pole arms/staff weapons

As spears, these were used by man's earliest ancestors in their hunting. As warfare developed, so the spear and its varying derivatives developed too, usually as the weapon of the common soldier on horse or foot. Like other weapons which have their roots at the beginning of man's story, pole arms are still with us, principally in a symbolic or ceremonial role, but, only 60 years ago in a time of national emergency, Britain's Local Defence Volunteers were hurriedly armed, as had been their predecessors of the 1790s, with crudely fashioned pikes. It is probable that the little morale-building effect that the pikes had in 1940 would, itself, be recognizable as an emotion to the medieval peasant pikemen, similarly armed and confronted with apparently superior technology. Most pole arms were derived either from the basic spear or from implements, such as the scythe or bill-hook, in common use for agricultural purposes; many types of pole arm have differing names to describe the same weapon.

Few ancient civilizations eschewed the spear in their armies and, both short and long, it is known to have been used in Egypt and by the Persians, Greeks, and Romans. While the Macedonian phalanx was noted for its effective use of the thrusting spear, in the 3rd century bc, the pilum, or throwing spear, of Rome was equally effective. Tactically, the Macedonians' use of the pike, both as a weapon for the charge and for the defensive ‘hedgehog’, was little different from its use by the Swiss in the 16th century or by the Scots schiltroms in their war of independence of the late 13th and early 14th centuries. Javelins, or throwing spears, are as old as pikes and were used by both the Greek and Macedonian armies but the Roman pilum appeared in the 3rd century bc and was perfected over the following century to become a 7 foot (2.1 metre) light javelin, half wooden shaft and half iron rod. Its design was such that, thrown from a distance of about 60 feet (18.3 metres), usually in volleys, it would snap or bend on impact and render its targets, transfixed body or penetrated wooden shield, either incapacitated or unwieldy. The pilum served equally efficiently as a short thrusting pike and could have its accuracy enhanced by being thrown using a wound cord which imparted a spin; if the angle of impact was greater than 45 degrees it was capable of penetrating contemporary armour.

The thrown spear did not survive competition with the longbow, crossbow, and firearm in the West but it continued in cultures innocent of gunpowder. In the hands of the infantry, the long spear became the pike and survived until the musket and socket bayonet combination rendered it obsolete, apart from brief anachronistic appearances in 1793 and 1940. Towards the end of its active life, by the early 17th century, the pike, generally shortened to 12 feet (3.65 metres) from its earlier length of 18 feet (5.5 metres), was widely regarded, perhaps inevitably, as a more gentlemanly weapon than the noisy, dirty, rather technical interloper of the musket. With this attitude in mind, it is easy to comprehend how the half-pike of 8 or 9 feet (2.4 or 2.7 metres), called an esponton or spontoon from the mid-17th century, could remain the weapon of junior infantry officers into the late 18th century; in the British army it survived as a subaltern's weapon until 1786 and was then carried by sergeants—to replace their traditional halberd—from 1792 to 1830. Half-pikes remained as anti-boarder weapons in most navies until the mid-19th century.

The halberds of European infantry sergeants, carried as a symbol of their authority and used not only to dress the ranks but also as the components of a flogging triangle, were derived from a weapon called, in Swiss-German, a hallembart and known to have existed in the 13th century; it may have derived from Frankish and Viking war axes. In its most developed form, the halberd was a long-shafted axe with a broad head, sharp rear pick, and long spike continuing the line of the shaft. During its ancestry it spawned many derivatives, such as the poll axe, the long-shafted war hammer, the bill, the glaive, the Jedburgh staff, and the Lochaber axe: all were, essentially, long-shafted axes with a rear pick or hook ideal for unseating horsemen and all represented fearsome weapons in the hands of muscular infantry.

Offshoots from the development of the half-pike and the halberd in the medieval period were the long-shafted, broad-bladed thrusting weapons of which the partisan is the most well known. Remaining today as the ceremonial weapon of the Vatican's Swiss Guard and the British monarch's Yeomen of the Guard, the partisan resembles a winged, broad-bladed spear. Variations on this theme were weapons such as the rawcon, the langdebeve (or langue du bœuf), the fork, the chauve-souris, and the couseque: the vulnerable parts of an armoured knight or man-at-arms were favoured targets for their searching, incapacitating thrusts.

For mounted troops the long spear evolved into the lance. Only in central Europe did lances survive the end of armour but they were reintroduced into European warfare by Polish lancers in the early 18th century and widely employed after c.1780, being used in cavalry charges, often against far superior technology, into the 20th century. Outside Europe, the lance remained an important weapon for the American Plains Indians and in both the Middle East and India. Its role as a significant weapon in the medieval tournament is continued today, symbolically, by ‘musical ride’ teams in military tournaments and tattoos, especially those influenced by the British army. The mounted bodyguard of the president of India still carry lances on state occasions, echoing their history and that of the Bengal Lancers.

Bibliography

• Blair, Claude, European and American Arms (London, 1962).
• Edge, David, and Paddock, John M., Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight (London, 1988).
• Oakeshott, Ewart, European Weapons and Armour (London, 1980)

— Stephen Wood