¹ This combat took place at Greenwich in October 1510. See Hall, Edward, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke, Ellis, H., (ed.), (London, 1809), 515. As my friend Claude Blair has pointed out to me, the Danish axe had certainly been much used in Anglo-Saxon and early Norman warfare. But Spenser would have known even less about that than about axe play in tournaments.Google Scholar

² Olivier de la Marche's Mémoires were available in printed editions of 1562, 1566 and 1567. Also available in print (theoretically at least) was the excellent analytical discussion of axe combat in Pietro Monte, Exercitiorum atque artis militaris collectanea (Milan, 1509), Lib. I, caps, i, xii; Lib. II, caps, x-xiii. I discuss this text more fully in my article, ‘The man who taught Leonardo darts: Pietro Monte and his “lost” fencing book’, Antiq. J. 69 (1989) 261–278.Google Scholar There are also sections on axe combat in Maestro Fiore dei Liberi da Premariacco, Flos duellatorum in armis, sine armis, equester, pedester, Novati, Francesco (ed.) as II fior di battaglia (Bergamo, 1902), 171–3Google Scholar; and in the 1443 and 1467 versions of the Fechtbuch of Talhoffer for whom I have consulted the edition by Hergsell, Gustav, Livre d'escrime de Talhoffer (Prague, 1901) I, 25–7, and pls. 79–103; III, pls. 76–81.Google Scholar

³ See Le Jeu [60]. Nor is this blow favoured by Monte. But it does, of course, occur from time to time in accounts of fighting. See, for example, the Chronique de Jean Le Fèvre Seigneur de Saint Remy, Morand, F. (ed.), Socié de l'histoire de France, 2 vols. (Paris, 1876–81), I, 207: ‘en frappant des haches l'un sur l'autre, de hault en bas et sans pousser, de si grand force et puissance que, à la vérité, il sembloit qu'ilz deuissent fendre les bachinés’.Google Scholar

⁴ For a concise, well illustrated account, one may still turn to Guy Laking, Francis, A Record of European Armour and Arms through Seven Centuries, 5 vols. (London, 1920), III, 87–104.Google Scholar There are useful indications in Buttin, Charles, ‘La hache d'armes’, Revue de la Socié des Amis du Musée de l'Armée 59 (1956), 45–54Google Scholar; Riquer, Marti de, L'Arnes del cavaller. Armes i armadures catalanes medievals (Barcelona, 1968), 156–8Google Scholar; and in David H. Caldwell, ‘Some notes on Scottish axes and long shafted weapons’, in Caldwell, David H. (ed.), Scottish Weapons and Fortifications 1100–1800, (Edinburgh, 1981), 253–314.Google ScholarTroso, Mario, Le armi in asta delle fanterie Europee (1000–1500) (Novara, 1988) refers to several polaxes, but does not discuss them systematically.Google Scholar

⁵ There is a reference to the ‘dague et la virole de dessous’ in the Chronicque du bon chevalier Messire Jacques de Lalain, lxxii, in Buchon, J. A. C., Choix de Chroniques et Memoires (Paris, 1842), 684b. Pietro Monte specifically refers to a point at the bottom end of the haft. See below, note 12.Google Scholar

⁶ I must thank my friend, A. V. B. Norman, for drawing my attention to this feature which I had quite failed to notice. He also reminded me of the superb illustration of an axe with both rondelle and leather ring in British Library, Harleian MS 4826, fol. 1*. This has been well reproduced in Derek Pearsall, John Lydgate (London, 1970), opp. 166.Google Scholar

⁷ The Munich axe is reproduced in Laking, op. cit. (note 4), III, fig. 888. Two such rings, one just below the languets and the other about a quarter of the way up from the bottom of the haft, feature on the axes in illustrations for Anthoine de la Sale's Le petit Jehan de Saintré, British Library, Cottonian MS Nero D.IX, fols. 46^r, 103^r. A. V. B. Norman has pointed out to me that one of the combatants in the latter illustration is wearing an armour fitted with an arrêt de cuirasse, and has raised the possibility that the leather ring might have served much as the arrêt de lance. The idea is interesting: but—on the basis of the weight and balance of polaxes in general—it seems unlikely. Nor have I come across any corroborative evidence for this kind of use of the axe; and certainly there is nothing in the relevant chapter of Le petit Jehan to support the hypothesis. I am inclined to think that the feature is the illustrator's idiosyncracy—that it is his way of showing that the warrior in question (a worldly abbot) is wearing a borrowed suit of armour.

