from the battleeld of Morgarten (1315), except that the point of the spike in
one of the Codex illustrations is in line with the shaft rather than in front of it. These
are the types of halberds that were used at the battle of Sempach in 1386, and they should
not be confused with the modern and erroneous term Sempach halberd, and which
refers to a seventeenth century halberd (see chapter 3).
In general it is true that the later the halberd style, the more the spike point moves
back in relation to the shaft; however, variations and exceptions do occur. The woodcut
depicting scenes from of Dorneck, the decisive battle of the Swabian War in 1499, clearly
shows halberds whose spike points are in front of the axis of the pole.
25
They had either
survived from earlier times and were favored by reputation as being battle-worthy, or,
as was more likely, the earlier type continued being constructed contemporaneously with
more advanced or developed forms whose spike points were in line with (and some-
times behind) the shaft axis. These types can be seen in a partial view of the Swiss force
in g. 18. This large colored woodcut, printed from two blocks and vertically joined in
the center; was created by an unknown Swiss artist who depicts the merciless rout of the
Burgundian and German forces of Maximilian I in 1499, at the castle of Dorneck. The
Burgundians, marked by an X on their clothing and armor symbolizing the cross of St.
Andrew, are being hacked, speared, and decapitated by the halberd-wielding Swiss foot
soldiers, marked by the cross of St. George on their clothes.
The various gures reproduced here (gs. 19, 20, 21, 22) show the techniques of use
of the halberds, such as thrusting with the spike and, huge overhead swings using the
23
The basilard is a dagger, popular in both fteenth and sixteenth-century Switzerland and Germany.
24
Bchtiger, F., Bemerkungen zum Widersacher des Eidgenossen von 1529, Zeitschrift fr Schweizerische Archologie
und Kunstgeschichte, 1980 vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 252259.
25
Dorneck 1499, Anonymous colored woodcutKupferstichkabinet, Kunstmuseum, Basel.
26 chapter two
halberds 27
Fig. 16. Swiss warrior carrying a halberd with a ( presumably) sharpened extension of the shaft above the
blade and resembling that of gs. 5 and 15. Mid 16th century Swiss chronicle of Johan Stumpf. It is prob-
able that the woodcut itself is from a slightly earlier period, that is, early 16th century, but the halberd itself
is of 15th century manufacture. Courtesy of Karl Mohler, Basel.
Fig. 15. Early halberd blade resembling that in the foreground of the St. Lambert Panel in Graz (g. 5) and
mounted on a new shaft. Note that the St. Lambert halberds shaft extends above the upper eye and is sharp-
ened to a point, that is, into a wooden spike. Private collection.
28 chapter two
Figs. 17a and b. Two representations from the Passion in Codex 339 Mystisches Traktat zum Leiden Christi,
Luzern, 1396, in the library of the Benedictine Cloister in Engelberg, Switzerland. The halberd in the door-
way of the building in 17b is a pure Sempach form; the one in the right of 17a is described in the text
as the capped form with the spike in line with the shaft. Courtesy of the library of the Cloister.
halberds 29
blade (gs. 19, 20), as well as sideward swings of the weapon (gs. 21, 22). It is again
noteworthy that the weapons used were more than one hundred years apart in style. The
earlier types were only slightly later than Morgarten (gs. 21, 22) and were used beside
1499 types (gs. 19, 20) which were manufactured without great change during the lat-
ter half of the fteenth century and in the rst quarter of the sixteenth century. Judging
from the remaining details in the woodcut, especially the arms and armor worn, the illus-
tration is in all likelihood created close to 1499.
26
There is no doubt that there is an evo-
lution of the form of the halberd in both warfare and civil defense, but noting the example
of the above woodcut of 1499, this evolution is anything but linear.
There is, in a Bohemian panel painting of the second half of the 13th century, a type
of halberd diering from the rapidly developing Swiss models. A typical example is seen
in the hands of a soldier in the panel painting of the resurrection of Christ by the Master
of the Tebonsk Altar, formerly in the National Gallery in Prague and now in the Cloister
of St. Agnes in that city. It resembles somewhat the type seen in the St. Lambert panel
(g. 5) but is more slender. The eyes are slightly further from the back of the blade, which
has an inferior point usually indented on the back side and slightly shorter than the supe-
rior point of the bladewhich is questionably useful for thrusting. It bears, therefore, a
remote resemblance to the halberds in gs. 15 and 16. There can be one or two small
beaks ( pointed straight back) welded to the eyes, as well as a spear-like metal point cap-
ping the shaft, the latter being of the usual length.
An early but unusually formed halberd is pictured in the hands of the soldier-guard of
the tomb in a Bohemian Resurrection panel painting by the Hohenfurther Master, of ca.
1350. This halberd shows the presence of a cylindrical cap-spike curved backwards at the
tip to which a blade is solidly attached without eyes; it has a slightly convex cutting edge,
not unlike the primitive one in the St. Lambert panel. The curved spike, fused eyes, and
extremely attenuated blade points are probably the idiosyncratic depiction by this artist.
27
By contrast, an early halberd is depicted in Martin Schongauers engraved Passion of about
1480 in the Christ Taken scene in the hands of a fully armored man wearing a visored
hounskull ( pig-faced basinet) of about 1400. The halberd, of approximately the same date
(g. 23), is fastened to its shaft by eyes and has a large slightly forward-curved spike,
retaining nonetheless its thrusting function. Although only one such surviving halberd has
been identied (it is located in the castle of Chillon), near Lausanne, Switzerland, Schongauers
acute sense of detail and accurate depictions lead one to believe that this form existed in
somewhat larger numbers at that time.
These details also demonstrate that a man of means might have kept himself in the lat-
est style of arms and armor, but that a common soldier certainly could not aord to do
26
Breastplates are two piece Gothic; these are not made after 1500. Helmets, when worn, are visored
German sallets (Fig. 11) and swords have both wheel-pommels with S shaped quillons (Fig. 9) as well as vase
shaped pommels, which are beginning to replace the wheel-pommel by 1450 (Fig. 7). It should be noted here
that, especially in this period of time, that artists, whether or not they were actual witnesses of a scene or
event would depict it using the latest in style, arms, architecture, etc. The rule is not absolute, but very use-
ful in dating a work of art. In this case, the fact that various types of weapons and armor are shown prob-
ably indicates that the artist was an actual witness. It was not uncommon, in fact, to nd artist-soldiers; well
known ones include Niklaus Manuel Deutsch and Urs Graf.
27
What justies calling this weapon a halberd is the fact that a simple axe would not have a spike; and a
pollaxe, which may have a short spike, would not have as long a shaft, and would not be found in the hands
of a common soldier acting as a guard in the fourteenth century. The pollaxe is found mainly in the fteenth
and early sixteenth centuries, and was an elaborate and expensive weapon, used mainly by the nobility. (See
chapter 15).
30 chapter two
Fig. 23. Martin Schongauer, Christ Taken from the engraved passion, ca. 1480. Note the non-contemporary
halberd shafted by eyes and the slightly forward curved spike. Courtesy Vassar College.
so and could count himself most fortunate to possess armor of, in this instance, some sixty
years of age. The halberd, a far less expensive item to acquire, was therefore more a mat-
ter of personal choice for the foot soldier (halberds were not used by mounted warriors).
This particular early weapon, as depicted by Schongauer, although antiquated in his
day, was just as functional as the later halberd forms of 14601480. The peasant foot-
soldier or landsknecht, once having acquired a ghting arm as required by the muster;
the repair or replacement of the weapon, damaged or lost in military use, was the respon-
sibility of the army command, not the soldier.
Some of the reasons given for the rise in the success of the early halberd as a weapon
of the infantry were the Reichsfreiheit of the non-titled, which gave them the freedom to
bear arms. Propositions for the development of halberds from earlier weapons are given,
as almost no written, pictorial or other surviving evidence is known to exist of the 12th-
and early 13th-centuries, when this evolution took place. Descriptions of its deadliness in
the ancient literature which recounted the fear it evoked in its victims, and contemporary
depictions of them in use, now lead us to discuss the ner details of the physical weapon
from the early to the late forms by studying the extant examples themselves.
halberds 31
CHAPTER THREE
EXTANT EXAMPLES OF HALBERDS
The following is an attempt to list the features of the design and structure of halberds,
focusing on the evolution of the manufacture itself and recognizing again that all through-
out this period of time, older and outdated halberds were in active use side by side with
newer and developing forms. This chapter is based primarily, although not solely, on the
study of surviving halberds rather than pictorial evidence. The latter, although immensely
helpful in general, does not provide ne detail the way an actual weapon does. If one can
imagine the diculty encountered by art historians in arranging in chronological order
solely by stylistic criteria, the undated prints of an artist such as Albrecht Drer or
Rembrandt van Rijn for example, then it becomes obvious that trying to arrange halberds
in chronological order can also be a dicult matter. The variables here include: dierent
smiths (dozens judging from the stamped marks), dierent locations of manufacture (regional
or national), preferences of styles, (that is, the persistence of an older style because of per-
sonal experience), failed experiments, and the degree of exposure a given style has in
conicts, which in turn can introduce a style to a new region. It is, furthermore, not pos-
sible to know which important forms in the course of such a development were destroyed
during those developmental years and the metal reused to make more recent or advanced
forms. Nonetheless, judging by surviving examples and illustrations of those times, a cer-
tain line of evolution (and involution) took shape over centuries.
As in human evolution, it is dicult to state specically when proto-halberds yielded to
early examples of the complete weapon. Notwithstanding the possibility of a missing link,
some of the earliest ground nds that merit being called halberds, are present in the col-
lection of the Historical Museum of Basel, the Landesmuseum in Zrich and in the
Historical Museum of Bern. The Zurich blades were used to illustrate the earliest phases
of the development of halberds in the 1939 article by Gessler
1
and later again by Schneider.
2
These weapons are typically long, thin, faintly crescent shaped, and have a convex cut-
ting edge. The rst ( pictured at the left on p. 149, g. 18, in Gesslers article, and repro-
duced here as g. 24) rises to a point which is not yet demarcated as a spike and has a
questionable thrusting function: the vector of forces of such a thrust would put great stress
on the lower eye, tending to move it forward. It thus diers in this respect from all sub-
sequent halberds. The lower end of the blade is pulled-in (narrow) and has a thin ring-
like eye welded onto it. A second eye is present on the mid portion of the blade back
and appears somewhat stronger. The upper eye has a smaller diameter than the lower
one. An almost identical blade is present in Basel (No. 1873.24, g. 25) in relatively good
condition. The rear edge of this blade, beginning at the tip, is sharpened down to and
including the section between the eyes. A very similar halberd blade, mounted on a mod-
ern shaft, is in the collection of the Historical Museum of Bern
3
(g. 10); it diers only
1
Gessler, E.A., Das Aufkommen der Halbarte.
2
Schneider, H., Gedanken zur Halbarte aus Hnenberg, Helvetia Archaeologica, Schwabe & Co., Basel.
3
It is pictured and described in the 1945 Copenhagen monograph by Martin Ellehauge, entitled The
Glaive. He dates it, as does the author, to the thirteenth century.
in that it possesses a small straight triangular beak welded on to the rear of the upper
eye. Traditionally these three halberd blades are assigned to the last two decades of the
thirteenth century, but as can be seen in g. 11, in a German Psalter which shows a very
similar halberd on a shaft approximately 2 meters long and is dated to the earlier part
of the thirteenth century, this form is already present some half century earlier.
Reference should be made to an illustration not reproduced here, in order to point out
how variably in a given period of time the spread of a new weapon form occurs. The
Scrovegni Chapel in Padua contains one of the great masterpieces of the early fourteenth
century: the fresco cycles by Giotto of 1305. In the Betrayal and Arrest scene, two sta
weapons are present (left and right) resembling early halberds such as the rst three
described above. The weapons dier only from these three in one respect; the lowest por-
tion of the blade is attached to the pole only by a nail-like extension, which pierced the
shaft and was probably bent over on the other side. This shows that this halberd-form
of manufacture existed in Italy by 1305, but there is not evidence that it was further devel-
oped or used there at this time, nor really until well over a century later. In fact the hal-
berd appears never to have been used in great numbers in battles in Italy as it was in
the North, but made a transition via the scorpion form, which was indeed a powerful
weapon of the late fteenth and early sixteenth centuries, to a decorative guard or parade
weapon in that country later in that century.
What may also be signicant about this illustration is the observation that the weapon
on the left as well as on the right has a lower nailed fastening like in a guisarme (see
chapter 14). This may in fact distinguish them from a true halberd. This type of a lower
fastening may have just preceded the establishment of the lower eye of halberds and may
have been a transitional form between the Danish great axes and the thirteenth century
halberd blades excavated. If so, the transition must have occurred earlier than ca. 1230
(see g. 11) because shortly after that time the earliest true halberd forms are already
shown in illustrations. Also, this example points out another vexing problem, that of seman-
tics or nomenclature. Troso in his book, citing the illustration above calls the weapon on
the left a Swiss voulge, and the one on the right, a bardiche.
4
Borg, writing a very enlight-
ened article on Gisarmes and Great Axes calls the Giotto weapon an axe, probably
Danish, but concludes that these elongated axe-like weapons were soon called gisarmes
(guisarmes).
5
Very similar weapons are pictured in the fresco cycle by Barna of Siena in
the Collegiate Church in San Gimigniano, on the second arcade panel entitled the Betrayal
and Arrest, said to have been executed towards the middle of the fourteenth century.
Furthermore, three other extant weapons can be included in a catalog of the earliest
halberds. Halberd no. 2 in Gesslers g. 13 (g. 26) is no longer convex and saber-like.
It has a long, thin, rectangular blade, eyes similar to the previous one but clearly shows
a slight angulation of the blade backwards above the level of the upper eye, a faint indi-
cation of a spike and is certainly functional as a thrusting weapon. A similar but slightly
later halberd appeared as lot no. 1 in a 1959 Galerie Fischer (Lucerne) sale catalog.
6
It
shows a long narrow blade with a vertical measurement 4 to 5 times its width, and it
narrows again towards the base. The superior end sweeps back into the relatively long
at spike with a minimal concavity. No beak is present. These ve weapons described in
4
Troso, M., ibid.
5
Borg, A., Gisarmes and Great Axes, Journal of the Arms and Armor Society, vol. 8, 197476, pp. 337342.
6
Galerie Fischer, Luzern, Waenauktion Frhe Schweizer Waen, Sammlung Boissonas, November 25, 1959 (Katalog
136).
34 chapter three
Fig. 25. This 13th century halberd in Basel (inv. no. 1873.24, neg. no. 12375) measures 47 cm. in length and
has a greatest width of 6.5 cm. It is almost identical to the rst halberd in g. 24, including the triangular
top eye. Courtesy of the Historisches Museum, Basel.
extant examples of halberds 35
Fig. 24. Early halberds in the Landesmuseum, Zurich. From an illustration in the 1928 article by E.A. Gessler
on the development of the halberd. The individual blades are discussed in the text, and numbered left to
right.
Fig. 27. Halberd #3 in g. 24. It is the rst to show a real indent between the blade and the spike. The
length is 43 cm., the spike is 15 cm., and its weight is 960 g. It was found amongst the vine roots in
Cormondrche near Neuchtel. Courtesy of the Landesmuseum, Zurich, inv. no. LM6345.
36 chapter three
Fig. 26. Halberd #2 in g. 24, late 13th century, found near Rorbas, Canton Zurich. It measures 42 cm. in
length and has a greatest width of 7 cm. The upper eye is almost completely broken o. Note that the blade
back is now straight and useful for thrusting. Courtesy of the Landesmuseum, Zurich, inv. no. 4327.
the last two paragraphs precede the Morgarten types that follow; they are certainly thir-
teenth century arms.
The third halberd in Gesslers g. 13 (g. 27) is slightly later. Although similar to the
preceding two it shows a clear cut indentation of the cutting edge of the blade above the
upper eye demarcating the at short spike with a low central ridge, both edges of which
are sharp. The blade is heavier, more solid and rectangular. The bottom edge has a very
slight downward slant. The eyes are stronger, of larger and equal diameters and thicker
vertically. Its date is probably around 1300.
The fourth weapon in Gesslers g. 13 (g. 27) is very likely a modern copy.
7
Fig. 28 is of a groundnd mounted on a new pole in the collection of the Historical
Museum of Berne; it is slightly later but very similar to the halberd in g. 27, and appears
to be the immediate predecessor of the fth halberd in Gesslers g. 13 (g. 29). This last
was found in the 1860s buried in the stump of a tree, which was being removed from
the soil very near the memorial on the battleeld of Morgarten (1315), between it and
the lake of Aegeri. Although it appears massive and short, this is only because the spike
tip has broken o; it must have been originally at least 4 cm. longer. The authors recon-
struction is depicted in g. 30. The base of the blade was missing a piece when originally
found, as well as a small fragment removed in modern times for metallurgic analysis.
The next six halberds pictured, including one already described (g. 24, no. 5, and gs.
19, 21, 22, 23, 25) are classic for the forms following the battle of Morgarten (1315) to
the end of the fourteenth century and are characterized by a slightly longer blade, longer
tubular eyes that are closer together and a straight, slightly convex, or most frequently
concave sweep from the top of the blade to the tip of the at broad spike. A good example
is shown in g. 31, recovered from the river Broye in Switzerland, and showing the massive
lower eye as well as the emerging quadrangular spike tip. Another river nd, seen in g. 32
shows yet more elongation of the blade, and dates to about the mid-14th century. It begins
to resemble the typical halberd used at the battle of Sempach (1386). Any or all these
halberds might have had a small beak arising from around the shaft between the eyes, or
from the upper eye (gs. 35, 36).
An excavated halberd blade from the last quarter of the fourteenth century is present
in the historical museum of the town of Murten (Morat in French), the site of the battle
in 1476 marking the second major defeat of Charles the Bold on Swiss soil. It diers from
the Morgarten halberd of 1315, in that the blade is slightly longer, just as is the halberd
blade in g. 32, and also shows a signicant change in the spike, which is at and sharp-
ened in the front, swelling slightly towards the rear, and forming a primitive quadran-
gular (actually triangular) thickening near the tip. This thickening became more pronounced
with time, and coexisted with the at spike throughout most of the fteenth century. But
by the sixteenth century, the spike points were almost universally quadrangular, except for
the at sword-like spikes seen mostly in Germany. The spike point in the Murten blade
and other halberds of the fourteenth century was still in front of the shaft line.
7
The word copy is used here in a neutral sense, meaning simply that the piece is made to look like an
older piece (style) i.e. is not original. What is not implied in using the word copy, is whether the piece was
meant to deceive the modern eye, or merely represent the form of an older original piece. Copies without
intent to deceive (deceive = fake) usually can be distinguished by means of a clear (modern) makers mark or
some identifying icon stamped into it. Dr Matthias Senn, curator of Arms and Armor in the Landesmuseum
in Zurich agrees with the interpretation of this weapon as a copy.
extant examples of halberds 37
Fig. 29. Halberd blade with a broken spike probably
used at the battle of Morgarten in 1315 and excavated
there in the 1860s. Note how compact and massive
the weapon is. Courtesy of the Landesmuseum, Zurich,
inv. no. 13153.
38 chapter three
Fig. 28. Halberd of about 130020, very similar to
the one in g. 27. Note that both edges of the spike
are sharpened as well as the rear blade edge between
the eyes. Courtesy of the Historisches Museum Bern,
inv. no. 3463.
extant examples of halberds 39
Fig. 31. Halberd blade closely following the Morgarten
blade of g. 29 of ca. 1330, (?). Note the very long
lower eye. Ex. collection Charles Boissonnas, found in
the river Broye in the 19th century. Photo courtesy
of Landesmuseum, Zurich.
Fig. 30. Reconstructed drawing of the halberd in
g. 29, Landesmuseum, Zurich, inv. no. 13153.
40 chapter three
Fig. 33. Halberd blade of the middle of the 14th cen-
tury, found in 1985 in 5 meters (16 ft.) of water in
the Greifensee (Switzerland) near the shore. Two small
pieces of the sta were trapped in the eyes but were
lost during the process of conservation. It measures
37 cm. in length; the spike is 14.2 cm. and its weight
578 g. Courtesy of the Landesmuseum, Zurich, inv.
no. KZ 11476.
Fig. 32. Halberd blade on a new pole somewhat after
the one in g. 31 (ca. 1350?). It is larger and more
slender. The blade is slightly drawn in at the base.
Ex collection Charles Boissonnas. Found in the river
Thile in the 19th century. Photo courtesy of the
Landesmuseum Zurich.
Between the time of the battle of Morgarten and the end of the century, the method
of construction and nishing of the early halberds with two rear shaft eyes appears to
have varied greatly. Careful examination of the original ground- and water-nds in the
Landesmuseum in Zrich (LM KZ 11476, 6345, 13153, 3453, g. 24), and the weapon
in g. 37, reveals in some, a faint longitudinal indentation in the rear edge of the blade,
indicating that the blade consists of either two pieces of iron, hammer welded, or a single
piece folded on itself at the cutting edge and then welded together (g. 44). The actual
cutting edge leading up to the spike tip and down the back side to the upper eye could
have been made of hardened high carbon content steel and welded onto a central por-
tion of the blade of softer iron with a technique allowing the hardened qualities of the
steel to persist. In these specimens the front or rear vertical joint lines are of course, not
visible.
Unlike the method of construction proposed in Schneiders article of 1983,
8
the eyes on
these early blades are not always separate pieces of metal welded over the rear edge of
the blade but were sometimes integral with the blade before the welding as two rectan-
gular straps which are then bent around a mandrel to conform to the diameter of the
shaft and then hammer welded on one side of the blade (gs. 29, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42).
In the well-preserved halberd in the Landesmuseum of Zurich, (KZ 11476, g. 33), a
water-nd from the Greifensee in Switzerland, these weld marks are especially clear through
the slight corrosion that has occurred. The much longer lower eye has a great overlap
with the blade body and the weld edge is only a short distance from the front cutting
edge (approximately 1.5 cm.). The upper eye is welded onto the blade very close to the
rear cutting edge, again only 1.5 cm. from the cutting edge. The same technique is seen
in the construction of DEP 3453 in the Landesmuseum of Zurich, found during the exca-
vation of the castle of Hnenberg in 1945 (g. 34). This halberd shows a central ridge
down the entire length of the spike to the upper eye.
Also in contrast to Schneiders diagram in his article, most blades, as previously men-
tioned, were constructed out of two leaves or a folded one (gs. 42, 44). Some eyes were,
as proposed by Schneider, a separate strap welded to the blade on both sides (g. 37 top
eye and g. 43). One of these, having come apart, is pictured in g. 36. Finally, these
early types can be distinguished by the fact that the rear edge of the spike, which is invari-
ably located just in front of the shaft, was sharpened just like the front edge. This area
of sharpening is quite wide (approximately 1 cm.) and is angled, giving the cross section
of the spike a at hexagonal appearance. Between the middle of the fourteenth century
and the middle of the fteenth, the spike became somewhat longer and thinner, allowing
the front and rear sharpened edges to meet in the middle, thus forming a quadrangular
cross section instead of a hexagonal one. The halberd in g. 35 has a curved rear langet,
as well as the remnants of an anterior one. Both langets appear to have been welded on.
This halberd is from approximately 1390; it shows the spike tip to have a faint swelling
creating a quadrangular cross section. The rear edge of the spike, however, was still sharp-
ened down to the upper eye.
A very similar halberd in the collection of the Royal Armouries in Leeds gives some
insight into the techniques of manufacture. It has a long slender beak welded on to the
upper eye, which is in itself somewhat crudely welded to the rear edge of the blade.
The spike which is slightly shorter than the one in g. 35, appears to be sharpened down
8
Schneider, H., ibid.
extant examples of halberds 41
Fig. 35. Halberd blade on a replacement sta and
with a separate beak, the latter showing the weld mark.
End of the 14th century. The thick curved dorsal langet
appears at about this time (see also g. 37), the ante-
rior one is sometimes a later addition. What is novel
in this weapon is that the spike point is in line with
the shaft because of its slight backward lean. Courtesy
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.35.
42 chapter three
Fig. 34. Halberd blade found in the excavation of the
castle of Hnenberg, Canton Zug in 1945. Length
39.5 cm., weight 590 g. Second third of the 14th cen-
tury. Displayed in the Landesmuseum, Zurich, inv.
no. Dep. 3453. Courtesy of the Landesmuseum Zurich.
Fig. 37. Halberd of ca. 1400 with a long narrow blade
and an angled convexity leading to the spike which
also leans backwards slightly so that the point as in
g. 35 is in line with the shaft. The spike tip is clearly
reinforced and the last 3.5 cm. are quadrangular. The
blade measures 43.8 cm. in length. Only a short rear
langet is present. It has possibly the oldest surviving
shaft, and one of the last of a round diameter, which
measures 181 cm. in length and has a diameter of
3.8 cm. just below the langet. The shaft between the
eyes measures 3.1 cm. in diameter and appears to be
made of a soft wood such as pine. It is also among
the last halberds before the appearance of sockets, but
as shown throughout this book, such types were prob-
ably made and used until late in the 15th century and
are shown in illustrations of ca. 1500 alongside later
forms. Private collection.
extant examples of halberds 43
Fig. 36. Halberd blade on a new sta with distinct
and partially dehiscent weld marks. A posterior rounded
langet is present as well as a small beak as part of
the upper eye. Note the slight forward curve of the
beak edge of the at spike (vaguely like g. 23). This
is one of the last halberds before the change in haft-
ing from eyes to a socket. Courtesy of the Historisches
Museum, Bern.
Fig. 39. Two photographs of the lower eye of the early Basel halberd in g. 25. The retouched one shows
that there is a single weld of a strap bent as in g. 38. The upper (triangular) eye is welded on both sides.
44 chapter three
Fig. 38. Schematic diagram illustrating the method of creating the eyes on a 14th century halberd. A man-
drel would have been inserted during the nal bending of the eye and during the hammer welding process.
The Morgarten blade in Zurich (g. 29) was created in this way. Hardened steel might have subsequently
been welded on the cutting edges of the blade, the spike point and the beak, if there was one.
extant examples of halberds 45
Fig. 40. Detail of the hammer weld of the left side of
the upper eye of the Morgarten halberd in Zurich
(g. 29). The eye is not welded on the right side, indi-
cating that it is a strap bent as in g. 38.
Fig. 41. Another view of a strap with a weld on the
right side of the blade. It is similar in appearance to
the one in g. 39, but is of a later date.
Fig. 43. A 14th century halberd with a lower eye
welded on both sides, showing early dehiscence.
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no.
14.25.35.
46 chapter three
Fig. 42. Detail of the weld on the bottom eye of the
halberd in g. 37, which represents a fusion of the
two blade halves (see the diagram in g. 38).
extant examples of halberds 47
Fig. 44. The two blade halves, welded together over the
top eye. Halberd in g. 37, ca. 1400. Private collection.
Fig. 45. Schematic diagram of the construction of the
halberd in g. 37.
the rear edge of the blade, which carries a smiths mark on both sides and is completely
at in cross section. It is nevertheless from the same period as the former halberd dated
ca. 1400. The halberd of g. 37 has a short but clear quadrangular spike at its tip 3.5 cm.
in length, as well as a single curved dorsal langet. This early halberd on its original shaft
has yet another method of construction diering from that previously described in four-
teenth century halberds. The blade is composed of a double leaf, connected in the back
by a wide strap that became the lower eye when it was bent around a mandrel. Also it
has a wide downward extension that becomes a dorsal langet. The upper eye is a sepa-
rate strap, hammer-welded on.
9
Although the reconstructed pattern before welding looks
somewhat strange and complex (see the diagram in g. 45), no other explanation is pos-
sible, since welded seams are not present between the lower eyes and the blade and all
metal parts (aside of the spike tip) are of nearly equal thickness (g. 42). The cutting edge
of the blade does not have a hardened steel edge welded onto it; it reveals, however, a
faint joint line in the front, almost at the very edge where the leaves are joined. In some
of the early halberds such as the Morgarten type, the cutting edge does appear to be
welded on, as has been previously described. Metallographic studies
10
performed on a six-
teenth century halberd from the Historical Museum in Bern show the lightly etched sur-
face of a hammer-weld to consist of a joint between a soft iron, relatively free of carbon,
and a much harder mix of pearlite-ferrite steel.
11
On occasion, within the working life of these weapons, a hammer-welded seam between
the eye and the blade would open. Repairs could be made by oven-brazing, which con-
sisted of lling the open seams with powdered or granular lings of brass, and heating in
an oven or furnace.
12
The powder melted into the seam much as modern solder would,
using a point/heat source. The weld was achieved at lower temperatures than with ham-
mer welding, which probably served to protect the tempered steel edges, should they be
present (g. 46).
Following the earliest types from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as represented
by groundnds, in general, the halberd shows a rectangular box-like blade a little more
than twice as high as wide. The superior end sweeps backward in a concave form into a
relatively short spike, originally at, but soon showing a central ridge and again later a
quadrangular reinforcement of the tip in the fteenth century (gs. 4752).
Almost invariably the lower eye is larger than the upper, (if they are not equal) and
the pole is trimmed accordingly. Surviving original poles of this period are exceedingly
rare. One original shaft is found on the halberd in g. 37 and shows that tting the shaft
to the diering diameter eyes is accomplished not as in many modern restorations by
forming a conical end to the shaft between the eyes (gs. 10 and 28), but by keeping a
cylindrical shape of two diameters throughout. The signicance of this fact is that if the
9
The technique of hammer welding was a delicate procedure and had to be performed at temperatures
of between 1300 and 1400 degrees centigrade at which time rapid hammer blows forced the pieces being
supported on an anvil together. The slag inherent in the steel melted at these temperatures and acted as a
ux preventing oxidation from interfering with the bond. When thus properly performed the bond was a
strong and stable one. From Smith, R.D., Brown, R.R. Bombards-Mons Meg and her Sisters, Royal Armouries
Monograph 1, 1989, p. viii.
10
Rupp, A., Metallographische Untersuchung von Halbarten des Historischen Museums Bern zur Ermittlung Unterschiedlicher
Herstellungsverfahren und Eisenqualitten, in the Sonderdruck aus dem Jahrbuch des Bernischen Historischen
Museums 197980, pp. 279284.
11
Using the Vickers Pyramid Hardness scale. The gures indicate the Kg. pressure per sq. mm. necessary
to create a measured indentation with a diamond point.
12
Personal communication by Robert Carroll, armorer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
48 chapter three
Fig. 48. 15th century halberd (perhaps middle) showing
the rather rare at spike with the axis behind the shaft
line. The mandrel used to form the socket was inserted
fully to the top of the blade. The nished halberd
shows therefore a small hole on the upper blade edge.
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no.
52.208.8.
extant examples of halberds 49
Fig. 47. Corroded halberd found in 1908 on the shore
of the Rhine near Rheinfelden, 13901400. The blade
is double-leafed (see g. 44); it has the earliest socket
and ange. Courtesy of the Historisches Museum,
Basel, inv. no. 1910.93. Negative no. 12373.
Fig. 50. A mid-15th century halberd. Note the elon-
gate blade approximately twice as high as wide. Courtesy
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 42.50.18.
50 chapter three
Fig. 49. Halberd, probably from the third quarter of
the 15th century, showing large proportions and mass.
An identical one is present in the Museum Altes
Zeughaus, Solothurn. Courtesy of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, inv. no. 42.50.17.
Fig. 52. Halberd of last quarter of 15th century. Note the pronounced concavity of the upper and lower blade
edges and the beginning slant of the cutting edge. This line of development eventually leads to the 16th cen-
tury triangular forms. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.74.
extant examples of halberds 51
Fig. 51. On the left: detail of the top mandrel opening, in this case between the spike base and the top of
the beak, as in g. 52. Visible in the photo on the right are the top of the wooden shaft and the weld mark
between the hardened point of the beak and the beak body. Private collection.
weapon had been tted with the typical primitive beak on a cylindrical shaft, the stabil-
ity and strength of the beak upon delivering a strong blow would have been vastly increased
as opposed to that of a weapon where a conical shaft prompted an upward displacement
encouraged by any levered force. Moreover, many surviving beaks of this period are on
eyes with cylindrical internal diameters. At least two exceptions to this rule are readily
found. They are in the thirteenth century Basel halberd in g. 25, discovered in Alsace,
in which the upper eye has a triangular shape (see g. 39) and in the almost identical
Zurich blade, found in the Rhine near Basel, (the rst halberd in g. 24, which illustra-
tion was used for the rst time by Gessler in his 1928 article).
13
The only cogent reason
for creating this shape appears to be to prevent rotation of the beak, as well as of course,
the rotation of the whole shaft in the halberd head.
The beak when it rst appeared in the late thirteenth century was independently forged,
and was fastened onto the wooden shaft between the eyes of the blade. This construction
is clearly seen in g. 18 and 21 (Dorneck 1499), as well as in the fourteenth century hal-
berd in g. 35. It is slender, long, slightly curved and does not appear capable of resist-
ing great force. Soon the eye of the beak was elongated vertically to ll more of the space
between the blade eyes. Already in the fourteenth century (g. 21) and in one instance in
the thirteenth century (g. 10), the independent beak was replaced with one welded to
the upper eye, rst of the same shape as the older ones but soon of more massive vertical
dimension. Not all halberds possessed beaks. They do not appear to be a regular feature
until the fteenth century.
The lower portion of the beak shows a downward extension, called the ange, which
appears at the very end of the fourteenth century and is in reality the rear edge of the
blade, which could be expressed weakly or strongly, both because of the location and
angle of the shaft socket and because of its use as a counterweight for the blade and also
later as a matrix for decorative purposes (g. 47). Curved metal reinforcing plates were
occasionally nailed to the smaller diameter shaft between the eyes to strengthen that por-
tion of the shaft, to protect it from a cutting injury and at the same time to prevent slip-
page of the halberd eyes over the shaft. This last was also accomplished by creating a
rear langet descending from the lower eye and nailed to the back of the shaft. The langet
initially had a length of approximately 9 to 18 inches and was fastened with 1 to 3 nails
to the almost universally round shaft. As opposed to the later long, thin, and at langets,
these early types were curved to t tightly against the round shaft. Somewhere in the tran-
sition of the fourteenth to the fteenth centuries, the upper eye was occasionally closed
on top, capping the shaft (g. 17).
The axis of the spike point on fourteenth century halberds was generally forward of the
shaft, but with capping of the shaft after 1400; the placement is further back to be in line
with it. Occasionally, in the fteenth century, the spike axis was even behind the shaft
but this is rare (g. 48). On some halberds of the early fteenth century, there is no upper
eye; instead, the lower eye has been elongated to form a cylinder of approximately 5 to
6 inches in length and has a rear langet. Half the blade, the spike, and beak rise over
this cylinder. A slightly later halberd is similar, but shows the signicant step of trans-
forming the function of the eye in holding the shaft to a more centrally placed socket,
built into the blade to hold the shaft. The technique of forming this socket is discussed
below. With this step, the greater part of the mass of the halberd was now located on
13
Gessler, E.A., Das Aufkommen der Halbarte von ihrer Frhzeit bis zum Ende des 14. Jahrhundert, Jubilumsschrift
von Dr. Robert Durrer, Stans, 1928.
52 chapter three
either side of the shaftpattern that persisted through all subsequent forms of the hal-
berd and even through its decline in the seventeenth century.
A ne group in the collection of the Landesmuseum in Zurich is composed of four early
halberds that serve to show the transition from eye hafting to socket hafting. The sketches
in g. 54, based on these examples, illustrate this change. The Basel groundnd in g. 47
of ca. 1400 is very similar to the last of these four and appears to be the earliest sur-
viving example of a shaft socket. It is located in the storage facilities of the Historical
Museum in Basel, number 1910.93. The lower portion of the socket has rusted away,
revealing a small remnant of the original shaft. In contrast to the well formed contour of
later sockets, this one is merely a swelling over the pole caused by rough hammer weld-
ing over a mandrel; nevertheless, a slight backward tilt is already present in the shape of
the socket. A poorly demarcated long ange was thus formed behind the shaft. The hal-
berd itself is a long rectangle, its spike is at, triangular and integral with the blade and
its point is slightly behind the shaft axis. The partial destruction of this halberd by cor-
rosion allows us to thoroughly analyze its construction technique. The weapon consists of
two leaves of steel, hammer-welded together over a mandrel as stated before. Whereas the
right blade leaf is completely intact, the left, which might have been a little thinner orig-
inally than the right, has corroded away as shown in the sketch in g. 53. By following
the remaining margins one can see that each leaf was the complete contour of the blade
except that the beak is entirely from the left leaf. As opposed to most other halberds, the
langets appear to be integral with the blade leaves, but this is not certain.
The poles or shafts of the halberds under discussion gradually make the transition from
round to square (or octagonal) cross section as an aid to maintaining a directional blow
both during the swing and contact phase. Most weapons produced after the mid-fteenth
century have shafts of square or rectangular cross section, although occasional weapons
are found whose shafts have oval cross sections. After the transition from eye hafting to
socket hafting, the form tends to be square, which coincides also with the appearance of
lateral langets.
In the fteenth and early sixteenth century the halberd in northern Europe reached the
zenith of its use and many diering forms co-existed at this time. After the middle of the
sixteenth century, large numbers of halberds were being used, and military strategy was
being changed in Germany. Also France, Burgundy, Italy and Spain began to use hal-
berds but to a much lesser extent; the weapon did not achieve great popularity in those
countries. Halberds were, in the era of the fteenth century Burgundian wars; not a com-
mon weapon in the army of Charles the Bold, except in the hands of mercenaries. In
France in 1448, however, Charles VII began to change the composition of the standing
French army in favor of the infantryman, recognizing the economic value of this move as
opposed to the far more expensive option of equipping mounted knights. Louis XI, some
thirty years later, having been duly impressed with the fate of Charles the Bold in the
Burgundian wars against the Swiss, replaced some of his archery units with mercenaries,
both Swiss and German, who were equipped with halberds and other sta weapons. As
an aristocrat, Duke Charles did not believe in the importance of the foot soldier until the
very end of his life. In fact, his lasting belief in the chivalric structure of the feudal soci-
ety, which he helped to preserve and perpetuate, and his frenzied attempts to annex lands
to Burgundy while ignoring that which was becoming clear to others, contributed heavily
towards his defeat and death.
14
extant examples of halberds 53
14
The preceding discussion is based in part on Brustens LArmee Bourguingnone de 1465 a 1468, p. 90 in
Fig. 54. Sketches of four halberd blades, displayed in the Landesmuseum, Zurich,
showing from right to left, the transition from the eye-shafting method to the socket
form. The blade on the left is roughly a decade later than the Basel halberd in g.
47. (Drawings not to scale). Courtesy of the Landesmuseum, Zurich.
54 chapter three
Fig. 53. Sketch of what is possibly the earliest halberd with
a shaft socket (Historisches Museum, Basel, no. 1910.93).
The dotted lines show the edges of the corroded right leaf
of the blade as well as the welded joint line at the front
edge of the spike.
Despite its substantial worth as an infantry weapon, the halberd was most eective when
used in consort with other hafted weapons. The Swiss in spite of their successes of the
fourteenth century against the Habsburgs, had come to realize, after their defeat at the
battle of Arbedo in 1422, that the halberd could not be used alone and without the sup-
port of the longspear. Furthermore, the marked increase of the use of this last weapon
led to their continued military success for the remainder of the fteenth century, espe-
cially against the attacks of Charles the Bold, again in the Burgundian Wars.
