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Murder Holes, Machicolations, and Other Medieval Warfare Facts

Khalid Elhassan March 6, 2020 34 min

Pike and shot - Pike and Shot : Campaigns — A pike and short formation, with pikemen protecting those wielding firearms while they reloaded. Pintrest

32. The Middle Ages’ Most Popular Sword

The knightly sword in a tournament. Wikimedia

The European knightly sword, also known as the arming sword, was developed from the Viking sword and traces its roots back to the Roman spatha. The transition from the spatha-based Viking sword to the knightly sword went through the intermediate phase of the Norman sword of the ninth and tenth centuries. It witnessed a simplification of the pommel to a disk or hazelnut, and the growth of the Viking sword’s spatha hand guard into a full cross guard – the main visually distinguishing feature of both the knightly sword, and its successor, the longsword.

The knightly sword was double-edged, usually with a 28 to 32-inch blade, although some had blades of up to 39 inches. It featured a single-handed cruciform hilt that gave it a distinctive cross shape. It was the most popular European sword from the eleventh to fourteenth centuries. Knightly swords were then edged out by the longsword, and relegated to the role of secondary weapons or sidearms – hence their other name, the “arming sword”.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.