A halberd is a two-handed pole weapon that came to prominent use during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. The word halberd is most likely equivalent to the German word Hellebarde, deriving from Middle High Germanhalm 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 hook or thorn on the back side of the axe blade for grappling mounted combatants. It is very similar to certain forms of the voulge in design and usage. The halberd was usually 1.5 to 1.8 metres long. The word has also 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. The Chinese polearm known as ji is also commonly translated into English as halberd.
History
The halberd was inexpensive to produce and very versatile in battle. As the halberd was eventually refined, its point was more fully 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 14th and early 15th centuries. Later, 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, also 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 steadily 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, and 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, however, become simply 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 correctly aligned with each other and that their muskets were aimed at the correct level.
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 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, and primarily served as a symbol of the Royal Guard