The use of the halberd in the composition of armies of the fteenth and sixteenth cen-
turies is well documented in an excellent article by Meier.
15
According to this study the
German landsknecht adopted the halberd fully by the fourth quarter of the fteenth century,
and used it successfully, as did the Swiss, through the rst half of the sixteenth century.
The arsenal of the city of Vienna has a most remarkable halberd dating from the end
of the fteenth century, a type that is seen in only a few illustrations extant from that
period.
16
An identical halberd is present in a private Swiss collection,
17
another in the von
Kienbusch collection in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv. no. 481 in the von Kienbusch
catalog). The catalog entry for this halberd mentions the existence of three more such
weapons, probably held in private collections.
18
The Vienna example (g. 55) is well pre-
served, having been in the arsenal since the date of its manufacture. It is known in German
as a Sturmhalbarte, or Hallebarde dAssaut in French (assault halberd in both lan-
guages), and is distinguished by its large mass (weight) and dimensions, including a shaft
of ash with a diameter of close to 3 cm. The blade is a long rectangle with a slightly
convex cutting edge, and measures 32 10 cm. The spike is quadrangular but hollow-
ground and only 25 cm. long. A beak is present and shows a mark, but it has no ange.
The socket is exceptionally long, curved slightly back, and recurves slightly as it continues
into the lateral edges of the hollow-ground spike. It recurves again at the base as it joins
the langets, which measure 65 cm. and contain eight nails each. Hammer welding is evi-
dent at the socket base. The man wielding this type of weapon must have been extraor-
dinarily large and strong, and its eect was surely devastating. The sturmhalbarte was used
to defend a given area such as a town square under attack, but it appears too massive to
have been used on a moving eld of battle. There is, however, a battle scene in the
Saxon Chronicle printed in Mainz by Peter Schoeer in 1492 showing the use of hal-
berds very similar in size and shape to the sturm halberds just described, leaving open
the possibility that it might have been a combat weapon as well.
19
which he makes it clear that the vouges (i.e. halberds) he portrays are those in the Musee de la Porte de
Hal in Brussels (now the Muse de LArme), which may or may not have an association with the fteenth
century Burgundian armies, and adds that none of these are found in contemporary illustrations of the
Burgundian wars, and of the period in general. His primary sources include the chronicles of Jean de Wavrin,
Jean de Haynin, Jean de Roye, Jean de Looz, Philippe de Commines and Olivier de la Marche. Charles the
Bold believed in strong artillery (described at great length by Brusten), which he built up following the lead
of his ancestors, to be the best in Europe, but most of which was lost in the consecutive defeats he suered
in the ght against the Swiss, along with his life.
15
Meier, Jrg A., Verbreitung und Herkunft der Halbarte im alten Zurich, Zurcher Chronik, February 1972.
16
For example, The raising of Christ on the Cross, painting by Wolf Huber, 1525, Kunsthistorisches Museum,
Vienna. This type of halberd is seen on the right half of the panel.
17
Armes Anciennes des Collections Suisses, Heer, E., et al., ed. Muse Rath, Geneva, Edita, Lausanne, 1972,
p. 57, no. 261.
18
The one in footnote 17 may well be one of these.
19
The entity of the sturm halberd is here identied by its peculiar enlarged and twisted spike tip, its
massive blade, as compared to a mans head (top left center), and the shape of the blade. Interestingly; the
combatants are driven on by a trumpeter on one side and a drummer on the other.
extant examples of halberds 55
56 chapter three
Fig. 55. Sturmhalbarte from the arsenal of the city of
Vienna. The spike of this massive weapon is hollow-
ground. Its great weight required skill and strength to
manipulate. Courtesy of the Museums of the City of
Vienna, inv. no. 126011.
Fig. 56. Late 15thearly 16th century halberd with a
at sword-like spike showing a strong central rib. This
type, commonly depicted by Drer in his woodcuts
and engravings, may therefore be of German rather
than Swiss design and manufacture. Courtesy of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 25.135.7.
20
Drer, A., Crucixion, from the engraved passion, 1511, B. 13, M. 13, as well as in many other engrav-
ings and woodcuts of this period.
A large heavy rectangular form like that of the late fteenth century persists into the
sixteenth century (g. 50) and is illustrated in g. 57, a 1508 woodcut by Hans Wechtlin,
a Strassburg master, as well as in an engraving by Drer (g. 58),
20
with the vertical diam-
eter of the blade still twice its width. In the evolution of the weapon there was initially a
triangular at spike, wide at its base, but soon a quadrangular spike tip emerged, turned
so that an edge, not a at face, faced forward, and was less wide at its base, this exam-
ple is illustrated in g. 50. The large blade (20.4 10.2 cm.) is rectangular but the lower
portion is generally narrower than the top, and the cutting edge therefore is slightly drawn
in (g. 52). Beak and ange are prominent and at. One variant of this time had a con-
vex blade pulled in completely to the socket at its base. Another variant featured an almost
square blade with rounded edges, an almost straight cutting edge, a stout at spike set
well in back of the shaft axis and a relatively small straight beak. The most interesting
feature of this as well as other examples (g. 48) is the long vertical shaft socket, and the
tip open to the superior edge of the blade.
The oldest shaft sockets that were integral with the blade were tilted back towards the
beak at their tips and in some instances, such as the one cited above, remained open to
the surface at the superior edge of the beak. A photograph of this detail is seen in g.
51, with the tip of the shaft being visible at this opening. In general the shape of the
socket straightened out later in the sixteenth century and was completely vertical. The
shaft socket was formed by hammer-welding the two heated leaves of iron (the blade) over
a mandrel of cool iron, the shape of which was either curved or straight and corresponded
to that of the upper end of the wooden shaft. Although the reason for the backward tilt
of the socket tip is not clear, it can be postulated that this form served to increase the
diameter (depth) of the cutting blade at that point, which allowed it to cut more deeply
before the shaft socket stopped its penetration.
Depictions of halberds in fteenth-century illustrations show the large rectangular type
of halberd to be the most widespread, especially in the land of its birth, Switzerland.
However, certain other types were also present in signicant numbers, namely those resem-
bling the Zrich type, which more recently have been unfortunately labeled as Sempach
halberds. There is no evidence whatsoever that these weapons were extant at the time of
the battle of Sempach (1386). The Zrich-type halberds rather were manufactured largely
in the seventeenth century by smiths such as Lamprecht Koller and Hans Balthasar Erhardt,
to fulll orders to stock the city arsenals (g. 59b). These weapon-smiths appear to have
invented the form of not only the Zrich type halberds, but other types as well, each asso-
ciated with specic cities in Switzerland.
The fact that large numbers of Zurich type halberds, for instance, were ordered leaves
us with a historical mystery and a disagreement among scholars. It would have been
strange, for the city fathers to order vast numbers of halberds to stock their arsenals for
use in time of war without evidence of a workable shape and without a previous record
of use and success on the battleeld. Nevertheless, there is some evidence that this indeed
was done, as a few of the contracts between the smiths and the town councils have sur-
vived. One of these, between the master smith Claus Lerchli of Kempten, Germany and
the city government of Zurich in 1585 accepts the form of the halberds as delivered to
them, and states elsewhere that the drawing the master had provided the town was an
extant examples of halberds 57
Fig. 57. Woodcut by Hans Wechtlin (1480-after 1526): Christ Before Anna, from the series entitled The
Life of Jesus Christ, 1508. Note the halberd like those in gs. 50, 52, and 56, as well as the Hngelaschen
(hanging plates) covering the shoulders and attached to the collar of the Maximilian-style helmet. (See page
147.) Private collection.
58 chapter three
Fig. 58. Albrecht Drer: The Crucixion from the engraved Passion of 1511. Note the halberd with a at
spike on the right which appears to be more popular in Germany than in Switzerland. Private collection.
extant examples of halberds 59
Fig. 59a. A halberd in the Altes Zeughaus in Solothurn
showing signs of use and wear, and without 17th cen-
tury marks, distinguished also by a dierent smithing
technique, and consistent with a 15th century date.
Halberds like this one may have served as a model
for the 17th century types such as in g. 59b. Courtesy
of the Museum Altes Zeughaus, Solothurn.
60 chapter three
Fig. 59b. 17th century halberd by Lamprecht Koller
of Wrenlos, canton of Aargau, 166381, until fairly
recently classied mistakenly as 15th century and called
a Sempach halberd. The shafting nails are sunk in
conical holes in the langets and ground at. Private
collection.
extant examples of halberds 61
acceptable form for these halberds.
21
One could assume, however, that Lerchli as well as
the later Swiss smiths such as Koller and Erhardt might have used an older type as a
model rather than invent one. Soldiers in the fourteenth and fteenth centuries might have
had strong opinions on the subject of using unknown forms of weapons, but by the second
half of the sixteenth century, city governments decided (and provided) the weapons to be
used in case of attack.
Whether the smith invented the Zurich type halberd or based his drawing on older
battle tested halberds, specically on one type still extant in the arsenal of Solothurn is as
yet unknown. This halberd in the Arsenal of Solothurn, Switzerland, appears slightly smaller
than the seventeenth century Zurich types and has marks not associated with the sev-
enteenth century smiths previously mentioned. It has a dierent smithing technique, is also
less well preserved and shows scars of use; the shaft diameter is smaller and the wood has
an older appearance (g. 59a). It is at least possible, that it represents a true fteenth cen-
tury halberd type on which the seventeenth century design was based (g. 59b). Contrary-
wise however, these forms are neither numerous nor are they shown in contemporary
fteenth century illustrations, leaving the whole question somewhat open. One other such
weapon, however, was a part of a sale at Galerie Fischer in Lucerne in 1985.
22
It had
almost the exact proportions of the seventeenth century Zurich types, but a at broad
spike, sharpened only in the front, four long and broad langets, and a keeper (a some-
what later addition). The shaft was a replacement. The beak had a mark, resembling, but
not identical with, the Schorno mark, but denitely not that of the atelier Schmidt.
23
It
originated slightly before the year 1500, and it seems quite probable that it, or one like
it (as in Solothurn), served as a model for the huge seventeenth century series we have
just discussed. On this subject, there is considerable disagreement, and J.A. Meier rmly
believes that no such forms existed in the fteenth century.
24
Other older forms similar to those used at Morgarten (1315) were also made for the
purpose of stocking arsenals. The reader is referred to the publication of J.A. Meier cited
below clarifying the long time confusion on this subject.
25
The halberd in question, the Zurich halberd of the seventeenth century (and possi-
bly of the fteenth), is typied by a compact square blade with a slightly convex cutting
edge, short triangular massive spike, at rst at then with a low central rib and with or
without quadrangular spike tip. The shaft socket is central, in line with the spike and
straight. Relatively long langets are present, and the ange is small. The beak is a pow-
erful downward facing triangle somewhat like a nose in prole. The blade is often perfo-
rated by a cross and stamped with a mark at the base of the beak, features not seen in
fteenth and sixteenth century illustrations.
21
Meier, J.A., Stangenwaen aus Kempten fr Zrich, Rapport de lInstitut Suisse dArmes Anciennes (Grandson),
vol. 34, published under Marc A. Barblan.
22
Catalog for the weapons auction at Galerie Fischer, Lucerne, May 28, 1985, item no. 2.
23
This workshop, in Munich, produced large numbers of halberds as well as other sta weapons in imi-
tation of various types of originals, towards the end of the nineteenth century that were, for decades, thought
to be genuine. The atelier did this in response to a sudden popular demand for this type of weapon from
central European nations, more acutely aware of their historic past, and known now as the period of his-
torismus. It included some revision of their history, the worship of these formative years of their countries,
and the desire to collect of weapons and other artifacts of these periods.
24
Personal communication.
25
Meier, J.A., Sempacher HalbartenDie schweizerische Halbartenrenaissance im 17. Jahrhundert , Festschrift Hugo
Schneider, Zurich, 1982.
The end of the fteenth century marks the beginning of the nal phase of the great
popularity of the halberd, now in the hands of each side of perennial rivalry: the German
Landsknechts and the Swiss Reislaufer. Sta weapons other than the spear or pike were not
universally used in Europe. They were present, if at all, in minor quantities in the armies
levied by the French. But, beginning with the last quarter of the fteenth century and
during the rst half of the sixteenth century, mercenaries (Landsknechte) hired by Francis
I, and also led by Georg von Frundsberg for Charles V at the battle of Pavia in 1525,
certainly fought with sta weapons. They are seen on both sides in the Swabian war of
1499 (the Imperial forces of Maximilian against the Swiss) and in the battle of Novara on
the sixth of June 1513.
The armies of fteenth century Burgundy did not use sta weapons other than long
spears to any great extent, but a change occurred in the armies under Maximilian I after
he acquired the Duchy of Burgundy, rst by marriage and then by succession to Charles
the Bold, his father in law (d. 1477). Maximilian was an astute military leader and real-
ized the signicance of the successful Swiss tactics and their weapons. He began training
six or seven thousand German soldiers in the style of warfare used by the Swiss. It is
stated that it was he who coined the word Landsknecht, which is somewhat untrans-
latable but designates a freewheeling warrior moving mostly in groups, having something
less than the rank of a squire (knecht) and being mostly a free peasant or farm-hand seek-
ing his fortune as a soldier. These men had the advantage of being muscular, used to the
rigors of peasant life (doing without and enduring), and willing to quit the isolation of
the farm for a very attractive alternative; the excitement of war, women, wine and booty.
Maximilian also realized the value of grouping these Landsknechts according to the dis-
tricts they came from, thus creating a solidarity and single-mindedness of purpose. These
formidable soldiers usually stood him good stead, but there were drawbacks. The record
reveals that on occasion, they were quick to disagree with the eld commanders, wont to
do their own will, and in the case of the much-feared Swiss Reislaufer (mercenaries used
by the French), they might indeed decide to desert en masse, and at critical times.
There are small but signicant dierences between Burgundian-German-Austrian hal-
berds, weapons used by the forces of the Holy Roman Empire, and those of the Swiss
Confederation. The Swiss, who had as we have seen, developed and rened the halberd,
came to rely more and more on the importation of the halberd by beginning of the six-
teenth century. They imported their weapons principally from the Germans, who had built
up many smithies specialized in the large-scale production of such weapons as the hal-
berd. Nevertheless some production by the Swiss persisted into the seventeenth century,
but by that time, the large numbers of halberds ordered by the Swiss town-governments
were made in German shops almost exclusively.
26
The nal decoration if there was one,
and the shafting, was probably executed locally. For example, the Swiss would have cut
a St. Georges cross into the blade, whereas the Germans might have cut a long-tailed tre-
foil into the beak. In the nal years of the fteenth century and in the rst decade or so
of the sixteenth, the cross of St. Andrew, derived from the coat of arms of the Duchy of
Burgundy, would have decorated German halberds, as it was the symbol of Maximilian I.
Existing examples of these Burgundian halberds are rare. Only four are easily researched.
The rst is marked on one side of the blade with a large cross of St. Andrew inlaid in
latten; its beak is pierced with a long tailed trefoil, which is probably of Styrian manu-
26
Personal communication by J.A. Meier.
62 chapter three
facture (ca. 1500). This halberd was most probably used by the forces of Maximilian in
the Swabian war (g. 60). An illustration of these forces in action, is seen in a woodcut
panel out of the Triumphal Arch of Maximilian by the artist Wolf Huber (g. 61). The
German landsknechts, bearing the symbols of Burgundy (the cross of St. Andrew) on their
dress and on their weapons, had by then adopted halberds. The Swiss on the right of this
illustration, are marked by the cross of St. George, known later as the Helvetian cross
and worn by them for the rst time at the battle of Laupen in 1339. The second and
third such halberds are in the arsenal in Graz, are of slightly later date, and are marked
by a brass inlaid X on the at base of the spike and a perforated bulbous-ended X respec-
tively. A photograph of the fourth halberd, marked by a point-perforated cross on its blade
can be found in an auction catalog published by Galerie Fischer in Lucerne (1999).
A similar halberd was carried by a German landsknecht facing death in a large anony-
mous woodcut entitled Death and a Landsknecht of 1504, which is now in a private
collection in Schloss Friedenstein in Gotha.
27
A similarly marked but slightly later halberd
is carried by a landsknecht guarding the Emperor Charles V in a single-leaf woodcut of
1530 by Jrg Breu the Elder, now in Wolfenbttel (one of a set of 10 prints, G. 357).
Halberds Elsewhere in Europe
Although England and Italy made limited use of halberds, a fair number of halberds of
the Italian style and make, have been present in the Tower of London since the sixteenth
century. It is documented that Henry VIII ordered such weapons from Italy. A well-known
Italian merchant, Leonardo Frescobaldi, is known to have sold Italian sta weapons includ-
ing halberds to England around 1510.
28
Shortly thereafter, Henry formed an army to
invade France. In describing his departure from London, the Venetian observer, Antonio
Bavaria wrote of the presence of a 6000-man contingent bearing halberds.
29
The Royal
Armouries also possess halberds, some as groundnds, of the fourteenth and fteenth cen-
turies. The bill, as will be discussed later, was on the whole, a much more popular weapon
in England.
Halberds were little used in warfare in Spain and in the Scandinavian countries. The
scholarship on Spain relating to sta weapons is mostly old and in need of revision. The
large catalog of 1898 of the Real Armera of Madrid by the Conde de Valencia de Don
Juan, mentions only two halberds of the sixteenth century from the army of Charles V
( possibly of German manufacture) and only a further fteen halberds of the seventeenth
to nineteenth centuries, described as parade arms.
30
Calverts historical and descriptive account
of 1907, while giving us very good photographic plates of the Armera, adds little to the
1898 book and is full of inaccuracies.
31
For instance, regarding halberds, Calvert depicts
a sixteenth century folding spear (? folding partisan) spiedo di ripiegarsi, which otherwise
resembles a decorated runka, as the Emperor Charles Vs halberd. In the same illustration,
27
Walter Karcheski has kindly called my attention to this illustration, which Geisberg has numbered 1573
in his list of unidentied artists.
28
Seitz, H., Blankwaen I, Klinkhardt & Bierman, Braunschwig 1965, p. 383.
29
Bosson, C., Le Morgenstern, in Armi Antiche, Bolletino dellAccademia di S. Marciano, Torino, 1963, no. 1
p. 117.
30
Don Juan, El Conde V De Valencia de, Catlogo de la Real Armera de Madrid, Madrid, 1898.
31
Calvert, A.F., Spanish arms and Armor New York, John Lane Company, 1907. Calvert was not a stu-
dent of arms and armor.
extant examples of halberds 63
Fig. 60. A halberd of ca. 1500 marked with a cross of St. Andrew on the right side of the blade, probably
German or Flemish (Burgundian) and of the type shown in g. 61. Private collection.
64 chapter three
Fig. 61. Woodcut by Wolf Huber for the Triumphal Arch of Maximilian, 15121515. The Swiss and Imperial
forces meet during the Swabian war of 1499. Note the halberds and longspears on both sides, as well as the
cross of St. Andrew and the Helvetian cross (St. George) marking clothing and ags. The ready position of
the longspears in the foreground is also interesting. Private collection.
extant examples of halberds 65
an Italian roncone of 1500 is labeled as being a Moorish boarding weapon. The small
guide of the Armera by Javier Corts in 1956 sheds no additional light on the subject.
32
The latest guide is a small, well-illustrated booklet published in 1987, in which there are
illustrated two large partizans of the early sixteenth century.
33
One is being held in the
hands of Charles Vs oak leaf skirt armor garniture for combat on foot; the other is in
the hands of a highly decorated half armor of the early seventeenth century.
A large Italian type of halberd with gilding and etched decoration is present in the
Castle of Chillon on the lake of Geneva, and an identical one was sold at Galerie Fischer,
Lucerne in November 1959, No. 57 (g. 62). The weapons are decorated with a large
crowned K surrounded by a fasciculated ring and four int and steel symbols with ema-
nating ames suggesting the Arms of fteenth century Burgundy and associated with the
order of the Golden Fleece. These motifs were adopted by Charles the Bold, (Karl der
Khne, Charles le Tmraire) or his father, Philip the Good. If the letter K stands for Karel
in Flemish, then it suggests that these weapons were carried by Charles Flemish body-
guards. Although the weapon is massive and simple in form, it appears to be later in style
than the times of Charles rule (he died in 1477 in the battle of Nancy). Because of the
ties between the Duchy of Burgundy and the Holy Roman Empire, which were cemented
by the marriage in 1475 of Maximilian I to Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles, it
is also possible that Maximilians grandson Charles, (son of Philip the Fair) who became
Duke of Burgundy in 1515 and King of Spain as Charles I in 1518 (and upon the death
of Maximilian in 1519, Emperor Charles V), had the halberds made for his bodyguards.
Both the close ties of the Dukes of Burgundy and those of the Holy Roman Empire to
the Papacy may explain the Italian style of the halberds. In any case, it is noteworthy
that the Italian style halberds, with their forward tilted blades such as this one, bear a
slight resemblance to the roncone, a very popular Italian weapon of this time, derived over
a long period of time from a Roman pruning tool and described in a later chapter.
In the second printing of the Nuremberg Chronicle by Anton Koberger in December
of 1493, the German text refers to Charlemagne as Karl der Gross(e) above his wood-
cut portrait, while retaining Carolus as his name in the text. It is therefore perfectly
plausible that the letter K on the halberd in 1516 would be used to refer to Charles
V (Karl in German). There is question as to its authenticity by J.A. Meier, but its slightly
unusual form could be the result of its transformation into a guard weapon, otherwise it
is very similar to the Italian weapon shown in g. 65.
The Italians hardly used signicant numbers of these weapons before 1500; they did
arm themselves with glaives, roncas, and roncones, as well as slender long partizans, and
spiedi da guerra. A notable exception is the presence of a prominently displayed early hal-
berd in an illustration by Niccol di Giacomo of 1373 in a manuscript from Bologna (near
the time of the battle of Sempach) reminiscent of the halberd of g. 62.
34
The two are
similar except that the inferior part of the di Giacomo blade is fastened to the shaft by
an anterior langet, and the upper shaft is inserted into an eye that is capped and integral
with the top of the blade. The somewhat short shaft is studded with large nails along its
32
Cortes, J., Guia Ilustrada de la Real Armeria de Madrid, Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, 1956. A scholar and
personal friend; but severely limited in his ocial duties by the lack of funds under the Franco regime.
33
Lacaci, G.Q., Armeria del Palacio Real de Madrid, editorial Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid 1987, p. 25 and
p. 131.
34
Lucain, Pharsalus Trivulsian Library, Milan, Ms. 691, fol. 87, Pompeus Gnaeus (magnus) and his troops.
66 chapter three
extant examples of halberds 67
Fig. 63. Italian halberd of about 1500. Both edges of
the spike are sharpened down to the beak-spike. Note
the scorpion mark. Private collection.
Fig. 62. Large decorated Italian halberd, probably end
of the rst quarter of the 16th century and made for
the bodyguard of the Emperor Charles V. (Several
have survived) Courtesy of Galerie Fischer, Lucerne.
Fig. 64. Italian scorpion of about 1530. Note that although the weapon is quite functional, there are already
many small attempts at decoration. The weld mark of the mid back spike is shown in the detail photo of the
scorpion mark. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art inv. no. 14.25.360.
68 chapter three
entire length, and its base is shod with iron. It should be noted that this halberd, with its
quite long blade (length to width ratio of 6:1) although similar in appearance to the early
glaive seen in the Maciejowski Bible illustration in g. 88, is dierentiated from it by the
fact that the glaive is hafted by its socket to the top of the shaft whereas the halberds
shaft is behind it, extends into an upper eye, and has a lower anterior langet.
Italian use of halberds is greatest in the years between 1500 and 1600. The typical
weapon from the early part of the century shows either a slightly concave or straight cut-
ting edge on a long thin blade capped by a at triangular spike, most showing however
a low central ridge. A small straight spike may also be present in the mid back portion
of the blade with decorations at its base (g. 63). There is no ange. Pointed basal lugs
may be present; either straight or curved. The shaft socket is below the blade and is in
line with the spike. An evolutionary relationship is suggested between this type of halberd,
a preceding bill-like weapon, and the concomitant and more popular roncone. It also co-
exists with a similar form called a Scorpion, so named because it bears a scorpion mark
(g. 64). The scorpion, however, has a less massive blade and a raised, acutely pointed
upper blade edge. The beak arises high on the blade back and is curved downward. A
pair of basal lugs, front and back, are usually present, as well as a second small horizontal
spike issuing from the middle of the back of the blade.
A very well preserved halberd of this type from about 1500, which may have originally
been a gift to the city of Basel and has been in its arsenal since then, illustrates a play-
ful artistic freedom. It is now exhibited in the Historical Museum of Basel (g. 65). It has,
besides all the classical features of Italian halberds such as lightly punched-in dots on both
faces of the blade as decoration, a most outstanding design; namely a fox barking at
a dog. This reversed order of things die umgekehrte Welt of the Germans and le monde
lenvers of the French, that we nd here was a popular theme in the late middle ages and
renaissance but can be found in illustrations well into the nineteenth century.
35
Famous
examples of the phenomenon include Pieter Bruegel the Elders masterpiece The Nether-
landish Proverbs of 1560 which illustrates this reversal of the normal order of things.
Israel van Meckenems late fteenth century engraving Hares Roasting the Hunter in
which the rabbits carry the hounds to the roasting area for boiling, is a similar example.
Late forms of Italian halberds are hardly distinguishable from those of other countries
in the seventeenth century, except of course Switzerland, which stocked earlier type weapons
into its arsenals and simultaneously manufactured some weapons typical of the seventeenth
century elsewhere. The late Italian halberds are probably unique in the respect that they
manifest the widest variability of form found anywhere. One nds them combined with
all manners of other sta weapons as well as exhibiting a great array of elaborate design
that emphasized form over function, as was characteristic for Italian art and decoration
over many centuries.
Despite great variation, the shapes of halberds in the period 15001550 do have cer-
tain common characteristics that distinguish them. By 1500 the blade had diminished some-
what in mass and size, having slowly evolved into a triangular shape (not much higher
than wide, (gs. 6669a). Its spike had lengthened over the previous century and was
almost universally of quadrangular cross-section and in line with the shaft. Figure 69b, a
1518 iron etching by Drer illustrates this style.
36
The inventory of Basels Zeughaus (arsenal)
35
Tristan, F., Le Monde Lenvers, Atelier Hachette/Massin, 1980.
36
Albrecht Drer, The Cannon, iron etching of 1518.
extant examples of halberds 69
Fig. 65. Italian halberd ca. 1500 with punctuate dec-
orations on both faces. This side shows a dog bark-
ing at a rabbit (the right world) as opposed to the other
side, which shows a fox barking at a dog (the world
upside down). The at spike with the prominent rib
is similar to the one in g. 56. Courtesy of the
Historisches Museum, Basel, inv. no. 1905.4142.
70 chapter three
Fig. 66. Halberd of ca. 151020 with a quadrangular
thickening of the beak tip (similar to the spike tip).
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no.
42.50.20.
Fig 67b. Typical triangular bladed halberd of ca.
1520, with a sharply drawn in cutting edge. The spike
is massive, as is the beak. Private collection.
extant examples of halberds 71
Fig 67a. Early 16th century halberd with a convex
cutting edge. The mandrel opening is present between
the base of the spike and the beak. Private collection.
Fig. 68a. Halberd of ca. 1520 with a concave cutting
edge and a broken superior tip as well as a weakened
lower tip. The blade as usual is constructed of two
leaves welded together. The langets measure 76 cm.
in length. Private collection.
72 chapter three
Fig. 68b. Halberd of ca. 1520 with an unusual socket
and central straight vertical rib above it that is entirely
solid. Probably German. Private collection.
Fig. 69a. Halberd of ca. 153040 showing ame
shaped langets on an original ash shaft. Private
collection.
extant examples of halberds 73
Fig. 70. Ash shaft of halberd showing a rough cut, as
well as rened mark, 5. The upper gure is possi-
bly the arsenal mark itself. Courtesy of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, inv. no. 42.50.20.
Fig. 69b. Detail of A. Drers The Great Cannon iron etching of 1518 M. 96. The halberd held by the
Landsknecht leaning against the cannon, though slightly indistinct against the roof of the house, is typical dur-
ing a relatively long span of time in the 16th century. Private collection.
74 chapter three
extant examples of halberds 75
of 1591 notes the presence of 334 halberds with awl-spikes, ahlspitzen, thus we know
the contemporary name of the quadrangular spikes of the fteenth, sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries.
37
The awl-pike, (ahlspiess in German) a fteenth and early sixteenth cen-
tury weapon favored by the Austrians, had the same type of long spike, but it featured a
roundel at the base, where it was mounted on a pole. The older halberd spikes, it should
be remembered, were at rather than quadrangular. An exception to the quadrangular
form of spikes, were those found only in the closing years of the fteenth and in the begin-
ning of the sixteenth century. They were at and sword-like with a median sharp ridge
and of medium length (g. 56 for example). They were most probably of German, rather
than Swiss, origin.
In the beginning of the sixteenth century, halberds had two or four broad and long
langets (see chapter 5). By the middle of the century the langets were thinner and shorter.
The lateral langets integral with the shaft socket on Swiss halberds occasionally have a
wave or ame form (g. 69a). Just below the throat, at the joint of the socket and the
langets, there appeared occasionally a keeper (zwinge in German), a tight square ring
around the shaft and its langets, to strengthen the bond of the metal head to the shaft
(g. 56). The function of the langets, other than to prevent the cutting o of the shaft by
some other weapon, was to stabilize and strengthen the union between shaft and halberd
head, as it also did for other weapons such as pikes, glaives, roncones, and other shafted
arms. The cutting edge of the blade could have been convex, straight, or concave and was
generally angled to the shaft axis, the superior portion, jutting forward. Surviving speci-
mens show that the straight and convex blades were more successful. Extant concave blades
tend to show broken superior or inferior tips (g. 68a). The beak of sixteenth century hal-
berds was almost universally at and angled down, but rare quadrangular beaks do exist
(g. 66). As some of these weapons were, by about 1500, beginning to be stored in town
arsenals, some of the few surviving shafts show arsenal marks and numbers cut and some-
times burned into the wood (g. 70). Rarely the shafts are shod with iron.
A rather peculiar and rather rare series of halberds stylistically consistent with a six-
teenth century origin, called saber-halberds have survived. These weapons, of dubious
authenticity, have a small convex blade and a long, extremely exible at spike resembling
a saber blade (g. 71). They do not appear terribly eective, are poorly balanced, and do
not have enough stiness in the blade to cut or thrust eectively. They have no beak or
ange but rather a very long socket enclosing two or four non-integral langets. The spike
blade has a central groove. The weapon has a length of about 8 feet (2.4 meters), which,
with its heavy head, must have made it very dicult to use in close combat, if it was
ever used at all. Despite exhaustive research the weapon does not appear in the manu-
script or book illustrations consulted. It is most likely a nineteenth century invention.
There are, in some localities, instances of late but functional halberds lacking the dec-
oration usually seen on late sta weapons. One such non-decorated halberd by the Styrian
smith Peter Schreckeisen of about 1570 is shown in g. 72a, whose main function judg-
ing by its very long spike, was thrusting.
Combinations of halberds with other weapons are usually unique variations, such as a
halberd with a beak transformed into a hammer.
38
The later the date of the weapon, the
more likely it was that variations might have appeared, as for example in a circa 1600
37
Schneewind, W. ibid.
38
Mller und Kllig, Europische Hieb und Stichwaen, Militrverlag der DDR., Berlin, 1981, p. 254, #249.
Fig. 72a. Thrusting Styrian halberd of about 1575 by
Peter Schreckeisen of Waldneukirchen; the beak is still
functional appearing, the blade less so. Courtesy of
the Landeszeughaus, Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz.
76 chapter three
Fig. 71. Saber-halberd, probably 19th century. The
spike blade is too exible for eective cutting and is
not very useful for thrusting. The mass of the halberd
head is not at the end of the weapon, thus also reduc-
ing its impact. Although these weapons are well made,
they are in all probability products of 19th century
romanticism. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, inv. no. 25.188.2.
Fig. 72b. Etching by Jacques Callot of the Crucixion scene, ca. 1640. Note the halberd as well as a mor-
genstern, roncone, and true pikes. Callot worked extensively in Italy, and at this time, Italian halberds resem-
bled those from elsewhere. Private collection.
extant examples of halberds 77
north Italian halberd showing two spikes in a V shape conguration.
39
Custom made
variations, although interesting, are not signicant in the overall history and use of the
weapon.
Oriental Inuences
Local blacksmiths as well as more specialized weapons manufacturers must have had ample
opportunities to examine weapons and armor foreign to them. One can imagine trophies
found on battleelds being brought back by returning soldiers. Furthermore, mercenaries
(Landsknechts or Reislafer) constantly passed through villages and cities, en route to armies
or new employers. Here they would stay for a shorter or longer period of time and
participate in activities and festivities (usually to the detriment of the community) as well
as exchange information. These smiths then might easily have tried to copy weapons they
or the soldiers found interesting or eective, or to modify or change their own design.
In fact, smiths themselves would have been recruited to accompany armies into the
eld, less to manufacture weapons than to repair damaged ones. Here again they would
have found opportunities to observe and examine material from other parts of Europe
and elsewhere. For any given smith working alongside smiths from other locations in eld
forges, these diering techniques might also be learned and thoughts exchanged.
Undoubtedly knights and local soldiers returning from war also described weapons they
had found eective even if they did not possess them. Of course this type of exposure
leading to stylistic borrowing was not limited to weapons. Armor and even styles of cloth-
ing were designed occasionally to imitate foreign, often Middle-Eastern, styles. When what
we call Middle-Eastern styles inuenced Europeans of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies, the inuence was called Oriental. For example, by the middle of the sixteenth
century, and after the Turkish invasions, Ferdinand II of Austria had established tourna-
ments in the oriental style (alla turca), and had moreover, ordered armor made in the
Turkish style, not only for his personal use, but also for most of the participants of the
tournaments.
40
The extant collection of Ferdinands weapons can be found in the Turkish
Room in the castle of Ambras, near Innsbruck; although no long sta weapons outside
of lances are present, maces, swords and axes in the Turkish style are represented.
It seems likely that the popularity and therefore the perpetuation of a given design of
sta weapon was dependent on its success, without regard to numbers of them in any
given conict situation. In the days before municipal arsenals issued arms to its citizens,
that is before the sixteenth century, it was the individual soldier or group of soldiers who
commissioned and bought weapons from the weapon-smith and probably had some say
as to the form and style of the weapon requested. Despite the copying, some designs
remained unique to a given location, such was the case in fact with the Lucerne ham-
mer, and the Styrian gusy.
39
Boccia, L.G., Coelho, E.J., Armi Bianchi Italiane, Bramante editrice, Milan, 1975, N.TR. 461.
40
Pfaenbichler, M., Europische Waen im orientalischen Stil aus den Bestnden der Hofjagt- und Rstkammer des
Kunsthistorischen Museums in Wien, Z.H.W.K. Otto Schwartz & Co., Gttingen, 1996, pp. 117128. Gamber, O.,
Fhrer durch die Rstkammern Erzherzog Ferdinands, in Schloss Ambras- Rstkammern, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien,
1981, pp. 3359.
78 chapter three
Around 1550, the halberd began to show a rapid decline in numbers used in warfare,
as well as in the quality of its material and manufacture; but, at the same time, it became
subject to extensive decoration.
41
Although still popular, the halberds use shifted by 1600
to functions other than in battle. A fairly functional-appearing halberd appears in an etch-
ing by Jacques Callot of ca. 1640, in the hands of a soldier or guard in a crucixion
scene (g. 72b).
At rst the ceremonial halberd was relegated to town guardsmen and night watchmen,
then in the eighteenth century it was given to non-commissioned ocers as a mark of
rank. Ceremonial halberds were even present in America during the period of the Revolution.
The use of the halberd in ceremonies continued into the nineteenth century in Europe
where, in combination with a sponton, as Gessler writes, it found its way into the hands
of village police, railroad functionaries and guardians of vineyards.
42
The evolution of the
halberd into a non-military, purely ceremonial function was the capstone on an almost
700-year-long period of its use as a fearsome weapon that played an important part in
the reshaping of armies, the roles of classes in society, and, at least in some measure, the
boundaries of nations.
41
Meier, J.A., ibid.
42
Gessler, E.A. Das Aufkommen der Halbarte und ihre entwicklung von der Frhzeit bis in das 15 Jahrhundert. Revue
dHistoire Militaire, Paris, 193940, Vol. I, p. 148.
extant examples of halberds 79
CHAPTER FOUR
DIFFERENT STYLES IN SIMULTANEOUS USE
Towards the end of the Middle Ages, and before regimentation and standardization of
troops, individual combatants were often left to make their own choice of a particular
weapon with which they were familiar and practiced. This weapon might be newly acquired
or old, perhaps inherited through several generations, or recently transformed from a farm
tool. Occasionally, it might have even been given by the local arsenal if there was one,
or by the governing lord of the town or region. Early on, however, percentages of com-
batants bearing one type or another of a weapon were specied by royalty, the company
leaders or captains, or even by town ocials. This chapter seeks to demonstrate this diver-
sity of use.
In a marginal illustration by Albrecht Drer dated 1515 on folio 28, recto in the Prayer
Book of the Emperor Maximilian I, a group of peasants, battle landsknechts. The peas-
ants wield various weapons, including a boar spear, an ahl-spiess (awl-pike), a lugged spear,
and three halberds (g. 73). The most prominent halberd is held high overhead at the
beginning of, or during, a mighty swing, it appears to be an early type with two shaft
eyes and a beak welded onto the superior eye, a rectangular narrow blade, and a rela-
tively short at spike in-line with the shaft, that is in eect an extension of the upper eye.
The drawings date 1515 is inscribed on the blade. This halberd originates (stylistically) in
the last decade or so of the fourteenth century.
The gure on the far left wearing a fteenth-century kettle-hat as well as some elements
of armor including arm defenses and a mail shirt, however, wields a halberd contempo-
rary with the drawing. It has a convex blade of small dimension, straight socket, small
beak and a short at spike. The blade shows three marks. A partly obscured gure in the
group wields a halberd pointed forward, which resembles an Italian halberd again con-
temporary with the illustration (ca. 15001515) and similar to the one illustrated in g.
62 and one in the Tower of London.
1
It has a thin long concave curved blade ending in
a short stout spike with a curved beak high on the back of the blade. One of the lands-
knechts is in the process of spearing a peasant lying on the ground with the spike of his
halberd. The weapon has the typical features of a late fteenth- or early sixteenth-century
German or Swiss halberd; a massive square blade, a convex cutting edge, a quadrangular
spike, a large beak and a ange. Another wields a javelin-like weapon resembling an over-
sized arrow, including feathers, known as a dart. Because of its fragile nature, it is possi-
ble that no specimens have survived, nonetheless, there are many are found in illustrations
in literary works, so this weapon deserves discussion even though it is unrelated to the
halberd.
The head of the dart was barbed, and it could have been used either as a thrusting
weapon as shown or thrown, hence its name dart. The feathers stabilized the trajectory
during ight. It is also known as a lancegay, or lance-ague from the French, and
appears to be identical with the archegayes or assagays of the Arabs, Byzantines, and
1
Troso, M., Le Armi in Asta, Istituto Geograco di Agostini, Novara, 1988, p. 118, no. 8.