⁸ Olivier de la Marche, Lib. I, cap. xxi, uses the term baton several times in his long account of the feats of arms undertaken by Lalain in 1450.

⁹ Olivier de la Marche, Mémoires, Michaud, J. F. and Poujoulat, J. J. F (eds.), (Paris, 1837), 424a: ‘Messire Jaques fit presenter une longue hache, à poincte dessus, et d'une costé un bec, qu'on dit de faucon, et de l'autre un mail rond, à trois pointes de diamond: et, au dessous de la hache, une bonne forte dague. et l'hache de l'Anglois fut une forte hache, pointue dessous, et un grand taillant, d'un costé, et de l'autre un long mail: et plus bas avoit rondelle, pour la garde de la main: et dessous fut pointue d'une courte dague’. The English knight's axe is also described in the Chronicque du Lalain, op. cit. (note 5), 668a: ‘et étoit celle hache a taillant et à martel et à longue et large dague devant: si étoit le taillant d'icelle hache long et aigu’.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Olivier de la Marche, op. cit. (note 9), 431b.

¹¹ Demy hache is distinct from the milieu of the axe which is simply the middle of the haft regarded passively as, for example, something to hook at with the bee de faucon. See Le jeu [29]. The use of the dimidia asta vel aza is discussed by Monte, op. cit. (note 2), Lib. II, cap. xiii. But the term demy hache is not used by the chroniclers and was probably a subtlety beyond their observation.

¹² Fiore dei Liberi, op. cit. (note 2), 171–3; Talhoffer, op. cit. (note 2), pl. 79; Monte, op. cit. (note 2), Lib. I, cap. i, where he describes the weapon as follows: ‘Aza vulgariter assumpta ferrum et lignum continet et sic inter arma inhastata intelligitur.In longitudine est aliquanto maior nomine: In superiori parte se habet quodammodo ut martellus nisi quod superius fortem habet cuspidem et una pars martelli est obtusa: alia vero acuta. In inferiori parte que calx vocatur alia cuspis inest quoniam sepissime cum calce aze decertari debet’. It is curious that Saint Remy, op. cit. (note 3), 11, 317–18, describing the combat between Charny and Merlo in 1435, distinguishes sharply between the bec de faucon and the axe: ‘Nous avons veu que le chevalier, qui cy est venu, aporte ung becq de faucon, en lieu de hache, et vous scavez qu'ilz doivent combattre de baches; et nous semble qu'il y at grant difference’. And he goes on to say that as for this bec de faucon: ‘ce que on n'a point veu ou royaume de France; car becq de faucon n'est mie hache, ains sont deux choses’.

¹³ The Monstrelet is Bibliothèque Nationale, MS français 20360, fol. 3O3^v. See also the well known illustrations in the Hastings MS, reproduced in Dillon, Viscount, ‘On a MS Collection of Ordinances of Chivalry of the fifteenth century’, Archaeologia 57 (1900), pls. vi, VII.Google Scholar Rondelles may be seen on a number of surviving polaxes, including the example at Munich referred to above (note 7). See also above, pls. xxxiiia, d.

¹⁴ For some approximate contemporary dimensions, see Riquer, op. cit. (note 4).

¹⁵ Pietro Monte, op. cit. (note 2), Lib II, cap. xii: ‘Aza sive tripuncta in longitudine usque ad martellum ex quantite unius manus esse debet longior homine ipsam deportante’. Also cf. Monte's earlier description cited above (note 12).

¹⁶ The polaxe in the Royal Armouries Collection at the Tower of London, Inventory Number VII–1510, has an overall length of 93·5 inches: though there is, as far as I know, no documentary evidence to support the idea that it really was used by Henry VIII.

¹⁷ Bonaventura Pistofilo, Il Torneo (Bologna, 1627), 60: ‘Il martello si fà di legno, e di competente grossezza in conformità dell'hasta, della quale parciò esso dourà esser alquanto più grosso. S'indora, ò s'inargenta, o si fà di color dell'acciaio ben lustro, e simili, accioche paia più conforme al vero’.

