i was reading a book about the hundred years war and came across an interesting description of a foot soldiers equipment at the time of the battle of bannockburn: "foot soldiers of both sides were similarly dressed with a brigandine, a reinforced jacket of boiled leather or an aketon, a sort of quilted and padded tunic with long sleeves and skirts. All wore either a steel pot helmet or a kettle hat with a wide brim. Very few could afford mail armour but in due course veterans would aquire suitable protection taken from casualties. All foot soldiers carried a sword or axe as well as a staff weapon,or if an archer a longbow and a quiver of arrows.the staff weapon of the English was generaly a bill, a cleaving weapon, and that of the scots a 12 foot spear a thrusting weapon." I had previosly thought that the bill first came into use during the wars of the roses but this might be an early form of the billhook. later during the battle of crecy it sais this about dismounted knights and men-at-arms: "on foot they used a shortened lance, or an infantry bill or spear." and sais this about foot soldiers: "either a bill or a pike for a bill man." throughout the book foot soldiers (not archers) are simply reffered to as bill men. these early bills would not have been elboratley shaped or have many spikes or protrusions but would be a simple chopping blade with perhaps a hook.
i have found an example of what these bills might have looked like. the bill is the 5th weapon from the left in the image at the bottom of the screen.
http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/20C/Weapons.html
please tell me what you think of this.

I am not wildly enthused about the labelling of the document you cited, but the pictures are useful.

As I recall, the earlier part of the Anglo-Scots War did not feature the bill particularly. The English did make an effort to recruit shock infantry, but the model was armoured, spear carrying soldiers. These were not particularly successful. I believe that at later battles like Halidon Hill, the front line was dismounted knights, and they would have been carrying lances, shortened or not. I agree with you that the bill seems to become a predominant English infantry shock weapon at a slightly later time.

However, the early halberd does rather look like the weapons illustrated as "voulges" in your document, and these were current at the time of Bannockburn. Of course, the halberds were Swiss, and the later versions are listed in the same document as "pole arms".

There are others vastly more qualified than I to comment on when the bill was first used but a little on it's shape and origin...

Andrew R. wrote:

these early bills would not have been elboratley shaped or have many spikes or protrusions but would be a simple chopping blade with perhaps a hook.

The earliest bill would most probably be the agricultural pruning bill mounted on a haft. This would be a stout blade with a forward curving hook at the top, similar to the image you mentioned although to me, that appears to have a backwards curving hook, simply from the position of the socket. The bill would have had a concave rather than convex blade.

The military bill was later made especially for the purpose and usually included a spike, not unlike a spear point, protruding forward from behind the hook, along with a fluke sticking out the back. I wouldn't be surprised to find that early versions were pruning bills with additional spikes forge welded to them but have no evidence to support this theory.

Some 15th century military bills from Stone's Glossary...

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I wish somebody would put a big wooden stake through the heart of that diagram set. Keeps turning up and misleading folks.

The shortest answer is that the bill has been around in some form as long as humans have needed to prune trees. See this page for more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billhook

As a slight aside,

Those images on the UC Davis website have been lifted from Unearthed Arcana by Gary Gygax (1985). Yes a Dungeons & Dragons book. You can even see on one of them where they left in the page header 'Appendix T: Polearms' from the original book. Its an interesting point of reference for a University and no wonder they didn't site the source. Whether Mr. Gygax was reproducing images originally created by someone else, I can't tell but the labelling seems to be his.

Cheers.

For a D&D book, those weapons look pretty good. I guess some things deteriorate over time.

I was hoping it was a student's page, but it appears to be an element of online class materials. Makes me feel a little better about my courses, actually . . . .
I haven't yet had to resort to role-playing games for my source material, at least . . . .