82 chapter four
Fig. 73. Detail of the bottom illustration of folio 28 recto by Drer in the Emperor Maximilian Is Book of
Hours. This scene shows a remarkable mixture of sta weapons of diering epochs (see text). Courtesy of
the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, L impr. membr. 64.
the Moors of Andalusia. Froissart in his Grand Chroniques de France, describes how
men, armed in the manner of Castile, launched and threw darts and archegayes.
2
This
weapon, with some modication, has survived in use and is manufactured to the present
day by the African Massai.
The dart appears often in the art of the fteenth century, for example, this same weapon
is seen in the St. Lambert panel, top center, in the hands of a mounted warrior riding
next to Louis I, the Great, (13261382). He is about to thrust it into a mounted Turk
facing him as an overhead strike (g. 5). In an almost identical pose, a knight in full armor
is about to strike an enemy in the second Clovis Tapestry hung in the cathedral treasury
in Rheims. The tapestry, depicting the battle between Clovis and King Gondebaud was
woven in mid fteenth century Paris or Arras for Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy. A
similar dart can be found about to be hurled by a mounted knight at a eeing warrior
chest deep in a river, in a fteenth century miniature painting by Jean Fouquet entitled
The Battle Between Jonathan and Simon Maccabeus against Bacchid from the book
Antiquits et guerre des juifs, by Josephus. Again, a feathered dart lies next to a fallen knight
under the hoofs of Penthesileas charging horse in a beautiful detailed miniature illustra-
tion of ca. 1460.
3
In an exhaustive monograph on the subject of ceremonial arrowheads from Bohemia,
4
Helmut Nickel describes the use of the dart as a symbol of authority in the hands of roy-
alty (Maximilian I), ocers of a court (a woodcut by Urs Graf ), and soldiers (a drawing
by Albrecht Drer of 1489).
Olivier de la Marche (14251502) in his lengthy poem Le Chevalier Dlibr rst
published about 1486 with contemporary woodcuts by an unidentied illustrator, gives pre-
cise instructions for details of the pictures. In several scenes dealing with trials by combat
and ociated over by death, the latter wields a dart of considerable size to command
the outcome (g. 120).
5
Thus one can infer that the dart in addition to its use as a com-
bat weapon had magisterial use as well.
Again, turning to illustrations that record the eld of battle where more than one weapon
was in use simultaneously and where certain weapons are used in a non-traditional fash-
ion, Maximilians prayer book scene is interesting. In addition to showing the traditional
conict of classes at the turn of the fteenth to sixteenth centuries, it shows this remark-
able mixture of battle elements from dierence countries and epochs.
Another marginal illustration by Drer on folio 55, verso of Maximilians prayer book
raises important questions regarding the places of chivalry and the knightly tradition in
the politics of fteenth to sixteenth-century Europe and the interaction of the artist with
his patron in a rapidly changing cultural atmosphere. The drawing shows a foot soldier
(landsknecht) attacking a fully armored knight on a heavily armored horse. The lands-
knecht uses his halberd as a spear (g. 74). The halberd so depicted is massive, contem-
porary with the illustration, and has a at triangular spike merging in the front with the
2
Froissart, J., Grand Chroniques de France, book III, John of Gaunts expedition to Spain (138687), hommes
arms lusage de Castille lanant et jetant dards et archegayes.
3
Pisan, Christine de, pitre dOtha, M.S. BR. 9392, fol. 18 verso, Bibliothque Royale Albert Ier, Brussels.
Pethesilea, the fabled and bloodthirsty queen of the Amazons, along with her subjects, was a popular subject
of discussion for millennia, and in the works of Herodotus, Homer, Virgil, and Boccaccio as well as more
modern authors.
4
Nickel, H., Ceremonial Arrowheads from Bohemia, Metropolitan Museum Journal, Metropolitan Museum of
Art, 1968, vol. 1, pp. 6193.
5
de la Marche, O., Le Chevalier Dlibr, Chiswick Press, London, 1898, plates on p. 44 and p. 48.
different styles in simultaneous use 83
upper part of the blade. Long wide langets are present for two thirds of the length of the
shaft. The knight, in contrast, wields a minuscule war hammer appearing unequal to the
foot soldiers weapon and inappropriate for the task. One questions why Drer, who was
dependent on the Emperor for his commissions and his promised pension, should choose
to show a foot soldier so eectively challenging a member of the nobility? Maximilian, it
should be remembered, was called the last knight, referring to him as the defender of
chivalry and the whole medieval concept of order, which was rapidly coming to an end.
Perhaps it was Drers only way to communicate, or perhaps the Emperor despite his
traditional stand, was not blind to the signicant changes taking place all over Europe.
As will be demonstrated in the chapter on the morgenstern group, Maximilian also cham-
pioned foot combat with weapons previously regarded with scorn by the nobility.
In this period, it becomes more and more common to nd illustrations of foot soldiers
challenging the mounted horseman, who was usually of noble rank. The fact that the
nobility was loosing its primacy in winning any given conict is demonstrated by the rise
of the worth of the foot soldier armed with halberd, long spear, hand and a half sword,
two-handers, and with a further variety of sta weapons as the determining element in
the outcome of any given battle. Another example is pictured in the 1512 drawing by
Albrecht Altdorfer, entitled Knight Confronted by a Landsknecht in a Forest, in which
the knight bears a sword and is only lightly armored.
6
Social stratication and the inuence of battle on culture and politics can be found in
the illustration of the Battle of Grandson (1476) in the Diebold Schilling Lucerne Chronicle
of 1513 (g. 75).
7
The illustration shows soldiers equipped with late fteenth century armor.
The breastplates are of gothic two-piece overlapping construction. Sallets of the German
type are worn, partly with reinforced brows, some with visors, and bevors fastened over
the breastplates. Foot soldiers wear kettle-hats, sallets, and archers sallets with mail coifs
or bevors. The clothing shows rounded shoes (bear toes), which do not appear before
14901500. One Swiss foot soldier wears pued sleeves, a stylistically striking style of
clothing seen in Switzerland (and soon elsewhere) beginning with the last two decades of
the fteenth century and becoming immensely popular for the next sixty years. This style
is said by some scholars to have originated with the stripping of nely made Burgundian
clothes from the well-to-do battle victims and from general booty. The burly Swiss, who
could not t into these smaller Burgundians clothes, simply slashed them to increase their
size, and sewed in additional (and dierently colored) material as ller.
Yet in this illustration, the soldiers are wielding fourteenth to early fteenth century hal-
berds. This is evident because each halberd has two eyes over the shaft and a relatively
long thin blade rising with a concave sweep to a spike point in front of the shaft axis.
Some of these appear to have a dorsal langet, and the shaft portion under the blade is
wrapped in a spiral manner with cloth or metal, much as the shafts of the cantonal ags
carried by the Swiss. The Burgundians are seen wielding roncones, in this case, rossschinder
(see chapter 9). This curious mixture of styles can be interpreted as reecting the artists
attempt in 1513 to depict (fairly accurately) combat in the third quarter of the fteenth
century. Thus one can imply that battleelds were often a mixture of new, old and eclectic
compromise.
6
Rotterdam, Museum Boymans (MB 248).
7
The Battle of Grandson, 1476, Diebold Schilling, 1513, from Amtlicher Luzerner Chronik, . 99V100,
Luzern, Zentralbibliotek.
84 chapter four
Fig. 74. Detail of the bottom illustration of folio 55 verso by Albrecht Drer in the Book of Hours of the
Emperor Maximilian I. The contrast of the armamentation of the combattants is striking. It speaks volumes
on the reversal of roles and warfare in general. Courtesy of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich, L impr.
membr. 64.
different styles in simultaneous use 85
An example of revived manufacture of an older type of halberd at a time when even
newer designs were being discarded or used for ceremonial purposes only can be found
in the arsenals (now mostly transferred to museums) of many Swiss cities. It is a pro-
foundly interesting point moreover, that the large quantities of these mostly seventeenth
century weapons having been manufactured were not totally homogeneous but were in
the style of many dierent halberds used over a time span of 200 years.
8
Notwithstanding
this introduction of certain stylistic irregularities, certain details both in the manufacturing
process and in the design, aside from the smiths marks however, make this era of design
distinct.
9
It is somewhat ironic that of the many thousands of seventeenth century hal-
berds manufactured to stock Swiss arsenals, none at all were ever used for their intended
purpose, although they appear to have excellent ghting qualities. The rearm had ren-
dered them quite obsolete and ineective. Yet, their manufacture and stockpiling continued.
This has led to many errors in dating and labeling this category of weapon.
In the crypt of the Historical Museum of Basel, for instance, a halberd of the type
called Sempach (after the battle of 1386) is displayed as a fteenth century weapon. It
was in reality one of Hans Balthasar Erhardts halberds of 1627. The blade is fastened to
the shaft by eyes, which, while having rounded edges, are basically squares. Thirteenth
and fourteenth century halberds and those that continued to be made in the fteenth,
with very few exceptions, have round eyes. One exception is the excavated thirteenth cen-
tury blade in the same museum, number 18731824, whose upper eye is almost a triangle
(g. 39). Square eyes are found in the early halberd shown in g. 15, whose origins are
much more likely directly linked to the Danish axe rather than to the thirteenth century
blades such as in g. 25, whose direct ancestors are more likely a gisarme-like weapon
(but which in turn is also derived from the Danish great axe).
The previously discussed illustrations among many others, intend to show the decline in
the power and respect for the mounted knight, whose role in society and warfare was,
by the beginning of the sixteenth century, no longer a leading one. The bourgeoisie had
established itself rmly and was a power to be reckoned with both in peace and war. The
nobility clung to the outward trappings that distinguished them from the lower classes,
including armor, decorated weapons, and the continued martial exercises such as the tour-
nament and personal combat. They were, however, observed by the common gentry with
some indulgence but perhaps also with scorn. These mounted warriors who fought with
individual valor became an insignicant minority, easily defeated by infantry formations.
In the last phase of their existence, knights dismounted and fought on foot next to the
common man turned soldier. By the end of the sixteenth and the beginning seventeenth
centuries, battles were fought by disciplined soldiers governed not by their lords in civilian
life but by professional ocers. The halberd, in the hands of the footsoldier, and in con-
junction with other sta weapons, was a powerful weapon that signaled a seismic change
in the power relations on and o the battleeld. The medieval system had ceased to
function.
8
Meier, J.A., ibid.
9
See chapter 3 for details of these seventeenth century halberds.
86 chapter four
CHAPTER FIVE
FASTENINGS, POLES, AND FINISHING PROCEDURES
In the general scholarship on arms and armor this subject is remarkably under-represented,
therefore, it seems a few words on the subject are relevant. X-ray studies of a number of
fteenth and sixteenth century sta weapons reveal the techniques of fastening the weapons
to the shafts to be moderately uniform with, however, a few exceptions.
In the earliest halberds, blades with eye fastenings, single or two opposing nails are
driven into the lower eye (usually from the side). The upper eye may or may not be
nailed. An additional few nails are present in the dorsal langet (the steel strap issuing from
the lower eye) when it is present. With the development of lateral langets, a larger num-
ber of shaft nails are foundthe same number on both sidesranging from 2 or 3 to 7
or 8 per side. The longest and largest langets are found on halberds of the outgoing
fteenth century. Additional front/back langets are sometimes present (not integral with
the blade) predominantly in late fteenth- early sixteenth-century halberds (g. 76). The
shaft on these halberds is thus protected on all four sides from cutting damage. Another
quicker and somewhat cruder way of stabilizing the junction between the head and the
shaft in the sixteenth century is shown in g. 77, where the very broad langets are ham-
mered around the edges of the square shaft. This method is not often seen.
Nail holes can be opposite each other or not. When exactly opposed, the nails are dri-
ven in at an angle so as not to exit at the opposed hole. Rarely they are driven straight
through and peened over so that they rest under the head of the opposing nail head
(g. 78a). The most common and (it would seem) best method was to drive a nail longer
than the shaft diameter against the opposite inside surface of the langet where it is bent
over for a distance up to a centimeter or so (g. 78b). This method prevented loosening
of the halberd head from the shaft upon repeated impact of or on the weapon. Screws,
although known at these times, were not used for this purpose. They are found in the
bases of spikes in the heads of percussion weapons such as morgensterns or Godendags.
Later decorative and rank-associated halberds do occasionally show screws (seventeenth
century), as do some of the functional halberds of the late sixteenth century. Screw-like
proles are seen in the X-rays studies of these staves, but because no slot is present in
the nail heads, (which can be of either iron or brass), they must therefore have been
hammer-driven (g. 79a).
1
Another system of fastening was the use of round headed bolts driven straight through
and hammered over to form a similar rivet-like head on the opposite side (g. 80b) This
method is found often in the seventeenth century weapons commissioned for the town
arsenals such as the Sempach types by Koller or Schorno. On some Sempach types, as
the one in g. 59 by Koller, the langet hole is conical, and the bolt heads were ground
down to be ush with the langet surface (g. 80a). In the early halberd in g. 37, the
rear curved langet is fastened in its center with a long nail driven through the shaft against
a metal surface such as an anvil, since there is no opposing langet, and bent back into
the shaft (g. 79b).
1
It is not possible on the X-ray lm to distinguish between true screws and ribbed nails.
88 chapter five
Fig. 77. A rapid and inexpensive method of sta-
bilizing the union between the halberd head and
the shaft. The lower part of the socket, consist-
ing mostly of a broad langet, is hammered around
the square shaft. Courtesy of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art.
Fig. 76. A rear langet of an early 16th century halberd,
both in place and by itself. Note the small claw-like
upper portion which anchors itself in the throat of the
socket between the ange leaves (and the blade leaves in
case of the front one). It also wedges itself between the
cheeks of the socket, thus forming a rigid box and sta-
bilizing the whole structure. Private collection.
fastening, poles, and finishing procedures 89
Fig. 78a. Opposing nails driven straight through and in two instances emerging through the opposite hole
and bent over, under the opposing nail head. Early 16th century halberd. Private collection.
Fig. 78b. Nails driven against the opposing inner face of the langet and bent over for up to 1 cm. This radio-
graph is of a Lucern hammer. Private collection.
90 chapter five
Fig. 79a. A mid to late 16th century halberd fastened with hammer-driven screws. Private collection.
Fig. 79b. A radiograph of the halberd in g. 37. Note the long dorsal nail through the langet which has been
driven into an iron plate or an anvil applied to the front of the shaft so that the nail curves back on itself
to lock into place. Private collection.
fastening, poles, and finishing procedures 91
Fig. 80a. A Lamprecht Koller halberd of the 17th century with peened over nail tips ground ush with the
langet surface. Private collection.
Fig. 80b. In this halberd the boltheads and the peened over points are not ground down. Private collection.
Careful scrutiny of surviving sta weapons, especially halberds, reveals that a few have
notches led into the lower half of the throat just above the junction with the langet. It
is questionable whether these marks represent the number of fatalities caused by that
weapon. The habit was certainly not widespread. Some notches might also have been cut
into the wooden shaft, but none is evident in any of the several hundred original shafts
studied. Many of the surviving shafts are newer ones substituted for an original that was
damaged, wormed, or bowed. This substitution might have taken place anytime between
the actual life and use of the weapon to the present day, where presumably it was done
for purposes of display or to enhance the weapons sale value.
Original shafts are almost always plain and smooth and have a certain patina that gives
them a luster that is hard to recreate. Many now have wormholes in varying numbers.
The use of decoration such as incising or knobbing is more associated with hunting weapons
where the sta is less likely to break or be lost. Tassels and leather bands are not origi-
nally associated with arms of war, except on weapons also used as standards or with pen-
nants. Such accoutrements were popular in the latter half of the sixteenth century and in
subsequent centuries especially on ceremonial weapons, as well as on those of lifeguards
of the nobility and in the civil guard (night watchmen and functionaries). There are illus-
trations in early sixteenth century Swiss chronicles showing the wrapping of portions of
the shaft with leather to strengthen the grip of the weapon in use, but such examples of
this practice do not seem to have survived. There are early sixteenth century Brussels
tapestry illustrations moreover, that show the upper part of the shaft wound with cord,
but it does not seem to have been a widespread practice, and not seen in other contem-
porary depictions.
Despite the use of langets as protection, halberd and other weapon shafts were often
damaged and replaced within the period of their working lives. Surviving shafts often show
grooving (for langets) and shaping that does not perfectly t around the metal parts. Rather
than indicative of poor workmanship in the preparation and tting of the shaft to the
weapon, this would more likely be the result of drying and shrinkage of the wood over
time. Then again, some shafts, although undoubtedly original, t the weapon perfectly. In
these cases it is very likely that the shaft wood was seasoned before tting, especially at
the times of manufacture, but of course, such careful craftsmanship was impossible for
battleeld replacements; these are the shafts of arms which, while stemming from close to
the date of manufacture, would eventually show a strong tendency to warp. Storage of
the weapons without thought for preservation in arsenals, castles, collections, and museums
would also over time tend to cause warping. The natural shrinkage of wood due to dry-
ing, with time, could have eected a buckling of the langets as well as a loosening of the
fastening nails, especially if they were not driven against the opposing langet so as to bend
them at their tips within the wood (and thus anchor them rmly).
Most original shafts, other than those of longspears, have a length of approximately 160
to 180 cm. (5 to 6 ft.). The oldest (round) shafts measure 4 cm. in diameter and the
fteenth- and sixteenth-centuries rectangular or square shafts with shaved corners (octag-
onalized), are usually 3.3 to 3.8 cm. in diameter. There was also standardization in the
shaping of shafts; their mid-portions are the thickest; the bottoms and tops are slightly
smaller (by 23 mm). The reason for this is not yet evident, but it does not seem to be
from wear as the edges and angles of the bottom of the shafts are sharp. Bowing of orig-
inal shafts is a not uncommon phenomenon. Most old shafts, when bowed, are convex
on the beak side, possibly as a result of horizontal storage with the blade facing down.
If notches were not found on shafts (it made sense not to cut into the upper shaft-wood
92 chapter five
so as not to weaken the points of greatest stress), letters or numbers associated with arse-
nals in their attempt to inventory weapons certainly can be found. We know for instance,
because of a recorded transfer of 20 pikes from Lucerne to Bern in 1896, that Lucerne
poles were branded LZ. These letters were usually burned into the wood. Rarely, a mark
is seen near the base of the shaft, but there is one, for instance, on a German halberd
of about 1500 (g. 81). The mark is in the shape of a triangular arrowhead with a lower
crosspiece and notched at the base. It may possibly represent a shaftmakers mark. This
ash shaft shows much luster and is greatly worn just below the langet. Another shaft, per-
haps a decade younger, has six marks burned into it just below the langets (three on each
side) consisting of a roman M with a bar across its top (g. 82). They may represent
either shaftmakers or arsenal marks. Research so far has not shed light on the identities
of the shaftmakers associated with these marks.
Ash was the wood preferred by shaft makers. Cities in which shaft manufacturing was
a large-scale industry reserved areas of certain domainial forests rich in ash trees for their
use. These could be harvested periodically to supply the shafts for the sta weapons. In
fteenth and sixteenth century Switzerland, for example, there was a valley called the
Eschental, the Valley of the Ash Trees, referring to the trees naturally growing in
large numbers used originally for the manufacture of shafts.
2
The valley was annexed by
force from Italy; one of the Swiss military forays to it in 1410 presumably for the pur-
pose of securing natural resources to support this military industry, is pictured in the 1470
chronicle of Benedict Tschachtlan.
It is uncommon that wood other than ash was used during the period of active man-
ufacture of sta weapons, as ash had the most desirable characteristics needed: it was light,
extremely strong, hard, durable and relatively splinter free. Shafts of wood other than ash
on a surviving weapon are almost certainly replacements, either old or modern. However,
in the 1939 inventory of the historical weapons of the arsenal of Berne, Wegeli mentions
that out of a total of 96 pikes, three had shafts of beech wood or birch, the rest were
ash.
3
Peasant weapons such as morgensterne (morning stars) or godendags as they
were also called, are the exception. Their wood is usually pine or r, but occasionally oak
or ash. The metal portions were often fashioned by local blacksmiths and probably shafted
by the peasants themselves.
The process of shaft manufacture is described in some detail in the mid-sixteenth cen-
tury Swiss Chronicle, by Johann Stumpf.
4
The shaft makers from the Eschental split the
trunk of a young ash into four longitudinal portions and then planed each to approximately
the correct diameter. Each shaft was nally drawn and worked through one or more metal-
lic die cutters set into sturdy wooden forms (g. 83). The process was similar to (but in
a much larger format) the wire drawing devices used in the making of mail, and wire in
general. The shafts were then boiled in oil ( probably linseed) in long copper vats up to
18 feet in length, since these shafts were used for long spears as well as halberds and
2
The Eschental is currently the Val dOssola in the most Northern portion of the Piedmont region of
Italy. In 1410, a joint military force from several Swiss cantons was able to annex the Eschental almost with-
out resistance as far south as Domodossola. In the ensuing 100 years (until 1515 to be exact) the valley
changed nationality several times. These political changes probably had little eect on the trade for ash shafts
for the Swiss.
3
Wegeli, Rudolf, Inventar des Waensammlung des Bernischen Historichen Museums in Bern; K.J. Wyss Erben A.G.,
Bern, 1939.
4
Stumpf, J., Gemeiner loblicher Eydgnossenschaft Stetten, Landen, und Volckeren Chronik wirdigen Thaaten Beschreybung,
1548, (rst ed.), book 9.
fastening, poles, and finishing procedures 93
94 chapter five
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5
With use and continued handling, natural oils from the hands were
deposited on the wood surface, causing in addition to the linseed oil, a smooth patina,
referred to above.
Although the Italian and French-Swiss shaft makers of the Eschental had great renown,
there were also local shaft makers around Berne, Zurich, and Aarberg. As mentioned in
the Solothurn archives, sources for shafts were woods near the city itself as well as in the
Jura foothills between Yverdon and Aarberg. After 1600, many of the shafts were imported
from Milan and other parts of Italy. Interestingly enough, the Swiss longspears were orig-
inally adopted from the spears used in Italy. There is documentation that in 1202 the
Italians dierentiated between the lanceae longea and the somewhat shorter lances of
the mounted knight. Ordinances of 1327 in Torino specify a length of 18 feet for longs-
pears of the militia.
6
As stated in the arsenal of Bernes inventory, the assembly of metal to wood, the actual
shafting of sta weapons regardless of type, was a separate profession. In the days of town
arsenals, the craft was performed either at the arsenal itself or in the workshops of the
shafters. In 1587 raw halberd heads were delivered by Claus Lerchli to the town arsenal
of Zurich, here they were ground and polished by the armorer Jrg Kchli. The actual
shafting was done either by the arsenal assistants or the town carpenter.
7
Archives in Graz
reveal that Mert Pilgramb shafted the spearheads of master Michael Strobl for delivery to
the arsenal, and Bartlm Guessneger, Michael Schau, Hans Weiss, and Simon Wallpauer
in the town of Stbing, supplied shafts to the arsenal between 1570 and 1580. The main
smiths to manufacture spearheads (as well as halberds and couses) for the arsenal were
Pancraz Taller and Peter Schreckeisen.
8
While a reference to the shafting profession in
earlier times is elusive, it is reasonable to assume that sta weapons in the thirteenth, four-
teenth and fteenth centuries were assembled either by the smith, or an independent
shafter, in a municipal place, perhaps the town hall.
As an indication of the importance of these shafts, the Berne arsenal inventory records
8,158 long spears present as late as 1687. This gure does not include halberds or other
sta weapons. It was by no means the largest arsenal in Switzerland. Zurich had six arse-
nals before they were dismantled. For comparison, one should note that the arsenal in
Solothurn (today the only surviving stocked arsenal in Switzerland) contains far more sta
weapons than longspears: there are some three hundred and fty sta weapons for 100
longspears. The Landeszeughaus Graz still has 2,826 halberds but only a few hundred
longspears and less than 100 other sta weapons ( partizans, couses, etc.). These numbers
may have reected the mix of weapons prescribed for battle at a given time in the history
of the arsenal but were very likely changed since that time by de-accession, actual loss,
or replacement by more modern weapons (i.e. rearms).
5
Somewhat surprisingly, Stumpf also reports and illustrates the fact that the long pikes were wrapped with
leather some 130 cm. from their butt end to create a better grip. Such grips were not seen in any of the
numerous surviving shafts examined. Several of the late fteenth century Swiss chronicles, notably the Diebold
Schilling-Lucerne and the Schodoler chronicles show a distinct spiral wrapping of the halberd shafts near the
blade for a length of about 30 cm. This wrapping appears to be decorative, is often colored and not in an
area used to wield the weapon in combat.
6
Although the largest numbers of surviving spears are to be found in the arsenal in Graz, they measure
only about 3 meters in length. They are shortened longspears of sixteenth-century manufacture, but it was
not the need to convert them to pikes in the seventeenth century that caused the shortening, but a whim
of the nineteenth, during periods of rearrangements.
7
Meier, J.A., Stangewaen aus Kempten, ibid.
8
Schwarz, O., Das Steiermarkische Landeszeughaus in Graz, Steiermarkisches Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz,
1953, p. 34.
fastening, poles, and finishing procedures 95
96 chapter five
Fig. 84. Detail of an early 16th century halberd showing the original grinding ( polishing) marks as well as
the smiths mark, an 8-pointed star. Private collection.
Fig. 83. A shaft maker of the Eschental turning an ash shaft in a metal cutting die. Slots are present either
for various diameters or possibly to shape the sections of split ash sapplings gradually from square to round.
From the Swiss Chronicles of Johan Stumpf, 1586, Book 9, p. 554. Courtesy of Karl Mohler, Basel.
Since some of these cities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries including their out-
lying districts, could put some 10 to 20 thousand men in the eld it is safe to suppose
that they contained close to that number of sta weapons.
9
An even larger arsenal was
built in Innsbruck, in 1506 by Maximilian I. It was called the new arsenal because it
replaced the insucient small old one. It was also intended to be a safe and shielded
space for the manufacture of gunpowder. It became, within the next ten years, the store-
house for Maximilians army and is said to have had sucient arms and armor to equip
30,000 men. This was at a time when his landsknechts must have borne sta weapons
in large numbers. Today however it does not have the authenticity of the arsenals in either
Graz or Solothurn, as the original inventory is almost totally depleted and its method of
storage is completely replaced by modern displays.
10
Although not directly related to the above subject material, a few words should be said
about the nishing procedures of halberd blades, but that hold for most other sta weapons
as well.
To remove hammer marks and eliminate small smithing defects from halberds and most
other sta weapons, the blades were passed to a grinder and polisher before being shafted.
It is thought that the only tool used by the nisher was the grindstone, both hand-turned
and later, water driven. However, it is possible that ling was also used for this purpose,
as some of the marks surviving resemble le marks. The most carefully nished items were
undoubtedly armor and sword blades; the more mass produced shafted weapons must have
been processed more quickly and were seldom really polished, the exceptions of course
were the later highly decorated, etched and gilt parade and guard weapons. Many hal-
berds that are well-preserved show very clearly the marks left by the grinding tools. The
direction of these marks varies according to the contour and shape of the metal surface
being worked (see g. 84).
By the fourteenth century, when cities were situated next to rivers, water mills were
erected to perform a variety of water-powered tasks, such as wire drawing, grinding and
polishing, processing grain, and powering large hammers to beat out metal plates from
billets, in part for the use of producing armor. Some of these facilities, just outside the
gates of Nuremberg, although not specically those for grinding or polishing but for wire
drawing, were the subject of a water color painting by Albrecht Drer in 1489.
11
The power of these mills was obtained from water wheels that carried the grindstones
on long direct shafts, but they also used primitive gear wheels consisting of round spokes
protruding radially from the wheels to change the turning direction. These relatively
advanced factories sped up manufacturing procedures to the point where in the six-
teenth century, series of armors, so called munitions armor for the common soldier,
9
Valentinitsch, H., in Der Grazer Harnisch. Styria Press, Graz, 1971, pp. 3738. Also Vienna in the late
fteenth and sixteenth centuries, Waissenberger, R. Die wehrhaften Burger Wiens in Das Wiener Burgerliche
Zeughaus Eigenverlag der Museen der Stadt Wien, 1977, pp. 2829.
10
Pressures are nowadays put on museum directors and curators to modernize displays of these surviving
rarities, usually by civil authorities in an attempt to attract larger numbers of visitors, that is, to popularize
the institutions; but in the process the original purpose of the arsenals is destroyed. The original layout in
Solothurn was altered a hundred years ago, that of Graz less drastically, but also signicantly. An order by
the Empress Marie Theresia of Austria to liquidate the outdated contents of the arsenal was overturned by
intense diplomatic eorts.
11
Drer, A., trotzich mll, watercolor on paper, Berlin, S.M.P.K., Kupferstichkabinett, KdZ 4.
Reid and Burgess in their article entitled A habergeon of Westwale ( The Antiquaries Journal, Oxford University
Press, Jan.April 1960, vol. XL, nos. 1, 2, p. 47) state that a certain Robert of Nuremberg is credited in 1350
for adopting waterpower to the manufacture of wire, which, it should be remembered was used principally
for the production of mail defenses.
fastening, poles, and finishing procedures 97
were being made in large numbers. Heavy water hammers lifted by cams sped up the
process of producing sheet iron which could be used both for the making of shafted
weapons as well as for the production of plate armor. The nishing of sta weapons,
among other metal artifacts, was of course, also enhanced. Lastly, in the seventeenth cen-
tury, some but not many, sta weapons, were re-nished, that is, blackened, to protect
them from rust. Application of chemicals to the surface also produced a similar eect.
The manufacture of shafted weapons, except for spears and the anachronistic demand
for halberds by the Swiss into the middle of the seventeenth century for the town arse-
nals, all but ceased by about 1600 when the production of rearms in the eld totally
eclipsed sta weapons. Almost none of the seventeenth century halberds stocked in the
Swiss town arsenals ever saw use, and those that have survived are still today in mint
condition.
98 chapter five
CHAPTER SIX
THE USE OF HALBERDS
The use of the halberd can be examined from two dierent perspectives: the actual wounds
caused by its use and how the weapon played a role in the wider development of mili-
tary eciency and the growth and importance of infantry in battle. It is no exaggeration
to claim that the use of such weapons as the halberd, grosso modo, helped to change the
map of modern Europe.
So impressed are the written and illustrated documents of the many witnesses with the
use and eect of the halberd throughout its useful life (ca. 13151550) that one is forced
to consider these accounts as serious and realistic, even when allowing for the usual and
expected medieval exaggerations. Scenes of deadly injuries, such as decapitation (some
even through armor), as shown in some of the illustrations of this chapter, were recorded
by eyewitnesses to the actual event. Well-known artists such as Hans Holbein the younger,
Urs Graf, Nicklaus Manuel (Deutsch), Albrecht Altdorfer, and other members of the Danube
School have shown us in gruesome detail the work of the halberd. Some of these artists
spent years as part of armies and were in actual combat situations, which they then chron-
icled pictorially. Others such as Benedikt Tschachtlan and Diebold Schilling gathered infor-
mation some years following the battles of the Burgundian wars and wrote long and
detailed chronicles with hand painted illustrations. The anonymous woodcut in the Kupfer-
stichkabinet of Basel called Dorneck 1499 illustrated earlier in this book (Chapter 2) is
also a graphic example of the gruesome eciency of the halberd (see gs. 22, 85, 86).
Physical remains also give archaeological evidence of the eectiveness of the halberd.
In 1898 the tombs of the Austrian nobility killed at the battle of Sempach in 1386, kept
within the memorial chapel in Knigsfelden, were opened. Most of the skulls found had
been widely split open by what could likely have been halberds.
1
The account of the death
of Charles the Bold, who reputedly died of a stroke of a halberd in 1477 that was said
to have cleaved his head to his chin, may or may not be apocryphal. Although it has
been supposed that he might have been without his helmet on the battleeld, it would
have been strange if he or anyone else of rank fought in a battle without a helmet, thus
inviting sure death. It is also said that by the time his body was discovered it was half-
eaten by wolves. No matter, if truethe cleft skull would still have been clearly visible.
Whether the report of a halberd strike was rst person, deduced from examining his
remains or convenient to a chronicler is uncertain.
Hugo Schneider, in trying to test the eects of halberds, performed an experiment in
1982. In the test, his locksmith at the Landesmuseum of Zurich, after some practice, swung
a halberd dating from about 1650 and tted with a new ash shaft, against a munitions
1
Although skull wounds caused by two handed swords cannot denitively be separated from those caused
by a halberd, the greater weight and force of a blow from the latter is more likely to cause the dislodgement
of a large bowl-like fragment of the calvarium than a blow from a two-hander (the only other weapon large
and massive enough to cause such damage). Because of the lesser mass of the sword, a vertical blow would
more likely be seen as a deep cut into the bone as opposed to a complete separation of a portion of the
skull.
armor of the third quarter of the sixteenth century mounted on a dummy.
2
He was not
able to pierce or seriously damage the comb of the helmet or the shoulder pieces. Instead,
the hacking motion caused the halberd head to move backwards o the shaft with its
langet and was thus disabled. Turning the halberd so as to use the beak, however, he
succeeded in piercing the skull of the helmet easily, and then thrusting with the spike pro-
duced penetration of the rounded breastplate. Schneider concluded that halberds blades
were basically unsuccessful against armor, but that the beak was in this respect better.
Notwithstanding these ndings, the experiment can be viewed with some doubt as to
its validity. A lm was made of the experiment, but it is dicult to obtain a copy.
3
The
halberd used in this experiment must have been one of the numerous (but anachronistic)
seventeenth-century weapons ordered to stock one of the Zurich town arsenals. A new
shaft was tted to the halberd head, perhaps, as the experiment showed, not very well.
The dummy, not housing a weighty human, possibly did not oer the resistance to the
halberd blows, which might have otherwise caused the helm and armor to give under the
force of the blow. The locksmith, although perhaps used to hammering, was certainly not
as practiced as fourteenth-century Swiss peasants who had come by their expertise in chop-
ping trees and splitting wood with axes since their childhood and whose very lives depended
on producing the maximum force with the unrestricted swing of a halberd. A Swiss-arse-
nal halberd of the early seventeenth century was, of course, not primarily intended for
use against armor. Earlier halberds of the fteenth century had a nearly similar mass of
metal, but they also were most successful against lightly armed infantry such as compa-
nies composed of landsknechts. The beak would, probably, pierce armor as tested because
the mass of the weapon, with its swung velocity aecting just the point of the beak, would,
if applied at right angles to the metal in question, bring enormous pressure to bear. It
is quite certain that earlier halberds in the hands of a practiced fourteenth- or fteenth-
century Swiss reislufer could disrupt esh and bone, mail, and occasionally armor if the
blows landed correctly. There is enough attestation to the ecacy of the halberd in the
literature and art of the period, as well as in the surviving evidence (g. 87). One must
bear in mind however that prior to about 1400, the steel mass of halberd heads was con-
siderably less than the arsenal halberds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and
their ecacy fell somewhere between a knife cut and an axe blow.
A number of skulls recently excavated from a site near Dornach, Switzerland are appar-
ently the remains of military casualties from the 1499 battle between the Swiss and the
forces of Maximilian. The skulls have been cleaned and studied by anthropologists, who
were able to divide them into the two distinct populations under Maximilian, the Burgundians
and Germans, by their shapes. They were on display, with labeling, in the Museum Altes
Zeughaus, Solothurn, but are currently shown elsewhere. What is relevant here are the
shapes and sizes of the mostly fatal wounds caused by weapons that can probably be
ascribed to having been halberds.
4
Angled cuts are present penetrating completely through
the convex surface of the skulls and exiting again in the region of the ear, removing a
plate or bowl-like piece of bone. Unless the head was unprotected at the time of the blow
(a circumstance that was possible on occasion) it seems unlikely that a sword, no matter
how powerful the blow, or strong the bearer could split open a skull in this way. Figure 87,
2
Schneider, Hugo, Erfahrungen mit der Halbarte, Schweitzer Waen Magazin: No. 1, Nov. 1982, pp. 489.
3
This lm has not been viewed by the author.
4
Some wounds could have been caused by two-handed swords; except that the surviving pictorial evidence
of the time shows mostly halberds in use.
100 chapter six
the use of halberds 101
Fig. 87. Three skulls from the battle of Dorneck in 1499 recently studied and restored (stabilized). These fatal
wounds were probably inicted by halberds. Courtesy of the Museum Altes Zeughaus, Solothurn.
showing skulls in the Museum Altes Zeughaus, illustrates this point. A skull identied as
being Burgundian from the battle of Murten (Morat) in 1476 is exhibited at the museum
in Murten. It shows two large oblique cuts through the occipital (rear) portion, approxi-
mately 7 and 10 cm. in length, 34 mm. in width, and no signs of healing (which indi-
cates that it was fatal). The length and width of the cuts are consistent with having been
made by a halberd, although a two-handed sword might have produced similar defects.
It is interesting to speculate whether the location of the blows indicates a eeing man or
even one lying prone on the ground. Notwithstanding this indirect evidence, such death-
dealing blows are not uncommonly found in battleeld remains of these times.
Thordeman, in his astounding archaeological chronicle of 1939, described in minute
detail the skeletons of the warriors who fell during the battle of Wisby in 1361. He illus-
trated fatal wounds in skulls similar to the ones just described. There were no halberds
in the mass graves, nor any large weapons, not even swords. The grave nds included
large numbers of arrow and bolt heads and knives. One cannot rule out the fact that
large weapons were indeed used, however. These, being much more costly to replace than
arrows and knives, would certainly have been salvaged from the fallen. The battle occurred
at about the same time as the battle of Sempach in Switzerland in 1386, in which hal-
berds were a major weapon component after the front lines of the Austrians longspears
had been opened. It is also possible that the use of the halberd had not in 1361 spread
to the Danes and inhabitants of Wisby in Gotland.
5
It is interesting to note that the use
of a mail coif for protection of the head was relatively common, as many were found still
on the excavated skulls of the Wisby defendants. The coif s prolic appearance is note-
worthy rst because it was expensive to own and most if not all the defeated Wisby defen-
dants were peasants and other non-titled townsmen hurriedly amassed (some quite old).
Secondly, their demise, despite this protection, was often a crushing or cutting blow across
the exposed face (as well as penetration by arrows). It is assumed that there was no addi-
tional head protection besides the mail coif.
In summary, it cannot be determined with any degree of certainty which weapons pro-
duced the horrendous skull wounds just described, but it seems likely given the illustra-
tions in Swiss chronicles and poems cited, that the Dornach skulls, at least, were injured
by halberds.
There are many sagas, chronicles, and epic poems of the Middle Ages such as the Song
of Roland, Froissarts Chroniques de France, Mallorys Le Morte dArthur, not to mention illus-
trations in the Maciejowski Bible or the Caesar Tapestries in Bern, that tell of or show
a powerful knight or king splitting his mail clad and helmeted opponent (sometimes includ-
ing his horse) virtually in half with a blow of his sword. These descriptions are perhaps
wishful thinking or meant to atter, but in any case they are vastly exaggerated, and, it
seems, rather impossible. It also seems highly unlikely that a construction technique as
dicult as that employed by the halberd-smiths would be used to manufacture a blade
incapable of inicting severe damage in battle. It is far more likely that both actions of
the halberd were used, that is, cut and thrust. This is best illustrated in the Basel wood-
cut Dorneck 1499, whose enormous and complex battle scenes show the Swiss piercing
armpits and buttocks with halberd spikes as well as exercising large overhead swings against
an opponent with resulting decapitation or other fatal head wounds. Despite Schneiders
5
Thordeman, B., Armour from the Battle of Wisby, Almquist & Wiksells Boktryckeri A.B., 1939.
