Lucerne hammer
The Lucerne hammer is a type of polearm, popular in Switzerland during the 15th to 17th centuries. It was a combination of the bec de corbin with the blunt war hammer; the name comes from a discovery of many of these weapons in Switzerland. The "hammer" was a three- to four-pronged head mounted atop a 2m-long polearm stick, it bore a long spike on its reverse, an longer spike extending from the top. It proved effective at puncturing or smashing armor, much like a man catcher was used for dismounting riders. Spotlight: The Medieval Poleaxe, by Alexi Goranov
Armour
Armour or armor is a protective covering, used to prevent damage from being inflicted to an object, individual or vehicle by direct contact weapons or projectiles during combat, or from damage caused by a dangerous environment or activity. Personal armour is used to protect soldiers and war animals. Vehicle armour is used on armoured fighting vehicles. A second use of the term armour describes armoured forces, armoured weapons, their role in combat. After the evolution of armoured warfare, mechanised infantry and their weapons came to be referred to collectively as "armour"; the word "armour" began to appear in the Middle Ages as a derivative of Old French. It is dated from 1297 as a "mail, defensive covering worn in combat"; the word originates from the Old French armure, itself derived from the Latin armatura meaning "arms and/or equipment", with the root armare meaning "arms or gear". Armour has been used throughout recorded history, it has been made from a variety of materials, beginning with the use of leathers or fabrics as protection and evolving through mail and metal plate into today's modern composites.
For much of military history the manufacture of metal personal armour has dominated the technology and employment of armour. Armour drove the development of many important technologies of the Ancient World, including wood lamination, metal refining, vehicle manufacture, leather processing, decorative metal working, its production was influential in the industrial revolution, furthered commercial development of metallurgy and engineering. Armour was the single most influential factor in the development of firearms, which in turn revolutionised warfare. Significant factors in the development of armour include the economic and technological necessities of its production. For instance, plate armour first appeared in Medieval Europe when water-powered trip hammers made the formation of plates faster and cheaper. Modern militaries do not equip their forces with the best armour available because it would be prohibitively expensive. At times the development of armour has paralleled the development of effective weaponry on the battlefield, with armourers seeking to create better protection without sacrificing mobility.
Well-known armour types in European history include the lorica hamata, lorica squamata, the lorica segmentata of the Roman legions, the mail hauberk of the early medieval age, the full steel plate harness worn by medieval and renaissance knights, breast and back plates worn by heavy cavalry in several European countries until the first year of World War I. The samurai warriors of feudal Japan utilised many types of armour for hundreds of years up to the 19th century. Cuirasses and helmets were manufactured in Japan as early as the 4th century. Tankō, worn by foot soldiers and keikō, worn by horsemen were both pre-samurai types of early Japanese armour constructed from iron plates connected together by leather thongs. Japanese lamellar armour reached Japan around the 5th century; these early Japanese lamellar armours took the form of leggings and a helmet. Armour did not always cover all of the body; the rest of the body was protected by means of a large shield. Examples of armies equipping their troops in this fashion were the Aztecs.
In East Asia many types of armour were used at different times by various cultures, including scale armour, lamellar armour, laminar armour, plated mail, plate armour and brigandine. Around the dynastic Tang and early Ming Period and plates were used, with more elaborate versions for officers in war; the Chinese, during that time used partial plates for "important" body parts instead of covering their whole body since too much plate armour hinders their martial arts movement. The other body parts were covered in cloth, lamellar, or Mountain pattern. In pre-Qin dynasty times, leather armour was made out of various animals, with more exotic ones such as the rhinoceros. Mail, sometimes called "chainmail", made of interlocking iron rings is believed to have first appeared some time after 300 BC, its invention is credited to the Celts. Small additional plates or discs of iron were added to the mail to protect vulnerable areas. Hardened leather and splinted construction were used for leg pieces; the coat of plates was developed, an armour made of large plates sewn inside a textile or leather coat.
