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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goedendag


This a reproduction of an original goedendag from 14th century Flanders. The haft is 5' long and the spike is ~10". This weapon fascinates me for a number of reasons.

The weapon is designed to be used three different ways. First, it is a long club with a heavy iron head. Being such a large, heavy weapon requiring large hands to even grasp its beefy haft I would assume it would be given to the largest, strongest soldiers. The blow from a full-power swing would be crushing indeed.

Second, the thrusting point makes it an effective short pike. While it is heavy and thus less nimble, a thrust with all that weight behind it would be very difficult to deflect. I think it would penetrate most shields or plate armor.

The third use of the weapon is the one that gets me; as an anti-cavalry weapon. Flemish militias used them to good effect against French heavy cavalary. The goedendag men would form a line right behind the ranks of infantry pikemen. If an enemy knight broke through the pike wall, the man in his path would brace the butt of his goedendag against the toe of his boot and hold the goedendag out forward. The horse's chest would run onto the spike, stopping against the flat top of club head (thus the need for the very thick haft). The soldier withdrew the goedendag from the horse as it fell, sprang forward and commensed beating and/or stabbing the downed French knight to death.

I do not know if you ever have been in the path of a charging horse, but it is about like stepping out in front of a speeding bus. To face down a charging one-ton horse and stand directly in its path, placing total faith in your weapon to save you from being stomped into a red mudpuddle is enough of a sphincter-clencher. Now add to that the fact that said horse has an angry armored Frenchman on its back, and he is likely couching a 16' long stick with an iron-shod point under his right arm. I would not be applying for this position. I lack the required giant ferrous huevos.

While we all love the beautiful swords, horseman's axes and pole arms, we also know that cheap, effective arms that could easily be made by village blacksmiths were the meat and potatoes weapons of the infantry soldier. Most are adapted farm tools. The goedendag pictured above is a type of Medieval heavy maul used to break rocks, adapted by the addition of the spike. Other designs had larger wooden heads banded with iron. An enterprising farmer could make a goedendag himself using a heavy stick with a larger wooden head covered with metal studs, and an old field knife or dagger blade made into the spike on top.

Master weaponsmiths were few and their arms very slow and expensive to make. Weapons like the goedendag gave peasant militia infantry the means to not only defend themselves against heavy cavalry, but to overcome it. When a peasant with a cheap tool and little training can defeat a hideously costly knight on horseback, that is a real gamechanger.

Absolute genius for a simple weapon. Just the very intellect of a creative farmer turned into art of war is always attractive. I say we must surely need a man in these very forums building one. It would be me if only I could get my hands on such a spike.

When did it actually disappear? Did it ever get to face plate armor?

Good page here (referenced in the goedendag Wikipedia article as a source):

http://www.liebaart.org/goeden_e.htm

.... and FWIW it looks like Arms & Armor has made goedendags before, and is open to making more of them.

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http://www.arms-n-armor.com/custom935.html

A sort of combination goedendag-ragged staff from the Egerton Genesis, British Library Egerton MS 1894, fo.5r, 1350-1375.
http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=...1894_f005r

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It seems there was another version of the goedendag called the plancon a picot. Not sure what the difference between the two is.

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan%C3%A7on_a_picot

Thought I'd also chime in, as I too like these utilitarian weapons. They're simple, no-nonsense, and do exactly what they say on the tin.

A few years ago I asked Tod to make me one:



Unfortunately I sold it on to a lovely gent on this forum, but I really enjoyed it whilst I had it! (forgive the camera-phone pictures)

Specs:
Weight: 2.4kg/ 4.25lbs
Shaft length: 111cm/ 43.5”
Spike length: 33cm/ 13

I believe these are way too short to be effective against a charge. How tall is a horse? The reason they were effective in the battle you reference is because the French heavy cavalry charged through marshy ground, which immobilized their horses, and also slowed the knights when they dismounted. These weapons were effective because fighters could subdue the knight with well aimed clubbing actions, and then stick the spike through mailed areas or gaps in the armor. They were never intentionally used to penetrate plate armor, even during a charge.

Do we even know if these spikes were made with hardened steel?

As with most battles, the success of this weapon was based on appropriate use of the weapons combined with effective strategy. There's no guaranteeing further success if subsequent battles had occurred.

I will start with a clartification. I said this:

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Second, the thrusting point makes it an effective short pike. While it is heavy and thus less nimble, a thrust with all that weight behind it would be very difficult to deflect. I think it would penetrate most shields or plate armor.