102 chapter six
the use of halberds 103
great expertise and research, the experiment previously described and the conclusions
drawn from it, do not seem plausible or supported by contemporary illustrations.
Many peasants, as discussed in a previous chapter, turned to the profession of soldier-
ing as mercenaries. This was the transformation to Landsknecht or Reislafer and
brought with it monetary rewards and a freer lifestyle than farming. In battles they were
erce and successful, recalling the words of John of Winterthur and the King of Bohemia
( p. 34),they cut through their enemys armor as though with a razor, and reduced
them to pieces, andwhat a terrible sight this wedge formation is, with its horrible and
frightening instruments of death.
Mercenaries were active in Europe even before the time of Christ. Contemporary artists,
most of them sixteenth century, however, made it quite clear that the realities of landsknecht
life were usually anything but rosy. Many illustrations show the returning landsknecht-
mercenary in rags, with an empty purse (having lost all with drinking, whoring, and gam-
bling), and with the scars, mutilations and physical losses of war. At least one of them
shows a gure, one-half brightly clad and wholesome as the landsknecht starting out to
war, and the other half, wounded, worn, older and in rags and poverty, returning home.
More needs to be said about the Swiss tactics in battle and as halbardiers. During their
period of success in warfare in the fourteenth century, Swiss foot-soldiers were rather
loosely guided by a eld captain or leader who gave the time for attack or retreat but
left it largely to the combatants to enact the command in whatever fashion they chose.
As their cultural and social background was fairly uniform, the troops carried out the
action by collective instinct, skirting elds at the edge of slopes or mountains, or creating
a wedge formation for a direct attack, a phenomenon initially not formally prepared or
rehearsed.
6
Movement on a battleeld came naturally, much as might be found in a mod-
ern marathon racethe phenomenon of breaking up a standing group into a running one
tending to produce a wedge. Later in the fteenth and through the sixteenth centuries,
organization and structured leadership became more prevalent. Towns determined the
exact makeup of the troops both in terms of the weapons used and the rules of using
them (classically, the mix of halberds and longspears and later, rearms). Also; the hedge-
hog formations or squares, and the lines of command were more clearly dened. These
tight formations composed of longspears and halberds pushed in unison against the enemy
and only when the integrity of the other formation had been disrupted, did the hacking
and thrusting begin.
The Swiss were not alone in this use of the wedge. Military commanders often wrote
treatises on warfare based on their years of experience in the eld. Thus, Charles the
Bold, in his military ordonnance of Bohain en Vermandois of 1472, described in minute
detail the arming and composition of his regular troops. Furthermore he, as well as other
commanders like Louis XI, Charles VII, and Maximilian I contracted with armorers and
weapons smiths for large and specic standing orders of arms and armor to be delivered
mostly on a yearly basis (although the shops themselves usually preferred to commit them-
selves only to a daily production rate). By the latter half of the fteenth century, rulers
had come away from the haphazard massing of troops and had come to realize the valu-
able connection between weapons technology, organization, and strategy.
6
Meyer, W., Hirsebrei und Hellebarde, Walter-Verlag A.G., Olten, 1985, p. 357. Meyer points out that the
muster called out groups from towns and villages who had known each other as neighbors, friends or rela-
tives and whose customs, habits and thinking were relatively homogeneous, and who, in all likelihood, would
tend to react similarly in a given military situation.
Although the increasing use of rearms slowly retired weapons such as the halberd from
use on the eld of battle during the 16th century, the halberdiers, in conjunction with the
longspear-men in their hedgehog formations, inspired awe and terror in Europe during
the 14th and 15th centuries. They helped to change the power structure and boundaries
of the Holy Roman Empire, the Swiss Confederation, Burgundy, before its incorporation
into the Empire, and, to a lesser extent, Italy and France, where their obsolescence was
made denitive.
104 chapter six
CHAPTER SEVEN
HALBERDS: DETAILS OF RAPID IDENTIFICATION
Thirteenth century
Long, thin, slightly curved convex blade coming to a point without a well-dened spike.
Small beak between eyes, or integral with upper eye.
Blade is secured to round shaft by nails in one or both eyes.
Rudimentary spike/point is present at turn of century.
Rare depictions of shorter shafted square blades; few have survived.
Fourteenth century
Upper edge of blade indents to form clearly demarcated spike.
Head becomes larger, heavier, and more rectangular.
Beak disappears as a separate part and is integral with head.
Axis of spike is in front of shaft.
Spike is short and sharpened, front and back.
Rudimentary langets, integral with back (occasionally front) of lower eye, appear.
Shaft socket created in blade, replacing eyes (very end of century).
Fifteenth century
Blades are rectangular (early); some become angular (later).
Flange appears.
Spike moves back to be aligned with shaft, some of rectangular cross section.
Beak is more robust and angulated slightly downwards.
Langets become heavier and longer; second sets of langets appear (front and back).
Shaft socket curves towards ange.
Sixteenth century
Spike becomes longer with quadrangular cross section.
Occasional at spike with medial ridge.
Concave or convex cutting edge appears; head becomes smaller in second half of century.
Langets number two to four, becoming thinner and less massive.
Shaft socket is straight after ca. 1540.
Zwinge (collaret) appears.
Seventeenth century
Pronounced crescent shape or light square head with long or short spike.
Elaborate piercing, engraving and other decoration.
Shaft may be shod in iron.
Tassels and covering of shaft may be present (may also be added to earlier weapons).
Massive and utilitarian forms in earlier styles produced for Swiss arsenals, alongside light
parade and guard halberds.
Note: production and use of early forms may persist locally into a subsequent century.
106 chapter seven
CHAPTER EIGHT
GLAIVES
The glaive is a large cutting and thrusting weapon whose shaft can be up to 2 meters
(6 6) in length. The blade edge is convex, the back is usually straight, but may be slightly
concave. The shaft socket is central (unlike the similar appearing vouge) and basal lugs
may be present. It appears in illustrations of the mid-13th century and may have been
used even earlier. The name glaive, however, has been the source of confusion for a long
time. It is important, therefore, to discuss the various names used for what we now call
the glaive and the various weapons that bore those names.
The confusion becomes understandable if one considers the multiplicity of geopolitical
enclaves and the division of languages and dialects within which these weapons saw
their use. It seems that many of these names are also probably errors of observation on
the part of authors who, in the early twentieth century, were basing their opinions on yet
earlier works of the nineteenth century as well as on anonymous (and incorrect) labels on
weapons in dusty museums or storage areas. It should be remembered that nineteenth-
century writers on arms and armor were trying to organize a vast and almost forgotten
subject matter and regarded merely as a curiosity with long obsolete information and
sources. Standing out from this group, however, is the epoch making work of Charles
Buttin, who meticulously researched archival information on sta weapons. His notes were
published posthumously by his son in a series of articles called Les Armes dHast in the
Bulletin Trimestriel de la Socit des Amis du Muse de lArme. Rather than insist on
establishing a correct name for a number of sta weapons having either vague or clear
similarities, this chapter describes the development of a particular form, to give the names
associated with it by quoting sources, and shows interrelationships with other sta weapons.
In dierent modern and slightly older books and at dierent times, the glaive has
been called a variety of names. To give an example, as described in Martin Ellehauges
monograph on glaives, the word glaive is generic for long bladed cutting sta weapons
with a minor thrusting component.
1
Specically, however, he refers to one form (like g. 99)
as a guisarme (a French term), which it is not.
2
This same weapon is called a glfe (glaive)
by August Demmin, who gives as synonyms: guisarme and gisarme (English), again which
it is not.
3
He states that the English almost invariably confuse this weapon with a halberd
and that the Welsh call it Llawnawr or Gleddir. The German name for what Demmin
describes is rossschinder (horse-cutter literally, or ham-stringer) and the Italian name for
this same weapon form is roncone or ronca ( Troso writes elaborately about this weapon [see
chapter 11]).
4
The English call it a bill (late form). The modern Italian name is falcione.
The French name, which is also used in English, is fauchard,
5
which is perfectly acceptable,
1
Ellehauge, Martin, Certain Phases in the Origin and Development of the Glaive, Tjhusmuseets Skrifter 2,
Nordlundes Bogtrykkeri, Copenhagen, 1945.
2
Illustrations 28 through 33.
3
Demmin, August, Die Kriegswaen, E.A. Seemann, Leipzig, 1886, p. 594.
4
Troso, Mario, Le Armi in Asta, Istituto Geograco De Agostini, Novara, 1988.
5
This weapon is called fausart in 1180, 1260 and 1288; faussars in 1370 and again in 1373 by Bernard
de Guesclin, and fauchart in 1380.
but a slightly better synonym in English is still glaive, it seems, because of its more
ancient roots.
The sta weapon often called glaive, which name is derived from the Latin glad-
ius, glavea, meaning sword, but which is denitely not a sword; is seen in illustrations
as far back as the middle of the twelfth century.
6
This word, in one spelling or another,
is found in the English language as early as 1297, but then the word was used inter-
changeably for a lance or sword.
The statement has been made that the glaive evolved from the war scythe at some
point between 1200 and 1400.
7
This is a dicult point to prove, as the two have little in
common. The war scythe continued to be made in a more or less unchanged style and
technique from antiquity into the seventeenth century and beyond (see chapter 19); its
blade was adapted almost unchanged from a farming scythe, and all extant examples fea-
ture a corresponding concave (rather than the glaives convex) cutting edge, which would
have been unsuited for thrusting. The glaive, as described more fully below, has a sym-
metrical, carefully worked haft (socket), is of a much thicker steel than the scythe, and has
either a convex, or recurved cutting edge to the blade, suitable for thrusting. The oldest
forms, moreover, have either a medium length or long shaft. There is not a reason to
assume there is a developmental connection between the farming scythe and the glaive.
A survey of the available pictorial documentation for the period of circa 12501450,
illustrates early occurrences of the glaive roughly contemporary with the early develop-
ment of the halberd. The blade of a glaive as seen in these early illustrations is, initially,
slightly saber-like (single edged), had a slightly concave back-side and convex cutting edge.
It is sharply drawn in near its base into a ricasso-like narrow portion, which is fastened
possibly with a tang, into a short shaft appearing round and having approximately the
same thickness as the shaft of a spear in the same illustrations. A fuller runs most of the
length of the blade near the back edge, which on some illustrations is occasionally aug-
mented by a wavy incised decoration. These images are found in the Maciejowski Bible
of approximately 1250 that are probably from the Paris School, as they show gural sim-
ilarities to the personages depicted in the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, dating from this period.
In this manuscript, folio 10, recto, The Israelites are repulsed from Hai, the soldier at
the extreme left carries a glaive-like weapon measuring approximately 126 cm. in length:
the blade and haft each measure approximately 63 cm. (g. 88). On folio 10, verso, enti-
tled Joshua cuts in half a mailed warrior, Joshua uses a short-shafted glaive measuring
133 cm. in length; the grip is 33 cm., the blade 100 cm. (g. 89).
8
No sword-like grip is
present, nor are there quillons or a pommel. In fact, the illustration on folio 10, verso,
leaves open the possibility that the structure previously described as tang-like is in actual-
ity a socket tting over the shaft. Some illustrations in other manuscripts from Europe
also feature glaive-like weapons, thus conrming their early use, but many do not, indi-
cating only local and not widespread early use.
The delicately drawn illustrations in the Winchester Bible from the second half of the
twelfth century do not show glaive-like weapons.
9
6
The Roman gladius was short and not at all like the slightly later Teutonic sword or the glaive at any
point in time.
7
Puricelli-Guerra, A., The Glaive and the Bill.
8
These numbers are derived using proportions of the riders arm and those of a live model.
9
The Bible is still at Winchester Cathedral where it was produced ca. 1150.
108 chapter eight
glaives 109
An examination of the Wenceslas Bible in the Staatsbibliotheke in Vienna shows two
large glaives in the hands of Israelite foot soldiers in folio 207, recto, where they confront
the nobles and kings of other lands who carry swords and lances. These glaives, stylistically
of about 1380, are remarkably similar to those of the mid-15th and early 16th centuries
as can be seen in gs. 90b and 92. One of them even has a vertical backspike as in
g. 90b. The Wenceslas Bible was created over a long span of time, with a long hiatus
towards the end, and covers stylistically almost a century (13601450).
There is documentation that glaives were in use in Italy shortly after 1300. A prayer
book of approximately 1380 in the library of Parma, Ms. Pal. 56, shows three scenes:
The Kiss of Judas, Christ in Front of Pilate, and The Mocking of Christ, in which
long shafted glaives are being carried by foot-soldiers, (alongside shafted sickles, spears
with and without hooks, and military forks). Sketches of these glaive forms are shown in
g. 90a.
Although glaives are relatively easy to nd as single weapons in illustrations of the
fteenth and sixteenth centuries (and they must have had a devastating eect in actual
use), some drawbacks must also have been associated with their use as they were never
present in large numbers, nor did contemporary regulations give them a prescribed num-
ber within military formations, as opposed to long spears, halberds, crossbows, longbows
and later, rearms.
In one of the Caesar Tapestries in Bern (g. 91), an armored knight uses a glaive while
locked in deadly combat with another knight who is ghting with a vouge. Each of these
weapons has a roundel at the base of the blade, and, because the men are ghting at
very close quarters, they grip the (long-shafted) weapons just under the roundel with their
right hands and the shaft again, some two feet back, with their left hands. The weapons,
which are cut and thrust in type, are used here for thrusting only, again because of the
close quarters in this crowded and animated battle scene.
Early to mid-fteenth century glaives that survive are much like the earlier simple ver-
sions that have a fork-like backspike projecting upwards ( parallel to the blade).
10
Such a
weapon is seen in g. 90b. But, by the mid fteenth century glaives, as well as other sim-
ilar weapons, developed small stylistic and utilitarian additions. The classical glaive (g. 92),
which found its most widespread use in Italy in the late fteenth century, had a slender
half-moon like back-spike angled upwards; and above it, showed a rounded decorative
swelling, portions of which were led out. The half moon section might have been to
catch the opponents weapon. Front and back basal lugs with cut out proles were also
present in some weapons and might have served a similar purpose. It is possible to gauge
the widespread use of glaives in Italy in the fteenth and sixteenth centuries by their pres-
ence in illustrations by Paolo Uccello, Cosimo Tura, and Tintoretto, among others. Makers
marks are common on Italian glaives of the sixteenth century including the well-known
scorpion mark also found on Italian roncones and halberds (gs. 63 and 64).
During the next hundred years of glaive manufacture, regional dierences such as the
Venetian forms (g. 93) developed, and as always, ornamentation increased steadily
be it in the form of etched or engraved inscriptions, coats of arms or designs, gilding, or
the practice of covering of the sta with velvet and adding tassels, indicating use by the
10
Just such a weapon is swung overhand against a shield bearing and armored foot soldier in a mid-
fteenth century Veronese drawing in the Frits Lugt collection. Pictured in Hale, J.R., Artists and Warfare in
the Renaissance, Yale University press, New Haven & London, 1990, p. 149, g. 195.
110 chapter eight
Fig. 90b. An early Italian glaive, mid to late 15th cen-
tury, the forerunner of the glaive pictured in g. 92.
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. No.
14.25.259, gift of Wm. H. Riggs, 1913.
Fig. 90a. Sketches of two long-shafted glaives from an
illustrated prayer book prayer book of ca. 1380. They
are carried by footsoldiers in scenes from the Passion,
along with a profusion of other sta weapons. Parma
MS Pal. 56.
glaives 111
Fig. 93. Venetian glaive, end of 16th century. Although
the weapon is somewhat similar to the one in g. 92;
it is longer, more elaborate and has non-functional
additions which distinguish it from weapons of war.
Its great length also makes it impractical to manipu-
late in a crowded eld of battle. Courtesy of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 04.3.103.
Fig. 92. The most widespread form of glaivean
Italian weapon of ca. 150020. Its overall length is
270 cm. (8 ft. 10 in.). It is possibly a guard weapon,
but could clearly be used for thrusting and cutting in
the eld. Private collection.
112 chapter eight
bodyguards of the titled and wealthy. It is safe to say that very little combat was seen by
late-sixteenth-century glaives. Because they were more for ceremonial use and show, they
were large, impressive, and decorated to commanded respect. Some extant glaive heads
measure 85 cm. (2 10) in length (including the socket) and have relatively short langets,
containing only four brass nails, but some glaives have longer langets with iron nails sim-
ilar to those of halberds. The shafts are commonly two meters (6 6) in length and are
usually rectangular in cross section or oval on each side.
The Venetian palatial glaives that were popular at this time were massive, the blade
having grown into a more bulbous apex with a rear-facing small apical point, which could
no longer be used for thrusting (g. 94). They were purely ceremonial and used by the
Doges as well as by other guards of nobility.
This arm was never found in great numbers in Northern Europe, although one can
nd glaives illustrated there before 1500. For example, there are two simple slender and
long glaives; one with a backspike and one without, in the hands of French soldiers clad
in typical Gothic armor in a manuscript of Giovanni Boccaccios Des Cas des Nobles
Homes et Femmes from the region of the Loire valley in France, circa 1470. A small
glaive is seen in the hands of Flemish infantrymen in a woodcut of ca. 1480 by the Master
of the WA, of Bruges, similar to the one in the Caesar Tapestry. With a roundel at the
base of the blade, it appears to be a local adaptation, as it is not seen elsewhere. Also of
interest in this woodcut illustration is the fact that the glaives are interspersed between the
long spears in the back row of soldiers (behind the archers), which is reminiscent of the
use of halberds between the long spears of the Swiss. A glaive is being thrust against a
Swiss by an Imperial soldier in an illustration from Der Weisskunig, Maximilians account
of his deeds that was written between 1514 and 1516. Just as in the reports of modern
conicts; success was often claimed by both sides. Judging from this illustration of the
Swabian war, the Imperial forces seem to be routing the Swiss. Looking at the woodcut
produced by an anonymous Swiss artist, entitled Dornach 1499 (gs. 18 through 22 in
chapter 2), just the opposite appears to be the case. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in-
between; nonetheless, it is quite clear that Maximilian, after the Swabian war, had lost
the Helvetian confederation permanently.
Later, there is the woodcut of 1535 by Erhard Schn entitled Infantry Company
which, very much in the style of the Triumphal Processions of this time by Drer,
Altdorfer, and Burgkmair, gives us a picture of the composition and order of both infantry
and cavalry.
11
In this particular woodcut it is noteworthy that large numbers of halbardiers
and pikemen are present, along with somewhat smaller numbers of soldiers carrying
matchlocks and two-handed swords. Only one landsknecht is present in the company of
halbardiers, and he carries a glaive.
The glaive ceased to be manufactured and used as a weapon by the middle of the sev-
enteenth century.
11
Pictured in Andersson, C., and Talbot, C. From a Mighty Fortress. The Detroit Institute of Arts, 1983,
pp. 334336.
glaives 113
Fig. 94. This purely ceremonial glaive was meant mostly to impress and is also Venetian. It was a type used
by palace guards of such important gures as the Doge, has lost its thrusting function and can merely cut.
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 04.3.102.
CHAPTER NINE
BILLS
The bill is a ubiquitous weapon with many forms throughout more than a millennium of
use, but it always features a forward facing hook on the upper end of the blade and often
can be found with various spikes on the back facing up or rearward (or both).
According to Laking, who concludes that the bill was the most popular sta weapon in
England, the common bill was, in the late Middle-Ages, predominantly an English weapon.
1
He cites the Royal Armouries inventory as recording the presence of 6,700 bills in the
mid-sixteenth century.
The glaives origins are somewhat in dispute, but it has been recently traced to Roman
times. In an extensive discussion, Gaitzsch (1992), established a relationship between Roman
sickle-shaped vine-pruning knives known as the securis or sichelmesser in German, (worn
tucked into a belt) and the medieval and renaissance glaives or what we will designate
bills (ronca or roncone in Italian).
2
There seems to be little confusion about the
nomenclature of bills except in the 1981 publication by Mller and Kllig, in which this
weapon is called an Italian halberd.
3
The Roman agricultural tool, as well as the later
forms through the Middle-Ages, were simply made and have a simple shape (g. 95a
and b). The basic form of the securis is a that of a thick round or angle-headed sickle,
usually with a small upward facing hook on its back and having almost invariably a roughly
hammered, partially open socket at its base resembling a ange folded around a pole or
shaft. It has previously not been clear whether the roman knife indeed had a shaft or was
held by the metal socket itself. An example of this early type of weapon is the large securis-
like blade in the Cantonal museum of Baselland, which has a long stout tang instead of
the more common half open shaft socket as seen in g. 96. A Roman securis from a
period between the late rst and fourth centuries A.D. recently excavated near Jerusalem,
is shown in g. 95b. Dry soil conditions around the nd allowed a minute fragment of
wood to survive surrounding the securing nail driven into the shaft through the socket.
This seems to indicate quite clearly that a wooden shaft, even if short, was present as a
grip for the tool. The iron socket that held the wooden grip, as in practically all forms
of the developing roncone, is a folded triangle as is mentioned above. This securis has a
simple shape without the chisel-like cutting portion sometimes seen on the back of the
blade or the upward facing hook; it resembles the type C of Schulze-Drrlamm as pic-
tured in Gaitzschs article.
4
It is not surprising that in about two thousand years of burial
in dry soil, an iron blade survived fairly intact, whereas arms and armor recently exca-
1
Laking, Guy Francis, A Record of European Armour and Arms Through Seven Centuries, London, 192022,
Vol. 1, p. 144.
2
Gaitzsch, Wolfgang, Sichelfrmige Klingen rmischer und Frhmittelalterlicher Datierung, Waen und Kostumkunde,
Otto Schwartz & Co., Gttingen, 1992, pp. 8598.
3
Mller, Henrich, and Kllig, Hartmut, Europische Hieb-und Stichwaen, Militrverlag DDR. Berlin, 1981,
p. 248.
4
Gaitzsch, W., op. cit., but the type C illustrated is supposedly early medieval rather than Roman. Its
very long socket, back rib, and long sharp point suggests that it may be a sickle, rather than a pruning knife
or weapon.
vated from the moist and sometimes acid soil of northern battleelds having been interred
fteen hundred years later can be found almost totally destroyed by rust. A typical securis
measures about 22 to 28 cm. in length; however larger forms have also been found that
are probably of a slightly later date. Their size eliminates them from association with viti-
culture. Occasionally as in g. 95a, a tang was present instead of the socket.
Often, tools and weapons can be easily confused; this is particularly true with the bill
because of its close relationship to a pruning tool. Discerning tool from weapon requires
close examination and attention to makers marks, construction and presence or absence
of shafts. For example, some securis-like forms have been found in burial sites dating from
as early as Merovingian times. But, because they had remnants of longer wooden shafts,
clearly they were used as weapons rather than as pruning knives. Bills of this simple type
would have been widespread and popular in the Middle-Ages, and they could easily have
been made by a local blacksmith. Figure 96 shows the shape of such a weapon, but this
example was probably made by a moderately experienced smith in much more recent
times (in either the eighteenth or nineteenth century) and for agricultural use rather than
for battle. Its blade shows two large heart-shaped punch marks, and careful scrutiny reveals
a longitudinal weld mark running from the curved blade tip to the lower back of the
blade, close to the beginning of the shaft socket. Although the weld on the back speaks
against concluding that it was a tool, the heart-shaped marks are conclusive.
The Renaissance types, which are more complex, of better quality steel, and are bet-
ter nished, show marks consistent with a weapon-making specialization of the smith. The
Renaissance variations possess a spike making the bill similar to, albeit less massive, than
a halberd or roncone. As opposed to the spikes of halberds, however, this quadrangular
spike was fully in line with the blade surfaces (halberd spikes are turned 45 so that a
sharp edge faces front, back, and to each side rather than a at). Some roncone spikes
were also at and sword-like, as opposed to quadrangular. The sockets in better-made
examples are closed, or if they were still open on one side, a solid cylindrical base was
added (g. 97). The backspike of these forms no longer curved upwards but projected
straight back.
An exception to this reinforced manufacture is the bill in g. 98, whose delicate and
elongate form belies the fact that it was made as a weapon of war. It is called a Faucille
in French. Its long attenuated blade is curved into a right angle gradually over its 70 cm.
length, and the backspike, after a 34 cm. horizontal projection, is bent upward and
exceeds the height of the top of the blade. The base of the blade is hardly wider than
the rounded socket, which shows the usual open side. It is dicult to believe that it was
a successful weapon; even if the smith had tempered the blade extremely well, the thin-
ness, light weight, and unusual length of the weapon suggests that it would have tended
to bend or break with any signicant resistance. The backspike would seem to be even
more vulnerable than the blade. In a recent article, Blair discusses these forms, called
Welsh bills, glaives or hooks, and forest bills, and shows that large numbers of them were
ordered as early as 1493, by King Richard III.
5
Nevertheless, he points out that the great-
est documented use of them is by watchmen and constables. The weapon could not have
caused great damage to an armored opponent or even to one wearing a brigandine, cuir
bouilli, or even thick padded and quilted defenses. Its construction leaves little doubt that
5
Blair, C., Welsh Bills, Glaives, and Hooks, The Journal of The Arms & Armour Society, vol. XVI, No. 2,
March 1999, Dyer & Son, Surrey.
116 chapter nine
Fig. 95b. A Roman Securis recently excavated near
Jerusalem, from between the end of rst to the fourth
century A.D. The inside of the socket contains frag-
mentary remnants of the short wooden shaft and its
securing nail. This grip was probably no longer than
ca. 12 cm. (4.5) Private collection.
bills 117
Fig. 95a. Roman securis or roncola, with a tang instead
of the usual socket which was open on one side (see
g. 95b). Other forms had a small upward-facing rear
hook. The shortest of these were purely tools and worn
tucked into the belt. Private collection.
Fig. 97. The Ronca, a much more rened weapon that
the preceding Roncola armi, is fully capable of both cut
and thrust action and is widespread throughout Europe.
It still shows the presence of an open-throated socket
for its shaft. Private collection.
118 chapter nine
Fig. 96. The Italian type of Roncola armi pictured here
is also found in Merovingian graves in the North. The
actual weapon shown here is probably much younger,
by virtue of the marks. The original forms were made,
more or less unchanged, until the 15th century. Private
collection.
it was derived from the ronca (bill), and indeed the early forms shown in g. 2 of the
article ( p. 75) bear a strong resemblance to the earliest ancestor, the securis in g. 95b,
and to Gaitzschs type A.
6
The ronca in g. 97 has a 20 cm.-long spike that is 1.3 cm. thick; the backspike is
9 cm. in length, and the blade is 6 mm. thick. It has a large mark punched near the
back edge of the blade towards the base. The closed portion of the socket is fastened
through the shaft with a large two-headed nail. This type would have been used on a
1.5 m. (5 ft.) long shaft in the fteenth century. A larger, heavier, and more elongated
form was popular in the fteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries in Italy and spread
around 1500 to North Central Europe, particularly Germany. This nal form (g. 99a)
was called the Roncone in Italy or Rossschinder in Germany.
Troso, in his very detailed description of these weapons, breaks them down into four
types, namely: Roncola, the agricultural tool dating back to the Romans and in use well
into the early Middle Ages; Roncola Armi, the weapon similar in shape to the aforemen-
tioned entity but generally longer and better made; Ronca, a fully developed ghting bill,
with a backspike jutting out at 90 degrees from the back of the blade and with or with-
out a topspike as previously mentioned.
7
This is the Brown Bill used in England, but
used widely elsewhere as well. This weapon was called a Kriegsgertel in German. A
typical English bill is pictured in the exhibition catalog Treasures from the Tower of
London, g. 100.
8
It bears more than a supercial resemblance to a halberd of about
1500, but as can be seen in the following description; is clearly not one. The light cor-
rosion has served to show lines corresponding to the smiths working the metal. It shows
the back-spike or beak welded on just as in some halberds and some lines suggesting the
possibility that the blade is a folded-over leaf. The socket, open on one side, is the usual
triangular piece of steel folded over as in other bills and welded together as a bottom
ring. The blade is somewhat square but has the top forward hook of a ronca. The top-
spike is especially prominent for a ronca and is angled back from the axis of the pole
slightly. A similar bill is present in the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, Mass.,
except that its spike tip is quadrangular rather than at. This type of weapon, much feared
and used extensively by the English for centuries, appears to have been inuenced by the
shape of the continental halberd and the Italian ronca and seems to have been capable
of performing both functions. One can certainly imagine the weapon being swung like a
halberd and the blade edge having similar eects.
The roncone is the fully developed Italian Renaissance bill. As Troso points out, the
superior edge of the roncones billhook is sharp, which is in contrast to the blunt edge of
the preceding forms. Several other features distinguish the two groups. The roncone pic-
tured in g. 99a, has a shallow longitudinal ridge in the center of the blade and two broad
fullers on each side of it. The front one extends from the basal lugs into the beginning
of the billhook and ends in a forward curve. The rear one runs out into the base of the
spike. Some have a single fuller or none at all, i.e. the blade is at. The back of the side
of the blade is decorated with eyelash marks, common in this and other Italian sta
weapons of the sixteenth century (g. 99b). Two makers marks (eight-point stars) are pre-
sent on each side near the base of the back spike. A thick bronze keeper is present over
the base of the socket, which has a four-sided trapezoid shape. Short langets are present.
6
Gaitzsch, W., ibid., pictured on p. 89, g. 7.
7
Troso, M., ibid.
8
Norman, A.V.B., and Wilson, G.M. ibid., p. 68, no. 52.
bills 119
Fig. 100. An English bill of ca. 1500. Note the typi-
cally open socket which is a folded triangle, the weld
marks of the beak joints, as well as the grain of the
blade steel at the bifurcation of the spike and the bill
hook. This last indicates that the smith split the blade
down to the bifurcation to separate the hook and the
spike. Courtesy of the Board of Trustees of the Royal
Armouries, inv. no. VII-1493.
120 chapter nine
Fig. 98. A Welsh bill which is described as a weapon,
but appears to be too delicate and frail to be suc-
cessful as such. Its function is more likely to have been
a symbol of authority in the hands of a constable or
watchman. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, inv. no. 14.25.155.
bills 121
Fig. 99b. Closeup of another roncones eyelash marks.
Private collection.
Fig. 99a. A fully developed Roncone of early 16th cen-
tury Italy, similar to the contemporary Rossschinder
of the Germans. This Italian specimen has typical
eyelash marks along the lower rear blade. Private
collection.
The shaft, which is not ash ( possibly pine or cedar), was cut to be quadrangular to t the
socket; it, thereafter, was rounded for most of its length. This roncone is an example of
the oft-appearing at spikes that have sharp edges and a low central ridge; others, usu-
ally later, show spikes just like those on a halberd; that is, they are quadrangular and
turned 45 degrees. The later the roncone blades; the wider they become, but almost all
have a central convexity on the cutting edge of the blade. They measure an average of
80 cm. from spike tip to the base of the socket. The head of the roncone in g. 99a
weighs 1.3 kg. (ca. 2.5 lbs.), and has very sharp cutting edges, that extend down to the
backspike. Below the backspike the blade back is at across. Both edges of the backspike
are sharp.
Although most popular in Italy, illustrations of these weapons are also found in French
and German manuscripts and books of the fteenth and sixteenth centuries. Illustrations
in Maximilians Weisskunig, nished in 1516 but not published until centuries after his
death, show the use of roncas by both the Swiss and the Germans in battle scenes (see
also the lower right scene in g. 75). Strangely enough, a large number of similar woodcuts
of this period do not show bills in use. Most of them show only the usual mix of pikes
and halberds. Bills and partizans, after they had been discarded as ghting weapons and in
a diminutive form, assumed a role as the insignia of low ranking ocers in the seven-
teenth century and even into the eighteenth in France and northern Italy. The best doc-
umentation of illustrations and text dealing with bills of all epochs is in a lengthy chapter
in Trosos book on pole arms. The reader is referred to it for more detailed information.
9
The gross metallurgic structure of bills, that is the manufacturing technique, appears to
be quite dierent from that of most halberds. No other weapon examined in this volume
shows the complexity of manufacture of the early halberds. The roncone blade appears
to come from a single billet of steel. No hammer-welded seam to indicate that two leaves
had been welded together is present on the back of the blade. Instead, the surface is at
(see g. 44). Initially, to make a halberd, a smith worked a billet of metal by cutting and
folding it into a relatively complex blade, spikes, and lugs. The back at at the base of
the spike in such a halberd of the late 15th and early 16th century could measure up to
1.8 cm. in thickness. Conversely, in the roncone pictured in g. 99a, the blade measures
4 mm. in thickness on the back at and the socket walls are approximately 2 mm. thick.
The socket was worked out by beating out a wide at pyramidal shaped base and then
folding it over a mandrel and hammer-welding it in the middle of one side. Langets were
then welded on to the base of the socket.
OHara and Williams cut multiple cross sections of an early sixteenth century roncone,
said to be Italian (neither photographs nor marks are published).
10
They performed hard-
ness studies on the polished sections and photographed them as well. Their conclusion
from these studies was, as is stated here, that the roncone was derived from a single bil-
let of heterogeneous steel, folded and forged to shape. They mention also that no attempt
was made to harden the steel (by analyzing the pattern of carburisation), although the
pearlite and ferrite present were reasonably hard. The actual hardness varied greatly
throughout the blade, ranging from 75.2 to 313 kg./sq. mm.
11
9
Troso, M., ibid.
10
OHara, J.G. and Williams, A.R., The Technology of a sixteenth century sta weapon, pp. 198200, and ve
plates, Journal of the Arms and Armor Society, London vol. 9, #5, June 1979.
11
Using the Vickers Pyramid Hardness scale. The gures indicate the kg. pressure per sq. mm. needed to
create a measured indentation by a diamond point.
122 chapter nine
Thus, although the bill was a more-simply manufactured weapon than the halberd, it
couldand didfunction as a substitute for the more expensive and complex weapon.
Interestingly, as was discussed, its use was just as geographically local as that of the hal-
berd, and without any signicant overlap between the two.
bills 123
CHAPTER TEN
PARTIZANS
Partizan blades are basically long and triangular, like an enlarged spearhead, that has, in
its later incarnations, small basal wings. The weapon was shortened and often com-
bined with other weapon types such as the halberd, as it declined in importance. The
partizan is one of the few polearms whose nomenclature is relatively uniform in Europe
of the fteenth and sixteenth centuries. It has relatively recent origins, arising gradually
from the short spear, the evolution of which can be identied by a lengthening blade that,
at some point ( perhaps early fteenth century) reached more than around 4045 cm.
(18 in.) in length and branched o the family tree of simple spears becoming known as
a partizan.
Seitz, commenting on the etymology of the word partisan, points to its Italian roots
and that the name partigiana is the feminized word partigianomeaning a member
of a party ( political or military)and concludes that it must have been carried by groups
united by some specic cause.
1
In fact, the name seems to refer specically to the mem-
bers and guards of Italian princes and nobles, the partigiani.
2
The name in slightly altered
form was adopted by most European nations. In English a z was substituted for the
s, probably to distinguish the weapon from the more commonly used human designa-
tion partisan. However, both forms are valid. The old French spelling is pertuisane, and
the modern, partisanne, derived from the Italian partigiana.
The exact forerunners of the partizan are not the winged spears of the Carolingian and
Viking periods, whose blades generally were some 3035 cm. in length (ugellanzen). The
Carolingian spears wings arose from the socket rather than the blade itself, its equiv-
alent in the time-period of the partizans is the Bhmischer Ohrenlel or Knebelspiess. Rather,
the non-winged war spears, the spiedi da guerra, which had blades occasionally longer than
40 cm. were the partizans direct ancestor. As opposed to the partizan, the lower blade
edges of the spiedi were gradually pulled in to meet a generally conical socket, with or
without langets. A beautiful example of a late fteenth century northern spear that is con-
temporaneous with partizan use; is present in the arsenal of the city of Vienna (g. 101).
It is an example of superb craftsmanship, and was so well constructed that it might have
been used both for hunting or war, depending possibly on the length of its shaft. It would
not have been used as an infantry weapon, however, as its head would have been too
heavy on a 5 meter (16 foot) long pole and its construction too expensive. It could have
found use as a horsemans lance.
The partizan, in contrast to a large spiedi da guerra, aside of having a longer blade,
is also wider at its base, has straight edges and the base of the blade is more sharply
pulled in, either at approximately 90 in early forms (g. 102), or some 110120 (g. 103)
in sixteenth century ones. Just after 1500, small upward pointed sidewings jut out from
1
Seitz, Heribert Blankwaen Klinkhardt + Biermann, Braunschweig 1965 p. 231.
2
Thomas, B., Gamber, O., Schedelman, H., Arms and Armor, Thames and Hudson, London, 1964, plate
45b, folding-partisan.
126 chapter ten
Fig. 101. Late 15th century spear with a heavy and elaborately worked head, resembling a partizan. Courtesy
of the Museums of the City of Vienna, inv. no. 686, from the old city arsenal.
partizans 127
Fig. 103. Early 16th century partizan with small side
wings at the base of the blade and a strong central
rib. The blade, without socket, is 78 cm. long; the
width without the wings is 11 cm. Private collection.
Fig. 102. 15th century Italian partizan stamped with
a Gothic 4 and without langets. The base of the
blade is drawn in towards the socket at approximately
90. The blade is 55 cm. long and 10 cm. wide. Private
collection.
Fig. 104. Partizan or lingua di bue, ca. 1500, probably
Venetian. Two round brass inlays with seven perfo-
rations are present on the blade. The socket is hexag-
onal, and the tassels are probably a later addition.
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv.
no. 1425.119.
128 chapter ten
Fig. 105. Spiedi da guerra, probably Bolognese, end of
15th century. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, inv. no. 04.3.76.
the base. They became a regular feature of sixteenth century partizans (g. 103), as well
as on those of the seventeenth century and on later ceremonial forms. Fifteenth-century
partizan blades are usually some 55 cm. in length and 610 cm. wide at the base (g. 104).
This type of partizan has been called ochsenzunge by the Germans, lingua di bue by the
Italians, and langue de boeuf; at least since 1441, by the French. In an anonymous ordon-
nance of 1446 entitled Du costume militaire des Franais, foot soldiers are to be armed
with the very popular langues de boeuf. In contrast, the English, in the 1450 Rolls of
Parliament, name the langue de boeuf the forbodon wepon (forbidden weapon), because
they, along with boar-spears and long swords, were considered unmerciable (merciless)
except in times of war. In 1487, the will of a J. Cooke of Somerset House mentions a
Jak ( Jack), a salett and a long debefe.
3
In the sixteenth century, partizan blades were longer and averaged some 75 cm. in
length and generally 1112 cm. in width at the base. There is almost always a central
ridge, which can be faint (early) or sharply raised (later). The side wings vary somewhat in length but
are usually only 23 cm. long. This weapon was also present in England in 1556, as
Heywood names Byls, bowes partisance, pikes.
4
The two partizans shown in Lacacis guide to the Armera in Madrid are similar to
other partizans of the early sixteenth century, except that the shafts are covered with red
velvet and are studded with brass nails.
5
Tassels are also present. These features suggest
either a later addition, or the special nish accorded to palace weapons for guarding, in
this instance, the royal person of Charles V, as is suggested by their inclusion in the
Illuminated Inventory of 1544. They show the small peculiarity of a shallow double con-
cavity in the base of the blade joined by a third minute indentation. A shallow central
rib is present along the entire blade.