¹⁸ Ibid., 59, 247. The combats, in Pistofilo, are merely balletic posturings; and he especially recommends breaking the axe at the final blow—which is why the weapons should not be made of a wood ‘molto forte’ (Ibid., 257–8).

¹⁹ For a very convenient, if somewhat chaotic, summary of a number of fifteenth-century axe combats, see Dillon, Viscount, ‘Barriers and foot combats’, Archaeol. J. 61 (1904), 276–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ Philippe de Commines's story of the aftermath of the battle of Fornovo in 1495—which has been cited by Oakeshott, Ewart, European Weapons and Armour from the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution (North Hollywood, Ca., 1980)Google Scholar, 49, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the polaxe against men in armour—is not at all relevant. Commines specifically remarks that the knights were so well protected that they would not have been killed had they not been outnumbered by three or four to one. Moreover, their assailants were armed not with polaxes but with much more deadly axes for cutting wood—‘haches à couper boys’—with which they beat open the knights' visors and then smashed them about the head. Cf. a similar episode in the Chroniques of Wavrin, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS franços 87, fol. 299^v, where a mounted knight is being slain by four civilians—one armed with a dagger, the others with wood axes.

²¹ Curial and Guelfa translated from the Catalan by Pamela Waley (London, 1982), 25.Google Scholar This must have been a favourite Catalan practice for it also crops u p in Joanot Martorell's Tirant lo Blanc, caps, lx, lxxxii.

²² See Allanson-Winn, R. G. and Phillipps-Wolley, C., Broad-sword and Single-stick. With chapters on Quarter-staff etc. (London, 1890), 4–17.Google Scholar

²³ Of course, there is also the difference which would result from whether or not the axes had cutting edges. When they did, as in the combat between Rumaindres and Du Bars in 1415, then swings and long blows were more likely. See above (note 3) for a reference in Saint Remy.

²⁴ See Omont, Henri, Anciens inventaires et catalogues de la Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris, 1908–1910), 1258Google Scholar; II 386; III, 68. The old catalogue numbers appear on fol. 2^r of Le Jeu.

²⁵ See Castle's, Egerton comments concerning being ‘on guard’ in his Schools and Masters of Fence from the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century (London, 1885, repr. 1969), 9.Google Scholar

²⁶ Le Jeu never refers to the garde of either the mail or bec de faucon—though these were probably subsumed under the garde de la croix. Cf. Olivier de la Marche, op. cit. (note 9), 383b–4a, where the Spanish knight, Vasques, holds his axe, ‘le maillet devant son visage, un grand tour loing de la main, par maniere de garde’.

²⁷ The illustrations in Talhoffer lay less stress on the use of the queue, though it is still more dominant than the head of the axe. In the narratives of Olivier de la Marche, various strokes are recorded: though it is noteworthy that the expert Jacques de Lalain, fighting against an English knight in 1448, held his axe ‘a contre poix’ so that he could use either end as he saw fit. He began with an estoc with the queue; then with the teste; and then with the bout d'embas. See above (note 9). Pietro Monte, op. cit. (note 2), Lib. II, cap. x, as might be expected of a master of arms, recommends the use of the calx (which is his term for the lower end of the haft) because it is swifter of delivery: ‘tunc generalis regula est ocius cum calce punctam iacere’.

²⁸ cf. Olivier de la Marche, op. cit. (note 9), 420b, where the knight Meriadet ‘detourna le coup de la queue de sa hache’. However, Olivier also frequently uses the verb rabatir and the noun rabat to indicate parries—but they do not occur in Le Jeu.

²⁹ Olivier de la Marche also uses the word entree, as, for example, in the combat between Lalain and Boniface in 1449 when the former—seeing that his axe blows were having no effect—‘il entre dedans sa hache, par une entree de la queue, de revers’, op. cit. (note 9), 433b.

³⁰ This anticipates the notorious coup de jarret with which de Jarnac disabled La Châtaigneraie in 1547. See Scipion Dupleix, Les Lois militaires touchant le duel (Paris, 1611), 494–542.

³¹ These would normally have been a casting spear and a dagger.

³² The psychological advantages of a bold appearance were still being stressed by Pistofilo, op. cit. (note 17), 256, where he recommends receiving the axe from one's attendant with a great flourish and signs of defiance: ‘calando di poi il martello innanzi … e facendolo passar da man destra con moto circulare, per dimostrar un certo dominio, et franchezza nel maneggio di tal arme’.

