50 Fun Facts About Medieval Weapons

Which siege engine used a falling counterweight to sling boulders and rotting carcasses over castle walls?

The trebuchet could throw almost anything, from debris to incendiaries, though a large stone was typical. Crews hoisted its box of stones, sand or lead with winches or treadwheels, so reloading was slow.

Which six-foot English weapon did Edward III order able-bodied men to practise with on holidays?

The longbow took years to master, so a practised population made it far easier for the king to recruit archers. Skeletons of archers show the strain, with enlarged left arms and bony growths on the wrists.

Which weapon, usable with little training, did the Second Lateran Council forbid against Christians in 1139?

The crossbow was outlawed by Canon 29, which condemned ordinary bows in the same breath. A recruit could shoot one well after little practice, while other bows took far more skill to aim.

Which Byzantine incendiary weapon, sprayed from ship-mounted tubes, had a recipe so secret that it is now lost?

Greek fire kept burning on water, which made it devastating against wooden fleets. Most modern scholars think it was petroleum mixed with resins, close in composition to modern napalm.

Which weapon, adapted from a tool for threshing grain, joins a striking head to a handle by chain or hinge?

The flail armed the Hussite peasant soldiers of the fifteenth century, who fought with two-handed farm versions. The ball-and-chain type beloved of films is far rarer in the historical record.

Which pole weapon, an axe blade topped with a spike, do the Pope's Swiss Guards still carry on ceremonial duty?

The halberd was the primary weapon of early Swiss armies, and Vatican guardsmen are still ranked as halberdiers. Its name joins old German words for 'handle' and 'battleaxe'.

Which word for a self-employed worker did Walter Scott use in Ivanhoe for a medieval mercenary warrior?

Freelance began as a 'free lance', a fighter whose weapon was not sworn to any lord's service. The phrase never meant that his services came free of charge.

Which word for a swaggering sword-fighting hero contains the name of a small medieval shield gripped in the fist?

Swashbuckler pairs 'swash', to swagger with a drawn sword, with the buckler, a shield up to 18 inches across. The buckler could deflect a blow, bind an opponent's arms or simply punch him.

Which armour-denting medieval club with a flanged metal head survives as a ceremonial symbol in parliaments?

The mace focused its force through flanges or knobs, so it could dent plate armour and jam the overlapping plates. Legislatures and universities still display ceremonial ones as symbols of authority.

Which legendary sword does King Arthur receive from the Lady of the Lake in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur?

Excalibur came with a scabbard that stopped any wound from bleeding, until Morgan le Fay stole it. In Malory, the sword Arthur draws from the stone shares the name but soon shatters in combat.

What did King John send for in 1215 to fuel the blaze that collapsed a corner of Rochester Castle's keep?

Forty fat pigs, 'of the sort least good for eating', gave the grease that burned the timber props of a mine dug under the keep. When the props gave way, one corner of the great tower came down.

Which part of a medieval sword, the knob at the end of the grip, is named from a word for 'little apple'?

The pommel grew heavy enough by the 11th century to act as a counterweight to the blade. A swordsman could also strike with it, and English later bent the word into the verb 'pummel'.

Which groove along a sword blade, wrongly nicknamed the blood groove, lightens the steel while keeping it stiff?

The fuller works like the web of an I-beam, giving a blade the most stiffness for the least metal. Channelling blood was never its purpose.

Which curved samurai sword was worn thrust through the sash with its cutting edge facing upward?

The katana sat edge-up in the sash, which helped a samurai draw and answer a sudden attack quickly. The older tachi hung from a belt with its edge facing down.

Which two-handed Highland sword of the 15th to 17th centuries is named from the Gaelic for 'great sword'?

The claymore of the Highland clans had a cross hilt whose arms sloped forward and ended in four-lobed tips. From the 18th century the name was also given to Scottish basket-hilted swords.

Which siege weapon did castle defenders try to foil by lowering sacks of sawdust or snagging it with grappling hooks?

The battering ram lost its punch when a sack of sawdust dropped in front of its head just before impact. Attackers answered with canopies of fresh wet hides, which made the ram harder to set alight.

Which four-spiked iron device, strewn in the path of cavalry, always lands with one point facing upward?

The caltrop takes its name from an Old English word meaning 'heel-trap'. The design never went out of use, because it works just as well against the air-filled tyres of wheeled vehicles.

