Frankish Francisca

Origins

Axes were ordinary tools and weapons across the Germanic world, but in the fourth and fifth centuries a distinctive throwing form appears in the graves of the peoples of the lower Rhine who formed the Frankish confederation. The richest early example comes from the tomb of Childeric I, king of the Salian Franks, who died about 481 and was buried at Tournai with his sword, spear, and axe. His son Clovis united the Franks, defeated the last Roman authority in Gaul at Soissons in 486, and conquered most of the country; the weapon spread with Frankish settlement. The name francisca is recorded by Isidore of Seville in the early seventh century, who says the Spaniards called it so 'from its use by the Franks.' Whether the people took their name from the axe or the axe from the people was already a matter of speculation in the Middle Ages.

Design & Construction

The francisca has a small iron head, typically weighing 300 to 1,200 grams, with a distinctive shape: the upper edge rises in an S-curve and the blade is angled downward relative to the haft, so that the cutting edge leads when the axe rotates. The eye is round or oval, and the haft, of which only traces survive, was short — probably 40 to 50 centimeters. Modern experiments show that a thrown francisca turns end over end and that a trained thrower can make the edge land first at a set distance of about ten to twelve meters. The angled head and the weight forward of the hand made it effective in the hand as well, and unlike the broad-bladed Dane Axe of later centuries it was always a one-handed weapon, used with a shield.

Combat Use

The Byzantine historian Procopius, describing a Frankish army in Italy in 539, gives the classic account: the Franks, he says, carried a sword, a shield, and an axe, and at the first charge threw their axes to shatter the enemy's shields before closing to kill. Gregory of Tours, writing in the late sixth century, describes Frankish kings and warriors settling disputes with the axe in hand. The tactic depended on a short, sharp shock — a volley of heavy blades at close range, then an immediate rush — and it matched a style of warfare in which armies were small and battles decided in minutes. The francisca had a close cousin in the angon, a barbed throwing spear that fixed itself in a shield and dragged it down, much like the Roman Pilum before it.

Legacy

By the late seventh century the throwing axe disappears from Frankish graves, partly because the custom of burying weapons faded under Christian influence and partly because Carolingian armies were built around mounted warriors with lance and sword. The francisca survived as a symbol. Revolutionary and later French writers adopted it as an emblem of the nation's Frankish origins, and the double-headed 'francisque' was used as the personal badge of Marshal Pétain's Vichy regime, which gives the image an awkward modern history in France. Genuine franciscas are among the most commonly found early medieval weapons and appear on the market with some regularity; excavated heads with clear context are the most prized. See Axes and the later Viking Battle Axe.