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Soldiers trained in the use of the sword were granted the title of Meister des langen Schwertes (lit. Master of the Long Sword) by the Mark Brotherhood. Frisian hero Pier Gerlofs Donia is reputed to have wielded a Zweihänder with such skill, strength and efficiency that he managed to behead several people with it in a single blow.
Experienced and well-equipped soldiers, receiving double a normal Landsknecht 's pay and getting the title Doppelsöldner, [29] made up a quarter of each Fähnlein. 50 of these men were armed with a halberd or with a 66-inch (170 cm) two-handed sword called a Zweihänder while another fifty were arquebusiers or crossbowmen.
A longsword (also spelled as long sword or long-sword) is a type of European sword characterized as having a cruciform hilt with a grip for primarily two-handed use (around 15 to 30 cm or 6 to 12 in), a straight double-edged blade of around 80 to 110 cm (31 to 43 in), and weighing approximately 2 to 3 kg (4 lb 7 oz to 6 lb 10 oz).
A Hand and a half sword, colloquially known as a "bastard sword", was a sword with an extended grip and sometimes pommel so that it could be used with either one or two hands. Although these swords may not provide a full two-hand grip, they allowed its wielders to hold a shield or parrying dagger in their off hand, or to use it as a two-handed ...
The term claymore is an anglicisation of the Gaelic claidheamh-mòr "big/great sword", attested in 1772 (as Cly-more) with the gloss "great two-handed sword". [3] The sense "basket-hilted sword" is contemporaneous, attested in 1773 as "the broad-sword now used ... called the Claymore, (i.e., the great sword)", [4] although OED observes that this usage is "inexact, but very common".
The term "single-handed sword" or "one-handed sword" was coined to distinguish from "two-handed" or "hand-and-a-half" swords. "Single-handed sword" is used by Sir Walter Scott. [11] It is also used as a possible gloss of the obscure term tonsword by Nares (1822); [12] "one-handed sword" is somewhat later, recorded from c. 1850. Some swords were ...
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From sword and buckler to sword and dagger, sword alone to two-handed sword, from polearms to wrestling (though absent in Manciolino), early 16th-century Italian fencing reflected the versatility that a martial artist of the time was supposed to have achieved. [7]