At which battle did Henry V's outnumbered archers shoot down French knights wading through freshly ploughed mud?

Agincourt saw English archers try something new, planting sharpened stakes in the ground to turn cavalry aside. Knights knocked down in the deep mud struggled to rise again in full plate armour.

Which English king is traditionally said to have died at Hastings in 1066 with an arrow in his eye?

Harold Godwinson appears in the Bayeux Tapestry beside a figure gripping an arrow at his eye, under the Latin for 'Here King Harold is killed'. Scholars still debate whether the arrow was in the original stitching.

Which English king died in 1199 after a bolt struck his shoulder at the siege of Châlus and the wound turned gangrenous?

Richard I, the Lionheart, is said to have forgiven the man who shot him and sent him away with 100 shillings. The king's heart was buried at Rouen and his body at Fontevraud Abbey.

Which giant bombard, a gift to James II of Scotland, burst its barrel in 1680 and now sits at Edinburgh Castle?

Mons Meg has a 20-inch bore, and soldiers were once paid to fetch one of its shots from two miles away. It sat in the Tower of London until Walter Scott and others campaigned to bring it home in 1829.

Which sword, said to be Charlemagne's, led French coronation processions from 1270 and now rests in the Louvre?

Joyeuse means 'joyous', a name legend ties to a fragment of the Holy Lance sealed in its hilt. It was last carried before a French king at the coronation of Charles X in 1825.

Which Frankish name is inlaid on the blades of about 170 swords of the Viking Age found across Northern Europe?

Ulfberht blades were made from the 9th century to the 11th, far too long a run for any single smith. They began the medieval tradition of marking sword blades with inscriptions.

Which city shares its name with a prized sword steel, patterned like flowing water and forged from Indian wootz?

Damascus had a thriving arms industry fed by wootz ingots from southern India. Legend claimed its blades could slice a wisp of silk floating down across the edge.

Which long-shafted, two-handed axe do armoured huscarls swing in the Bayeux Tapestry's scenes of the Norman Conquest?

The Dane axe was also the mark of the Varangian Guard, the Byzantine emperors' 'axe-bearing' mercenaries from northern Europe. One tapestry scene shows it cleaving a horse's head in a single blow.

Which throwing axe did Merovingian warriors hurl just before closing to hand-to-hand combat, to break enemy shields?

The francisca was so closely tied to the Franks that Isidore of Seville explained its name by their use of it. Examples have also been found in Anglo-Saxon England.

Which slender dagger, named from the Latin for an act of mercy, was used to finish off mortally wounded knights?

The misericorde was thin enough to pass through a visor's eyeholes or the gap under an armoured arm. It is recorded from the 12th century in the armouries of England, Germany and Persia.

Which spiked Flemish staff weapon helped town guildsmen cut down French knights at the Battle of the Golden Spurs?

The goedendag has a name usually read as Dutch for 'good day', though some link it to a word for dagger. Fighters braced its spike against a charge like a boar spear, then swung it as a club.

Which square-sectioned, needle-like arrowhead was designed to punch through mail armour rather than cause wide wounds?

The bodkin borrows its name from a sharp, pointed dagger. Archers carried it alongside broadheads, which did less against armour but caused far more serious wounds in flesh.

Which mixture of saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal, first made by Taoists seeking medicines, went to war around 904?

Gunpowder is first recorded in a Chinese formula of 808. A later Taoist text warned that people heating its ingredients with honey had burned their hands, their faces and even the whole house.

Which very long thrusting spear, the main weapon of Swiss mercenaries, was later taken up by German Landsknechts?

The pike was drilled so hard by the Swiss that they introduced marching to drums to keep their blocks in step. A Milan decree of 1391 required shafts over 14 feet long, with iron strips guarding the tips.

In which tournament contest did two knights charge with lances, later separated by a barrier called the tilt?

The joust was given up in France after King Henry II died in an accident at one in 1559. The tilt began as a cloth barrier in the 14th century, meant to stop the riders colliding.

Whose horse archers, shooting bows of laminated horn, wood and sinew, conquered from the Sea of Japan to Eastern Europe?

The Mongols relied on bows short enough to shoot from the saddle, with horn on the inner face and sinew on the outer. Each archer usually carried two or three of them.