Early plate in Italy, elsewhere in the 13th–15th century, were made of iron. Iron armour could be case hardened to give a surface of harder steel. Plate armour became cheaper than mail by the 15th century as it required much less labour and labour had become much more expensive after the Black Death, though it did require larger furnaces to produce larger blooms. Mail continued to be used to protect those joints which could not be adequately protected by plate, such as the armpit, crook of the elbow and groin. Another advantage of plate was; the small skull cap evolved into a bigger true helmet, the bascinet, as it was lengthened downward to protect the back of the neck and the sides of the head. Additionally, several new forms of enclosed helmets were introduced in the late 14th century; the most recognised style of armour in the world became the plate armour associated with the knights of the European Late Middle Ages, but continuing to the early 17th
Maurice, Elector of Saxony
Maurice was Duke and Elector of Saxony. His clever manipulation of alliances and disputes gained the Albertine branch of the Wettin dynasty extensive lands and the electoral dignity. Maurice was the fourth child but first son of the future Henry IV, Duke of Saxony a Catholic, his Protestant wife Catherine of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Henry was the younger brother of Duke of Saxony. In December 1532, aged 11, came to live at the castle of his godfather Cardinal Albert of Brandenburg, Archbishop of Magdeburg and Archbishop of Mainz. For two years, he lived a contemplative life until his uncle Duke George demanded his return to Saxony. George educated him as a Catholic, but in 1536 Maurice's father became a Protestant, when he succeeded George as Duke in 1539, he made the Duchy Protestant. Henry and Catherine took the education of their son into their hands; that same year, now 18 years old, went to live in Torgau with his older cousin John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony, whom he despised. With another cousin, Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, whom he met in Dresden, Maurice struck up a lifelong friendship.
After Maurice came of age, in 1539, his parents began to look for a wife for him. The favorite was Agnes; the marriage plans threatened to fail, because of the illegal double marriage of the Landgrave. Without the knowledge of his parents, Maurice remained committed to his engagement with Agnes; the wedding disapproved of by his mother, took place in Marburg on 9 January 1541. Letters from that time illustrate the strong mutual devotion of the couple. Together they had two children: Anna, married on 24 August 1561 to Prince William I of Orange-Nassau, they divorced in 1574 Albert. On 18 August 1541 Duke Henry died, Maurice, as the eldest son, succeeded him as Duke of Saxony and Head of the Albertine Line, he replaced most of his advisors, because they had been opposed to his marriage with Agnes from the start. George von Carlowitz, one of the new confidants of the Duke, advised Maurice not to endanger the survival of the Protestant Movement, thus he participated in the emperor's army in the war against the forces of the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire, Duke William of Jülich-Cleves-Berg, King Francis I of France.
However, on the other hand, the Duke confiscated the properties of the Catholic Church in his lands. From the wealth of dissolved monasteries in his country Maurice founded the princes' schools of Schulpforta and Grimma; the legal basis for this was the "New National Order" of 1543. Maurice refused to join the Protestant Schmalkaldic League, although the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, his friend and father-in-law, was its leader; the principal reason for his refusal to do so is regarded as his hate for his Ernestine cousin John Frederick I and the Imperial promise of the Saxon electorship held by John Frederick. In the Holy Week of 1542, in the process of the Wurzener Feud it nearly came to a fratricidal war, because John Frederick occupied the jointly administered "Wurzener Country". There had been a controversy between Maurice and John Frederick over the use of tax funds from this area; the intervention of the Landgrave Philip of Hesse and Martin Luther prevented the war. Due to the energetic persistence of the Elector John Frederick in establishing the Protestant Faith, the Emperor Charles V, on 20 July 1546, imposed the Imperial Ban on him, with the agreement of the Catholic Imperial Estates, the enforcement of, laid on Maurice after the Wurzener Feud.
The emperor tried in this way to drive a still deeper wedge into the Protestant camp in order to prevent a further propagation of the Protestant Faith. In the case of a successful enforcement, Maurice hoped to be invested by the emperor with the Electorship. Maurice hesitated for a long time, since by this punitive action his father-in-law Philip of Hesse would have been affected also, but when the brother of the emperor, Ferdinand I, himself wanted to initiate a campaign against the Electorate of Saxony, he had to call it off, in order not to lose the initiative in his own lands to the Habsburgs. Maurice returned to Charles's camp. After initial successes — he occupied the Electorate of Saxony nearly without a fight — Maurice with his army was driven back by the Schmalkaldic League and retreated towards Bohemia. In the crucial Battle of Mühlberg on the Elbe, the Emperor and his brother Ferdinand, as well as Maurice, were able to defeat the Schmalkaldic League by capturing Landgrave Philip and John Frederick.