Two illustrations in Boccia and Coelhos book on swords and sta weapons need com-
ment. The rst is of a partizan in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, probably
Venetian, bearing the same mark (that of a large gothic 4) and having almost identical
dimensions as the one in g. 102. Both of these date from the end of the fteenth cen-
tury. The one from the book, number 182, has a delicate brass rosette with seven perfo-
rations inlaid in each side of the base of the blade. An almost identical one was present
in the Galerie Fischer sale of June 1994, stamped with a mark resembling a small sword.
Its brass rosette inlay has eight perforations. Both the Fischer and the Hermitage weapons
have a peculiar rounded point as compared to the spiedi da guerra from which they arose.
This probably indicates a slightly dierent function and their demarcation as a new weapon.
The Hermitage specimen is called a spear in the previously mentioned book. Another
very similar partizan, although with a somewhat shorter blade, is in the collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (g. 104). It has two basal rosettes in steel with seven per-
forations. The blade is not a perfect triangle but shows the point to be more pulled in
for the top 5 or 6 cm. The mark is a doubly crossed line issuing from a circle.
Measurements of the length and width of the blade show most of these early partizans
to have a remarkably similar width to length ratio (1:5.5), regardless of the actual length.
This is in sharp contrast to the true spiedi da guerra, regardless of the country of origin.
The spiedi (g. 183 in Boccia and Coelhos book quoted in footnote 142) typically were
3
Quotations from the Oxford English Dictionary, second edition.
4
O.E.D., Ibid.
5
Lacaci, G.Q., ibid.
partizans 129
6
The word libtas stands in all probability for libertas, which is the motto of the city of Bologna.
7
Boccia, L.G., Coelho, E.T., ibid.
long and slender, having a ratio of 1:11. An almost identical weapon from the Metropolitan
Museum of Art (g. 105) is marked libtas on the blade.
6
The later partizans (early six-
teenth century) typically had a much larger and longer blade so that the ratio was now
more variable.
A subset of partizans is seen in Boccia and Coelhos book, numbers 307 and 308.
7
They
are called spiedi alla Bolognese in this work and are distinguished by ornamentation at the
base, both etched and chiseled, and by the presence of two broad, shallow, concave hol-
lows (fullers) on each side of the blade, meeting in a low median ridge. The points are
angled in from the rest of the blade edge, somewhat like the top of an obelisk. The blades
are relatively short and broad.
Although the transformation of spiedi da guerra to partizan took place in Italy, it does
not exclude a similar phenomenon elsewhere. Partizans were used in Northern Europe in
the fteenth century such as the ones that have survived in the dynastic collection of the
Habsburgs in the Hofjagd-und Rstkammer now in the Neue Burg in Vienna. These were
carried and used by the bodyguard of Maximilian I, at that time king of the Romans,
during his unpopular sojourn in Bruges in 1488. Because of the unpopularity of Hapsburg
rule, personal safety was a real issue. He is said to have slept in his mail shirt; at least
one woodcut in his illustrated autobiography Theuerdanck shows him sleeping in full
armor, his sword at his side, while the enemy is preparing to attack him outside the bed-
room door with a variety of sta weapons (Ill. no. 86, our g. 106). Since in this largely
ctionalized work he is almost invincible, the partizan-carrying bodyguard has been dis-
pensed with; he is left with only his constant witness, Ehrenhold.
These northern partizans are examples of great skill and workmanship in their con-
struction (g. 107); they are heavy and decidedly dierent from their Italian counterparts.
Nonetheless, there are some similarities, like the Italianate partizans in the fteenth cen-
tury; the base of their blades had no wingtips. The Austrian partizans are much thicker,
measuring just under 1 cm. at the base, and, as opposed to the Italian blades (except
those from Venice and Bologna), that are basically triangular, the Austrian examples demon-
strate an ogival arch forming their points. These long blades have a faint medial ridge.
The bases show a number of inlaid brass marks including a large running wolf of Passau
and a few shield-shaped marks or inlaid circles, for example. The sockets are hexagonal
with additional faceting front and back towards the base of the socket. The shafts are fas-
tened to the sockets with a large diameter double-headed bolt, and additional nail holes
may be present above them. No langets are present. The socket bases have a large diameter
(approx. 3 cm.); all shafts appear to be modern replacements but are made to be true
hexagons to t. The blade bases can be straight in towards the socket, slightly concave,
or convex. Most interesting is the pattern of the original polishing marks. The blade was
polished crosswise between the base and the brass marks and longitudinally above them.
The socket, although carefully nished, clearly shows the usual hammer-welded seams.
The blade edges, when examined with a loupe, show them to have a two-leaf construc-
tion, as very slight separation is evident where the edges are damaged, and occasionally
the weld seam is not at the edge but is more central.
Sixteenth century Austrian partisans resemble Italian ones more, except for (in the ones
examined at the Hofjagd-und Rstkammer) the point, which appears deliberately and
130 chapter ten
Fig. 106. The emperor Maximilian I, asleep in his chamber, about to be attacked by soldiers bearing vari-
ous sta weapons. In this largely ctionalized book, his life guards who were said to carry Austrian partizans,
are not present. From the 5th edition of Theuerdank, M. Schultes, 1679. Private collection.
partizans 131
originally truncated in a pyramidal fashion with chamfered and polished edges, not unlike
a Japanese sword tip. A strong medial rib is usually present, along with basal wings.
8
A somewhat common feature of partizans of the second part of the sixteenth century
is the presence of a nodus (a round ball) between the socket and the blade (g. 108). The
shaft had been reduced in diameter, and langets were often used. The langue de boeuf
persisted in a rather shortened form up to about 1600, an example of which is in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. On this particular weapon, the upper end is drawn in from
the almost parallel sides to form a spike like point (g. 109). By the early seventeenth cen-
tury, as with most specialized sta weapons, there was a sharp decline in use and manu-
facture, but here and there the weapons persisted. Thereafter the blades became much
shorter and assumed a variety of ornate forms, including amed edges, single recurved
side wings, heavily ornamented and cut out wings, tassels, etc. These forms are generally
called spontons or spontoons and serve mainly as ceremonial weapons associated with mil-
itary rank. They persisted for well over another century in this manner (g. 110), as did
certain portions of armor.
9
In combination with a diminutive halberd blade and beak, the
sponton became a sponton-halberd, generally a decorated weapon that had only symbolic
or decorative use (g. 111). A signicant number of these sponton halberds made by
Pancras Thaller were delivered to the arsenal of Graz in the second half of the sixteenth
century. They were beautifully etched and blackened in the German style and were signed
PDthe D being the soft form of T in the makers mark.
As in the roncone, no complex metallurgic techniques appear to have been used gen-
erally in the manufacturing procedure of partisans. That being said; close examination of
the early partizan in g. 102 shows a faint irregular hammer-weld mark near one edge
of the base of the blade, suggesting that the blade may be double leaved or folded over.
The socket shows a single hammer-welded seam, which would tend to verify the concept
of a folded over blade leaf. The socket of the early-sixteenth-century partizan in g. 103
is nely nished and has ten facets running out in two langets measuring 32 cm. in length
and fastened with 4 nails each. The shafts of both are octagonal, and about 165 cm. long,
making the entire weapon approximately 230 cm. (7 6) in length. The shaft diameters
appear to be slightly smaller than those of contemporary halberds or roncones by about
an eighth of an inch (3 mm.) This is probably a reection of the fact that partizans are
chiey thrusting weapons with a small cutting component (sideward slashing) as opposed
to both the halberd and roncone, which are capable of being swung widely, to deliver a
considerable force at right angles to the shaft at the time of impact, so that a thicker stur-
dier shaft was needed.
The partisan, being originally an outgrowth of the Italian war spear, as just mentioned,
was mainly a thrusting and to a lesser extent, a slashing weapon, and was used focally
both in Northern and Southern Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries. It was not
produced, even at its zenith of use around 1500, in great numbers and had thereafter,
with a variety of additions, more of a symbolic use than that of a weapon of war.
8
It would be tempting to think that an outgrowth of the winged-shaped partizan became a runka or bran-
distocco (g. 144) with its straight central blade and large side wings, but this is merely speculation.
9
The gorget. (fteenth to eighteenth century, and even sporadically into the twentieth century).
132 chapter ten
Fig. 107. Austrian partizan, end of the 15th century, said to have been carried by the bodyguard of Maxim-
ilian I. Note the solid construction and the ogival arch-like upper end of the blade point, which it has in
common with the Venetian types. This example has a simple socket in the manner of an early ronca, but
others in this group have carefully constructed hexagonal sockets. None have langets. The shafts, which are
not original, have a hexagonal shape. Courtesy of the Hofjagt-und Rstkammer of the Historisches Museum,
Vienna, inv. no. A117.
partizans 133
Fig. 109. Partizan or Langue de buf , 17th century,
appearing to have been altered by drawing in the top
of the blade (the slight asymmetry would suggest a
post-manufacture alteration). The weapon has a width-
to-length ratio of 1 to 5.5. Courtesy of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.90.
134 chapter ten
Fig. 108. Partizan of the second half of the 16th cen-
tury, whose socket shows a nodus between it and
the base of the blade. Private collection.
Fig. 111. Sponton-halberd. This late weapon, a com-
bination of a short partizan (sponton) and a small hal-
berd, is highly decorated. Although it was either a
parade weapon or associated with military rank, it
could still have been used as a weapon. Courtesy of
the Museums of the City of Vienna.
partizans 135
Fig. 110. Sponton or spontoon from Brunswick,
Germany, 1718th century. The weapon is still clearly
a short partizan with basal wings and added lower
portions. Although its primary function is rank asso-
ciated, it could still be used as a weapon. Private
collection.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE MORGENSTERN GROUP
The group is dened as being percussion weapons even though almost all have spikes,
which along with a crush injury also cause penetrating wounds. Although, as will be seen
in the following text, there are elaborate forms; most are plain and simple weapons. The
German term Morgenstern (literally morning star) is most commonly used, German or
Swiss synonyms are Sturmkolben and Knttel. The English sixteenth century name is holy
water sprinkler but this name is restricted to weapons such as Henry VIIIs walking
stick, whose enlarged cylindrical head resembles the ecclesiastic object, and the French
Goupillon, which is the equivalent of this English name. Morgenstern appears to be the
term to use, for this weapon is mainly of continental use. The early Flemish weapon,
which is later described, is called a Godendag. The weapon is called a Spikklubba in Swedish,
which is readily understandable in English.
References to a club-like weapon, with or without spikes, and varying from a one handed
form (mace) to a two handed version, exist in Europe as early as 1300,
1
and they are
seen in illustrations of the eleventh century.
2
All forms were originally wooden, some with
iron reinforcements and radial spikes. The mace, developing somewhat independently, is
shod with iron or bronze, and became, by the fteenth century, mostly all metal. Its two
handed equivalent, the morgenstern, of course remained wooden, since it would otherwise
have been far too heavy to manipulate. Later maces (mostly in Asia Minor and Eastern
Europe) occasionally reverted to wood for the shaft. Ceremonial maces persisted into the
late seventeenth century.
One of the earliest references to this type of sta weapon, specically, the godendag (or
godendac, which means literally good day) is that the Flemish burghers and peasants of
Courtrai used it with devastating eect, in conjunction with spears in 1302 in the defense
of their town against the ower of French chivalry under Robert of Artois. This battle,
earlier than Morgarten (1315), which was the rst success of Swiss sta weapons, and ear-
lier than the success of the Scottish pikemen at Bannockburn, or of the English in the
Hundred Years War, shocked western European nobility. The fact that common foot sol-
diers had prevailed in battle against mounted and heavily armed and organized chivalry
was a quiet turning point in the military history of Central Europe. It is said that 500
pairs of gilt spurs were collected from the eld after the battle. But the immediate eect
on the nobility was minor, and their belief in their own superiority lived on for another
two centuries despite ever increasing signs of the fallacy of this thinking. Thirteen years
after Courtrai, the Habsburg chivalry was all but exterminated in the battle of Morgarten
by a Swiss peasant force. Charles Buttin identies the Courtrai weapon as Planon a Picot,
and shows in his text a miniature drawing depicting the battle of Mons-en-Pevele in 1304
1
Krenn, P., Das Steiermarkishe Landeszeughaus in Graz, 1974, p. 48.
2
The wooden clubs carried over the shoulder by mounted warriors in the Bayeux embroidery are related
to the early (thirteenth century) maces, which then with a longer haft, pass into the hands of the foot soldier
by the early fourteenth century.
where the Flemish combatants use this same weapon, just as the ones carved on the
Courtrai Chest (see below).
A wonderful depiction of the battle of Courtrai, as well as the events leading up to this
battle between the county of Flanders and the forces of Philip IV the Fair of France, is
carved into the front of a chest located within New College Oxford, England (g. 112a).
It is referred to as the Oxford or the Courtrai chest, but whether or not the carving can
be dated to the early fourteenth century has been debated for some time. A stylistic analy-
sis can support a conclusion that the chest is indeed from about 1300. A fresco of that
period discovered in Ghent in 1845 is very similar to the Courtrai chest in the essential
details; also several illuminations in a contemporary edition of the Grand Chroniques de
France are again stylistically similar. In analyzing the arms, armor, building style, as well
as the methods of depiction of the time, there can be little doubt that the carving is gen-
uinely old, although this is based only on seeing good photographs, as well as details of
those photographs, rather than on an examination of the object itself. Furthermore, scientic
analysis reinforces the early date. Dendrochronologic analysis of the wood by radiocarbon
dating as well as by accelerator-based mass spectrometry is apparently consistent with its
presumed age of the early fourteenth century. The conclusion is that the tree was felled
about 1250, seasoned for about 50 years and then used to construct the chest around
1300.
3
A last piece of evidence useful in dating the chest is literary. Charles Ffoulkes described
the carving in his 1912 account of the arms and armor of the University of Oxford.
Ffoulkes quoted from Guillaume Guiarts Branche des royaulx lignages, a contemporary
account of the battle:
A granz bastons pesanz ferrez
A un leur fer agu devant
Vont ceux de France recevant
Tiex bastons, quil portent en guerre
Ont nom godentac en la terre
Goden-tac cest bon jour a dire
Qui en Francois le veust descrire.
4
A rough translation is:
The peasants used large clubs
With a sharp iron point on top
Those of France faced
Those clubs they carried in war
Called godentac there
Goden-tac is to say good morning
Whoever wants to describe them in French.
When compared to this description, the images carved on the chest can be read as a con-
sistent contemporaneous account. One sees on the chest, the mail-clad burghers of Courtrai
and other Flemish towns wearing skullcaps and mail coifs, and armed with long wooden
clubs of a conical shape (Godentacs), that terminate with an iron spike. Longspears are
also shown on the panel, but are depicted as being relatively short, only because of the
3
Hall, E.T., The Courtrai Chest from New College, Oxford, Reexamined, Antiquity 61, no. 231 (1987): pp. 104107.
4
Ffoulkes, C., European Arms and Armour in the University of Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1912. Guiart, G.
Branche des royaulx lignages (13041307), 1st published by Buchon, J.A., Paris, 1828, lines 5428.
138 chapter eleven
the morgenstern group 139
lack of space in the panel of the carving. The burghers are represented as using them
against mounted and charging knights who wear surcoats and great helms and wield
swords, many of who have fallen from their chargers (lower right hand panel).
5
The goden-
tacs vary somewhat in length, but range between 120 and 180 cm. (4 and 6 feet) in length,
and are used with one or both hands by the carved soldiers. In an attempt to denitively
date the chest, a number of studies exist in 2001, which explored the events of historical
record and the age of the wood, rather than the date of the carving. As was often done,
a carving might have been added later to an old chest. The date of the carving is of
paramount importance here because it can help to date the weapons.
Some studies postulating that the godentacs were modied work tools such as might
have been used by weavers, oer as proof for this deduction that in battles subsequent to
Courtrai between the Flemish and the French, they were not mentioned. This conclusion
is easily refuted. Rather than disappearing from the material record, there are further
developments and uses of the morgenstern family of weapons found well into the seven-
teenth century. But more importantly, battle-tactics, arms and especially armor used by
combatants towards the end of the fourteenth century had changed drastically to favor
such weapons as the halberd, the longspear, and other sta weapons over spiked clubs
like the godentac. Lastly, the use of godentac-like weapons was by no means new at the
time of Courtrai, nor restricted to that part of Europe.
Although it has been generally assumed that weapons such as the morgenstern are
unsophisticated, that is, coarsely and cheaply made by non-weapon-specialized blacksmiths
and for use mainly by peasants in their ongoing eorts to revolt from an oppressive feu-
dal system, this assumption is not, in fact, completely correct. Clement Bosson, in his 1963
article on the morgenstern,
6
divides the group into three types: the military type made in
series by weaponsmiths, the peasant type cut by the peasants in the forest
7
and shod with
nails and spikes by the local blacksmith, and luxury types, mostly short-staed, of metal,
and decorated.
8
There is, for instance, a carefully crafted and shaped morgenstern of the military type
in the arsenal of the city of Vienna (g. 112b). The shafter used well-seasoned wood,
which is smooth and straight. The head, containing the polished and uniform radially
arranged spikes, is constructed of a separate wooden cylinder slipped over the head of the
shaft and secured to it by the spikes (that generally have a screw base). A steel plate is
present over the top and bottom of the cylinder and fastened to it by nails and is rein-
forced by steel retaining-bands at the top and bottom edges. The top-spike is made like
one of a sixteenth-century halberd, measures 55 cm. in length and is of quadrangular
cross section. This morgenstern is 236 cm. (93 inches) in length and has two langets each
fastened with 5 nails. The substantial construction suggests having been made by an
5
The great helms worn by the French chivalry have relatively pointed tops as opposed to the atter tops
seen in earlier helms, which puts them in the middle to late phase of great helms. This type of helm was no
longer in combat use after circa 1350. The plate construction and riveting are also correct for these helms.
The panel showing the arrival of Guy de Namur has not only the correct coat of arms on his shield, but
shows him wearing heraldic aillettes typical of this period. No attempt was made to show plate armor (which
did not exist in 1302). In short, none of the usual stylistic mistakes of a modern forger are seen here, and
there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the carving.
6
Bosson, C., op. cit. pp. 109 and 132.
7
It is worth noting that Bosson in the article just cited, refers to the forest as the arsenal of God, i.e.
supplying peasants with material for their arms. One assumes it is an old expression.
8
For example the sixteenth century morgenstern in the Wallace collection, London, no. A 986, which is
all steel and is damascened. It carries 22 spikes.
140 chapter eleven
Fig. 112b. Morgenstern from the arsenal of the City of Vienna, probably mid-16th century, now in the depot.
Courtesy of the Museums of the City of Vienna, inv. no. 126.207.
the morgenstern group 141
experienced smith. Because the Vienna arsenal contains no weapons except those deposited
for the military defense of the city, perhaps this morgenstern is one of a series made for
the arsenal. This is supported in the text of a museum catalog, which states that some
portions of the military companies in Vienna were equipped with various types of sta
weapons in the year 1571.
9
Although the morgenstern is dicult to date without this
knowledge, it is certainly consistent with being from the end of the 16th century.
Even more impressive in the same arsenal is the presence of a steel-headed morgen-
stern on a long shaft that measures slightly less than two meters in length (6 ft. 3 in.) (gs.
113 and 114), whose construction is very complex and could only have been executed by
an expert smith. Although this weapon appears to be from the early sixteenth century it
is similar to even earlier forms. The long stout spike is quadrangular; its tip is twisted
some 30 degrees and has a sculptured indent at that part. Hammer-welded onto its slightly
divergent base are four V-shaped spikes, also of quadrangular section, which join again
inside a long tubular socket tting over the top of the shaft. Inline with the shaft is a
twisted and braided steel bar, joining the base of the spike with the socket.
Somewhat less complex than the wooden morgenstern in the Vienna arsenal, but still
present in large numbers, (183) there are similar weapons in the Steiermarkische Landes-
zeughaus in Graz.
10
They have bulbous heads turned on a lathe and three rows of radi-
ally arranged spikes, as well as a longitudinal top spike measuring approximately 30 cm.
in length. Below the turned head on the shaft there are two nailed langets measuring
about 40 cm. These weapons have a length of 205 cm. (6 ft. 9 in.) and were delivered
to the arsenal in 1685 by the turner Egid Rotter. They arrived too late, however, to have
found actual military use.
A similar morgenstern is being carried by a fully armored knight, on the second of the
famous Caesar Tapestries in the Historical Museum of Bern. Caesar attacks and vanquishes
Ariovistus (g. 115), in this second tapestry out of four, woven in Tournai ca. 14651470,
and which were taken as booty from Charles the Bold after one of his defeats during the
Burgundian Wars against the Swiss.
In the previously quoted poetic work by Olivier de la Marche, Charles the Bold is
defeated by the knight Weakness under direction of Death (g. 12).
11
The knight is
heavily armed with a dart (like Death), which he wields for an overhead thrust, but he
also carries besides this a sword, and slung over his left shoulder are two morgensterns;
a solid one like gs. 117 and 119, and one kettenmorgenstern as in g. 118. One can
deduce therefore, that morgensterns found some use in the knightly class in the fteenth
century. The somewhat later simple wooden forms were then possibly a re-adaptation by
the peasant class. Despite this last supposition, it should be noted that all these percussive
weapons have a common origin in the ancient club or one of its permutations.
Early forms of the morgenstern that are similar to the later types are found in art. A
rather typical one can be seen carried by a soldier in the Berswordt Altars central panel
of the Crucixion, dating from 1390, in the Church of St. Mary in Dortmund, Germany.
A steel-headed mace-length morgenstern is raised above the head of a mounted knight of
about this same period, held high with both hands and poised for a strike in a miniature
9
Catalog Das Wiener Brgerliche Zeughaus 40th special exhibit of the Historical Museums of the City of
Vienna, published by the museums of the city of Vienna, Oct. 1977Principal author Dr. Gnter Driegl,
director of the Museums of the City of Vienna, nr. 591/1, p. 146, ill. nr. 62.
10
Krenn, P., ibid.
11
de la Marche, O., ibid.
142 chapter eleven
Fig. 114. Detail of the Morgenstern in g. 113 showing
the intricate smithwork used to produce a relatively
light but stable and strong steel head.
Fig. 113. This all-steel headed Morgenstern is from the
arsenal of the City of Vienna. The craftsmanship is
striking and the weapon is well balanced. Courtesy of
the Museums of the City of Vienna.
the morgenstern group 143
book illustration in folio 226 recto, of the Wenceslas Bible in the National Library in
Vienna. An even earlier depiction of a morgenstern is seen in the Maciejowski Bible from
the Paris school of ca. 1250, folio 14, verso, in the scene of Samson slaying the Philistines
with the jawbone of an ass. In this illustration, the weapon is being carried by an armored
soldier. Later, fteenth century examples abound in all forms of pictures as well as in
sculpture. A peasant variety of a morgenstern is carried by a soldier in Martin Schongauers
engraving Christ before Anna of ca. 1475. The morgenstern depicted in 1250 was sub-
stantially similar to the 15th century weapons.
In a charming little vignette out of Diebold Schillings Luzerner Chronik, one sees
just outside the city of Mulhouse, in upper Alsace, an outdoor court scene, shaded by a
linden tree. It is fenced o and contains a variety of persons including lawyers and a
judge, who is seated at a table and attended by a marshal in simple clothes. The mar-
shal is armed with a morgenstern. This last is of the peasant type with four rows of radi-
ally arranged spikes and has a length of about 170 cm., but no top spike. Whether the
weapon was depicted used because it was readily available to the marshal, or whether it
had a specic symbolic function, is not clear. In somewhat more recent times, the shorter
version, the mace, or marshals baton does have specic symbolism in the carriage of
justice.
Another morgenstern with an improbable name has an English origin. The holy water
sprinkler is an all-steel headed weapon and can be found in the Royal Armouries. The
sprinklers 18 spikes are sub-divisions of six anges that are in turn reminiscent of a mace
head (g. 116).
12
They are surmounted by a short stout spike of quadrangular section and
set into a hexagonal socket. The shaft is square and protected by four langets. Its length
is 189 cm. The archives show that in the mid-sixteenth century some 493 of these were
present in the armory. This morgenstern is certainly the work of weapon-smiths, who prob-
ably produced this as well as similar weapons in the large series quoted above. That this
type of weapon was not limited to use in England, is proven by its presence in a Flemish
book of hours of ca. 1500, probably from Bruges, in which Goliath faces David, carrying
an almost identical holy water sprinkler in his right hand.
13
Nonetheless, this weapon
seemed to be favored by the English. For example, there is a written reference to the
presence of some 12,000 sprinklers in the English army of the rst quarter of the sixteenth
century. The Venetian observer Antonio Bavaria wrote in 1513 that when the army of
Henry VIII sailed for Calais, it had a contingent of 5000 soldiers armed with 6 foot-long
weapons whose ball-like head bore six metal spikes.
14
Figure 117 shows a typical peasant weapon. The head and sta are one piece, not
turned but hand-cut from what appears to be pine. The head is sharply demarcated from
the shaft and shows radially arranged nails at the junction as well as four rows of crudely
made spikes in radial arrangements around the head. A top spike is also present mea-
suring 25 cm. and is stabilized by nails driven in next to its insertion as well as by an
iron band at the top of the head. Several crosses are carved into the head either as a
religious motif or to declare it of Swiss origin. The quadrangular spike is identical to that
of a halberd and was possibly removed from a defective weapon. It is dicult to date but
12
Described in Norman, A.V.B. and Wilson, G.M., Treasures in the Tower of London, Lund Humphries Ltd.
London 1982 p. 69 # 54.
13
Master of the Dresden Prayer Book, The CrohinLa Fontaine Hours, in the J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. 23,
fol. 121v.
14
Bosson, C., ibid., p. 117.
144 chapter eleven
Fig. 117. Morgenstern, 15th16th century, probably Swiss.
The shaft is pine. A weapon such as this could have
been made by a blacksmith. Private collection.
Fig. 116. Holy-water sprinkler, probably English, early
16th century. This type of weapon was very popular
in England and was certainly made by expert smiths,
probably in large series. Courtesy of the Board of
Trustees of the Royal Armouries, inv. no. VII-1642.
the morgenstern group 145
Fig. 119. A Kettenmorgenstern and a regular morgenstern, from a line drawing of a 15th century polyptych frag-
ment, possibly Czech. Note the similarity of the kettenmorgenstern to the one in g. 118.
Fig. 118. A carefully constructed kettenmorgenstern probably 15th16th century, German or Swiss. The
pole, of ash, is worn between the top retaining band and the lower part of the langets, which is the area that
can be touched by the spikes. Private collection.
146 chapter eleven
appears to be relatively early, possibly sixteenth or even late fteenth century.
15
Similar
weapons can be up to 30 cm. (12 in.) longer, somewhat thinner, and plainer (i.e. without
a well dened head), these usually date from the end of the sixteenth or the seventeenth
centuries, but can also be dated much earlier.
Another variety of a morgenstern is present in the Tjhusmuseets in Copenhagen as a
single specimen. It has a globose but somewhat corroded metal head, possibly bronze, that
is 6 cm. (2 1/2 in.) in diameter. An integral upper and lower circular ange is present
through which the large diameter wooden shaft was inserted. A stout quadrangular spike
is inserted into the top end of the sta, giving the weapon an overall length of two meters
(6 ft. 6 in.). It weighs 2.45 kg. (4.5 lbs.). An unusual feature is the presence of many square
holes radially arranged in an equatorial plane of four holes and two non-equatorial planes
each with six holes, through which spikes of square cross-section were driven into the shaft,
thereby anchoring them and the metal head. It is labeled as being sixteenth-century Danish.
There is a great deal of individual variation in the details of the earlier weapons because
each was hand crafted by a local blacksmith using available materials; very few were made
in series. So for instance, one may nd at top-spikes or side spikes of varying construc-
tion in one weapon. Langet-like side straps can be present through which the actual spikes
protrude, on other pieces the top retaining band is sometimes modied to form a hook
like a back spike, and some contain large numbers of short stubby pyramidal spikes. At
least one morgenstern extant has a military scythe-like topspike. Despite all of the peas-
ant variations, collections of morgensterns can still be found in some of the Swiss city arse-
nals, among which are Zurich and Lucerne. These were almost exclusively seventeenth
century deposits. They are described as being useful in the defense of walls and breaches
in them.
16
Two variations of morgensterns are also found with some frequency. The rst is the
ball and chain type or kettenmorgenstern, which is either a variation of the morgenstern or
of the military ail. The ail did not develop from the morgenstern but from a threshing
implement used to harvest grain, that is, separate the grain from the cha. The ball and
chain type is a relative rarity and has survived only in small numbers, an example of
which is seen in g. 118. Despite this, as with the ordinary morgenstern, many variations
can be seen. The ball can be round or polygonal, especially made for the weapon or
adapted from a heavy sword pommel, symmetrical hammerhead, or other tool. The quality
of the chain work, iron fastenings, and sta can vary widely.
Because it is rarely found in illustrations, the kettenmorgenstern cannot have had wide-
spread and signicant use (an exception is g. 119, a line drawing of a polyptych frag-
ment in eastern Europe from about the middle of the fteenth century). One reason for
its relative scarcity might have been the fact that it was a dangerous weapon to use. If
the swung blow did not directly nd its mark, the momentum of the ball would tend to
throw the user o balance and the recovery time would have been dangerously long. The
weapon depicted in g. 118 has a large wooden ball measuring 11.5 cm. in diameter and
has 17 somewhat heterogeneous spikes set and screwed into it. The shaft is 163 cm. long,
of ash and much damaged and worn in the area where the spikes touch it indicating that
15
The very substantial softwood hand-carved shaft, distinct head and quadrangular spike point to an early
date.
16
Gessler, E.A., Fhrer durch die Waensammlung (Schweizerisches Landesmuseum) H.R. Sauerlnder, Aarau,
1928, p. 40.
the morgenstern group 147
the spikes often fell against the shaft. The 20 cm.-long chain of eight links is fastened to
a terminal spike that pierces the ball and has a rough expanded portion on each side to
keep it from slipping. The upper end of the chain is held by an iron loop fastened to the
shaft by langets. The uppermost end of the shaft is encircled by an iron band, as is the
equatorial portion of the ball. An excellent example of these weapons being carried, but
not in use, is the early woodcut in the poem Le Chevalier Dlibr by Olivier de la
Marche, (g. 120).
The military ail, kriegs-dreschegel in German and au darmes in French, was more pop-
ular than the kettenmorgenstern and used in somewhat greater numbers by peasants, as indi-
cated by contemporary illustrations of dierent countries. In Hartmann Schedels Nuremberg
Chronicle (Buch der Chroniken) of 1493, for instance, folio 30 verso, shows a fascinating
scene of Moses closing the Red Sea over the Pharaohs army, which is clad in gothic
armor. Among a great variety of polearms carried by the soldiers, including ahlspiesse, hal-
berds, mordaxte, a mace, a military fork and lances plus a crossbow, there is a well repro-
duced military ail (g. 121).
The agricultural non-military ail is depicted in many chronicles of even earlier cen-
turies, such as the Luttrell Psalter of the early fourteenth century, and the Maciejowski
Bible of about 1250. As with the kettenmorgenstern, the ail was never of greatly sophisti-
cated manufacture or wide use, but it was easily converted from a farming tool in times
of need. Some military ails, however, do show a relatively skilled degree of workman-
ship such as decoratively twisted longitudinal bands along four borders of the ail, that
are held in place by top and bottom retaining bands. Generally, the ail was probably as
eective as the kettenmorgenstern in use, and easier to direct, because the chain was shorter.
In the case of a converted farming implement, the chain consisted only of two links. The
reduced momentum of the short-chained cylindrical ail was oset by the increased accu-
racy of the blow and the reduced likelihood of a backswing towards the wielder. Furthermore,
in the case of a peasant army, the soldier using the ail would have had years of expe-
rience using the farm implement eectively, safely, and well. A good example of a rela-
tively late (early seventeenth century) military ail is in the collection of the Museum of
the City of Vienna out of its old arsenal (inventory no. 162.623).
In the large series of woodcuts called the Triumph of the Emperor Maximilian, the
exact composition of which was dictated by the Emperor himself to his secretary Marx
Treitzsaurwein in 1512, there appears a group of well-dressed landsknechts carrying mil-
itary ails. The remarkable information gleaned from the Triumph is the fact that the
ail portion was specied to be made of leather rather than wood. This suggests strongly
that these weapons were also used in foot tournaments by the landsknechts and squires,
such weapons being thought unt for nobility. It is said, however, that Maximilian him-
self, great admirer and advocate of not only chivalry but also of sport and discipline,
fought on foot and with a great variety of weapons, thus popularizing them. This partic-
ular illustration depicting leather military ails is entitled Gefecht, which translates into
duelling or fencing, and listed under this heading are the weapons to be used, which
include ails, quarterstaves, lances, halberds, battleaxes, bucklers and swords, roundels,
swords, two-handed swords, and (Hungarians with) maces and paveses. There is, in fact,
an illustration in the Freydal on fol. 75, another of Maximilians illustrated poems about
himself, that shows him in a tournament duel using leather ails. Also of interest is the
fact that both contestants are wearing close helmets, from the collars of which project
(hanging) radial plates (hnge-laschen in German) covering and protecting the shoulders,
which might also have been specied for this type of combat. There is a surviving such
148 chapter eleven
Fig. 120. The knight Debile in mortal combat with Philippe of Burgundy. Detail from an anonymous wood-
cut of about 1485 in the poem Le Chevalier Dlibr by Olivier de la Marche (Chiswick Press, 1898,
London). Note that the knight has, slung over his left shoulder, two Morgensterns, one almost identical to the
one in g. 118 and the other like in g. 119. Note also that he is about to strike with a dart. Private collection.
the morgenstern group 149
Fig. 121. Detail of a woodcut out of the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartman Schedel, 1493, German edition,
showing the Pharaohs army being covered by the Red Sea. Note, among the many and interesting sta
weapons, the military ail. Private collection.
150 chapter eleven
helmet by Lorenz Helmschmied of 1492
17
in the castle Churburg in South Tyrolea, which
was visited by the Emperor at a time when his title was still King of the Romans.
18
The concept of duelling becomes immensely popular from this time on, with almost all
classes of people, and many manuals in this sport, or art are published throughout the
next centuries. It is easy to picture duelling with leather ails, but rather dicult to imag-
ine the same of halberds or lances. Some of these duels must have remained in the
Emperors imagination.
17
Gamber, O., Ein Visier Helm der Churburger Rstkammer, in Festschrift Oswald Trapp, Universittsverlag
Wagner, Innsbruck, 1959, pp. 5961.
18
The idea of attaching hanging metal plates from a helmet was not new in 1492 however, as a Norse
helmet similar to the British Museums Sutton Hoo helm, of iron; a spangenhelm in the Historical Museum
in Stockholm, has the same type of iron lames hung onto the rear neck portion as a protection for the upper
back and neck.
CHAPTER TWELVE
AHLSPIESSE
The ahlspiess is a long thin quadrangular spike set on top of the shaft and secured by
langets. The base may or may not have a disc guard, although one is usually present in
extant examples. The ahlspiess, or awl-pike in English, puntone a piatello in Italian and
lance pousser in French, is documented in the archives of the city of Vienna as appear-
ing as early as 1444 and it is likely that it was adopted by the Austrians from the Hussites
who used it in combination with a large shield (the pavese or setz-tartsche).
1
Its use there-
after was largely by the Austrians, but not exclusively so. The term ahl, or ahle is the
German word for the awl, a small acutely pointed tool of the same form used mainly for
piercing, not as Stone incorrectly translates the word, to eel (aal in German) in his
Glossary.
2
German ahlspiesse are recorded in the early fteenth century, and are pictured without
a disc hand guard. This particular form of the ahlspiess is known by the term breach pike
in English, breschspiess in German, pique de brche in French, and quadrellone in Italian. It is
identical to the fteenth century Austrian weapon except that there is no sculpted indent
for the roundel (see below). Handsome and well-formed examples exist with hexagonal
solid throats whose spikes measure some 95 cm. (36) in length. They appear to have per-
sisted longer than the ahlspiess, as late-sixteenth- century forms exist with the typical nodus
between the spike base and the shaft socket.
Relatively large numbers of ahlspiesse (164) survive in the arsenal of the city of Vienna
(Brgerliches Zeughaus der Stadt Wien) as well as in the Imperial Jagd- und Rstkammer
in Vienna. Judging by illustrations of the fteenth century, as for example g. 121, they
did have a multi-national distribution.
The construction of the ahlspiess is relatively simple. It was a pure thrusting weapon,
like the spear and pike. A spike of square cross-section, measuring a meter or more in
length, is fastened to a round shaft by two langets issuing from the shaft socket (gs. 122a
and b). Just above the junction of the socket and spike a double indentation is found
around the spike. A round at guard-plate, having a central square hole and raised square
anges around it, slips over the spike and snaps in between the two indentations (g. 123).
The anges are pressed into the upper recess or indentation. These plates serve to deect
downward blows along the spike and away from the hands on the shaft. The plate itself
is seen in g. 124. An alternate form of protection is seen on a specimen in the Metropolitan
Museum of Arts collection (14.25.247) that has four prongs issuing from the area between
the base of the spike and the throat. This last is hexagonal and has langets welded to it.
The prongs are either self-sucient in deecting blows from the hands on the shaft, or
serve to support a roundel ( plate) above it.
1
Duriegl, G., ibid.
2
Stone, G.C., A Glossary of the Construction, Decoration and Use of Arms and Armor, Jack Brussel, New York,
1934, 1961, p. 79.
Figs. 122a and b. Two ahlspiesse, probably Austrian, second half of the 15th century. Three marks are stamped
into one at at the base of the spike, which is the usual place for marks. The spike is usually longer than
one meter and is sti (rigid). The rounded contour langets are rough and unpolished. The presence of the
roundel guard and its seating grooves distinguish the ahlspiess from the breach pike or breschspiess (see
text). Fig. 122a. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.396. Fig. 122b. Courtesy of the
Hofjagd- und Rstkammer, of the Historisches Museum, Vienna, inv. no. A85.
152 chapter twelve
Fig. 124. Top view of the roundel guard of an Ahlspiess.
Courtesy of the Museums of the City of Vienna, one
of a large unnumbered lot.
ahlspiesse 153
Fig. 123. Detail of the roundel guard of an Ahlspiess
set into the special grooves at the base of the spike.
Courtesy of the Museums of the City of Vienna.
The lengths of the original shafts are not known with certainty, as many extant shafts
appear to be modern replacements. They range from 1.6 to 1.8 m. (5 to 6 feet) in length.
As seen in some contemporary paintings of the fteenth century, however, their length
appears to be slightly longer than the replacements.
The ahlspiesse do not appear to be much used after the rst quarter of the sixteenth
century. The most signicant smith recorded is Hans Maidburger of Piesting in Lower
Austria, who delivered 322 of the Vienna arsenals ahlspiesse between 1497 and 1500.
Occasional ahlspiesse have thicker spikes that are round and much shorter than the clas-
sical ones but have similar shafts. They are seen in illustrations of the fourteenth century,
suggesting that they may have, in fact, been the precursors of the ahlspiess. One such
weapon is present in the right hand background scene in g. 13, a detail from the Trs
Belles Heures of about 1400.
