Medieval Weapons
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50 free Medieval Weapons trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Medieval weapons were shaped by an arms race. As armour improved from mail to full plate, smiths answered with narrower points, heavier heads and longer shafts, and castle walls pushed engineers to build machines that could knock them down. Many of the results left their mark on everyday English, in surnames, in figures of speech and in the ceremonies of courts and parliaments. This quiz asks you to name the weapon from a description of how it looked or what it did, and it mixes in the people and battles that made certain arms famous. You will meet swords and their parts, bows and arrowheads, pole arms, clubs and daggers, siege engines, early firearms, a few legendary blades and several weapons from beyond Europe. It suits history fans, tabletop and video game players who want to know what their characters are really carrying, and teachers looking for a lively round on the Middle Ages. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches you something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which siege engine used a falling counterweight to sling boulders and rotting carcasses over castle walls?
Trebuchet
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.
Q 02Which six-foot English weapon did Edward III order able-bodied men to practise with on holidays?
Longbow
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.
Q 03Which weapon, usable with little training, did the Second Lateran Council forbid against Christians in 1139?
Crossbow
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.
Q 04Which Byzantine incendiary weapon, sprayed from ship-mounted tubes, had a recipe so secret that it is now lost?
Greek fire
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.
Q 05Which weapon, adapted from a tool for threshing grain, joins a striking head to a handle by chain or hinge?
Flail
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.
Q 06Which pole weapon, an axe blade topped with a spike, do the Pope's Swiss Guards still carry on ceremonial duty?
Halberd
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'.
Q 07Which word for a self-employed worker did Walter Scott use in Ivanhoe for a medieval mercenary warrior?
Freelance
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.
Q 08Which word for a swaggering sword-fighting hero contains the name of a small medieval shield gripped in the fist?
Swashbuckler
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.
Q 09Which armour-denting medieval club with a flanged metal head survives as a ceremonial symbol in parliaments?
Mace
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.
Q 10Which legendary sword does King Arthur receive from the Lady of the Lake in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur?
Excalibur
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.
Q 11What did King John send for in 1215 to fuel the blaze that collapsed a corner of Rochester Castle's keep?
Forty fat pigs
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.
Q 12Which part of a medieval sword, the knob at the end of the grip, is named from a word for 'little apple'?
Pommel
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'.
Q 13Which groove along a sword blade, wrongly nicknamed the blood groove, lightens the steel while keeping it stiff?
Fuller
Q 21Which giant bombard, a gift to James II of Scotland, burst its barrel in 1680 and now sits at Edinburgh Castle?
Mons Meg
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.
Q 22Which sword, said to be Charlemagne's, led French coronation processions from 1270 and now rests in the Louvre?
Joyeuse
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.
Q 23Which Frankish name is inlaid on the blades of about 170 swords of the Viking Age found across Northern Europe?
Ulfberht
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.
Q 14Which curved samurai sword was worn thrust through the sash with its cutting edge facing upward?
Katana
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.
Q 15Which two-handed Highland sword of the 15th to 17th centuries is named from the Gaelic for 'great sword'?
Claymore
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.
Q 16Which siege weapon did castle defenders try to foil by lowering sacks of sawdust or snagging it with grappling hooks?
Battering ram
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.
Q 17Which four-spiked iron device, strewn in the path of cavalry, always lands with one point facing upward?
Caltrop
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.
Q 18At which battle did Henry V's outnumbered archers shoot down French knights wading through freshly ploughed mud?
Agincourt
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.
Q 19Which English king is traditionally said to have died at Hastings in 1066 with an arrow in his eye?
Harold Godwinson
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.
Q 20Which English king died in 1199 after a bolt struck his shoulder at the siege of Châlus and the wound turned gangrenous?
Richard I
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.
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.
Q 24Which city shares its name with a prized sword steel, patterned like flowing water and forged from Indian wootz?
Damascus
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.
Q 25Which long-shafted, two-handed axe do armoured huscarls swing in the Bayeux Tapestry's scenes of the Norman Conquest?
Dane axe
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.
Q 26Which throwing axe did Merovingian warriors hurl just before closing to hand-to-hand combat, to break enemy shields?
Francisca
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.
Q 27Which slender dagger, named from the Latin for an act of mercy, was used to finish off mortally wounded knights?
Misericorde
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.
Q 28Which spiked Flemish staff weapon helped town guildsmen cut down French knights at the Battle of the Golden Spurs?
Goedendag
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.
Q 29Which square-sectioned, needle-like arrowhead was designed to punch through mail armour rather than cause wide wounds?
Bodkin
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.
Q 30Which mixture of saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal, first made by Taoists seeking medicines, went to war around 904?
Gunpowder
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.