Halberd

. Swiss soldiers can be seen armed with earlier halberds. The halberd is first mentioned (as ) in a work by 13th-century German poet Konrad von Würzburg. John of Winterthur described it as a new weapon used by the Swiss at the Battle of Morgarten of 1315. A Swiss peasant used a halberd to kill Charles the Bold, the Duke of Burgundy, at the Battle of Nancy, decisively ending the Burgundian Wars. with a halberd in the Vatican The halberd was the primary weapon of the early Swiss armies in the 14th and early 15th centuries. As long as pikemen fought other pikemen, the halberd remained a useful supplementary weapon for push of pike, but when their position became more defensive, to protect the slow-loading arquebusiers and matchlock musketeers from sudden attacks by cavalry, the percentage of halberdiers in the pike units steadily decreased. By 1588, official Dutch infantry composition was down to 39% arquebuses, 34% pikes, 13% muskets, 9% halberds, and 5% two-handed swords. By 1600, troops armed exclusively with swords were no longer used and the halberd was only used by sergeants (two men per company). Researchers suspected that a halberd or a bill sliced through the back of King Richard III's skull at the Battle of Bosworth Field on 22 August 1485, leaving his brain visible before killing him during the battle, and were later able to confirm that it was a halberd. While rarer than it had been from the late 15th to mid-16th centuries, the halberd was still used infrequently as an infantry weapon well into the mid-17th century. The armies of the Catholic League in 1625, for example, had halberdiers comprising 7% of infantry units, with musketeers comprising 58% and armored pikemen 35%. By 1627 this had changed to 65% muskets, 20% pikes, and 15% halberds. A near-contemporary depiction of the 1665 Battle of Montes Claros at Palace of the Marquises of Fronteira depicts a minority of the Portuguese and Spanish soldiers as armed with halberds. Antonio de Pereda's 1635 painting El Socorro a Génova depicting the Relief of Genoa has all the soldiers armed with halberds. The most consistent users of the halberd in the Thirty Years' War were German sergeants who would carry one as a sign of rank. While they could use them in melee combat, more often they were used for dressing the ranks by grasping the shaft in both hands and pushing it against several men simultaneously. They could also be used to push pikes or muskets up or down, especially to stop overexcited musketeers from firing prematurely. Halberds and other polearms remained useful during instances of close-in fighting such as during stormings of towns and forts. At the Siege of Lyme Regis in April 1644 during the English Civil War, halberdiers were among the troops that repelled the attackers after their cannons made breaches in the walls. The halberd has been used as a court bodyguard weapon for centuries, and is still the ceremonial weapon of the Swiss Guard in the Vatican and the Alabarderos (Halberdiers) Company of the Spanish Royal Guard. The halberd was one of the polearms sometimes carried by lower-ranking officers in European infantry units in the 16th through 18th centuries. In the British army, sergeants continued to carry halberds until 1793, when they were replaced by spontoons. The 18th-century halberd had, however, become simply a symbol of rank with no sharpened edge and insufficient strength to use as a weapon. It served as an instrument for ensuring that infantrymen in ranks stood correctly aligned with each other and that their muskets were aimed at the correct level. == The development of the halberd ==