War Hammer

Origins

Hammers and picks have been weapons since antiquity, but the war hammer as a distinct knightly weapon grew up with plate armor in the fourteenth century. As mail was reinforced and then replaced by solid steel plates — culminating in the full harness of the fifteenth century, like the Gothic Plate Armor of German workshops — swords lost much of their power against a fully armored man. Weapons that concentrated force on a small point or delivered blunt trauma through steel became more attractive: the Medieval Mace, the poleaxe, and the hammer. Contemporary art and inventories show short war hammers carried at the saddle by mounted men-at-arms by the mid-fourteenth century, and long-hafted hammers and poleaxes becoming the preferred weapon for knights who fought dismounted, as English and French men-at-arms often did during the Hundred Years War.

Design & Construction

A typical war hammer has a steel head with two faces. The hammer face is small, often cut with three or four teeth or points so that it bites into a curved steel surface instead of glancing off. The opposite side ends in a spike, straight or curved downward like a bird's beak — the source of the French name bec de corbin, 'crow's beak.' Many also have a top spike for thrusting. Langets run down the haft to protect it. Horseman's hammers were short, 50 to 80 centimeters, one-handed, and often fitted with a belt hook; foot combat versions, including the Swiss Lucerne hammer, were polearms of 1.5 to 2 meters, overlapping with the poleaxe and the Halberd. The weight was modest — horseman's hammers rarely exceed a kilogram and a half — because speed and precision mattered more than mass.

Combat Use

A hammer blow to a helmet could stun or concuss a man even when the steel held, and the beak could penetrate thinner plate or be driven into the gaps at the armpit, groin, and visor. In foot combat the long hammer or poleaxe was used with both hands, striking, thrusting, hooking, and levering an opponent off balance, as shown in the Burgundian treatise Le Jeu de la Hache from around 1400. English men-at-arms in the Wars of the Roses fought on foot with poleaxes and hammers; Richard III is often pictured with one at Bosworth in 1485. In Eastern Europe, the horseman's hammer — the Polish nadziak and Hungarian czekan — remained a cavalry weapon into the seventeenth century, carried by the Winged Hussars and by nobles as a sign of status.

Legacy

As plate armor gave way to firearms in the sixteenth century, the war hammer retreated to the parade ground, the tournament, and the Polish-Lithuanian cavalry. Its influence survives in fantasy fiction and gaming, where it is often wildly exaggerated in size, and in the steady market for reproductions. Authentic horseman's hammers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries appear at auction fairly regularly and are more affordable than swords of the same period; the finest are etched and gilded. See War Hammers and Morning Star.