Historical arms and other topics

This particular example is held in the Royal Armouries and is also a relatively recent addition to their collection. This is not the only example of this type where the blade shape is in the proicess of transitioning from earlier halberds, or "bardiches" as some people call them, to the 15th century examples more people are familiar with. It is however the only example I am aware of which contains an early form of a langet - a shaft reinforcement.

While langets are a commonplace feature on later halberds (and a lot of polearms in general) this period is where they start to appear, and instead of being directly forge welded to the head itself as they are later in this case it's a wholly separate object simply attached underneath the eyes of the head. On slightly later examples we can see how the langets, and head as a whole, further develop. The example from below is from the MET and is dated around the turn of the 15th century. The blade profile is the same as the previous example but the langet is now a directly integral feature to it.

These then begin to be put both on the front and back of the shaft, rather than just the back, as seen in this other ca 1400 example from the MET, or the other ones from a private Swiss collection:

Some time during the early-mid 15th century, by my personal observations and estimations I'd put this around the 1420s or 30s, the construction of these halberds changes a good amount, and they now incorporate full sockets instead of 'eyes'. With this development came moving the langets from the front and back of the shaft to the sides, which is how all later halberds are constructed from this point on.

And this is how you reach the later 15th century and 16th century forms of halberds from the initial example.

In popular perception it is very common to associate masked helmets such as the ones found in Kovali (picture above) or Lipovets with the Cumans. This has been portrayed in media as well, for example in Age of Empires II and later on very notably in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. However this attribution is in reality mostly without basis, but to understand why we first have to look at its origins, and to do that we first need to talk about who the Cuman-Kipchak are and how they relate to the Tatars.

The Cuman-Kipchak are known for having a significantly powerful confederation in Eurasia which was at its height at the start of the 13th century. While sometimes claimed that the Cumans and Kipchaks were two different peoples, it is more likely that the two names are simply synonyms for the same conglomeration of people, whom would have been made up of a lot of various turkic groups living under the confederacy whose land was often called Cumania by christian sources and Desht-i Qipchaq by Islamic ones. Hence from this point on I will refer to them simply as Cumans.

The Cuman confederation was famously broken up due to the Mongol expansions, which caused groups of Cumans to flee westward. Some ended up settling in Hungary, while others ended up in Rus lands and yet others were conquered and assimilated by the Mongols. What is important to note here is that the Cumans cannot be thought of as one unified group of people all with the same customs, because they were not. This is even more emphasised post-Mongol conquest as the Cumans who settled in various different lands would have gradually adopted to the customs and culture of the lands whom they settled, and this will be important to determine where the famous masked helmets fit into all of this. But before that, let's briefly talk about the Tatars. Tatar was simply a catchall term for the Mongols, and is thought to originate from Persian though to my knowledge it is a term mainly used by European sources. As the Mongols continued to conquer people and incorporate them into their empire, the definition of Tatar would also encompass any and all groups which had become part of the Mongols and were serving in their armies. After the breaking up of the empire into the four Khanates, the term Tatar came to mostly be used to refer to the Golden Horde, which at this point incorporated lots of Turkic people into it including Cumans. Hence the term Tatar does include Cumans in it, but it is not a synonym as it would not include Cumans who were not part of the Golden Horde as it's explicitly related to the mongols. The Cumans who were part of the Tatar Horde are at this point already becoming pretty distinct from the Cumans who are not, and as time went on these differences started to grow even more. The Cumans in Hungary for example are noted to gradually adopt to Hungarian customs, and by the 15th century they cease to keep their signature hairstyles and clothes, and grave finds of Cumans from that time period include a lot of materially hungarian items.

So then, masked helmets. The two famous examples mentioned above (Kovali and Lipovets) are both from Golden Horde territories. Some older russian research tends to for some inexplicable reason associate them with Cumans whom they call Polovtsy, sometimes claiming that they potentially predate the Golden Horde. However there is not really any evidence pointing to this and the masks found bear a lot of resemblance to later 15th and 16th century Persian ones, indicating that they date to the days of the Golden Horde (the shape of the skulls are also most akin to post-mongol examples). What is even more important is that masked helmets of this type have not been found in gravesites associated with Cumans or other turkic peoples outside of the Golden Horde which would indicate that these helmets are in fact something that relate to the Mongols rather than the Cumans.