³³ cf. Talhoffer (1467), pl. 88.

³⁴ cf. Talhoffer (1467), pl. 81. Pietro Monte, op. cit. (note 2), Lib. II, cap. xi, writes: ‘Bonum est minari cum calce: et cum ascendente redire ex inferioro parte ad superiorem: quemadmodum de ense duarum manuum fieri solet’.

³⁵ cf. Talhoffer (1443), pl. 79.

³⁶ cf. Talhoffer (1443), pl. 76 (see above pl. xxxvia).

³⁷ cf. Talhoffer (1467), pl. 84.

³⁸ ‘Ladicte poursuite’.

³⁹ cf. Talhoffer (1467), pl. 79.

⁴⁰ cf. Talhoffer (1467), pl. 95.

⁴¹ cf. Saint Remy, op. cit. (note 3), 1, 210. The knight Rumaindres, ‘en combattant de sa hache, du bout de sa dague, en poussant contre la Roche de toute sa puissance et tant qu'il faisoit démarchier la Rocque, quant la Rocque sentit que ledit Rumaindres mettoit toute sa puissance pour le faire reculer, il desmarcha ung pas; par laquelle desmarche Rumaindres chut d'un genoul à terre. Lors, la Rocque féry dessus et de tout le corps le mist à terre’.

⁴² This is a clear statement of preference for the queue which is the part of the axe that the expert ‘joueur de la hache’ most uses.

⁴³ ‘Passe lescreuisse de son genoul’. I take this to mean the poleyn. See also the similar move against the left-hander below [61]. These two paragraphs include the only references to armour worn by the contestants in Le Jeu. On the knee stroke, cf. Talhoffer (1443), pl. 78; and Talhoffer (1467), pl. 83 (see above pl. xxxviia).

⁴⁴ This sentence is syntactically one of the most obscure in Le Jeu, but I believe that the meaning itself is clear.

⁴⁵ cf. Talhoffer (1443), pl. 79.

⁴⁶ cf. Talhoffer (1443), pl. 80; Talhoffer (1467), pls. 91, 92. In the last of these plates, the tugging is done with the mail (see above pls. xxxviib, xxxviiia).

⁴⁷ cf. Talhoffer (1467), pl. 95; and see also pls. 82, 89.

⁴⁸ That is in the sense of being left unguarded: ‘au pie quil na point de couverte’. Cf. Talhoffer (1467), pls. 90, 97 (see above pls. xxxviiib, xxxixa).

⁴⁹ cf. Talhoffer (1467), pl. 84.

⁵⁰ This exposure of the palm of the hand is clearly illustrated in Talhoffer (1467), pl. 81.

⁵¹ cf. Talhoffer (1443), pl. 81, where the movement is carried out by thrusting the head of the axe between the opponent's thighs—a much more difficult thing to achieve, and certainly more painful for the victim (see pl. xxxvib). See also Olivier de la Marche, op. cit. (note 9), 438a–b.

⁵² Pietro Monte, op. cit. (note 2), does not deal with the problem of facing a left-hander in axe combat: but he does devote a chapter to the requisite technique in relation to fencing (Lib. II, cap. lxv); and he notes that, since there are few left-handed swordsmen and many right-handed, the former get far more practice in learning how to cope with the difficulties.

⁵³ That is, you use your opponent's momentum.

⁵⁴ cf. Saint Remy, op. cit. (note 3), I, 210; Olivier de la Marche, op. cit. (note 9), 411.

⁵⁵ This is the only hand to hand (or rather hand to genitals) wrestling mentioned in Le Jeu. Wrestling in axe play occurs in Talhoffer (1467), pls. 85, 86, 87, 94, 96 (and see above pl. xxxixb).

⁵⁶ cf. Talhoffer (1467), pl. 82.

⁵⁷ The poleyn: see above n. 43.

⁵⁸ For illustration of a similar, though not identical, movement see Talhoffer (1467), pl. 88.

⁵⁹ I take queuure to be an error for queue because ‘cover’ makes no sense here.

⁶⁰ ‘Entre sa hache et luy’—that is, between his axe and his body. Cf. above note 51.

⁶¹ cf. Talhoffer (1443), pl. 81, where the same attack is met with the same counter (see above pl xxxvib).