According to contemporary chronicles, all of this happened on the same day, 24 April 1547. In order to escape being beheaded, John Frederick ceded the Electorate and sizable lands to Maurice in the Surrender of Wittemberg. In a brief ceremony in the field camp after the battle on 4 June 1547 Duke Maurice of Saxony was raised to the dignified position of Elector of Saxony; the official appointment took place but at a high price: He had betrayed the Protestant Faith and had brought his father-in-law, Philip of Hesse, into a hopeless situation. Maurice assured him. However, Philip was taken prisoner and exiled, after he had fallen on his knees before
War
War is a state of armed conflict between states, governments and informal paramilitary groups, such as mercenaries and militias. It is characterized by extreme violence, aggression and mortality, using regular or irregular military forces. Warfare refers of wars in general. Total war is warfare, not restricted to purely legitimate military targets, can result in massive civilian or other non-combatant suffering and casualties; the scholarly study of war is sometimes called polemology, from the Greek polemos, meaning "war", -logy, meaning "the study of". While some scholars see war as a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, others argue it is a result of specific socio-cultural or ecological circumstances; the English word war derives from the 11th century Old English words wyrre and werre, from Old French werre, in turn from the Frankish *werra deriving from the Proto-Germanic *werzō'mixture, confusion'. The word is related to the Old Saxon werran, Old High German werran, the German verwirren, meaning “to confuse”, “to perplex”, “to bring into confusion”.
War must entail some degree of confrontation using weapons and other military technology and equipment by armed forces employing military tactics and operational art within a broad military strategy subject to military logistics. Studies of war by military theorists throughout military history have sought to identify the philosophy of war, to reduce it to a military science. Modern military science considers several factors before a national defence policy is created to allow a war to commence: the environment in the area of combat operations, the posture national forces will adopt on the commencement of a war, the type of warfare troops will be engaged in. Asymmetric warfare is a conflict between belligerents of drastically different levels of military capability and/or size. Biological warfare, or germ warfare, is the use of weaponized biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria and fungi. Chemical warfare involves the use of weaponized chemicals in combat. Poison gas as a chemical weapon was principally used during World War I, resulted in over a million estimated casualties, including more than 100,000 civilians.
Civil war is a war between forces belonging to political entity. Conventional warfare is declared war between states in which nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons are not used or see limited deployment. Cyberwarfare involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nation's information systems. Insurgency is a rebellion against authority, when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as belligerents. An insurgency can be fought via counter-insurgency warfare, may be opposed by measures to protect the population, by political and economic actions of various kinds aimed at undermining the insurgents' claims against the incumbent regime. Information warfare is the application of destructive force on a large scale against information assets and systems, against the computers and networks that support the four critical infrastructures. Nuclear warfare is warfare in which nuclear weapons are the primary, or a major, method of achieving capitulation.
Total war is warfare by any means possible, disregarding the laws of war, placing no limits on legitimate military targets, using weapons and tactics resulting in significant civilian casualties, or demanding a war effort requiring significant sacrifices by the friendly civilian population. Unconventional warfare, the opposite of conventional warfare, is an attempt to achieve military victory through acquiescence, capitulation, or clandestine support for one side of an existing conflict. War of aggression is a war for gain rather than self-defense. War of liberation, Wars of national liberation or national liberation revolutions are conflicts fought by nations to gain independence; the term is used in conjunction with wars against foreign powers to establish separate sovereign states for the rebelling nationality. From a different point of view, these wars are called insurgencies, rebellions, or wars of independence; the earliest recorded evidence of war belongs to the Mesolithic cemetery Site 117, determined to be 14,000 years old.
About forty-five percent of the skeletons there displayed signs of violent death. Since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe; the advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare. According to Conway W. Henderson, "One source claims that 14,500 wars have taken place between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, costing 3.5 billion lives, leaving only 300 years of peace." An unfavorable review of this estimate mentions the following regarding one of the proponents of this estimate: "In addition feeling that the war casualties figure was improbably high, he changed "approximately 3,640,000,000 human beings have been killed by war or the diseases produced by war" to "approximately 1,240,000,000 human beings...&c."" The lower figure is more plausible, but could be on the high side, considering that the 100 deadliest acts of mass violence between 480 BCE and 2002 CE claimed about 455 million human lives in total.
Primitive warfare is estimated to have accounted for 15
Horseman's pick
The horseman's pick was a weapon used by cavalry during the Middle Ages in Europe and the Middle East. This was a type of war hammer that had a long spike on the reverse of the hammer head; this spike was curved downwards, much like a miner's pickaxe. The term is sometimes used interchangeably with war hammer. A metal-made horseman's pick called "nadziak" was one of the main weapons of the famous Polish Winged Hussars. A weapon of late make, the horseman's pick was developed by the English and used by their heavy Billmen, a unit of heavy infantry, it was used with great success during the Hundred Years' War. A use of the horseman's pick was to tear men from their mounts; the horseman's pick was used as a means to penetrate thick plate armour or mail which the standard sword could not. However, a number of drawbacks limited the weapon's effectiveness, its relative heaviness made it unwieldy and, thus avoided. The injury caused by the weapon was small and immediately fatal. Additionally, if swung too hard, the weapon became embedded in the victim or their armour, making retrieval difficult.