Now obviously as mentioned earlier the Golden Horde did contain Cumans in it, and so a Cuman serving as a cavalryman in a Tatar army could very well have used a helmet like this. However there is nothing pointing towards the claim that the Cumans themselves were who brought these helmets to the Horde, as no archeological finds support this argument. Rather it's that these are armours which would've been used by anyone part of the Horde, including Cumans, however would also not be found outside of direct Mongol influence. For example, a Cuman settled in Hungary would not have used a helmet like this since he wouldn't be living in a culture to adopt it from.

Which reaches the conclusion that these are Tatar helmets and should not be thought of as Cuman helmets.

If you're someone interested in late medieval western european weaponry you have no doubt come across the pollaxe, and also the weapons people refer to as lucerne hammers and bec de corbins. But you also probably have seen these terms used on the same weapon, so how do they actually fit together and how were they used in history?

To begin with, the pollaxe is a weapon that, despite its name, does not need to have an axe blade. Since variants with hammers and beaks are just considered that - variants. It's still fundamentally the same weapon and can use almost all of the same techniques in the fencing manuals there is rarely a differentiation made in historical documents between ones with axe blades and ones with hammer heads. Most axe fencing treatises from the 15th century showcase hammer headed ones, for example this treatise from Paulus Kal:

This is also present in many other treatises such as Talhoffer, Fiore, Le Jeu de la Hache, etc etc. In fact it seems more common for axes used in dueling to have hammer heads and beaks rather than blades, although there's still examples of the latter.

Before I move on to the bec and the lucerne hammer, I will talk shortly about the term pollaxe. While sounding similar to poleaxe it is thought that the origin of the word comes from the word 'poll', meaning head, rather than the word pole. It is also a strictly english term and often the weapon is also simply just called axe, or battle-axe. In other languages some regional variations can be found, such as mordaxt from german, but in most cases it is just referred to as axe (axt, hache, azza, etc etc).

Anyway so going back to the bec de corbin. Bec de corbin is actually a rare form of this term, and the more common one in documents is Bec de Faucon. These refer to the beak of the pollaxe but at some point did come to denote axes which specifically have hammer heads and beaks. However it should be clear that in the documents this is simply thought of as a further categorisation of the pollaxe, it is not a separate weapon, and in many cases even in french sources these weapons are simply called 'axe'. Any axe with a hammer and a beak can be called a bec de faucon (or corbin), if you're speaking french. I have not found an equivalent term in other languages.

Lucerne Hammer is the least historical of the three terms. It was popularised by Ewart Oakeshott in the modern period, however there might be earlier references using this name that I am personally unaware of. This term is used to denote a very specific type of head construction found on swiss pollaxes of the late 15th and 16th centuries (and not earlier). Since a lot of these axes, or hammers, were found in the Lucerne armoury due to it being a popular militia weapon the construction came to be known as Lucerne Hammer. What actually is this construction then?

While non-swiss pollaxes will have the top spike and the langets (shaft reinforcements) go on top of the axe head and be fastened on the outside of it, these swiss axes instead have the head be outside of the langets. Why this was done is unknown but it is a feature that seems to be localised entirely (or almost entirely) to switzerland, and shows up in the very late 15th century where it remains in use throughout the 16th. This was potentially easier to mass-produce, although whether this actually is the reason remains unknown. It should also be noted this is not limited to hammers and is also found on axe-bladed pollaxes. For clarity, I will post the two relevant constructions below outlined. This one is the so-called Lucerne Hammer with the swiss construction, note how the head is above the underlying reinforcement (outlined in red).

This example below is Italian, and one can see how the head is under the shaft reinforcements (outlined in red).

This is going to be a slightly long post but it's still only going to scratch the surface of this topic so strap in, and let's get started.

If you're someone with more than a casual interest in historical warfare, at some point or another you've probably heard or even yourself said that historically speaking, spears would be more common than swords. But is this actually true? Well, not entirely. As everything else it's nuanced. But before I get into that let's first explain where this statement comes from.