3
A similar weapon is present in an illustration from the
emperor Maximilians book Der Weisskunig of the early sixteenth century entitled The
Battle Against the Blue Company, the image depicts such an ahlspiess carried by a Swiss
soldier in the background of the picture. The Italian term for this weapon type is can-
deliere, referring to a round candlestick of this period, having in its center, a pricket that
held the candle in place. The French term for the weapon is planon broche. This weapon
must also have had an international distribution, as it is present in an illustration in an
English manuscript of about 1480, next to a pollaxe.
4
The caption makes it clear that
they were to be used for combat on foot by fully armored knights. In this picture it is
seen that the English version of the candeliere at least, is more short-shafted than either the
awl pike or the breach pike, as it is exactly as long as the pole axe next to it, that is,
approximately 1.5 meters (5 feet). Interestingly, the shaft below the guard plate appears
to be spirally wrapped with leather. An excavated and partially restored candeliere is pre-
sent in the collection of the castle of Grandson in Switzerland. Its shaft, although a replace-
ment, is also about this length.
3
Bibliothque Nationale de France, MS. nouv. acq. lat. 3093, folio 181 recto.
4
The Hastings MS., The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. The illustration shows the knight being
armed by his squire, and the text reads How a man schall be armyd at his ese (ease), when he schal fyghte
on foote.
154 chapter twelve
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AXES AND AXE DERIVATIVES
The history and nature of the axe is briey discussed in chapter one; what concerns us
here is the period of the high Middle Ages, where diversication of the old axe form takes
place, adding to its cutting function, that of crushing and thrusting. The battle-axe, which
in the period of time following the expansionist age of the Vikings, that is the ninth and
tenth centuries, had come into disuse in central Europe, perhaps in favor of the sword,
did, however, persist in the Scandinavian countries. It returned to use in the rest of Europe
by about the middle of the eleventh century and it was widely used in the battle of
Hastings, judging by the Bayeux Embroidery (as it is now termed) of about 1070 and
appears to have continued in use relatively unchanged for several centuries thereafter. The
Bayeux Embroidery shows very clearly, for instance, a representation of Count Guy de
Ponthieu holding a long shafted Viking-type axe whose shaft is some 150 cm. (ve feet)
in length. A somewhat earlier but similar weapon is present as a miniature illustration in
a tenth-century manuscript by Aurelius Clemens Prudentius.
1
A pagan warrior swings an
axe resembling the one in g. 3 (but with a slightly more curved blade edge) against the
gure of Belief. Its shaft is some 140 cm. (4.5 ft.) in length. A large collection of these
axe blades is present in the Museum of London, most of which are groundnds. One of
these is shown in g. 3.
There are many illustrations of axes in battle scenes in later manuscripts and chroni-
cles; for example in the Maciejowski Bible of about 1250 axes are shown only slightly
larger than the old Danish axes of the ninth century but otherwise similar. As we have
seen in the earlier chapter on halberds, that weapon was developed by the last half of the
thirteenth century, probably from a weapon such as the Danish broad axe, or from a
closely related weapon, the guisarme. These axes, as well as persisting in unchanged form,
underwent a series of transformations well into the sixteenth century, some of which went
so far as to lose entirely the original axe blade in favor of hammers and beaks. These
variations were shafted mainly as two-handed weapons, measuring between 140 and 190 cm.
(4.5 to 6 ft.) in length.
By about 1400, the broadaxe developed into what was called a pollaxe in English, a
fussstreitaxt in German, ascia da fante in Italian, and hache de pieton in French.
2
There is men-
tion far earlier of a pollax by a chronicle quoting Richard I, Coeur de Lion (11571199),
and by GeoreyChaucer in 1386, but the exact shape and function of these weapons is
not known.
1
Prudentius, A.C., Psychomachie, Ms. 1006677, Fol. 115, verso, Lorraine, tenth century. The Ms. is in the
Burgundian Library of the Handschriftenkabinett of the Royal Belgian Library, and published in Delaiss,
L.M.J., Mittelalterliche Miniaturen, M. Dumont Schauberg, Cologne, 1959, p. 23. Prudentius is sometimes called
the Western Worlds (or Christianitys) rst poet.
At a time of great turbulence and shifts of power between the Christian religion and the old Roman
Pantheism, and during the time when the Emperor Julian reintroduced the old Roman religion, Prudentius,
a Christian born in 348, writes about the then popular theme of the triumph of the Belief of Christianity
over the false Gods.
2
Sometimes erroneously referred to as pole axe, the present weapon name refers to the word poll,
meaning the head.
After 1400, the pollaxe became fairly standardized with a length of about 5 feet (150 cm.)
a relatively small convex axe blade diminishing to a single eye, a back-spike (beak), and
a short top-spike. The back-spike could also be hammer-like and even had a short spike
tip protruding from the hammer face (g. 125). Pyramidal side lugs might be present as
in a Lucerne hammer, and indeed it diers from this last only by virtue of the fact that
the Lucerne hammer has four prongs in the front instead of an axe blade and usually a
slightly longer beak. Langets, usually four in number, can be present as well. The weapon
could be plain or decorated, sometimes highly so, with inlaid brass and cut out, led or
chiseled ornamentation. Several such etched and gilt sixteenth-century axes are extant in
the ducal palace in Venice showing the spike integral with the heavy langets over the eye
of the axe-hammer, which is over the end of the pole, the whole being held together by
screwed-on side lugs and shaft nails. A round or polyhedral plate was usually present
around the upper part of the shaft in the earlier forms, slipped over the langets, not unlike
the one on an ahlspiess, to protect the hands.
It is generally believed that this weapon was used more for foot duels between two
opponents or in tournaments rather than in general combat, although there are excep-
tions. An example of the pollaxe being used in a foot duel is seen in the illustration from
the Bernese Chronicle of Diebold Schilling of 1483, depicting the fatal duel between
Gerhart von Stes and Otto von Grandson in Bourg-en-Bresse in 1397. Otto, armed with
a pollaxe had fallen to his knees, and Gerhart, standing over him pushed the spike of his
pollaxe into the back of his neck through the camail of his visored bascinet.
As the pollaxe is usually of high quality and ornate (without, however, losing its strength);
it is associated with and documented as being the weapon of the aristocrat, in contradis-
tinction to almost all other sta weapons (g. 126). The rare surviving and less ornate
infantry version was still no match for the halberd, although its shorter length gave it good
maneuverability.
A close cousin of the pollaxe, however, has a slightly less crescent-shaped and larger
blade (more like the older Danish axes), a back-spike or hammer, with or (mostly) with-
out a short top-spike and was called a Mordaxt in German (literally a murderous axe); it
is not clear that there is an English equivalent term. It is seen in the hands of a heavily
armored knight on foot in a woodcut of about 14601470, mounted on a round shaft
some two meters (6 ft. 6 in.) in length (g. 127). Two very similar mordaxte are seen in
the woodcut of just a few decades later (g. 121) from the Nuremberg Chronicle. This
weapon became quite popular in Swiss, German, and Burgundian territories and in the
late fteenth and sixteenth centuries rivaled the halberd in some areas such as Burgundy,
judging from details of the Caesar Tapestries seen in gs. 128 and 129. The Swiss mid-
sixteenth century version had a somewhat smaller and convex axe blade and a strong
spike and was the length of most halberds.
Although used less in the seventeenth century, the Swiss mordaxt was, like a variety of
halberd forms, manufactured in considerable numbers for the town arsenals by such smiths
as Hans Balthasar Erhardt from Meilen near Zurich. The Landesmuseum in Zurich, which
assimilated the city arsenal, still has a considerable collection of these axes (gs. 130 and
131), and deposits of further numbers of them can be found in the castle of Kyburg,
which is under the direction of this museum. Their shafts vary somewhat in length but
are usually between 150 and 170 cm. (55 1/2 ft.) in length. The construction is rela-
tively simple; the quadrangular or crescent shaped blade and opposed back spike is slipped
over the wedge-shaped top of the shaft, which is covered by the wide portion of the langet,
and nails are wedged into the top of the shaft between the edge of the eye and the shaft.
156 chapter thirteen
axes and axe derivatives 157
Fig. 125. 15th century pollaxe with inlaid brass punched
and chiseled decorations. The rear facing hammer
head has a central steel quadrangular beak. The head
is fastened to the sta by laterally screwed in side lugs.
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no.
14.25.288.
Fig. 126. Gilt and etched early 16th century pollaxe.
The axe-hammer head is fastened underneath the
carefully constructed langets with pyramidal side lugs.
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no.
25.135.21.
158 chapter thirteen
Fig. 127. Anonymous German woodcut of ca. 146070 showing a long shafted mordaxt. A roundel guard
is present a short distance below the blade. Private collection.
axes and axe derivatives 159
This last appears to be hammer-welded to the blade and perhaps to the back spike as
well. In the case of the closely related fussstreitaxt, the technique of fastening is the same
as with Lucerne hammers of the sixteenth century; the blade is brought up from under,
over the langets and wedged in place with the shaft (see below). Overall, an amazing vari-
ety of axes and hammers of multinational use and manufacture were used in the period
under discussion.
A slightly dierent version of this weapon developed at the end of the rst quarter of
the fteenth century, typied by a 180210 cm. (67 ft.) long shaft and roundel guards
of either metal or leather sometimes present towards both ends of the shaft.
3
Several texts
of the time describe its use in great detail. This weapon referred to generically as la
Hache in French, Axt in German, and lAzza in Italian is in most instances not an
axe but rather a hammer-headed weapon with a rear facing beak that can be angled
down or curved but is usually straight. When equipped with an axe blade, it was described
by Olivier de la Marche in 1448, as taillant (cutting). A short spike either of blade form
or quadrangular protrudes from the top of the blade. The hammer itself was usually
pronged rather than at or massive. Side lugs and langets fasten the head to the shaft,
and the bottom end of the shaft might be shod with a short spike-like point for use in
combat. Overall there is a great resemblance between this weapon and the longer-shafted
Lucerne hammer.
However, the Hache is distinguished from all other such weapons by the fact that it
appears to have been developed as a training weapon for knights, or indeed even for com-
mon soldiers, and became one of the early subjects of treatises on the formalized use of
a weapon, i.e., the rst duelling or fencing weapons, excluding staves or quarter stas
and excluding of course the specialized swords, clubs, maces, and lances used in tourna-
ments. Later, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such manuals of duelling or fenc-
ing, now using swords and rapiers, abound.
As opposed to the pollaxe duels which generally resulted in fatality, these axe ghts
( Jeux de la Hache) appeared to cause little damage, except, perhaps, to the ego, despite the
fact that they were fought by heavily armored opponents (Fiore del Liberi in 1409, and
Talhoer in 1443).
4
In a slightly later version, ( Talhoer in 1467), the duels were fought
by non-armored combatants, which surely would not have been the case in reality.
One of the oldest hammers to have survived is a beautifully decorated weapon now
in the Doges palace in Venice, probably having belonged to Francesco da Carrara the
Elder, lord of Padua between 1355 and 1388.
5
The head and socket are cast in bronze,
but the four-pronged hammer ending in the rear-facing beak, forged of steel, is inserted
through the casting. The bronze portion is zoomorphic resembles a dragon, and bears
under its feet the shield and arms of the Carrara family. The shaft has been replaced,
but the whole weapon as displayed measures 1.8 m. in length. Interestingly, the four prongs
are arranged so that one is on top of the other three (in a diamond pattern). This dia-
mond arrangement is also found on the two fteenth-century examples currently in the
3
This discussion is taken in part from the article by Anglo in Archaeologia. The reader is referred to it
for a detailed analysis of this type of combat training. Anglo, S., Le Jeu de la Hache, A Fifteenth-Century
Treatise on the Technique of Chivalric Axe Combat, Archaeologia, vol. CIX, 1991, pp. 113128.
4
These illustrations appear stylistically to originate at about 1400, judging by the pig-faced basinet and
the hour-glass shaped gauntlet cus.
5
It is pictured in Boccia, L.G., Coelho, E.J. ibid. ill. 3334.
160 chapter thirteen
Fig. 130. Late 16th century fussstreitaxt by the Swiss
weaponsmith Lerchli. The weapon is part of a series
delivered to the Zurich arsenal between 1585 and
1591. Note that the only dierence between this axe
and the one in g. 127 is its length (ca. 1.5 m.) and
the presence of langets. Courtesy of Landesmuseum,
Zurich, inv. no. K21263.
Fig. 131. A dierently shaped fussstreitaxt also of
the same time period as the previous one and in the
Zurich arsenal. Courtesy of Landesmuseum, Zurich,
inv. no. K2601.
axes and axe derivatives 161
collection of the Museum of German History in Berlin.
6
They are called fussstreithammer in
German, roughly translated into English as infantry war hammer. Most have a ham-
mer-like head split into three or four short stout prongs, a very short and massive spike
(between 7 and 17 cm. in length), and instead of the fastening mechanism discussed with
the Lucerne hammer, the hammer head with its corresponding back spike is slipped over
the topspike and xed in place by U shaped langets pierced for the top spike and
inverted over it. It was then bolted in place over the regular langets, which, as in many
other sta weapons, were hammer welded to the base of the top spike. In the case of one
of the Berlin hammers, the inverted langet was also fastened through the hammerhead by
short truncated pyramidal lugs. These two are clearly fteenth century weapons, and pos-
sibly because of the diamond pattern of the hammer prongs; of Italian manufacture. Italian
early-fteenth-century hammers are massive, compact, and four-pronged as discussed above,
but the late-fteenth-century hammers are, besides being elaborately worked and orna-
mented, three-pronged with the single prong being on top in a pyramidal construction
(g. 133). A number of such hammers and axes are shown in the very popular mid-
fteenth century blockbook, Speculum Humanae Salvationis, the Mirror of Mans
Salvation. In one scene entitled Three Knights Brought Water from the Cistern to King
David, one of the three carries a mordaxt-like weapon, the second bears a hammer appear-
ing to be the immediate forerunner of the Lucerne hammer, and the third is armed with
a fussstreitaxt, very much like those later weapons in the Swiss arsenals made by such smiths
as Hans Balthasar Erhardt. All have langets, and the illustration clearly shows a roundel
some 40 cm. from the hammers base demarcating the grip area.
7
In another panel show-
ing the Resurrection, a sleeping guard carries a hammer that appears to have four prongs,
and a soldier in the background carries what may be a rossschinder or roncone.
The early Lucerne hammer, or bec-de-corbin pictured in g. 132, diers from the pre-
viously mentioned weapon in g. 133 in that the hammer head, after having been slipped
over the top spike, was fastened to the spike and shaft only by means of the long pyra-
midal side lugs, which were screwed one on another. It has four langets instead of the
previous two and shows secondary fastenings by means of ordinary nails driven in between
the spike and head and next to the langets, being bent over them as well.
The term Lucerne Hammer is a modern one, having been created just after the mid-
dle of the nineteenth century in order to name this variant of a fussstreithammer, peculiar
to the region of Lucerne. What characterizes this weapon is the splitting of the hammer
head into four prongs, the lateral two on each side being parallel to the shaft unlike the
placement of the prongs in the older Italian hammers, and the long thick beak-like back
spike which is almost like the papageienschnabel ( parrots beak) seen in sixteenth-century
war hammers of the cavalry.
6
Mller, H., Kllig, H., ibid. p. 197 gs. 116 and 117.
7
The dating of these Netherlandish woodblock books is still a matter of some speculation, but the wood-
cut illustrations appear to be of the 1440s as the general style of arms and above all, armor ts into this
period. The illustration entitled Sangar killed six hundred men with a plowshare, reveals a typical Kastenbrust,
or box breastplate, a short-lived style of about 143540. The same Kastenbrust is seen in Konrad Witz
143540 panel painting of the three warriors bringing water to the thirsty king David, and worn by the mid-
dle knight, Sabobai in the composition (located in the Kunstmuseum, Basel). This same subject and compo-
sition is present in the Speculum as mentioned above in the text, and although it is slightly indistinct, the
middle warrior in the woodcut also appears to wear a Kastenbrust. One of the two artists must have seen
the work of the other, as even the King wears similar robes and an almost identical headpiece.
162 chapter thirteen
Fig. 132. Bec-de-corbin or Lucerne hammer with a
massive beak measuring 13 cm. in length. End of the
15th century or 1500. The shaft is oak and is an oval-
ized octagon. Private collection.
Fig. 133. Italian Martello darme or Fussstreitaxt
ca. 1500. Note the three-pronged hammer with the
single prong on top. The solid langets t over the cen-
tral hammer and beak portion, which is slotted to
receive them. Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of
Art, inv. no. 14.25.465.
axes and axe derivatives 163
The Lucerne hammer, although a popular weapon in the Swiss city, appears never to
have existed in very large numbers except near Lucerne, (Zurich being an exception).
Nonetheless, they can be found in the Historical Museum in Bern stamped with the Bernese
arsenal mark; furthermore, some bear the arsenal mark of the Canton of Nidwalden.
8
The
weapon is most likely derived from the Mordaxt or Fussstreithammer. Like a long-shafted Bec-
de-corbin (also called Bec de faucon), it made its debut in central Switzerland in the closing
years of the fteenth century (g. 132). Although examples are found in illustrations from
elsewhere, it was, as previously stated, used in the Lucerne region, where it was also quickly
adapted for use as an individual weapon and carried by town-related guards and func-
tionaries and somewhat later by low ranking military ocers.
The later and most numerous Lucerne hammer forms, those that occurred during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, are characterized by an ever-lengthening top spike-
thus paralleling the halberd of the same period- a lighter hammer and back spike, and
most importantly, a dierent fastening method. The hammerhead; instead of tting over
the top spike, was passed over the langets from under them upwards. They were then
spread apart by the upward insertion of the shaft, whose top is wedge shaped; everything
was then screwed together by the bolt and nut pyramidal side lugs. An early 17th cen-
tury Lucerne hammer of this type is present in the collection of the Higgins Armory
Museum, bearing the mark of Hans Horwer, active in Lucerne between 1605 and 1620s.
9
The original shafts were usually ash, and of quadrangular section with rounded edges
or weakly octagonal. Some of the later forms have an oval shaft. In general the surviv-
ing shafts are fairly uniform in length, measuring 165 cm., the entire length then varies
according to the length of the spike but is between 185 and 220 cm. Some Lucerne ham-
mers of this period are marked on their dome-shaped lower spike portions (immediately
over the hammer head) with a large L either lying on its vertical side or erect (g. 134).
Since the early forms of the Lucerne hammer were developed in the fteenth century
when defensive plate armor was in general use, the more massive, short-pronged hammer-
head was a better weapon to break and disrupt the armor. Later, with the ever-decreasing
use of body armor occasioned by the use of rearms, the prongs were lengthened and
slightly everted to facilitate their penetrating power. These changes, of course, did not
apply to the long shafted axe forms, which although decreasing in numbers, remained
unchanged, and indeed as we have seen, were manufactured far into the seventeenth
century.
8
Statement by Rudolf Beglinger in 1999.
9
The association of the mark on the hammer with the weapons smith Hans Horwer, (Horw is an outly-
ing district of the city of Lucerne) was made by Walter Karcheski, even though Horwer is also listed as being
a gunsmith by Hugo Schneider, the former curator of the arms and armor section of the Schweizerisches
Landesmuseum in Zurich.
Fig. 134. The classic Lucerne hammer which persists without much change from the early 16th century into
the 17th century. Note the L on its side on the base of the spike. Private collection.
164 chapter thirteen
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE GUISARME AND THE BARDICHE
The guisarme and the bardiche are both variations of axes, and therefore cutting arms,
but some may also have a minor thrusting function. The two have often been confused,
quite understandably so, as they are very similar. The main dierence between the two
is that the bardiche is characterized by a rear facing concavity on the uppermost part of
the blade. Secondly, its blade is usually thicker and wider, that is, more parallel especially
towards the top, where it is truncated by the concavity.
The gisarme (and the bardiche) have only one eye towards the upper end of the blade
and have a secondary fastening at the bottom of the blade which is pin-like or strap-
(langet) like.
It is most likely that the Danish great axes were the inspiration for the guisarme, as
well as a number of others, and that the substitution of a lower eye for the thin strap or
nail of the guisarme, thus giving it greater strength and stability, transformed this weapon
into a halberd, in the early to mid-thirteenth century.
Despite the similarities, these two weapons were generally not used together in the same
geographical areas, or very likely during the same periods of time. The guisarme is older,
more central European, but made and used perhaps in smaller numbers; the bardiche
(also berdiche, berdyche or berdysh) appears to have been used mainly in eastern Europe,
including Turkey, and Russia and far longer into recent times. The word, as Borg points
out, is recent in the English language and in the West in general.
Borg, also in his previously cited article on gisarmes and great axes, gives convincing
evidence that this weapon is already extant in the thirteenth century and cites a writ
enforcing the Assize of Arms of 1252 in which among other weapons, gisarmes are
named.
1
Quoting again from this document, he shows that in fourteenth century Scotland
the English translation of gisarme is Scottish handaxe. There is documentation that
the French term, as far back as 1150, is Jusarme,
2
and Froissart cites the use of the
weapon among the Castilians in the fourteenth century, where it may have been called
Visarma. In 1436, guisarmes were preferred over the vouge for arming foot soldiers,
and ordered by Phillip le Bon to be made in Saint-Omer, a city famous for its sta
weapons.
In reference to the discussion on page 43 in the chapter on Surviving Material, the
sta weapons under discussion, in the Giotto fresco, which are halberd-like; are in all
probability guisarmes because of their specic blade form and the fastening of the lower
blade point to the shaft with a short slender nail-strap, which enters the shaft at a right
angle (as opposed to the fastening technique of the later guisarme and the bardiche where
the connecting strap points downward and is perforated for the fastening nails, much as
in a langet). The Guisarme blade itself is usually a long and quite large, new-moon-shaped
crescent, fastened to the shaft in its center with an eye, which is hammer welded to the
1
Borg, A., ibid.
2
Le Grand Robert, Dictionaire de la Langue Franaise, second edition, Paris, 1992.
blade, either plain or set with an upper small rear facing sharp portion. Early blades are
relatively short, being 38 cm. in a fourteenth century example, but 60 cm. long in another
of approximately the same date. The weapon is not for thrusting, but some forms have
a slight indent towards the upper portion of the blade, which would allow a thrusting
motion. The Tjhusmuseets has a very large well preserved guisarme, (g. 135) whose
blade measures ca. 1 meter in length without the langets, which themselves measure 80
cm. in length and are fastened to the shaft by ve nails. A leather strap is spirally wound
down the shaft from the blade to 50 cm. below it. The attened octagonal shaft becomes
triangular just below and through the eye. Twelve hexagonal cone-headed nails fasten to
the shaft from the rear of the eye and ve more are driven through a brass plate into
the top of the shaft. The weapon measures 217 cm. in length and weighs 3.81 kg. (8 lbs.).
Although it is very large, it is totally devoid of surface decoration and so would probably
not have been a presentation arm. It could very likely have been used in either battle or
guard duty by an experienced soldier, and is dated to 1530.
In the Betrayal and Arrest scene in the Missal of Henry Chichester of the mid-thir-
teenth century,
3
Borg cites a weapon in the middle of the picture, with two eyes over the
shaft and calls it a gisarme.
4
It is, however, identical to the others found in similar illus-
trations of this time, and which are clearly halberds (see g. 11). In the anonymous late
fourteenth century tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight both the Green Knight
and Gawain possess a gisarme as a weapon.
A fourteenth century illustration in the British Museum clearly shows what could be
described as a Danish axe with a long curved lower segment attached to the shaft by a
pin or being wrapped around it at that point. A good example of a guisarme is present
in the Royal Armouries, no. VII-868. Another is in the collection of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, (g. 136), which although having a crescentic broad blade, has a thrust-
ing point, and has the lower part of the blade fastened to the shaft by a langet-like strap.
It has also been called a form of bardiche, but lacks the characteristic rear indent of the
upper back of the blade. This highly decorated weapon, probably of Eastern, that is pos-
sibly Turkish, origin (or possibly Russian) is dicult to classify, as it has a blade form
somewhat in-between a bardiche and a guisarme.
The Sienese artist Duccio di Buonisegna, in his superb Maesta nished in 1311 for
the Duomo in Siena, and now in the Museo dellOpere del Duomo, shows in a number
of scenes from the passion, shafted weapons best described as guisarmes. They are hafted
by a single eye, which in this instance also caps the shaft, and whose lower blade point
is appositional to the shaft, as is typical (the shaft nail is not clearly seen). Two of them
have another distinctive feature, in that the upper rear edge of the blade, which is a hol-
low crescent, has a slightly expressed shoulder, somewhat like the reverse of a Morgarten
type halberd, appearing to demarcate a thrusting spike. Whether this slight shoulder
is a precursor to the later bardiches is an open question.
The largest number of surviving guisarmes can now be found in the Kung. Rustkammaren,
within the Royal Palace in Stockholm; although most carry old labels of bardiche. Some of
these weapons were acquired for the royal armory by Charles the XV in 1867 along with
many other weapons from Germany, through his German buyer-merchant. There is, despite
3
The Missal of Henry Chichester (thirteenth century) John Rylands Library, Manchester, MS. 24, folio
150, verso.
4
Borg, A., ibid.
166 chapter fourteen
the guisarme and the bardiche 167
Fig. 135. A very large Russian guisarme of 1530,
whose blade alone is more than a meter in length. It
is fastened to the shaft by an elaborate system of nails
which are themselves decorated. Courtesy of the
Tjhusmuseets, Copenhagen, inv. no. C50 (45).
Fig. 136. A near Eastern or Russian guisarme with a
thrusting point and geometric partially gilt decoration.
Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no.
04.3.100.
some controversy on the matter, evidence that these weapons were in use in Sweden in
the fteenth century, and in all likelihood much earlier. A wall painting in the church at
Kumla in Vastmansland shows a battle scene in which guisarmes are in use, and carries
the date of 1482. A large Swedish late Gothic altar from ca. 1450, preserved in the
Historical Museum of Stockholm shows guisarmes in the hands of soldiers about to kill
St. Olaf and St. Erik. They appear much like the interesting weapon from the province
of Bleckinge, which is shown in g. 137, now in the Livrustkammaren, on what is possi-
bly the original shaft, and also of the fteenth century. It is now described in some detail.
The point is broken o and would have added about 3 cm. to its length of 45 cm. It
weighs 2.95 kg. (ca. 6 lbs.) There are small holes of various shapes, which pierce the blade
near the upper rear edge. The widest portion is adjacent to the welded on eye, and mea-
sures together with the eye, 16 cm. The left face of the blade shows four U shaped marks
whose bases face each other and whose arms end in small stamped crosses. Other crosses
are between the Us and pierce the metal. Centered between the Us is a mark: a blunt
shield containing a cross under which is an arc (curved line). The lower part of the blade
is more sharply drawn in and nailed to the shaft through a short langet, which is actu-
ally the narrow lower point of the blade twisted over 90 to lie at on the shaft. This last
is 132 cm. in length, oval in cross section, and shows shrinkage within and below the eye,
as well as irregularities of the surface. A slightly later but similar weapon also in the
Livrustkammaren is shown in g. 138, with a much longer but attenuated blade and
pierced decorations along its back edge both above and below the eye. It is probably a
fteenth century weapon. An almost identical guisarme is in the Askeri Museum in Istanbul,
without the perforations and on a new short display-sta.
A guisarme, much corroded and evidently a ground nd, is present in the Danish
National Museum in Copenhagen (g. 139) and has some unusual features. The rst is
the presence of thick and wide langets issuing from a rear central extension of the blade.
The second is the presence of a somewhat small square hammerhead behind the point of
issue of the langets. The weapon is possibly fteenth century because of the presence of
the langets. It is not a fussstreitaxt, because the blade is typically a guisarme even though
the lowest part of the blade where the twisted langet attaches to the shaft is missing. The
last variation is that the upper blade portion is shorter than the lower one: the reverse of
the usual situation. Another example in the Askeri Museum, shares the feature of a rear-
facing hammerhead, has no langets and has a very broad blade with even less of an upper
portion.
A weapon, which is only vaguely related to guisarmes if at all, is shown in g. 140
from the Livrustkammaren. It has an arc-shaped blade of uniform width, from the hol-
lowed out back portion of which a short strap like extension is present, bearing behind it
the shaft eye. The inferior part of the blade is, like guisarmes and bardiches, turned 90
to form the strap that fastens to the shaft. The superior end of the blade bears a large
attened and almost parallel-sided spike with a low central ridge. The tip is rounded o,
possibly because of a broken point. The spike is directly in front of the shaft axis, but the
shaft itself has not survived. It is dicult to date as is not seen it in art work, but may
represent an unsuccessful transition between a guisarme and an early halberd in giving
the weapon a thrusting function.
Bardiches, which are now described, are possibly evolved from guisarmes, but this is
still believed to be an open question, as the weapon from the Maciejowski Bible discussed
below is another possible ancestor. The bardiche has a blade, which although convex, is
more uniform in thickness, usually somewhat wider especially near the upper end, and is
168 chapter fourteen
the guisarme and the bardiche 169
Fig. 137. A somewhat smaller but still massive guis-
arme on what is likely the original sta and showing
a complex pattern of geometrically arranged marks
(see text). The upper point of the blade is broken o.
Courtesy of the Kung. Livrustkammeren, Stockholm,
inv. no. 691020.
Fig. 138. A guisarme, Swedish or Russian, 15th cen-
tury or earlier. Weapons similar to this one are seen
in illuminations as old as the 13th century. Courtesy
of the Kung. Livrustkammeren, Stockholm, inv. no.
LRK GN 2403.
170 chapter fourteen
Fig. 139. Excavated guisarme blade with a variant of
a rear-facing hammer and langets. The inferior blade
point is broken o but appears to have reconnected
with the shaft in the standard manner of a guisarme.
Courtesy of the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen.
Fig. 140. Variant of a guisarme-like weapon with a
long attened top spike. Courtesy of the Kung. Livrust-
kammeren, Stockholm, inv. no. LRK GN 06:12.
also fastened to the shaft at its lower end by a strap. The joint of the strap to the blade
can also be reinforced with leather ties. The blade is commonly 60 to 80 cm. in length,
and curves backwards rather sharply towards the upper end; the rear edge more than the
front, and a concavity connects the point with the upper back edge. It shows, rather fre-
quently, a large number of perforations along the entire length of the back edge of the
blade, and can also be decorated to various degrees with incised lines and gilding. The
shafts were relatively short, not more than 150 cm., of oval or quadrangular section with
rounded edges and attened or otherwise modied to t the oval upper eye. The shaft
itself could be slightly curved much as in a modern axe handle. The weapon in g. 141
is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and is typical for the genre. Much
as in the case of the late, large, and highly decorated Venetian glaives, bardiches of extra-
ordinary size and decoration were used for ceremonial occasions, and as presentation pieces
for visiting dignitaries. Two very similar bardiches are in the Museum fr Deutsche
Geschichte in Berlin and illustrated in Mller-Kllig.
5
There is a weapon shown in many of the illustrations of the Maciejowski Bible, which
is possibly an ancestor of the bardiche. It is shown clearly only in one illustration, folio 3,
verso, entitled the rescue of Lot in which it has a relatively short wooden shaft and is
being wielded by both hands in an overhead swing. It is partly hidden in all other illus-
trations; being in back of groups of gures, and generally in a vertical position. It can be
seen in the illustration in g. 88, (folio 10, recto), in back of the helmet of the rider of
the white horse on the left. Since this weapon is in the hands of the rider of the dark
horse in back of the white one, its shaft is presumably not very long, and the conversion
to a long shafted weapon must have occurred later, if indeed there is a relationship at
all. The blade is, near its point, somewhat similar to a bardiche in that it has a rear fac-
ing concavity, and has a similar pattern of vertical punched dots or perforations decorat-
ing its back edge. An additional concavity is occasionally present below the rst one. As
opposed to the bardiche however, the front of the blade is fairly straight, instead of con-
vex, and even slightly concave, a surviving example of this exact weapon, either complete
or in fragmentary form has not been seen. It is not a falchion, and does not appear to
have a sword-like grip. Since no other weapon exists with such a prominent concavity
near its tip, it may have evolved with a curving of its blade, and lengthening of its shaft,
into a bardiche, although this is only speculation.
A unique sta weapon present in the collection of the Danish National Museum in
Copenhagen that shows some similarities to the Maciejowski weapon is shown in g. 142a.
Its blade is a long heavy rectangle, some 75 cm. in height and diverging very slightly
between the 4.5 cm. base and the 5.5 cm. top end. The front of the blade top is extended
forward in a small lip or hook, like that of a mini roncone. From this forward tip, a con-
cave sweep upwards leads to a short at 3 cm. spike whose axis is in the middle of the
blade, and has a quadrangular reinforcement at the tip. A second steeper concavity leads
back down to a small horizontal shoulder at the rear edge of the blade, which then drops
down vertically to the base. The base has a front and back thin downward-curled wing.
There is no true socket, but two long at lateral langets are hammer welded to the blade
base. Three marks are present in a vertical line at the top rear edge of the left blade face.
The shaft is a modern replacement and is quadrangular but may have originally been an
octagon. Judging from the langets, it was probably at least 1.5 meters in length, giving
5
Mller, H., Kllig, H., ibid. P. 240, no. 211, 212.
the guisarme and the bardiche 171
172 chapter fourteen
Fig. 141. A Russian bardiche, possibly on the origi-
nal sta and fastened to it by means of the front blade
extension and leather thongs. Rear perforations, almost
a hallmark of this weapon, are present. Courtesy of
Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.463.
Fig. 142a. A 15th century cut and thrust weapon with-
out a name and appearing to be unique, It may or
may not be related to the roncone, or an equally
nameless weapon in the Maciejowski bible described
in the text. Courtesy of the Danish National Museum,
inv. no. 212.
the guisarme and the bardiche 173
Fig. 142b. Detail of 142a, showing marks and the
prole of the topspike.
Fig. 142c. Drawing of a vaguely similar weapon said
to be early 14th century in a private collection, and
pictured in Trosos book Le Armi in Asta. It has
no forward facing beak as in 142a. The blade and
socket are 107 cm. long. Marks are not described.
the weapon an overall length of 2.25 meters (7 ft. 4 in.) This nameless weapon is probably
mid-fteenth century, and may be a rare descendant from the Maciejowski arm. It is also
possible that it is an extremely heavy form of a roncone because of its small forward fac-
ing beak, but because of its attributed age, it does not t into the scheme of the devel-
opment of the roncone. The long slender and curved Italian roncone blades of the late
fteenth and sixteenth centuries were not yet in existence in the mid-fteenth, where one
nds the shorter and stouter Ronca Armi- not at all similar to the weapon in g. 142a. It
remains for the present, unique as a surviving polearm with vague resemblances to the
Maciejowski weapon and a use similar to a halberd. Like the Sturmhalbarte, it appears
too massive to have been used in the eld, but could have been used in a dened area
by specially trained soldiers. The great length of the blade negates the eect of the mass
of a short blade on a point of contact that is the feature of the halberd; nevertheless it
is ultimately less in the roncone family than a sub-type of halberd. These last even in
their classic forms vary signicantly from region to region and in their stages of devel-
opment. The Danish National Museum weapon is clearly represented in a Flemish panel
painting, part of an altarpiece from ca. 1450, by Dieric Bouts in the Alte Pinakothek in
Munich, in the hands of a soldier coming to arrest Christ (g. 143). It is almost identical
to the weapon in Copenhagen, being just slightly shorter, and having the basal wings
uncurled out from the blade rather than curled under as in the Copenhagen one. Another
vaguely similar weapon is illustrated in Trosos book on sta weapons, and from a pri-
vate collection.
6
It has a long rectangular blade like the Danish weapon, with a short at
spike, falling to a rear weak point, (g. 142b) and is said to be early fourteenth century.
No forward facing beak is present, however, and therefore it resembles the Maciejowski
weapon somewhat less. A very similar weapon is in the hands of a kneeling soldier who
is oering the crown of King Saul (who has just fallen on his sword in the left half of
the illustration) to David. It is found in the Ninth German bible of 1483.
7
The dierence
here is that the blade of the weapon is slightly shorter and that there is a rearward exten-
sion of the back shoulder, making it into a short straight beak.
Historically, the bardiche is documented as being in use in northern Europe including
the Scandinavian countries, and in the hands of the Russian Streltsy (also Strelitz or Strjeltsi ),
a ruthless and undisciplined body of militia raised by Ivan the Terrible in the middle of
the sixteenth century. Initially they were the household troops, but soon numbered some
40,000 strong, widened their functions, and through mutinous rebellion became semi inde-
pendent, and began to oppose the regular troops.
8
Besides the bardiche and other weapons
they possessed large numbers of muskets, and were in fact also known as musketeers.
It is said that the Streltsy musketeers could use the bardiche as a rest for their rearm.
They were nally crushed and annihilated at the end of the seventeenth century by Peter
the Great, after one of their rebellions.
A somewhat shorter version of the bardiche was adopted by the mounted Streltsy, much
as were the shorter versions of other sta weapons like the war hammer, mace, or Danish
axe in other military uses. Such a bardiche is in the Livrustkammaren (g. 144), whose
blade measures 59 cm. in length and 16 cm. in width, and is nailed to the shaft by means
of four large-headed and rear facing nails through the eye. Three further nails are driven
6
Troso, M., ibid. p. 111, no. 1.
7
Koberger, A., ( printer) The Ninth German Bible, Nuremberg, 1483, book 1, p. 113.
8
A somewhat similar situation, although far less aggravated, existed in France.
174 chapter fourteen
the guisarme and the bardiche 175
Fig. 144. Small bardiche on a broken shaft. The shaft might have been short to begin with, suggesting the
possibility that this was a horsemans weapon. Possibly 15th century. Courtesy of the Kung. Livrustkammeren,
Stockholm, inv. no. LRK GN 5729:12.
into the triangular shaped top of the shaft, through a brass plate. The blade has a great-
est width of 16 cm. The shaft which is more oval below the eye but triangular below
that, is broken o midway down the anterior langet which is as usual, the inferior tip
of the blade twisted 90 and downward. It is probably from ca. 1500.
There is evidence, however, that the classic bardiche was present in some of the south-
ern European countries as well. In a large panel painting by the Catalan artists Guerau
Gener and Llus Borrass of about 1405, depicting the Resurrection, and located in the
Museu Nacional dArt de Catalunya, the sleeping guard in the left background carries a
typical bardiche, whose large blade bears the mark of a salamander.
176 chapter fourteen
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE BRANDISTOCCO, CORSEKE, AND RELATED WEAPONS
This group of weapons, which may or may not be developmentally related, is put together
because of a common form and function. As in some of the other weapons, nomencla-
ture is a problem, even in the more recent literature. In the preparation of this chapter,
eight lengthy texts consulted contained absolutely no agreement on a given photograph of
weapons of this group.