War hammer Shepherd's axe
Hammer
A modern day hammer is a tool consisting of a weighted "head" fixed to a long handle, swung to deliver an impact to a small area of an object. This can be, for example, to shape metal, or to crush rock. Hammers are used for a wide range of driving and breaking applications; the modern hammer head is made of steel, heat treated for hardness, the handle is made of wood or plastic. The term "hammer" applies to a mechanism's part that delivers a blow, such as the hammer of a firearm or of a piano; the claw hammer has a "claw" to pull nails out of wood, is found in an inventory of household tools in North America. Other types of hammer vary in shape and structure, depending on their purposes. Hammers used in many trades include sledgehammers and ball-peen hammers. Although most hammers are hand tools, powered hammers, such as steam hammers and trip hammers, are used to deliver forces beyond the capacity of the human arm. There are over 40 different types of hammers; the use of simple hammers dates to around 3.3 million years ago according to the 2012 find made by Sonia Harmand and Jason Lewis of Stony Brook University, who while excavating a site near Kenya's Lake Turkana discovered a large deposit of various shaped stones including those used to strike wood, bone, or other stones to break them apart and shape them.
The first hammers were without handles. <https://langs.co.uk/blog/2017/06/30/the-history-of-the-hammer-from-its-prehistoric-beginnings/> Later stones attached to sticks with strips of leather or animal sinew were being used as hammers with handles by about 30,000 BCE during the middle of the Paleolithic Stone Age. The addition of a handle gave the user less accidents. <https://langs.co.uk/blog/2017/06/30/the-history-of-the-hammer-from-its-prehistoric-beginnings/>. The hammer became the number one tool. Used for building and protection; the hammer's archeological record shows that it may be the oldest tool for which definite evidence exists of its early existence. A traditional hand-held hammer consists of a separate head and a handle, which can be fastened together by means of a special wedge made for the purpose, or by glue, or both; this two-piece design is used to combine a dense metallic striking head with a non-metallic mechanical-shock-absorbing handle. If wood is used for the handle, it is hickory or ash, which are tough and long-lasting materials that can dissipate shock waves from the hammer head.
Rigid fiberglass resin may be used for the handle. A loose hammer head is hazardous because it can "fly off the handle" when in use, becoming a dangerous uncontrolled missile. Wooden handles can be replaced when worn or damaged; some hammers are one-piece designs made of a single material. A one-piece metallic hammer may optionally have its handle coated or wrapped in a resilient material such as rubber, for improved grip and to reduce user fatigue; the hammer head may be surfaced with a variety of materials including brass, wood, rubber, or leather. Some hammers have interchangeable striking surfaces, which can be selected as needed or replaced when worn out. A large hammer-like tool is a maul, a wood- or rubber-headed hammer is a mallet, a hammer-like tool with a cutting blade is called a hatchet; the essential part of a hammer is the head, a compact solid mass, able to deliver a blow to the intended target without itself deforming. The impacting surface of the tool is flat or rounded; some upholstery hammers have a magnetized face.
In the hatchet, the flat hammer head may be secondary to the cutting edge of the tool. The impact between steel hammer heads and the objects being hit can create sparks, which may ignite flammable or explosive gases; these are a hazard in some industries such as underground coal mining, or in other hazardous environments such as petroleum refineries and chemical plants. In these environments, a variety of non-sparking metal tools are used made of aluminium or beryllium copper. In recent years, the handles have been made of durable plastic or rubber, though wood is still used because of its shock-absorbing qualities and repair-ability. Ball-peen hammer, or mechanic's hammer Boiler scaling hammer Brass hammer known as non-sparking hammer or spark-proof hammer and used in flammable areas like oil fields Carpenter's hammer, such as the framing hammer and the claw hammer, pinhammers Cow hammer – sometimes used for livestock slaughter, a practice now deprecated due to animal welfare objections Cross-peen hammer, having one round face and one wedge-peen face.
