The chief arm of the mounted knight was the lance, a weapon having a long and often quite heavy wooden shaft and a steel point. Near the butt its diameter was reduced to provide a comfortable hand grip, and just in front of this grip there was applied a vamplate or conical hand guard of steel. Behind the grip there was attached a thick iron ring called a graper, which, when the lance was in use, rested against the hook or lance-rest projecting from the right side of the knight’s breastplate. The graper thus served as a thrust bearing, and put directly behind the point of the lance the entire momentum of horse and rider. When such a projectile made a direct hit upon an opponent something had to give. Either the opponent was knocked completely off his horse, or his back was broken, or the lance was shattered.

Foot soldiers also employed arms with long wooden shafts, of which by far the commonest was the pike, which had a very simple steel point and butt ferrule respectively on the ends of a slender rod of wood about fourteen feet long. This was the arm of the great bodies of mercenary infantry which did so much of the fighting of the seventeenth century. A company of such men, formed into a square or circle, the front rank kneeling, the second standing, and both holding their pikes with the butts against the ground and the points projecting outward, was almost invulnerable to cavalry, whose horses would not charge against the forest of pike-points. The one effective maneuver against them was for some of the cavalry to dismount and attack swinging great two-handed swords, which could beat down the pike points and allow the cavalry to ride in.

Lance and pike were simple utilitarian tools; few have survived. But there are other pole arms, from the fifteenth century on, which offered more opportunity to individual taste in form and decoration; a number of these are present in the Museum’s collection. Some (Fig. 33) were developments of the simple spear point, as for example (1) the type called an ox-tongue or (2) a boar spear provided with a toggle to prevent a wounded animal from charging right up the shaft of the weapon which transfixed him. In (3), now a well-developed partisan, the toggle has been replaced by a projecting spur at each side of the base. In (4) these spurs have become large and ornamental, the weapon is decorated with etching, and has become a ceremonial object rather than a weapon for actual fighting. (5) is a partisan of the state guard of Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland (1697-1733), and is even more noticeably designed for display purposes only.

Other pole arms are developments of the axe. Military axes (Fig. 34 [1], [2]) had handles somewhat shorter than those of pikes, spears or partisans but longer than the short-handled axes used on horseback. They were particularly popular for use in judicial combats or “trial by battle”. Each contestant in a law suit would swear to the truth of his claim, and call upon God to prove its truth. The two men, armed with such axes, would fight until one was killed or driven out of the ring. The victor was thus proven to have told the truth, while the unsuccessful contestant, if still alive, was executed for perjury. Such axes, capable of defending the right, were made with special care, and were highly valued by their surviving owners.

Axes with longer shafts were known as halberds, and were usually provided with a sharpened hook at the back of the axe blade to permit a man on foot to catch and cut the bridle rein of an attacking horseman. Like the partisans, halberds developed from plain functional military types, (Fig. 34 [3], [4]) of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries respectively to highly decorated types carried as badges of authority by the state guards of Christian II of Saxony (Fig. 34 [5]) and of the Princes of Liechtenstein (Fig. 34 [6]) respectively.