Nevertheless, their generic description is that of a (usually) long shafted, spear-like weapon,
from whose blade or socket there issue sharpened curved side wings of varying shape and
dimensions. As indicated in the chapter on partizans, it is easy to imagine that these
weapons are outgrowths or further developments of the winged partizan, but this is unlikely,
because some of these weapons precede or at the very least are concurrent with the winged
partizans of the early sixteenth century (which is the time period when the wings on par-
tizans appear). It is at least possible, that this type of weapon is derived from the winged
spear of the fteenth century, the Flgellanze, but it is more likely that this last (which
harks back to the winged spears of the Vikings) developed into the popular and numer-
ous hunting spears of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The Brandistocco, principally an Italian weapon, called Runka in German, or Ranseur in
French; on whose shape and nomenclature there is some, if not unanimous agreement,
has a long rather thin straight blade of attened diamond section, which may also show
shallow fullers between the central ridge and the sharpened edge (g. 145). The side wings
arise directly from the base of the blade, are sharpened on the inside edge, which is con-
cave, and mounted on a conical socket with or without langets. The shafts are usually
octagonal, have the usual 3.5 cm. diameter and a length of about 175185 cm. There is
some evidence that the term brandistocco can also represent a variant of this weapon,
present mainly in the sixteenth century, whose spike-blade and side wings are retractable
and hidden in the upper end of the shaft by a spring catch, and released by a sudden
forward motion of the weapon. Another variant or synonym, the buttafuori, conceals only
a long thin spike, like that of an ahlspiess, in its shaft, as well as the sharp slender side
wings. The English name for this type of weapon is feathersta.
In their book Arms and Armor, Thomas et al., designate a beautifully decorated
Brandistocco-like weapon with an elaborate folding mechanism for the wings, blade, and por-
tions of the shaft, a folding partisan.
1
A more appropriate title would be folding bran-
distocco, as this weapon has far less in common with a partizan than with a brandistocco.
In any case the mechanism has nothing to do with the surprise of an attack, but is clearly
intended to provide the user with the means to reduce the size and dimensions of the
weapon for purposes of storage and travel. It is known, moreover, that the bodyguards of
the nobility and wealthy, accompanied their masters on trips with such folded weapons as
baggage.
1
Thomas, B., Gamber, O., Schedelman, H., ibid., plate 45. This weapon that was until 1999 in the Hof-
Jagd und Rstkammer in Vienna, was recently returned to the Rothschild family from whom it had been
stolen, and was subsequently auctioned and acquired by Walter Karcheski for the Higgins Armory Museum
in Worcester, Massachussetts.
178 chapter fifteen
Fig. 145. Early 16th century runka, also called bran-
distocco, with etched decorations at the base of the
blade and wings. The thick blade has a strong cen-
tral rib. Courtesy of the Museums of the City of
Vienna.
Fig. 146. This large corseke, also called furloni as well as
spetum in the North, although dating to about 1500, is
too long for eld combat. It was probably used against
civil unrest or for guard duty, and is Italian. Private
collection.
The Corseke or Corseca (Korseke in German and Corseque in French) is similar to the
Brandistocco except for the curvature of the side wings. The larger types are also called
Spiedo friulano or more specically Furloni. Weapons with somewhat shorter wings are termed
Corsecone. The unusually prominent side wings arise not directly from the base of the blade,
but from a at non cutting section between the blade base and the top of the socket
(equivalent to a ricasso on a sword blade), with their convexity towards the blade edges.
They can reach very large dimensions; (g. 146) the side wings in this example, which
dates from the end of the fteenth century, measure 46 cm. in length. The blade mea-
sures 74 cm., and has punctate decoration. Most examples are of somewhat smaller dimen-
sions. Langets may or may not be present, they are more commonly found in the later
weapons, and are usually short. The shafts are round or weakly facetted octagons, and in
the specimen in g. 146, measure up to 4 cm. in diameter. They are most used in the
outgoing years of the fteenth century, through the sixteenth, and bridge the turn into
the seventeenth century before disappearing. Late forms show a peculiarity in that the end
of the side wings do not come to a symmetrical point but appear truncated and the top
portion recurves, forming a needle-like slightly down curved point (g. 147). This form
can also be called a Friuli spear (Friauler spiess in German) and it is said, was used on war-
ships of Venice and Trieste (in Friuli), as a boarding weapon.
2
The word Spetum is some-
times applied to the Friuli spear in the North, as well as to the runka and even to the
corseke. Its name is said to be derived from the Latin Spendum, spear, or the Italian Spiedo,
meaning the same, or Spido, meaning a spit. The weapon is also used north of the Alps,
but in a limited way.
A more or less closely related weapon is called the Chauve-souris (French and English)
and Pipistrello in Italian. In the 1547 inventory of Henry the VIIIs personal goods; this
weapon is called, however, a three-grayned stave. It appears to evoke the image of a
bat in most observers (g. 148), hence its French and Italian name. The blade in this
weapon is short and stout, and each tine always clearly a triangle. The indent between
the bottom of the blade and the at under it, joining it to the socket is variously shaped,
one sees arches, multiple arcs, perforations, or merely slits separating the base from the
side wings. These last are usually straight with a central rib and have variously arcaded
and angulated edges resembling the wings of a bat. The central blade also has a median
sharply raised ridge, running down to the socket. The socket is round or faceted, mea-
suring some 10 to 15 cm., but the weapon generally lacks langets. Shafts average 170 cm.
(5 1/2 ft.) in length and tend to be octagonal rather than round. Round-headed brass
nails sometimes decorate the shaft. The weapon is manufactured principally in Italy, but
also in France, and possibly elsewhere as well.
A somewhat similar appearing, but unrelated weapon, is the trident. The outline is
almost the same but the peasant variety has no true blades. Instead one nds round pitch-
fork like tines, the middle being the longest, and sometimes of quadrangular section as is
a late sixteenth century halberd spike. Groundnds of earlier centuries show at tines,
more of equal length, but all these weapons are rare, and have little documentation. As
usual; ornate, fanciful, and imposing sixteenth century palace-guard specimens exist. One
such trident was probably made for the guard of Francesco I della Rovere of Urbino, and
is now in the Bargello in Florence; no. M414. It has three massive diamond section spikes,
2
Tarassuk, L., Blair, C., Arms and Weapons, (the complete encyclopedia of ) B.T. Batsford Ltd. London 1982,
p. 141.
the brandistocco, corseke, and related weapons 179
180 chapter fifteen
Fig. 147. Friuli spear of the later 16th century. Note
the long slender quadrangular spike and the needle-
like wing tips. Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of
Art, inv. no. 29.156.38.
Fig. 148. This Chauve-souris, or Pipistrello, is probably
Italian, ca. 153040, and from the Veneto region. It
measures 246 cm. in length and the steel head is 59
cm long. The blade is thin but rigid because of the
strong central rib. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum
of Art, inv. no. 25.135.9.
held by a box-like frame decorated with acorns, over curved steel ornamental forms, and
ends in a long polygonal socket with langets.
The military fork, Forca da guerra in Italian, Sturmgabel in German, and Fourche de guerre
in French, clearly a farm tool conversion, appears more closely related to the trident than
to the preceding weapons. It served, as many other similarly derived weapons, to equip,
at least in part, the common farmer suddenly pressed into military service. The principal
dierence between the farm tool and its military derivative is that the slightly curved tines
of the tool are beaten out straight to enable a more stable thrusting function. If time
allowed, a thicker sturdier shaft would have been tted. As primitive as the weapon may
appear to be, it found use over many centuries. It is said to have been in popular use
during the Crusades and was still in use through the seventeenth and into the nineteenth
centuries, and in one instance, in the twentieth.
3
This is not to say that all military forks
were conversions, far more the weapon was created as such and underwent many
modications. A military fork created for combat (without conversion) is shown in g. 149,
and stems from the old Vienna arsenal. In another form of military fork, reversed rounded
tines are seen implanted into the top of the shaft between the main tines, serving to hook
and pull.
Italian military forks of the early sixteenth century show heavy tines of attened diamond
section. Some have assumed a beautifully crafted half-moon shape (Mezza luna), and one
in particular is combined with a semicircular axe blade and opposed facetted hammer
held in place beneath the long solid throat of the fork by strong heavily nailed langets.
It is appropriately termed Forca-azza.
4
Forks are also found with barbs on the points of
the tines.
It should be understood that all these weapons, in serving their particular purpose, were
popular by tradition or experience mainly with the peasant class, but it is interesting that
in their hands the success of the weapon was considerable, recalling to a degree the con-
tinued use of much outdated halberds passed on through generations, perhaps within a
given family. Forks are not often specied in chronicles of military action, nor mentioned
in military ordinances dealing with the constitution of armies until the end of the seven-
teenth century in France, Italy, and Germany.
5
Conversely, illustrations of forks abound
in illustrations between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. These are seen predomi-
nantly in New Testament scenes of the Betrayal and Arrest of Christ (as are many other
weapons), but also in other scenes, specically in the scene from the Old Testament, of
Moses closing the Red Sea over the troops of Pharaoh, in the Nuremberg Chronicle, folio
30 verso (g. 121), showing a fork with a roundel guard near the base of the tines. An
even more clearly depicted fork is shown in folio 63, recto of the same work, the Expulsion
of the Babylonians out of Egypt, whose tines are slightly divergent and having two roundels
near the shaft socket.
A fork with a small central polled tine was used in sixteenth century Italy, and also
elsewhere, for hunting, and is termed Forca da caccia in Italian, Jagtgabel in German, and
Fourche de chasse in French.
3
Tarassuk, L., Blair, C., ibid. Some of the preceding facts are taken from Tarassuk and Blairs Arms and
Weapons The use of military forks in the twentieth century is quoted as those being used by Polish farm
troops in 1920 to help defeat Soviet troops attacking Warsaw.
4
Vienna, Hofjagd-und Rstkammer, nr. A 191.
5
Tarassuk, L., Blair, C., ibid., p. 186.
the brandistocco, corseke, and related weapons 181
Fig. 149. Military fork, or Sturmgabel, Austrian, early 16th century. The fork has a tang inserted into the top
of the shaft which is prevented from breaking by the presence of a wide metal retaining band surrounding
that portion of the shaft. Courtesy of the Museums of the City of Vienna, inv. no. 410.
182 chapter fifteen
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
VOUGE AND COUTEAU DE BRCHE
A sturdy cut and thrust weapon, appearing to originate in France, and used between the
twelfth to sixteenth centuries is variably named vouge (voulge), vouge franaise, and couteau de
brche in French, couse (kuse in German), and coltello da breccia in Italian. The term vouge
derives from the Latin vidubium, and becomes the Gallic vooge of the twelfth century.
1
More than any other weapon, this group presents enormous problems in the matching
of the name to the weapon itself. The current literature is replete with apologies for the
ambiguity in this matter, and this is denitely understandable; as there is not a clear-cut
illustration associated with the terms mentioned, and the nal facts are a matter of con-
jecture. This notwithstanding, the weapons will be sorted out as best possible.
The weapon in g. 150, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is typical for the type
called vouge franaise, based on the following facts, after its description. This typical vouge
has a very slightly convex cutting edge to the blade, which is 48 cm. long, and tapers to
a point. The almost straight backside of the blade is sharpened down to approximately
two-thirds of its length, where it assumes a thick at shape. A cross section of the blade
at this point is triangular; above this part, it is of attened diamond shape, the meeting
point being a rounded chamfered indent. The socket is asymmetrically hexagonal, the at
parts facing front and rear. Two langets are present with 6 nails in this specimen that is
on a hexagonal shaft, appearing to be original. It suggests a date of approximately 1500,
but is similar to the weapon depicted in the Caesar Tapestry panel in Bern previously
mentioned (g. 91). This last, has a roundel guard near the shaft socket, as many dierent
fteenth century sta weapons seem to have had, most of which are now lost, possibly as
a consequence of shaft replacement. This illustration is useful also because it shows the
technique of its use, although it could certainly also have been swung for a cutting blow.
The vouge franaise was reportedly used at the battles of Grandson, Morat and Nancy
by foot soldiers in the service of Anthony of Burgundy, the Great Bastard, and the natural
son of Philip the Good.
2
This strongly suggests, by association, that the name of the weapon
in question on the Caesar Tapestry, which was made for Charles the Bold, Anthonys half
brother, at about this time (14651470), is vouge. Troso also considers this weapon to
be a vouge.
3
The French 15th century artist Jean Fouquet, shows, in a prominent place
in at least two paintings, the armament of soldiers and knights with the vouge franaise.
4
In the rst, the Scottish bodyguards of Charles VII carry bows and vouges, in the second,
entitled The Battle of Cannes, knights in golden armor, mostly of scale construction,
and in the focal point of the painting, are swinging a vouge with a roundel, a poll axe,
a glaive and a medium shafted morgenstern. A very well preserved vouge of ca. 1500 is
shown in g. 151, bearing a small mark of three dots. Its head is even more massive than
the one in g. 150. There is evidence that the vouge was also popular elsewhere in Europe,
1
Le Grand Robert, ibid.
2
Tarassuk, L., Blair, C., Arms and Weapons, ibid., p. 497.
3
Troso, M., ibid.
4
Jean Fouquet, c. 1420c. 1481, painter for Etienne Chevalier, Charles VII, and Louis XI.
184 chapter sixteen
Fig. 150. A Vouge franaise of about 1500, on what may
be the original shaft. Note the heavy gauge of the
steel blade. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, inv. no. 14.25.272.
Fig. 151. Massive vouge franaise, showing decorative
nails in the upper shaft. Early 16th century. Private
collection.
as it is clearly seen in Portuguese paintings of the outgoing fteenth century. A large six
panel painting with near life-size gures called the panels of St. Vicente de Fora by the
master of that name, shows in the right of center image, the saint surrounded by armored
soldiers, three of whom hold classic vouges with ve foot long shafts and bearing pointed
iron shoes. They resemble the vouge in g. 151. The panels are in themselves unique in
that they are said to be the oldest large-scale representation of a group portrait of real
people.
5
This lends credence to the fact that the details such as the weapons pictured, are
accurate.
A weapon having some similarity to the vouge is the couse, and bearing the synonym,
of couteau de brche. The classic couse at the end of the fteenth century, was a cut and
thrust weapon whose blade is much thinner than the vouge, but with a larger surface
area. The cutting edge of the blade is slightly more convex than the back, which is almost
straight (g. 152), and in this example, measures 63 by 8.5 cm. The bottom edge of the
blade is pulled in at a right angle except that it also contains a cut out arch. The shaft
socket is in line with the back of the blade, and either square, or octagonal. Two or four
langet are usually present, containing, in this weapon, six nails each. A rosette-like perfor-
ation is present with six holes surrounding a central one, as well as a mark 4 cm. above
the socket joint. A rare couse is in the collection of the Museums of the City of Vienna,
from its now dismantled arsenal and is shown in g. 153, tting somewhere in between
the two weapons in structure. It has a short stout backspike or beak, showing a slight
downward curve, and dates from the early part of the sixteenth century. The socket is
constructed somewhat in the manner of a halberd.
Despite this exercise in logic and association, there are weapons present in relatively
large numbers in the arsenal in Graz, manufactured by the weapons-smith Peter Schreckeisen
of Waldneukirchen in Upper Austria, (as well as by other smiths such as Pancraz Taller),
which throw some doubt on the foregoing nomenclature. They have long blades resembling
in their structure and cross-section the vouge Franaise, but have at the base a beak like
a halberd, from the top edge of which a half-moon curl arises, pointed forward (g. 154),
and which are also typical on late and decorated Styrian halberds. Most bear a smiths
mark, and are referred to in the 1581 inventory of the Arsenal as a Gusy.
6
This word
must refer to the term Couse.
What sets the couse and vouge apart from other similar weapons (i.e. partizans, ron-
cones, military forks, corsekes), is the fact that the haft, that is to say, the socket, is not
centrally placed under the blade, but oset to one side. The weapons therefore resemble
long-shafted knives. The glaive, possibly the ancestor of these two weapons, is centrally
shafted in the more modern forms of the late fteenth and sixteenth century, but is sim-
ilarly oset in the earliest illustrations, such as in the Maciejowski Bible.
The couse survives, as do many of the other polearms, into the sixteenth, seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries becoming as usual, more decorated, (g. 155) and assumes
an important role as a palace guard weapon, called trabantenkuse in German. Gilding,
etching, engraving, and bluing are all used to decorate weapons of sixteenth to eighteenth
century nobility. This elaborate decoration, which includes coats of arms, proper names
5
The panels, which were found in 1882, are in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga in Lisbon.
6
Krenn, P., Das Steiermarkische Landeszeughaus in Graz, Verentlichungen des Landeszeughaus Graz, 1978
p. 47. Krenn, P., Schwert und Spiess, Landeszeughaus Graz, Kunstverlag Hostetter, Ried, 1997, p. 57. This unusual
weapon also appears in Peter Krenn and Walter J. Karcheski, Jr., Imperial Austria (Houston: Museum of Fine
Arts), p. 31, g. 29.
vouge and couteau de brche 185
186 chapter sixteen
Fig. 152. Couteau de brche, or Couse, end of the 15th
century, with nailed-on langets. Note the thin at blade.
Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no.
14.25.260.
Fig. 153. A sturdy but roughly made weapon of the
early 16th century, somewhat between a Vouge and a
Couteau de brche. It has what would be unique for either
of these weapons: a beak. From the old arsenal of the
City of Vienna. Courtesy of the Museums of the City
of Vienna, inv. no. 126094.
Fig. 154. A Gusya late 16th century weapon delivered in substantial numbers to the armory in Graz by
Peter Schreckeisen. The word relates to couse, but the blade is really a vouge franaise, thus blurring the dis-
tinction. Coutesy of the Landeszeughaus, Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz.
vouge and couteau de brche 187
and titles or rank, gural decoration, as well as cut, chiseled, or incised accents, replaces
the functional aspect of these weapons, and transforms them into symbols. Some of these
symbolic weapons persist to the present day, as in for instance, the halberds of the Swiss
Papal guards, or the partizans of the Yeoman Warders of the Tower of London.
188 chapter sixteen
vouge and couteau de brche 189
Fig. 155a. Trabantenkuse of the Archducal guard of
Ferdinand, King of Bohemia (1617), King of Hungary
(1618) and Emperor (1619). It has an overall length
of 2.53 m. (8 ft. 4 in.). Courtesy of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, inv. no. 14.25.383.
Fig. 155b. Trabantenkuse (also called Gardekuse) of the
Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria. Courtesy of the
Hofjagd- und Rstkammer of the Kunsthistorisches
Museun, Vienna, inv. no. A 673.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE MILITARY SCYTHE
The military scythe is perhaps, next to the military fork, the most simple and primitive
of the sta weapons, but one which is active over a large time span. It was, like the mil-
itary fork; used by Polish peasants against the Russians early in the twentieth century.
Far from being weak or ineectual, however, it was a deadly arm. Over the centuries
of its use, it was the weapon of the peasant (again like the military fork) and easily con-
verted from the tool by the farmer himself, or by the local blacksmith, to its military
equivalent. It was called the kriegssense in German, faux de guerre in French, and falce da
guerre in Italian.
The construction was relatively simple; after partially cutting the almost right-angle
connection to the original shaft, a rectangular piece remained in line with the rolled up
back of the blade. This was fastened onto one side of the new straight sta by means of
a thick nail or bolt, and two squarish keepers were clamped around the shaft and the rec-
tangular base of the scythe over and under the bolt. Some scythes have a slightly more
elaborate fastening method with additional straps bolted or welded to the blade base. The
blades measure some 6570 cm. in length, but can be up to 10 cm. wide at the blade
base. The original shaft was unusable for battle as it was usually both curved and recurved.
The steel of the blades is thin, hard and relatively exible in order to make the tool light,
as farming required many hours of daily use and repetitive motion. No grinding or pol-
ishing is usually found and one sees the hammer marks from the manufacturing process
quite clearly.
Relatively large numbers of these scythes have survived, some appearing so similar to
each other as to suggest a serial manufacture by a relatively experienced smith. Impressive
quantities are displayed in the castle of Kyburg in Switzerland, and are in storage in the
Landesmuseum in Zurich. These weapons, whether or not converted from a tool, also
show no attempt at renement, either of the technique or the nish. Although the ham-
mer marks on the blade are still obvious, some of those suggesting serial manufacture do
show punctate or incised patterns of crude decoration (g. 156). The weapon was ques-
tionably useful for thrusting, and was doubtlessly only successful against unarmored sol-
diers, having only a thin blade without great mass. As it was very sharp, however, the
cut inicted by it into an unarmored part, would have been deep and deadly.
In general it should be noted that the eect of a wound, even what we would call a
non-serious esh wound, might have an entirely dierent end eect in the centuries under
discussion. It is said for instance, that caltrops were smeared with horse or cow dung, to
cause wound infection, which would remove the combatants from that particular action,
and possibly in a permanent way.
1
This was done, of course, on the basis of observation
and experience, and without any knowledge of the basis of infectious disease. Aside of the
1
Caltrops are four relatively small iron spikes radiating from a common point, so that three lie on the
ground and one always faces up. They were scattered in large quantities in areas suspected of being under
enemy forces, and to hinder, wound, and incapacitate them.
Fig. 156. War scythe, 16th to 17th century. Note the rough workmanship and the crude punched decorative
pattern on the blade. One of a great number still preserved. Courtesy of the Landesmuseum in Zurich.
192 chapter seventeen
care of weapons to prevent rust and other deterioration, these weapons were certainly not
cleaned per se. Far more likely, they might have been purposefully contaminated, as above,
to incapacitate the combatant, although there is no reference to this particular subject in
documents. This type of biological warfare would have had far more of an eect in a
long term situation, a campaign, or series of battles, or a siege, rather than in a single
battle situation, as the incubation time of bacteria is never less than a few days.
2
Medical
treatment was mostly an individual matter in the eld until the late sixteenth to seven-
teenth century. Considering the status of medical knowledge at that time, and the lack of
availability of trained physicians in the eld, the wounded soldier was perhaps in better
hands treating himself, or receiving rst aid from a fellow soldier.
A war scythe with a special purpose is depicted in use in a scene from one of the
Caesar Tapestries in the Historical Museum of Berne at the bottom of g. 157, cutting
the rigging of a ship of war. As opposed to the common variety of war scythes, this
weapons blade is set, like the farm tool, at right angles to the shaft, which is, as in all
war scythes; straight. The purpose of this weapon would seem to be to hook and cut by
pulling back rather than to slash.
2
The period of time between infection and the onset of recognizable disease.
the military scythe 193
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE JEDBURGH STAFF AND LOCHABER AXE
These weapons are not of continental European origin or use and were deployed almost
exclusively in Scotland. A typical Jedburgh axe, or sta, stave, Jeddart axe, (all synonyms)
is shown in g. 158. It bears a remarkable resemblance to the continental Swiss halberd
of the late fourteenth century, but has instead of the beak, a downward curved hook
welded to the back of the superior eye, and being either quadrangular or round in sec-
tion. Wagner calls it a Scottish halberd.
1
The lower half of the blades cutting edge is
drawn in to form a concavity, and the base of the blade is stamped twice with a crowned
S mark, reminiscent of Milanese marks of the fteenth century. The eyes are, as in
other forms, welded on, the lower being of larger diameter than the upper, and the pole
is modied to t these diering diameters much the same way as in the early halberd in
g. 37. They are nailed to the round shaft with lateral nails. The medium-length spike is
quadrangular and again, like halberds, has a sharp edge facing forward. The weapon
appears to have been in use between the fteenth and eighteenth centuries. A reference
to the arming of troops with this weapon occurs in 1643, in the Scottish Acts of Charles I
that provides that they be furnisched with halbert, lochwaber axes or Jedburgh staes
and swordis. Interestingly enough the weapon never made the transition from eye-fastenings
to socket fastenings. There is not a general consensus as to the use and signicance of the
rear-facing hook, nor is there a contemporary reference to it. It is variously claimed to
assist in scaling walls, hooking an opponent, mounted or on foot, or even the horse itself.
It seems questionable, however, that such a relatively small hook would be used against
a horse, or an armored rider, unless the armor were mail. Using this weapon for hooking
and pulling, would put the attacking soldier within reach of the riders sword, or a foot
soldiers weapon, during the relatively slow motion of a pull. It has even been suggested
that the hook was to hang the weapon on a pole while in a guardroom, or in storage.
The question is not yet answered.
The Lochaber axe is rst mentioned in the literature in 1501 as an old Scottish batale
ax of Lochaber fasoun (fashion) and was Latinized to securis Lochaber.
2
The weapon is
somewhat similar to the Jedburgh sta, but has a larger and heavier crescent-shaped blade,
with a broad middle portion and without a true spike (g. 158). The main portion of the
blade rests squarely on the shaft without a space. Its rear-facing hook is slightly more
curved and smaller at the opening than that of the Jedburgh sta and arises either from
the rear portion of the blade or more commonly from the top of the upper eye, to which
it is either welded, or inserted into the top of the pole using a tang. It cannot possibly
have had a use for pulling on a person, as the hook opening is too small to catch. In
the weapon illustrated in g. 159, a unique feature appears to be present. The lower eye
has been replaced by rear facing lobes, which are nailed to the shaft, and a full-length
1
Wagner, E., et al., Tracht, Wehr und Waen des spten Mittelalters (13501450), Artia, Prag, 1957, part 5,
plate 30.
2
The Scottish National Dictionary, Grant, W., editor, the Riverside Press Ltd., Edinburgh, n.d.
196 chapter eighteen
Fig. 158. Jedburgh sta, 15th to 16th century. Note
the resemblance to 14th century halberds and the
prominent hook replacing the beak of a halberd, and
welded to the upper eye. Courtesy of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, inv. no. 29.156.10.
Fig. 159. Lochaber axe, 16th to 17th century. It is
distinguished from the Jedburgh sta by the more cres-
cent-shaped blade, smaller lower eye and the hook
that is mostly inserted by a tang into the top of the
shaft. The lower eye has been modied into two ear-
like lobes that are nailed to the front of the shaft, and
a full length anterior langet is present. Courtesy of the
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. Inv. no. 925.49.9.
the jedburgh staff and lochaber axe 197
forward facing langet has been welded to the lobes and extends to the iron shoe to which
it is also welded, thus forming a metal skeleton between the shoe and the head. The pole,
in order to be mounted, must have had to be rst inserted through the upper eye and
slightly above it, then slid back into the shoe, before nailing. Others may have a front
and back langet of regular length, and all use a round diameter sta.
The Lochaber axe found use in later years as the weapon of city guards, especially in
Edinburgh. It is possibly also a Scottish adaptation of the early continental halberds, as
is the Jedburgh sta. The use of the hook here is also not clear, but in the later forms
that were used by the city guards, where the hook is almost in line with the top of the
sta, and hardly of use in hooking a moving object, it may possibly, like the Jedburgh
Sta, have been used to hang the weapon on a rack in the guard room.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE DOLOIR
The doloir or wagoners axe, is not, strictly speaking, a weapon of war. It is discussed
briey here because its use is found in the hands of the wagoner, or a man in charge of
the supply trains accompanying troops on the march, and who used it, both as a tool,
and in case of attack; in self defense. The term appears to be French, and is rst men-
tioned as doleoir in 1150, and subsequently as doloire in 1372, and is probably derived from
the Latin dolabra, meaning axe. It is shown in g. 160 as a heavy, somewhat clumsy
appearing arm or tool, with a blade oset at a 1520 degree angle. The shaft can be
straight or slightly curved, (convex to the front of the weapon), is usually no longer than
1.5 meters (5 ft.), and of oval section. The back is a heavy square hammerhead, which
is welded to the rear of the relatively long oval eye, the blade being welded onto the front
of this eye. The blade is a large heavy triangle, the rear blunt edge is vertical with its
base rounded in front, and having only the front and bottom edges sharpened, indicating
that its design is primarily for working and shaping wood rather than as a weapon of
attack. On the ground oor of the castle of Spiez, Switzerland, however, amidst a display
of arms and armor, there is a doloir-like weapon with a four and a half foot shaft, diering
only because the hammer (at the rear of most doloirs) is instead, a slender straight rear-
facing beak. This clearly indicates that it was used as a weapon.
1
The specic purpose of this axe, other than defense, is that of a tool useful in the repair
of wagons and similar vehicles and wooden structures. The use of the hammer is obvi-
ous; the axe portion can be used for cutting and shaping new wooden parts or for rework-
ing old ones, somewhat in the manner of an older type adze. The oset blade; although
less ecient in chopping trees; was useful in planing or nishing wooden surfaces, and
above all; in self-defense. The wagoner, when attacked could stand up from his seat and
swing the axe downward and across to hit his opponent. Although it was understood ever
since the early middle ages that wagon trains were to be considered a non-combative part
of an army, and therefore immune from attack, this concept was occasionally violated,
both for practical as well as demoralizing reasons. Wagoners and wagon attendants were
traditionally, men too old to ght or boys, and women in the role of labor and other sup-
portive functions. On occasion, violations against these people so enraged the combatants
for whom they worked, that their anger helped turn the tide of battle.
The doloir pictured in g. 160 has a blade measuring 44 by 13.5 cm., a hammerhead
of 4.5 by 6 cm., and an eye measuring 9 cm. in height. The decoration of these blades
is quite uniform and somewhat peculiar, suggesting a common origin for them. It is
punched and incised in an abstract ower-like pattern, where some of the ower buds are
replaced by cartouches containing initials; one illustrated having two with the letters IK
and one with the letters AF. In yet other examples the cartouches are not a part of the
incised pattern, but grouped at the juncture of the blade and the eye. They often contain
1
The castle of Spietz was the ancestral home of Adrian von Bubenberg, one of the military leaders of the
Swiss confederation during the Burgundian wars of the late fteenth century.
Fig. 160. Doloir or wagoners axe of ca. 15001550. Note the heavy hammer head and the broad oset blade
with punched decorations and initialed cartouches. The blade measures 44 cm. (17 in.) in length. Private
collection.
200 chapter nineteen
a key as a mark. No name or place of manufacture has as yet been identied for them
and the dating of them is uncertain as well. There are in agricultural museums, doloir-
like tools, said to have been in use well into the eighteenth century, and having some-
what similar decorative engravings, but without cartouches.
It has also been suggested that the doloir was used in the defense of the walls of
fortications, to repel attackers approaching from below on ladders, or in any situation
where a downward swing would be made more ecient by an oset blade. Reference to
the fact that it may also have been used as an executioners axe, although this seems
somewhat unlikely, is found in a French text.
2
A smaller one-handed variety also exists, which should be called a wagoners hatchet,
as an axe is a two-handed tool or weapon (beil in German for the one handed variety,
as opposed to axt for the two handed entity). A moderate number of these weapon-
tools have survived. It very dicult to date them, as illustrations are rare, however, in a
woodcut of 1526 created for the Triumphal Procession of the Emperor Maximilian by
Albrecht Altdorfer showing the wagon trains or baggage carts with all the attendants; a
man trudging along in the foreground carries a short-handled version of the doloir in his
right hand and a boar spear over his left shoulder (g. 161). Two separate gures in front
of this man are shown carrying more traditional and more generic carpenters tools: hatch-
ets and adzes. In an earlier woodcut from the Triumphal Arch of the Emperor Maximilian
of 1517, a doloir with a shaft of undetermined length lies on the ground, its shaft broken
near the hafting eye, but suggesting strongly that it had been used in battle. It can be
concluded that the doloir, by association, is, in this instance, a German weapon-tool and
that it is in use as such at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It should be noted also
that the short-shafted doloirs in these early woodcuts do not have a rear facing hammer-
head, and might possibly have had a slightly dierent function as well as a dierent name.
2
Le Grand Robert, ibid.
the doloir 201
Fig. 161. Detail of a woodcut by Albrecht Altdorfer out of the series The Triumphal Procession of the
Emperor Maximilian, 1517, showing a short shafted doloir carried by a non-combatant accompanying a
wagon train, who is probably a carpenter trained in wagon repair. Private collection.
202 chapter nineteen
CHAPTER TWENTY
CONSERVATION AND RESTORATION OF POLEARMS
Since nature and man have both contributed heavily towards the destruction of ancient
artifacts, the rst by chemistry and the second by intent, neglect or ignorance; it becomes
paramount to try to arrest this loss and to conserve what is left, so that future generations
can appreciate and understand their cultural heritage; should they wish to do so. Conservation
always precedes restoration but at times, conservation and restoration are one and the
same process, that is, conserving an object properly will often also restore it. The most
important principle in undertaking a restoration is that the process of doing so acts less
to improve its cosmetic appearance, than to stabilize and reverse, if possible, damage that
has already occurred. In undertaking this momentous task it is important to emulate the
rst commandment of medicine, paraphrased as follows: above all do no harm.
The following procedures are but a few of the simpler methods of conservation or
restoration, they are by no means complete, nor are they even totally up to date, as that
is not in the main objective of this book. They are listed and described not with the intent
of creating conservation laboratories in every home or institution, but merely as examples
of what can and sometimes has to be done by qualied individuals, and to make the
reader aware of pitfalls and problems. It is rmly believed that the most positive thing
that can be done in respect to all antiques and art objects is to hand them over to the
next generation in as good a condition as possible to assure their continued existence.
The materials concerned, are mostly metal; overwhelmingly iron and steel, then wood
and rarely, leather. A discussion follows in some detail, bearing in mind that this addresses
only some of the more common problems.
Most commonly, iron (used interchangeably with steel) will show evidence of oxida-
tion, or if this is allowed to proceed unchecked for long periods of time: deep and disguring
corrosion. Corrosion can occur in moist air, in earth, or in water, but not uniformly so.
Dry air, dry soil or sand, and even deep still water above an object lying under a layer
of anoxic mud, can actually conserve well. Iron objects have been found in lake-beds after
burial periods of a thousand years, almost perfectly preserved. Such an object was found
in a Swiss lake recently, a Viking sword of the tenth century, which, although having lost
its grip wood and leather covering, showed underneath its calcareous and shell encrusted
surface, a smooth shiny blade with gold inlay; the surface molecules having been con-
verted chemically to crystalline Goethite, a ferric hydroxide, in the muddy quiet bottom
of the lake bed. Occasionally an iron phosphate compound will form in organic mud, and
have a similar appearance.
In the case of the Viking sword, three possibilities present themselves: spray the object
with a protective wax; remove the incrustation, or further remove the thin layer of Goethite
to reveal the original nish of the blade, hilt and pommel. These are very dicult deci-
sions to make, as the more one removes, the more the risk of irreversible damage, but of
course the more clearly one gets to see the object as it was in the tenth century. This, in
essence, is the decision everyone undertaking a restoration project faces.
If a sta weapon is heavily corroded, it more often than not ends up in a museal or
archaeological collection, but the corrosion, especially if it has been buried in the ground,
will probably continue unless it is specically stopped. During the time it is buried, small
ssures, cracks or pores due to the heterogeneity of the metal will occur as it rusts, and
the many salts present in the earth will leach into these spaces. Removal of the object
from the earth does little to stop the corrosion and eventual disintegration because the
moisture present in the air allows these salts to continue working chemically. What must
be done to remove the salts is painstaking and slow, but can be eective.
The object is rst washed and thoroughly but gently brushed to remove as much as
possible of soft crumbling surface material but without marking the rm metallic oxide
surface. The next step is to fully immerse the object in distilled water for periods up to
two or three days, using a non-metallic container lled with between ve and ten times
the volume of the metal. This procedure is repeated with careful in-between brushing as
long as any turbidity is present in the wash water after removal of the object and with
gentle agitation under an angled incident light (which serves to make particulate matter
in the solution visible to the naked eye). What this process serves to do is to move the
salts from the pores into the water.
The following procedure, although somewhat painstaking, will ensure that all salts have
been removed from the metal.
1
Two clear glasses (or test tubes) are placed next to each
other in front of a black background. The rst is lled with distilled water, the second
with the last wash water. To each, 5 drops of a 5 percent solution of nitric acid is added,
followed by 3 drops of a 1 percent solution of silver nitrate. After slight agitation and
about 5 minutes, a comparison between the two is made. Any diering turbidity between
the two indicates remaining salts in the wash water, and the procedure must be repeated
until no dierence is seen. When this stage has nally been reached, the metal must be
quickly dried to prevent new red rust from forming on any non-oxidized metal, using
gentle heat. The next step is the lling of the pores and cracks using microcrystalline wax,
such as that used as an embedding medium in a histology laboratory in a hospital set-
ting. It can also be purchased from a good pharmacy. Canning wax is similar enough so
that it can also be used for this purpose, although the melting temperature of it is some-
what higher than the embedding wax. These waxes, rm at room temperature, melt easily
in any container that will hold the object, when placed in an ordinary oven at approxi-
mately 75 degrees Celsius (160 degrees Fahrenheit). The object must be covered by the
melted wax for about 30 minutes, and then removed to drip out on any absorbent paper.
The last step in the procedure is to lightly wipe the surface with a rag dipped in alcohol,
or better in Xylene, but making sure that the rag is barely wet, so as to leave wax in the
smallest pores and cracks. There is also a process called the alkali sulphide method of
extraction, which is said to remove even non-water soluble salts, but the author is not
familiar with it. Acrylic plastics have also been used to seal the cleaned surfaces of cor-
roded iron, but these cannot be subsequently removed.
Far more frequently, a much lesser degree of corrosion, rust, or surface staining will be
present. This also may be removed, but here it is even more critical not to mar or pol-
ish the metallic surface beyond what is actually present. If the surface is dull and yel-
lowed, it is called staining; a minor and supercial form of oxidation which usually stabilizes
the surface. It detracts, however, from the aesthetic appearance of the metal, and may
indeed hide certain details, which are important, i.e. nely inlaid marks on a blade sur-
1
Mhlethaler, B., Kleines Handbuch der Konservierungstechnik, Paul Haupt, Bern and Stuttgart, fourth ed. 1988,
p. 66.
204 chapter twenty
face, which may identify the place of manufacture and the smith, or the original polish-
ing marks, which allow the study of the polishing techniques used (see g. 84). Somewhat
similar in appearance is the practice of varnishing or shellacking the metal surface in an
attempt to protect it, practiced mainly in the earlier part of the twentieth century. With
time, this covering, although protecting the surface well, turns a dull yellow-tan, and hides
all ne detail. If the weapon is well preserved to start, a minor miracle can be accom-
plished by cleaning it with solvent in the case of varnish, or alcohol in the case of shellac,
using cotton pledges, or in stubborn cases, a sti cloth or even 0000 grade steel wool.
If there is spotty red rust, dry 0000 steel wool, will usually remove it without marking
the surface. Almost the worst case is a surface that has been over-cleaned, that is when
the surface has been so polished that the original nish has been destroyed. Two choices
present themselves here. The rst and probably the better one, is to leave the nish alone
and hope that an eventual tarnish or stain will improve the appearance. The second which
is recommended with great caution, is to rough up the surface (which is already ruined)
with something like 350 grit wet machine paper, in a random orbital sander. This helps
the aesthetic appearance but does nothing to restore its historical value.
In the case of light but rm uniform dark rust, a mechanical wheel made of curled sti
nylon, less hard than the surface of iron, but harder than soft to medium rust, can be
used for its removal and is sold in parts of Europe,
2
by subsidiaries of the U.S. 3M com-
pany and is also available through specialty catalogues. This type of brush is too soft for
thick hard rust. What it does is remove minute plugs of rust from pores in the metal,
thus exposing the entire metal surface, but creating thereby a surface unevenness, which
some do not like. A nish with ne emery paper (3400 grit) can improve that appear-
ance, but most restorers prefer to use the paper straight o without the wheel. This last
method provides a smooth surface, but with blackened points. A wire wheel must never
be used to clean metal surfaces, as it alters the surface and gives it a peculiar and articial
shine ( partially through the heat of friction). Acid of any type or strength should never
be used to clean metal of historic value, as it eats deep tiny pores in the relatively inhomo-
geneous metal, giving it a dull moth-eaten appearance, from which it cannot be restored.
The use of a bung wheel is also not recommended, as it will produce a lustrous articial-
appearing shine, again obscuring original markings, should they be present.