Which wood was so prized for English war bows that Bavaria and Austria ran out of mature trees to export?

Yew staves were first imported to England in 1294, and by 1569 Bavaria and Austria could not cut enough to justify a royal monopoly. Practice bows of hazel or laburnum had been permitted since 1470.

Which medieval craftsman, whose trade lives on as a common English surname, fitted the feathers to arrows?

Fletcher comes from 'flèche', the French word for arrow. London's arrow makers formed a guild of their own, the Worshipful Company of Fletchers.

Which medieval club, a shaft topped by a ball bristling with spikes, came into wide use in fourteenth-century Germany?

The morning star was nicknamed the holy water sprinkler in England, after the rod a priest uses to scatter holy water at Mass. English smiths turned them out in series for the army of the sixteenth century.

Which Ottoman sultan had the Hungarian founder Orban cast a 27-foot gun to smash the walls of Constantinople?

Mehmed II bought a design that the Byzantine emperor Constantine XI could not afford to build. The finished gun needed 60 to 90 oxen and hundreds of men to drag it the 140 miles from Adrianople.

What did the besieging army of Jani Beg reportedly hurl over the walls of the Crimean port of Caffa?

Plague corpses flung into Caffa were blamed by the Italian notary Gabriel de Mussis for carrying the Black Death to Europe. He was not at the siege, and other evidence from the region contradicts his story.

Which first true firearm, a bare metal barrel set off through a touch hole, was common in China from the 13th century?

The hand cannon had no trigger or lock of any kind, so the shooter had to bring a flame to the touch hole himself. In fifteenth-century Europe it evolved into the matchlock arquebus.

Which long-hafted, armour-breaching weapon is named, most authorities say, from an old word meaning 'head'?

The poleaxe arose in the 14th and 15th centuries from the need to breach the plate armour of men-at-arms. Fighting masters suggested a shaft about as tall as the person wielding it.

Which training target for mounted knights could, in one version, tip a tun of water over a rider who struck it badly?

The quintain was not only for knights: young men ran at it on foot, on wooden horses and, in 12th-century London, from boats. The pastime lingered in English country districts into the 18th century.

Which single-edged, one-handed European sword of the 13th century onward survives in the cleaver-like Conyers example?

The falchion takes its name from the Latin 'falx', a sickle. Despite the wide blade, surviving examples are thin and light, built for quick slashes and not for heavy chopping.

Which fighting knife of the early Germanic peoples appears as a notched, curved blade on the coat of arms of Essex?

The seax takes its name from an Old English word for knife and was typical above all of the Saxons. The same notched blade also marked the arms of the former county of Middlesex.

Which Japanese pole weapon with a curved blade became the iconic arm of the onna-musha, noblewomen trained as warriors?

The naginata spread so widely on the battlefield that Japanese armourers had to add greaves to their armour. It later became a status symbol and self-defence weapon for women of the nobility.

In which German sword technique does a fighter grip the blade in both hands and strike with the hilt?

Mordhau means 'murder-stroke', and it let a swordsman use his weapon as a hammer. Cuts with the edge were useless against plate armour, and a blade alone was too light to hurt by impact.

Which oblong shield, often tall enough to cover the whole body, gave archers stationary cover from the mid-14th century?

The pavise is named after the Italian city of Pavia. Homer describes the same idea far earlier in the Iliad, where Ajax shelters the archer Teucer behind his own shield.

What were the tight rings of Scottish spearmen called that William Wallace drew up against English cavalry at Falkirk?

Schiltron comes from Old English roots meaning 'shield-troop'. At Falkirk the rings were fenced with stakes driven into the ground and roped together.

Which Scottish king split Sir Henry de Bohun's head with an axe in single combat on the first day of Bannockburn?

Robert the Bruce was poorly equipped for a fight when de Bohun spotted him and charged with a lance. The English withdrew for the day after the knight fell.

Which long, edgeless sword with a sharp point, called a tuck in English, was built to pierce mail and plate armour?

The estoc was a stiff variation of the longsword that gave up its cutting edge altogether. No surviving specimen weighs more than about six pounds.

Which French heroine took an arrow between the neck and shoulder at Orléans yet returned for the final assault?

Joan of Arc was holding her banner in a trench when the arrow struck, during the attack on the English stronghold of les Tourelles. She was wounded again in later fighting, that time in the leg.