Heroic Dreams - All Things Medieval

Pole Axe

I recently had a long discussion with a friend about medieval weapons and the topic came around to pole axes. It got to the point where we were laughing so hard I thought one of us was going to have a heart attack!

Anyway, the basic concept of a poleaxe is similar to any other poleweapon. You take a hand weapon and you put it on the end of a pole. 

The nice thing about pole weapons is that they enable you to extend your reach in combat, and in particular, they enable you to reach up and attack, or dismount an enemy on horseback.

But if you give some thought to the poleaxe you have to wonder what they were thinking. The effectiveness of a hand axe is in the slicing motion - you take a nice swing and let the curved blade do its work. But if you mount the axe on the end of a pole how are you going to take a nice swing?  If the pole is ten feet long you have to wind up and then swing it! How long is this going to take? half an hour? Do you tell your opponent, wielding an ordinary sword, to wait a minute while you wind up for your poleaxe swing?

I can see it now. It’s practically a monty python sketch in the making.

Anyway, we had a lot of fun with it. We envisioned a middle ages kingdom that rose to quick fortune and fame but for some reason they all took to using the poleaxe and well, in their first big battle they were all wiped out by a small army carrying daggers and clubs. We envisioned thousands of them on the battlefield all trying to swing their enormous poleaxes and never getting a swing completed!

Well, The poleaxe does seem to be a rather peculiar weapon but I am sure it was very useful in it’s time, and it did have a certain amount of use and popularity. It’s just all in good fun!

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