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A polearm or pole weapon is a close combat weapon in which the main fighting part of the weapon is fitted to the end of a long shaft, typically of wood, extending the user's effective range and striking power. Polearms are predominantly melee weapons, with a subclass of spear-like designs fit for thrusting and/or throwing.
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In English, the term 'Italian bill' is applied to the similar roncone or roncola, but the Italian version tended to have a long thrusting spike in addition to the cutting blade. The English distinguished among several varieties of bill, including the black, brown and forest bills, but the differences between them are currently not fully understood.
Spear-armed hoplite from Greco-Persian Wars. A spear is a polearm consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head.The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with fire hardened spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fastened to the shaft, such as bone, flint, obsidian, copper, bronze, iron, or steel.
In the 1599 treatise "Paradoxes of Defence" by English gentleman George Silver, the glaive is described as being used in a manner similar to other polearms like the quarterstaff, half pike, bill, halberd, voulge, and partisan. Silver considered this class of polearms superior to all other hand-to-hand combat weapons.
An assegai or assagai [a] [2] is a polearm used for throwing, usually a light spear or javelin made up of a wooden handle with an iron tip. Area of use [ edit ]
The oldest surviving English work giving technical information on staff combat dates from the 15th century – it is a brief listing of "strokes of the 2-hand staff", which shares terminology with the preceding "strokes of the 2-hand sword" in the same manuscript. [5]
Lanza Longa sometimes also known in Italian as gialda.; [1] modernly known scholarly mostly as lanzalonga, [2] [3] the term was also, normally, translated in Tudor period english as Long Spear, was a medieval polearm typical of Italian municipal infantry, a type of spear between 3 and 4.5 meters long [4]