After the surface has been cleaned, and active rust removed, great care should be taken
to protect this now vulnerable bare metal.
3
The simplest nishing is obtained by wiping
mineral oil onto the surface of the metal, but this method has slight drawbacks in that it
is then messy to examine or handle. With time and gravity, the coating may become
uneven and thin, although rusting will probably not take place, assuming always that the
place of storage is relatively dry, and that care is taken when handling (to prevent the
perspiration on hands, which contains saltthe worst enemy of iron, from coming into
contact with the metal). In this respect, one should thoroughly wash hands before han-
dling any iron weapon, or as by industry standards, wear clean cotton gloves.
Better than mineral oil is the application of a hard wax, although it is more time con-
suming and dicult. Only a few waxes are suitable, all liquid waxes are inappropriate,
2
This tool is sold by the Swiss rm MIGROS in a chain of stores somewhat like Sears Roebuck in the
U.S., but manufactured by a Minnesota Mining subsidiary in Europe.
3
Iron plates which were used before copper for the technique of etching, were soon discarded for this pur-
pose because they so rapidly formed surface rust that prints pulled from them had reddish spots in the paper
that were unsightly.
conservation and restoration of polearms 205
and have a relatively short life span. So-called armorers wax, although probably still
obtainable, leaves a peculiar dull surface. What is recommended is the plain original
Simoniz paste wax, without any additives or softeners. Although it is slightly acid ( pH 6),
no harmful eects of this are observed. It is rubbed on (in patches, if desired), allowed to
dry for a few minutes, and then rubbed to produce an acceptable luster, which hides noth-
ing of the metals ne surface structure. Small accumulations of unrubbed wax in pores
or cracks, which show as white deposits, can be removed with a bristle brush. In more
than forty years of use no ill eects from it on steel or wood have been observed. If the
objects must be stored in less than desirable conditions, and where there may be mois-
ture, such as a warehouse, a thin layer of mineral oil may be applied onto the waxed
surface, as an additional safeguard.
The wooden shafts present quite dierent problems of conservation. There are obviously
two kinds, the original ones that need careful attention, and the replacement shafts that
are modern, that need mostly cosmetic care.
The modern replacement shafts can be completely raw wood, if in a museum setting,
the intent is to show the original weapon head as an archaeological nd or a recon-
struction and to make it clear that the shaft is a modern copy. Mostly, however, the intent
is to make the shaft look like an original one, in order to create the overall impression
of the original appearance. These are the majority of shafts seen on surviving sta weapons,
whether in museums, in the marketplace, or in a collection. The term modern encom-
passes any shaft united with the head after the period of its use down to the modern day.
These shafts can date back to the seventeenth or eighteenth century, but most are nine-
teenth or twentieth century additions. The older of these may be subject to the same prob-
lems and diseases as the original poles, and probably deserve conservation rather than
replacement, unless they are basically incorrect in length, diameter, contour, or have exten-
sive mold or insect infestation.
As an example of this type of shaft, there is a beautiful doloir of the usual large dimen-
sions (g. 156), mounted on a machined, thin round shaft probably of the eighteenth or
nineteenth century, measuring only 1.25 inches in diameter, but over 6 feet long, and
wrapped just below the eye with cord, silk and a large red tassel. This shaft, in the light
of modern knowledge, deserves to be replaced, as it has no resemblance whatsoever to
the original one.
Original and accurate replacement shafts should be kept at all costs, even if they are
fragmentary or unstable. The following problems must be dealt with, if present. Insect, or
woodworm infestation, manifests itself by the steady slow destruction of the wood, and
is usually noted by the presence of very ne light colored sawdust beneath or on the
side of the shaft. It is progressive and relentless. Several species of insects can cause this
damage singly or together. If this slow inexorable process is not arrested, the shaft will
eventually be destroyed. There are chemical products available, some in pressurized cans,
either for spraying or for injection by means of a needle on a plastic tube connected to
the can, but unfortunately the best of these, and the only one that really works, contains
Lindane, and is manufactured in France.
4
It is available in the United States with great
diculty and then only to qualied personnel because of its toxic nature (it must not be
inhaled). It is generally applied by injecting the liquid into the wormhole (escape hatch),
thus ooding the galleries and passages and killing both adults and larvae.
4
Xylophne, manufactured by Xylochimie, 7 11, boulevard de Courbevoie, 92200 Neuilly s. Seine,
France.
206 chapter twenty
Just as eective, but also dicult to access, is treatment with ethylene oxide, a gas hav-
ing germicidal (and insecticidal) properties used routinely by certain industries, for steril-
izing mechanical equipment such as medical machinery and instruments used in operations.
This equipment consists of closed airtight gas-lled containers, heated or not, in which the
object is given contact with the gas for about 24 hours. The length of the shafts, of course
makes this procedure dicult, but airtight plastic sacks can substitute for the rigid con-
tainers, provided sealed rooms are used for this procedure.
The easiest solution appears to be a new procedure, with promising results. It is called
oxygen deprivation methodology, and works by ooding a chamber or impermeable plas-
tic sack with an inert gas such as common nitrogen or argon, and occasionally repeating
this ooding over a more or less long period of time, until all the insects have died of
suocation. This method should be available from furniture restoration dealers, whose
clients face the same problems as those caring for polearms. A quick remedy, that has a
chance of being eective, is the application of colorless wood preservatives sold in hard-
ware stores, but the use of these compounds does not guarantee the ultimate riddance of
some species of insects, and the shafts should be monitored periodically for signs of renewed
activity.
The older texts claim that these worms may be eliminated by instilling kerosene, alka-
line salts, carbon disulde, arsenical salts, or benzene, into their holes.
5
The author has
no experience with these methods whatsoever, and believes that they were less ecacious
than the ones mentioned above, and are, moreover hazardous to work with. Benzene, an
organic solvent for instance, has long been recognized as being carcinogenic, even with
limited exposure. Most of these chemicals are no longer on the market.
A further and annoying problem with shafts is bowing, which can occur with both orig-
inal and working replacement shafts. This can sometimes be quite extreme, and is only
theoretically remediable. Steaming and bending the shaft is possible, but the risk of break-
age is great, and the author has no personal experience with it. Most woodworking pro-
fessionals including shipwrights, will not accept the task, fearing a break, and given the
great age of the shafts and that they may be simultaneously aected with insect damage,
it is not an unreasonable refusal. These shafts are, therefore, best left as is.
Other organic damage is rare, as the wood is usually too dry for mold growth. Wood
that has lost too much of its moisture content, and is brittle presents special problems of
conservation, especially if it has also been weakened by insects. Here injections of an epoxy
resin might be useful, especially if there are wormholes to inject through, but this type of
procedure is best left to a professional wood restorer. Merely overly dried wood can be
partly helped by applying coats of walnut oil to the surface and allowing it to be slowly
absorbed into the pores. After no more oil is taken in, the surface must be dried and
defatted (wicked with towel or lter paper) and after a week or so, waxed as below.
Holes of moderately large diameters were drilled through sta weapons mostly in the
nineteenth century, (during the period of what is called historismus in German, i.e.,
nineteenth and early twentieth century adulation and imitation of medieval objects and
styles, also called neo-Gothic in the English speaking world), when both in private collec-
tions, museums and even arsenals, it was fashionable to create panoplies consisting of
objects hung high on a wall, with a fan-like shape or completely round, such as spokes
5
Haenel, E., Alte Waen, Carl Schmidt & Co., Berlin w 62, 1920. Poschenburg, V., Die Schutz und Trutzwaen
des Mittelalters, Saturn Verlag, Vienna, 1936.
conservation and restoration of polearms 207
of a wheel. These holes should be lled, if it is desired to ll them, with a dowel as a
plug rather than with plastic wood, as the latter tends to shrink, cannot be properly
sanded smooth without scratching the original surface and usually does not take on stain
evenly. The dowel is best left unglued, and with a tight t, so that it may be removed to
permit examination of the wood core; if desired. It can then be stained to match the color
of the rest of the shaft.
All shafts should have a protective coating of wax just as do the metal parts, and usu-
ally they can be done together as one procedure. Care should be taken when rubbing the
dried wax on the shafts, not to raise splinters, both for the sake of the shaft and of the
hand. This usually means rubbing in only one direction.
Leather is rarely present on sta weapons, except on the shafts of hunting spears, or if
it has survived on a bardiche, tying the bottom of the blade to the shaft. There is writ-
ten documentation that halberds, longspears and occasionally other sta weapons had por-
tions of their shafts covered with leather for a better grip, but none appear to have survived
outside of a late tournament lance. The only recommendation made is that leather, if pre-
sent, be treated with a small quantity of pure unscented lanolin, which may take days to
be absorbed. It is a natural product of the skin (generally of sheep), and helps to give
leather a small amount of suppleness without weakening it. The author has no experience
with the various leather-care products on the market for this purpose, and has only used
them with varying success on newer leather products, that is, those without historical value.
Brass; as found in ornamental nail heads, marks and inlays, is a softer metal than iron,
and should be cleaned only with a specic brass or metal cleaning liquid or paste It will
partially re-tarnish even under wax, with time.
Storage or display of sta weapons is not dicult, but certain precautions should be
mentioned at this point. The degree of humidity is ideally the same as for humans, in the
range of 40 to 60 percent saturation. Temperature variations are less important and can
vary greatly, bearing in mind that high temperatures are mostly accompanied by high
humidity, unless it is articially removed. The physical position of sta weapon is impor-
tant, especially to prevent deformation of the shaft. The weapons should not lean on a
wall by the tip or spike point. A completely vertical position is probably the best, but a
horizontal display or storage is acceptable if the shaft is evenly supported along its length,
and even the placement of several layers of sta weapons on top of each other is accept-
able as long as they are, again, supported and stable. A good display example of this is
seen in the early sixteenth century arsenal of Solothurn, Switzerland, where large bundles
of similar and dissimilar polearms are, and have been; stored for centuries in horizontal
racks without evidence of warping. In the arsenal of Graz, the weapons are carefully sep-
arated and evenly stored in horizontal racks, supported only at two points, but so that
there is an overall balance of their weight.
Once a shaft is warped, position is no longer critical, and the aesthetics can be the
guideline for display. It is safe to say that placing a warped shaft in a horizontal and con-
vex position, even with weights attached to the middle of the convexity, has little or no
eect on straightening it, at least during any reasonable length of time. As mentioned in
an earlier chapter, warped shafts are far more frequently found in replacement shafts than
in the originals as these last are the most carefully selected and cured, although I have
also seen some of the best quality original shafts warp.
208 chapter twenty
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THE MARKETPLACE
As a short appendage to the previous portion of the text, a word or two can be said
about sta weapons in the marketplace. Collecting, unfortunately, is not always done for
the sake of helping to preserve the objects in question for posterity. It is usually done with
a degree of passion, which is a very positive emotion, but is even better when tempered
with reason. This last can relate to the choice of the object as well as its price. There
will be, for a long time I believe, these weapons available for purchase, but an equal num-
ber if not actually more, will be recent imitations, some of which will be very hard to
detect as such. If the objective is to acquire sta weapons (and this holds for all arms and
armor), that are used only for decorative purposes, then the reader of this book probably
would not have read it, however, having done so; and desiring weapons for show, the
purchase of good copies is advisable, as the impression of displaying such a weapon is
almost the same, and the price (sometimes) quite dierent.
For the serious student/connoisseur/collector, the task is far more dicult as well as
costly, although with patience and some luck even a person of modest means can acquire
some good material. There are good auction houses in many countries, which are prob-
ably better sources for sta weapons than private galleries, both from the point of view
of scholarship as well as price and availability.
It is a constant source of amazement to see what actually shows up in the market place,
and the condition of the objects ranges from frightening to laughable, which is to say from
total neglect to over-restored in innovative, if not correct, ways. I would plead with the
collector to put uppermost, as a priority, the correct conservation of the acquired objects,
so that these irreplaceable human artefacts persist for future generations to study and enjoy.
This plea is not only for weapons, of course, but for all antiquarian objects, be they books,
illustrations, or any creation of the fertile human mind and hand.
The most dicult thing to do is to keep an open mind about objects that do not imme-
diately appeal, for aesthetic, philosophical, or pecuniary reasons. One has only to think of
the mindless mass destruction of ecclesiastic and secular sculpture in France following the
Revolution, which destroyed for all time and for all people countless masterpieces of
Romanesque and Gothic sculptural art; or the melting down of the marvelous goldsmiths
works by the Swiss, following the rout of the Burgundian army under Charles the Bold
at Grandson, on March 2, 1476.
During the nineteenth-century, wealthy collectors cut apart illuminated medieval manu-
scripts, and then cut out of the individual pages the illuminations themselves. More than
half of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York of such illumina-
tions consisted of these cut out illustrations. In the twentieth century, we have for instance,
the aerial bombing of European cathedrals, and similar damage has occurred, for the same
reasons in the Orient. I believe, however, that the greatest damage by far is the one occur-
ring constantly and insidiously by mere ignorance and neglect. It happens not only in the
homes of private individuals, but most glaringly in some of the worlds well-known muse-
ums and archives, and regardless of the reasons, it is perhaps the greatest pity of them
all. Examples that the author has seen in recent years include armor in Valetta in Malta
\
(now largely corrected by professional conservation) and the high castle in Salzburg, Austria,
where red rust was evident on most iron objects. Objects in the Wallace collection in
London and the Bavarian National Museum in Munich, suer from overzealous cleaning
and polishing that they received during earlier parts of the nineteenth century. I am nam-
ing but a few places that contain such casualties.
210 chapter twenty-one
POSTSCRIPT
Hopefully this brief discussion has served the purpose of describing most sta weapons
used for their intended military purpose, including some facts regarding their development,
deployment, manufacture, and above all their nomenclature. This is certainly not a denitive
work (such a thing probably does not exist anyway), and much more work is needed, and
in more countries, to complete this chapter of European history; and above all, the deci-
phering of weapon-smiths marks to identify the time and origin of these and other weapons.
This last is a daunting and so far, frustrating task, not dealt with in this work.
Ideally in the future, a center could be created to gather global information on all such
weapons, their photographs, characteristics and marks, to clarify the many uncertainties
that still exist. Ideally also, the same center or other centers could do the same thing with
armor. I would say, moreover, based on my limited but very pleasant contact with cura-
tors and other professionals on two continents, that an extensive informational network
already exists, and that cooperation is generally not hard to nd.
LIST OF MARKS
Scale 1:1, except for those marked with an asterisk
The second 67b is from a halberd not illustrated in the book, but is included because the
halberd is virtually identical to the rst no. 67B and although the mark and therefore the
smith, are dierent, must come from the same workshop.
\
1 32 34 35
36 37 48 49
50 52 55 56
56 60 64 66
214 list of marks
67a 67b 67b 68a
99a 102 104 107
121a 125 133 141
144 150 154 156
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INDEX
Note: References in italics are to black & white illustrations ( page number). References in bold are to
colour plates (gure number).
Aarberg 95
acid 116, 204206
Aegeri 37
ahlspiess 75, 147, 151, 152153, 154
ailettes 9
Alsace 19, 21, 52, 143
Altdorfer 84, 99, 112, 201, 202
Anthony of Burgundy 183
Anton Koberger 66
Appenzell 15
Arbedo 55
archegayes 81, 83
Ariovistus 141
Armera 66
armor 2, 4, 9, 1417, 2223, 26, 29, 31, 34, 37,
48, 63, 66, 78, 81, 8384, 8687, 95, 97100,
103, 107, 109, 112, 115116, 119, 122, 125, 130,
132, 138139, 141, 143, 147, 151, 154, 156, 159,
161, 163, 166, 177, 183, 185, 191, 195, 199,
206, 209, 211
arrows 7, 14, 34, 102
arsenals 4, 16, 55, 56, 57, 61, 63, 69, 73, 75, 78,
81, 8687, 9293, 95, 9798, 100, 106, 125, 126,
132, 139, 140, 141, 142, 147, 151, 154, 156,
160, 161, 163, 181, 185, 186, 207208
ascia da fante 155
ash 55, 73, 83, 93, 94, 96, 99, 122, 132, 145,
146, 163
awl-pike 75, 81, 151, 154
awl-spikes 75
axes 3, 7, 910, 11, 12, 1415, 1718, 19, 2023,
26, 29, 34, 78, 86, 100, 147, 154156, 157, 159,
160, 161, 163, 165166, 171, 174, 181, 183, 195,
196, 197, 199, 200, 201
axt 147, 155156, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163,
168, 201
backspike 109, 112, 116, 119, 122, 185
Bannockburn 137
barbs 181
bardiche 22, 34, 165166, 168, 171, 172, 174,
175, 176, 208
Bargello 179
Barna of Siena 34
Barte 17
Basel 10, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 33, 35, 44, 49,
5254, 69, 70, 86, 96, 99, 102, 115, 161
Baselland 12, 13, 115
basilard 26
battle axe 155
Battle of Cannes 183
Bayeux tapestry 14
beak 15, 17, 19, 29, 34, 37, 41, 4244, 51, 5253,
55, 57, 6162, 67, 69, 7071, 75, 76, 81, 92,
100, 105, 119, 120, 132, 155157, 159, 161, 162,
173, 174, 185, 186, 195, 196, 199
bec-de-corbin 161, 162, 163
bec de faucon 163
beech wood 93
Benedikt Tschachtlan 99
Berlin 115, 161, 171, 207
Berswordt Altar 141
bill 14, 63, 69, 107108, 115116, 119, 120,
122123
biological warfare 193
birch 93
bishops mantles 16
boar spear 81, 129, 201
Bohain en Vermandois 103
Bohemia 22, 83, 103, 189, 216
Bohemian 7, 29
Bohemian ear spoons 78
Bhmischer Ohrenlel 7, 125
Bois Protat 23, 25
bolts 14, 87
Borg 34, 165166
Bouts, Dieric 174
bows 7, 109, 183
brandistocco 177, 179
brass 23, 48, 63, 87, 112, 128, 129130, 156, 157,
166, 176, 179, 208
brazing 48
breach pike 151, 152, 154
breastplate 1415, 21, 29, 84, 100, 161
breschspiess 151, 152
broadaxe 155
bronze 7, 10, 18, 19, 119, 137, 146, 159
bronze plate 7
Brown Bill 119
Bruegel 69
Bruges 112, 130, 143
Brgerliches Zeughaus der Stadt Wien 151
Burgundy 1, 53, 6263, 66, 83, 104, 148, 156,
183
Burgundy-Spain 53, 63, 66, 83
buttafuori 177
Caesar 141
Caesar Tapestries 102, 109, 112, 141, 156, 183,
193
Callot 77, 79
caltrops 191
Calvert 63
candeliere 154
Carolus 66
Charlemagne 2, 66
Charles V 6263, 66, 67, 129
Charles VII 53, 103, 183
Charles the Bold 1, 37, 53, 55, 62, 66, 99, 103,
141, 183
Chauve-souris 179, 180
Chillon 29, 66
Chroniques de France 83, 102, 138
Coeur de Lion 155
coltello da breccia 183
conservation 40, 203, 206207, 209210
copper 10, 18, 93, 205
corrosion 41, 203204
corseke 177, 178, 179, 185
Corts 66
Courtrai 137139
couse 15, 95, 183, 185, 186, 187
couteau de brche 183, 185, 186
crossbow 7, 109, 147
crossbow bolts 14
Crusades 14, 181
cuir bouilli 7, 116
dagger 9, 12, 14, 18, 26
dagger axe 18, 19
Danish axes 21, 155156
Danish National Museum 168, 170, 171, 172, 174
Danube School 99
David 143, 161, 174
Diebold Schilling 84, 95, 99, 143, 156
Dolchstab 18
doloir 199, 200, 201, 202, 206
Dornach 100, 102, 112
Dorneck 26, 101
Dorneck 1499 26, 52, 99, 102
duelling 147, 150
Drer 56, 57, 59, 69, 74
Egid Rotter 141
Engelberg 26, 28
Erhard Schn 16
Eschental 93, 95, 96
ethylene oxide 207
eye 15, 19, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 3334, 3536, 37,
39, 41, 4347, 48, 5253, 54, 69, 81, 8687,
105, 156, 165166, 168, 171, 174, 176, 195, 196,
197, 199, 201, 204, 206
eyelash Marks 119, 121
falce da guerre 191
falcione 107
fauchard 22, 107
faux de guerre 14, 191
fencing 147
Ferdinand II 4, 12, 78, 189
Fiore del Liberi 159
rearms 4, 9
Fischer 34, 61, 63, 66, 67, 129
ange 17, 105
intlock 4
ugellanzen 7
forca da caccia 181
forca da guerra 181
forca-azza 181
fourche de chasse 181
France 12, 23, 53, 63, 83, 102, 104, 112, 122,
138, 154, 174, 179, 181, 183, 206, 209
Francesco da Carrara 159
Francis I 62
Frescobaldi 63
Freydal 147
220 index
Froissart 83, 102, 165
Friuli spear-Trieste 179, 180
fullers 119, 130, 177
fussstreitaxt 155, 159, 160, 161, 162, 168
fussstreithammer 161, 163
gauntlet 23, 159
ge 18
Geneva 55, 66
Georg von Frundsberg 62
Gerhard von Stes 156
Germany 23, 26, 37, 53, 57, 59, 119, 135, 141,
166, 181
Gesa 22
Gessler 17, 20, 22, 3334, 35, 37, 52, 79, 146
Giotto 34, 165
gisarme 22, 86, 107, 165166
gladius 108
glfe 107
glaive 33, 69, 107109, 110111, 112, 113, 115,
183, 185
glarus 22
glavea 108
gleddir 107
godendag 137
Goethite 203
Gotha 63
Grandson 61, 66, 84, 154, 183, 209
Graz 4, 12, 13, 23, 27, 63, 76, 95, 97, 132, 137,
141, 185, 187, 208
great axes 34, 165
Greifensee 40, 41
guisarme 11, 15, 19, 21, 34, 107, 155, 165166,
167, 168, 169170
gusy 78, 185, 187
Habsburgs 3, 21, 55, 130
hache de pieton 155
hache Danoises 21
hafted dagger 18
halberd 24, 7, 9, 12, 1418, 19, 2023, 2425,
26, 2728, 29, 30, 31, 3334, 3536, 37, 38, 40,
41, 4245, 47, 48, 4951, 5253, 54, 55, 56,
5758, 5960, 6163, 6465, 66, 67, 69, 7074,
75, 7677, 7879, 81, 84, 8687, 8889, 91,
9293, 94, 95, 96, 97100, 101, 102110, 112,
115116, 119, 122123, 125, 132, 135, 139, 143,
147, 150, 155156, 163, 165166, 168, 174, 179,
181, 185, 188, 195, 196, 197, 208, 213
hallebarde dassaut 55
Halm 17
Hans Balthasar Erhardt 56, 60, 86, 156, 160
Hans Dring 16, 68
Hans Guldenmund 16
Hans Holbein 99
Hans Maidburger 154
Hausbergen 20
helmets 14, 16, 28, 146
Helvetian Confederation 62, 64, 112
Henry VIII 62, 136, 142, 166, 178
Hermitage Museum 128
Higgins Armory 118, 162, 176
Hippe 16
holy water sprinklers; sprinklers 4, 143
index 221
humidity 208
Hnenberg 41, 42
hunting spears 6, 176, 208
Illuminated Inventory 128
Imperial Jagd-und-Rstkammer 130
infantry hammer 161
Irish daggers 18
iron 10, 12, 13, 41, 48, 57, 69, 74, 75, 87, 90,
98, 106, 112, 115, 137138, 143, 146147, 150,
185, 191, 197, 203205, 208, 210
Italy 34, 53, 62, 76, 92, 94, 104, 108, 118, 120,
122, 130, 178, 180
Ivan the Terrible 174
jagdspiesse 7
jagtgabel 181
javelin 7, 81
Jedburgh axe 195, 196, 197
Jeux de la Hache 159
ji 18, 19
John of Winterthur 22, 103
Jrg Breu 63
Joshua 108109
Jura 12, 13, 95
jusarme 165
Kastenbrust 161
keeper 61, 75, 119, 191
kettenmorgenstern 141, 145, 146147
kettle-hat 15, 81, 84
Konrad of Wrzburg 22
Konrad Witz 161
Kriegsgertel 119
Kriegshippe 17
kriegssense 191
Kumla 168
Kyburg 156, 191
Lambrecht Koller 57, 60, 61, 87, 91
lance 2, 7, 14, 16, 26, 108, 125, 151, 208
lance pousser 151
lancegay 81
Landesmuseum 14, 20, 33, 3536, 37, 3840, 41,
42, 53, 54, 76, 95, 99, 146, 156, 160, 163, 187,
191, 192
landsknecht 16, 31, 55, 63, 74, 84, 103, 112
langets 17, 41, 5253, 55, 60, 61, 7273, 75, 84,
87, 9293, 105, 112, 119, 122, 125, 127, 130,
132, 133, 139, 141, 143, 145, 147, 151, 152,
156, 157, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 166, 168,
170, 171, 177, 179, 181, 183, 186
Langspiess 3, 7
langue de boeuf 129, 132, 134
Laupen 63
Le Morte dArthur 102
leather 7, 14, 23, 92, 95, 147, 150, 154, 159, 166,
171, 172, 203, 208
Lindane 206
lingua di bue 128, 129
Livrustkammaren 168, 174
Llawnawr 107
Lochaber axe 195, 196, 197
long spear 62, 84, 93, 95, 109, 112
Lorraine 12, 155
Louis XI 53, 103, 183
Louis the German 20
Lucerne 61, 63, 66, 67, 78, 84, 93, 95, 146, 156,
159, 161, 162, 163, 164
Lucerne hammer 156, 159, 161, 163
Ludwig of Austria 22
mace 9, 14, 78, 137, 141, 143, 147, 159, 174
Maciejowski Bible 69, 102, 108, 143, 147, 155,
168, 171, 172, 174, 185
mail 4, 7, 9, 12, 1416, 23, 26, 81, 84, 93, 97,
100, 102, 108, 130, 138, 156, 195
Martin Schongauer 29, 30, 31, 143
Marx Treitzsauerwein 147
Mary of Burgundy 66, 141
Massai 83
masseln 12
matchlocks 4, 16, 112
Maximilian 12, 21, 26, 58, 6263, 65, 66, 81,
82, 8384, 85, 97, 100, 103, 112, 122, 130, 131,
147, 154, 201, 202
Meier 55, 6162, 66, 79, 86, 95
Merovingian 12, 116, 118
Metropolitan Museum of Art 8, 42, 46, 48, 4951,
56, 68, 70, 73, 76, 83, 88, 110, 111, 113, 120,
128, 129130, 132, 134, 151, 152, 157, 162, 166,
167, 171, 172, 180, 183, 184, 186, 189, 196, 209
mezza Luna 181
microcrystalline wax 204
MIGROS 205
Milan 66, 78, 95, 195
military ail 146147, 149
military fork 14, 109, 147, 179, 181, 182, 185,
191
military scythe 146, 191
mineral oil 205206
Missal of Henry Chichester 166
Morat 183
mordaxt 147, 156, 158, 161, 163
Morgarten 14, 2122, 26, 29, 37, 3839, 41,
4445, 48, 61, 137, 166
morgenstern 9, 63, 77, 84, 87, 93, 137, 139, 140,
141, 142, 143, 144145, 146147, 148, 183
Moses 147, 181
Mulhouse 143
munitions armor 97
Murten 37, 102
Mstair 20
Nancy 66, 183
Nicklaus Manuel 99
Nicolo di Savri 4
Niello 3
notches 92
Novara 62, 107
Nuremberg Chronicle 66, 147, 149, 156, 181
oak 66, 93, 162
Obwald 23, 24
ochsenzunge 129
Olivier de la Marche 55, 83, 141, 147, 148, 159
Otto von Grandson 156
oxygen deprivation 207
Padua 34, 159
partigiana 125
partisanne 125
partizans 66, 95, 122, 125, 129130, 132, 133,
177, 185, 188
pavese 147, 151
pertuisane 125
Peter the Great 174
Philip the Fair 66
Philip the Good 66, 83, 183
physicians 193
picca lunga 7
pictographs 18
pike 4, 7, 62, 75, 81, 151, 152, 154
pilum 7
pine 43, 93, 122, 143, 144
Pipistrello 179, 180
pique de brche 151
pique longue 7
planon broche 154
plate armor 9, 1415, 98, 139, 163
polishing marks 96, 130, 205
pollaxe 29, 154, 156, 157, 159
pommels 15, 18, 26, 29, 108, 146, 203
puntone a piatello 151
quadrellone 151
radial plates 147
Ranseur 177
Reichsfreiheit 2021, 31
reinforced mail 9, 12
Reislafer 62
Renaissance 7, 9, 15, 17, 61, 69, 109, 115116,
119
restoration 48, 203, 207
Resurrection 23, 29, 161, 176
ricasso 108, 179
Robert of Artois 137
Romans 3, 12, 119, 130, 150
ronca 66, 107, 115, 118, 119, 122, 133, 174
roncola 117118, 119
Roncola Armi 119
roncone 66, 69, 75, 77, 84, 107, 109, 115116,
121, 122, 132, 161, 171, 172, 174, 185
rossschinder 84, 107, 119, 121, 161
Rudolph of Habsburg 21
runka 63, 132, 177, 178, 179
saber-halberds 75, 76
Sainte Chapelle 108
sallets 29, 84
salts 204, 207
Saxons 10
Schmidt 61, 207
Schneider 15, 20, 33, 41, 61, 99100, 102, 163
Schn 16
Schorno 61, 87
Schwyz 21
scorpion 34, 6768, 69, 109
Scottish Acts 195
Scottish halberd 195
Scottish handaxe 165
scramasax 20
screws 87, 90
222 index
Scrovegni 34
scythe 1415, 17, 108, 146, 191, 192, 193
securis 115116, 117, 119
securis Lochaber 195
Sempach 23, 26, 28, 37, 57, 60, 66, 8687, 99,
102
setz-tartsche 151
shafter 95, 139
shellacking 205
shields 14
skulls 99, 101, 102
socket 8, 15, 17, 23, 43, 49, 5253, 54, 55, 57,
61, 69, 72, 75, 81, 88, 105, 107108, 112,
115116, 117118, 119, 120, 122, 125, 127128,
130, 132, 133134, 141, 151, 159, 171, 173, 177,
179, 181, 183, 185, 195
Solothurn 4, 50, 60, 61, 95, 97, 100, 101, 208
spear 7, 8, 9, 16, 26, 29, 6263, 81, 8384, 93,
95, 98, 108109, 112, 125, 126, 129, 137138,
151, 177, 179, 180, 201, 208
Speculum Humanae Salvationis 161
spetum 178, 179
spiedi alla Bolognese 128, 130
spiedi da caccia 7
spiedo di Ripiegarsi 63
spiedo friulano 179
spike 1517, 23, 26, 2728, 29, 30, 33, 36, 37, 38,
40, 41, 4244, 48, 49, 51, 5253, 54, 55, 56, 57,
61, 63, 6768, 69, 7071, 75, 76, 78, 81, 84, 87,
100, 102, 105106, 109, 112, 115116, 119, 120,
122, 132, 137, 139, 141, 143, 145, 146147, 151,
152153, 154, 156, 159, 161, 163, 164, 166, 168,
170, 171, 173, 174, 179, 180, 185, 191, 195, 208
sponton-halberd 132, 135
spontons 132
spurs 137
St. Andrew 26, 6263, 6465
St. Erik 168
St. George 26, 6263, 65
St. Olaf 168
sta 23, 7, 910, 12, 1417, 20, 26, 34, 40,
4243, 53, 6163, 69, 75, 78, 82, 84, 8687,
9293, 95, 9798, 107109, 110, 115, 122,
129130, 131, 132, 137, 139, 141, 146, 149,
156, 157, 159, 161, 165, 168, 169, 171, 172,
174, 177, 183, 191, 195, 196, 197, 203, 206,
208209, 211
sta weapon 7, 9, 17, 20, 78, 108, 115, 122, 137,
171, 203, 208
steaming 207
stone 10, 17, 151
stone age 9, 11
Strassburg 57
Streltsy 174
Sturmgabel 181, 182
Sturmhalbarte 55, 56, 174
Styria 12, 97
Sutton Hoo 150
Swabian War 9, 26, 6263, 65, 112
Swiss dagger 26
Switzerland 1, 4, 20, 23, 2425, 26, 28, 29, 37,
40, 41, 57, 59, 61, 69, 84, 93, 95, 100, 102, 154,
163, 191, 199, 209
sword 2, 7, 910, 12, 1415, 20, 26, 29, 37, 56,
75, 78, 84, 97, 99100, 102, 108109, 112, 116,
index 223
129130, 132, 139, 141, 146147, 155, 159, 171,
174, 179, 195, 203
taillant 159
Talhoer 159
tang 18, 20, 108, 115116, 117, 182, 195, 196
tassels 92, 106, 109, 128, 129, 132
temperature 204, 208
Theuerdanck 130
Tojhusmuseets 146, 166, 167
Torino 63, 95
Tournai 141
tournaments 9, 78, 147, 156, 159
trabantenkuse 185, 189
trident 18, 179, 181
Triumph of the Emperor Maximilian 147
Triumphal Arch 63, 65, 201
Troso 34, 81, 107, 119, 122, 173, 174, 183
Turkish 78, 166
two handed swords 7, 99100, 112, 147
Urbino 179
Uri 2021
Urs Graf 29, 83, 99
varnishing 205
Venetian glaives 171
Venice 130
Vickers 48, 122
Vienna 5, 55, 56, 97, 109, 125, 126, 130, 133,
135, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147, 151, 152153,
154, 177, 178, 181, 182, 185, 186, 189, 207
Vikings 155, 177
visarma 165
vogt 20
Von Meckenem 69
vooge 183
vouge 17, 22, 107, 109, 165, 183, 184, 185,
186187
vouge Suisse 17
voulge 34, 183
wagoners axe 199
wagons 199
walnut oil 207
war hammer 14, 84, 161, 174
war scythe 18, 108, 192, 193
wax 203206, 208
Wechtlin 57, 58
wedge 103, 156, 163
Weisskunig 112, 122, 154
Wenceslas Bible 109, 143
wheel-pommel 15, 29
wheellock 4
Winchester Bible 108
winged partizan 177
winged spears 7, 125, 177
Witz 161
Wolf Huber 55, 63, 65
Wolf of Passau 130
woodworm 206
wootz 12
X-ray 87
Yeoman Warders 188
Zrich 4, 20, 23, 26, 33, 3536, 37, 3840, 41,
42, 4445, 5253, 54, 55, 57, 61, 95, 99100,
146, 156, 160, 163, 191, 192
HISTORY
OF WARFARE
History of Warfare presents the latest research on all aspects of military history. Publications in the series will examine technology, strategy, logistics, and economic and
social developments related to warfare in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East from ancient times until the early nineteenth century. The series will accept monographs,
collections of essays, conference proceedings, and translation of military texts.
1. HOEVEN, M. VAN DER (ed.). Exercise of Arms. Warfare in the Netherlands, 1568-1648. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10727 4
2. RAUDZENS, G. (ed.). Technology, Disease and Colonial Conquests, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. Essays Reappraising the Guns
and Germs Theories. 2001. ISBN 90 04 11745 8
3. LENIHAN P. (ed.). Conquest and Resistance. War in Seventeenth-Century Ireland. 2001. ISBN 90 04 11743 1
4. NICHOLSON, H. Love, War and the Grail. 2001. ISBN 90 04 12014 9
5. BIRKENMEIER, J.W. The Development of the Komnenian Army: 1081-1180. 2002. ISBN 90 04 11710 5
6. MURDOCH, S. (ed.). Scotland and the Thirty Years War, 1618-1648. 2001. ISBN 90 04 12086 6
7. TUYLL VAN SEROOSKERKEN, H.P. VAN. The Netherlands and World War I. Espionage, Diplomacy and Survival. 2001.
ISBN 90 04 12243 5
8. DEVRIES, K. A Cumulative Bibliography of Medieval Military History and Tech-nology. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12227 3
9. CUNEO, P. (ed.). Artful Armies, Beautiful Battles. Art and Warfare in Early Modern Europe. 2002. ISBN 90 04 11588 9
10. KUNZLE, D. From Criminal to Courtier. The Soldier in Netherlandish Art 1550-1672. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12369 5
11. TRIM, D.J.B. (ed.). The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12095 5
12. WILLIAMS, A. The Knight and the Blast Furnace. A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages & the Early
Modern Period. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12498 5
13. KAGAY, D.J. & L.J.A. VILLALON (eds.). Crusaders, Condottieri, and Cannon. Medieval Warfare in Societies Around the
Mediterranean. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12553 1
14. LOHR, E. & M. POE (eds.). The Military and Society in Russia: 1450-1917. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12273 7
15. MURDOCH, S. & A. MACKILLOP (eds.). Fighting for Identity. Scottish Military Experience c. 1550-1900. 2002.
ISBN 90 04 12823 9
16. HACKER, B.C. World Military History Bibliography. Premodern and Non-western Military Institutions and Warfare. 2003.
ISBN 90 04 12997 9
17. MACKILLOP, A. & S. MURDOCH (eds.). Military Governors and Imperial Frontiers c. 1600-1800. A Study of Scotland and
Empires. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12970 7
18. SATTERFIELD, G. Princes, Posts and Partisans. The Army of Louis XVI and Partisan Warfare in the Netherlands (1673-
1678). 2003. ISBN 90 04 13176 0
20. MACLEOD, J. & P. PURSEIGLE (eds.). Uncovered Fields. Perspectives in First World War Studies. 2004.
ISBN 90 04 13264 3
21. WORTHINGTON, D. Scots in the Habsburg Service, 1618-1648. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13575 8
22. GRIFFIN, M. Regulating Religion and Morality in the Kings Armies, 1639-1646. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13170 1
23. SICKING, L. Neptune and the Netherlands. State, Economy, and War at Sea in the Renaissance. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13850 1
24. GLOZIER, M. Scottish Soldiers in France in the Reign of the Sun King. Nursery for Men of Honour. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13865 X
25. VILLALON, L.J.A. & D.J. KAGAY (eds.). The Hundred Years War. A Wider Focus. 2005. ISBN 90 04 13969 9
26. DEVRIES, K. A Cumulative Bibliography of Medieval Military History and Technology, Update 2004. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14040 9
27. HACKER, B.C. World Military History Annotated Bibliography. Premodern and Nonwestern Military Institutions (Works
Published before 1967). 2005. ISBN 90 04 14071 9
28. WALTON, S.A. (ed.). Instrumental in War. Science, Research, and Instruments Between Knowledge and the World. 2005.
ISBN 90 04 14281 9
29. STEINBERG, J.W., B.W. MENNING, D. SCHIMMELPENNINCK VAN DER OYE, D. WOLFF & S. YOKOTE (eds.).
The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective. World War Zero. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14284 3
30. PURSEIGLE, P. (ed.). Warfare and Belligerence. Perspectives in First World War Studies. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14352 1
31. WALDMAN, J. Hafted Weapons in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. The Evolution of European Staff Weapons between 1200
and 1650. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14409 9
32. SPEELMAN, P. War, Society and Enlightenment. The Works of General Lloyd. 2005. ISBN 90 04 14410 2
33. WRIGHT, D.C. From War to Diplomatic Parity in Eleventh-century China. Sungs Foreign Relations with Kitan Liao. 2005.
ISBN 90 04 14456 0
ISSN 13857827