Dead blow hammer delivers impact with little recoil due to a hollow head filled with sand, lead shot or pellets Drilling hammer – a short handled sledgehammer used for drilling in rock with a chisel. The name refers to a hammer with a 2-to-4-pound head and a 10-inch handle called a "single-jack" hammer because it was used by one person drilling, holding the chisel in one hand and the hammer in the other. In modern usage, the term is interchangeable with "engineer's hammer", although it can indica
Halberd
A halberd is a two-handed pole weapon that came to prominent use during the 14th and 15th centuries. The word halberd is most equivalent to the German word Hellebarde, deriving from Middle High German halm and barte joint to helmbarte. Troops that used the weapon are called halberdiers; the halberd consists of an axe blade topped with a spike mounted on a long shaft. It always has a thorn on the back side of the axe blade for grappling mounted combatants, it is similar to certain forms of the voulge in design and usage. The halberd was 1.5 to 1.8 metres long. The word has been used to describe a weapon of the Early Bronze Age in Western Europe; this consisted of a blade mounted on a pole at a right angle. A similar weapon, the dagger-axe, from Bronze Age China, has been called "halberd" in English; the halberd was inexpensive to produce and versatile in battle. As the halberd was refined, its point was more developed to allow it to better deal with spears and pikes, as was the hook opposite the axe head, which could be used to pull horsemen to the ground.
A Swiss peasant used a halberd to kill Charles the Bold, the Duke of Burgundy, decisively ending the Burgundian Wars in a single stroke. Researchers suspect that a halberd or a bill sliced through the back of King Richard III's skull at the Battle of Bosworth; the halberd was the primary weapon of the early Swiss armies in the early 15th centuries. The Swiss added the pike to better repel knightly attacks and roll over enemy infantry formations, with the halberd, hand-and-a-half sword, or the dagger known as the Schweizerdolch used for closer combat; the German Landsknechte, who imitated Swiss warfare methods used the pike, supplemented by the halberd—but their side arm of choice was a short sword called the Katzbalger. As long as pikemen fought other pikemen, the halberd remained a useful supplemental weapon for push of pike, but when their position became more defensive, to protect the slow-loading arquebusiers and matchlock musketeers from sudden attacks by cavalry, the percentage of halberdiers in the pike units decreased.
The halberd all but disappeared as a rank-and-file weapon in these formations by the middle of the sixteenth century, though Hakluyt's'Voyages' relate the death of a halberdier named Zachary Saxy in fighting on the coast of Ecuador during Cavendish's circumnavigation in 1587. The halberd has been used as a court bodyguard weapon for centuries, is still the ceremonial weapon of the Swiss Guard in the Vatican and the Alabarderos Company of the Spanish Royal Guard; the halberd was one of the polearms sometimes carried by lower-ranking officers in European infantry units in the 16th through 18th centuries. In the British army, sergeants continued to carry halberds until 1793, when they were replaced by pikes with cross bars; the 18th century halberd had, become a symbol of rank with no sharpened edge and insufficient strength to use as a weapon. It served as an instrument for ensuring that infantrymen in ranks stood aligned with each other and that their muskets were aimed at the correct level.
Bardiche, a type of two-handed battle axe known in the 16th and 17th centuries in Eastern Europe Bill, similar to a halberd but with a hooked blade form. Ge or dagger-axe, a Chinese weapon in use from the Shang Dynasty that had a dagger-shaped blade mounted perpendicular to a spearhead Fauchard, a curved blade atop a 2 m pole, used in Europe between the 11th and 14th centuries Guisarme, a medieval bladed weapon on the end of a long pole. Lochaber axe, a Scottish weapon that had a heavy blade attached to a pole in a similar fashion to a voulge Naginata, a Japanese weapon that had a 30 cm – 60 cm long blade attached by a sword guard to a wooden shaft Partisan, a large double-bladed spearhead mounted on a long shaft that had protrusions on either side for parrying sword thrusts Pollaxe, an axe or hammer mounted on a long shaft—developed in the 14th century to breach the plate armour worn by European men-at-arms Ranseur, a pole weapon consisting of a spear-tip affixed with a cross hilt at its base derived from the earlier spetum Spontoon, a 17th-century weapon that consisted of a large blade with two side blades mounted on a long 2 m pole, considered a more elaborate pike Voulge, a crude single-edged blade bound to a wooden shaft War scythe, an improvised weapon that consisted of a blade from a scythe attached vertically to a shaft Welsh hook, similar to a halberd and thought to originate from a forest-bill Woldo, A Korean polearm that had a crescent-shaped blade mounted on a long shaft, similar in construction to the Chinese Guandao, served as a symbol of the Royal Guard Dagger-axe Viking halberd O'Flaherty, Ronan.
Brandtherm, Dirk & O'Flaherty, Ronan. R. E. Oakeshott, European weapons and armour: From the Renaissance to the industrial revolution, 44–48