The idea behind this statement hinges on the following factor; that spears are significantly cheaper and quicker to produce than swords, meaning that your average lower class soldier is far more likely to have a spear than a sword, so spears should be more common.

However in the reality we gleam from the sources we have available, the situation is a bit more complex than that. What needs to specifically be stressed before I continue with the explanation is that this is heavily dependant on the time period and region of the world you look in at any given time. As with most other things regarding history there will never be a general answer which applies unconditionally onto every context. Anyway, let us begin.

So the argument of cost is sound. In every possible situation it is simpler and cheaper to produce a spear than it is to produce a sword. However what also needs to be taken into account is that swords are generally not a replacement for spears but instead worn in addition to any primary weapon one might have on hand. Whether this is a polearm, a bow, a gun etc. There are contexts where this isn't fully the case and I'll talk more about them later but for our general purpose it is relevant. This then moves the argument into the realm of whether swords were widely and easily accessible, and this is something which does matter heavily on period and area of the world. In early medieval western europe for example, after the fall of rome, swords were less common and mainly found with more professional and elite warriors. In this context claiming that spears were more common is true.

On the other hand in late medieval western europe this isn't the case, swords are by this point widely accessible to the point where most people fighting could be expected to own one, even if they are of lower class. We see this in plenty of muster rolls, ordonnances and other sources. If we then consider that a good portion of people would not be using polearms but rather other primary weaponry such as bows, crossbows or guns; we can say that swords were probably more common than polearms in this context as they would be worn by both people using polearms and people not using polearms.

Note also that I said 'polearms' in general, as by this point plenty of other polearms besides spears were common with regular soldiery. Bills, glaives, halberds, pollaxes etc. So swords were unquestionably more common than simple spears, and on top of that can be claimed to potentially be more common than all polearms combined. And really this goes for most of the world. If swords were commonly accessible - which they in many places were (such as post-Qin china, late medieval and early modern central asia, etc), they would be similarly common to or more common than spears due to them being carried by most people in addition to their primary weaponry. On the other hand if the context is a place and time in history where swords were not easily accessible then claiming that spears were more common would be a reasonable statement.

If you are someone with an interest in East asian historical warfare you have probably encountered mentions of the Iron Buddha cavalry, 铁浮屠 in Chinese. They're a type of heavy cavalry fielded by the Jin dynasty, a Jurchen-led dynasty which first conquered the Khitan-led Liao dynasty and then proceded to conquer the northern Song dynasty. The Jin Dynasty fell to the Mongol Invasions and was then preceded by the Yuan Dynasty, which would become the first non-Han chinese dynasty to rule all of china (as the Jin dynasty never managed to conquer Southern Song).

Some people attribute the Jin Dynasty's military success against the Song to these heavy cavalrymen, clad from top to toe in nearly fully covering iron lamellar armour. Below is one of the few contemporary depictions of these cavalrymen, titled 中興瑞應圖 from the southern Song dynasty.

It is very exciting and sensational to attribute Jin's military successes to the presence of this unit but of course, reality is rarely that simple. In the grand scheme of things these Iron Buddha cavalrymen only existed for around two decades and while they were used to good effect in some of the conflicts they were present in they were not the main factor towards the success of the military of the Jin dynasty.

Moreover heavy cavalry armoured from top to toe in lamellar armour is not something which was unique to the Jurchen, or started by them. We see heavy cavalry configurations similar to this in use since the Han dynasty, and most central and east asian powers at some point or another did make use of heavily armoured cavalry. Below is a depiction from the Tang dynasty, showing a very similarly covering armour

The cavalry of the Jin dynasty was therefore not unique in its equipment, and due to its short life of existence this unit cannot be said to be instrumental in the Jin dynasty's success against the Song Dynasty. Rather it was the overall military effectiveness of the Jin dynasty as a whole which in and of itself is a complex topic. Of course the heavily armoured Iron Buddha cavalry did play a part in that as well, however for example when faced against the Mongol Invasions there is virtually no notable presence of these cavalrymen in the Jin armies, lighter cavalry instead playing the more effective roles against the mongols.