I get the sense that some here have wrongly inferred that I was saying that spearing an attacker right through the breast plate was a primary tactic of goedendag men. Looking back at the thread, clearly I did not say that. I made my passing comment in the first post merely to illustrate the penetrating power of a sharp spike with a heavy object and the full muscle power of a big guy behind it. That is all. A discussion of tactics evolved, and I let it run its course before I posted this because it was interesting enough not to risk quashing it.

Another thing is that when I said "well-braced" I was speaking about the target being braced against the blow. Some pointed out that should not happen. I know in my weapons training I always try to be in a well-braced, stable stance. I see the same in pretty much any style of combat. And in the case of a goedendag man trying to stop an attack rushing in to exploit a gap in defenses, the defenders would be greeting charging attackers. It is easy to say that an attacking soldier would not expose himself to a goedendag spike thrust to the chest, but that soldier is likely charging into more than a single defender. When you charge multiple defenders, things get chaotic, but you have to maintain the momentum of the attack and keep moving forward. In that kind of melee 'stuff happens'.

So far as the actual penetrating power of the goedendag versus the lance, I would guess that achieving the perfect hit on a breastplate that would 'bite' instead of skittering off to the side would be a near-impossible feat. I suspect that is precisely how breastplates are designed to work against something like a lance; survival through deflection, not through taking and stopping cold a direct hit. I welcome comment on this idea (just pointing and laughing hysterically is acceptable as well).

If true, a goedendag wielder, being up close and personal, could place the point of his thrust with far more precision. You may not have the chance to draw back and swing the hammer cap down on someone rushing you. You also may not be able to get a good shot at a vulnerble spot and thus you *have* to hit him square in the breastplate. In a close quarters battle I would think you would happily take any shot you could get, including suboptimal ones. And then there is this:

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goedendag#Use Exactly how the weapon was used is a source of debate. Contemporary illustrations show it being used as a club[3] but the contemporary chronicler Guillaume Guiart, speaking of the battle of Courtrai, states, "each held his godendart raised against the French, the iron as one meets a wild boar".[4] which suggests it was first used as a spear to meet a charge, then a club as the enemy was halted. The goedendag was probably set in the ground secured by the fighter's foot and aimed with both hands. The thicker knob under the spike, a safeguard against the horse impaling itself and then going on to crash into the defender, served the same purpose as the cross bar on a boar-spear. The military historian Kelly de Vries asserts that "its chief function was to bring down a knight from his horse".[5] Verbruggen describes the role of the goedendag thus: "They were placed between the pikemen, or in the second rank, so that with their shorter, very heavy weapons they could put the horses out of action.[6]

Yes, I know Whackapedia is not authorative, but they are quoting sources here that are. It seems that the goedendag was, in fact, deployed as a short pike according to historical sources.

What I do not see above is a specific citation supporting the anti-cavalry use described in the article. If anyone has any idea where that claim came from or knows of any relavent historical material on that, I would greatly appreciate it if you could comment here. It would also be useful to spectulate; if the goedenduck was not used as a braced sharp stave to stop a horse, what would a goedendag anti-cavalry action look like? Swing the hammer at the mounted knight? Jab at armor weak spots with the spike? Attack the horse's legs with the hammer, or its body with the spike? There should have been some preferred tactics found to be more effective.

As for the difficulty in withdrawing the weapon after you rammed the spike through mail/plate, padding and carcass, it seems obvious to me that is one of the reasons most of the pictures show a sharply tapered spike on top of the weapon is to facilitate easier withdrawal. Its triangular or pyramidal profile is also precisely the profile of weapon spikes of the time meant to penetrate armor and subsequently be able to be withdrawn (though I also did see a couple historical goedendag caps with spear-like points on top). And really, if the spike would snare the weapon every time it penetrated anything tough then they would have gotten rid of the damn thing rather quickly. The facts that the spike remained pretty much unchanged on the weapon for at a couple centuries and the French were impressed enough to copy it without modifications are probably the best refutation of this concern.

The only way to really settle the plate penetration issue is with as realistic a test as you could set up. I am not going to procure a 14th century French repro breastplate of authentic construction and metallurgy, strap it on a fighting dummy with period correct padding and clothing, set the torso at the angle of a soldier lunging in for a strike, and ram a repro goedendag into it. Well, assuming I do not win the lottery anytime soon I won't. Short of that, with the distressing lack of historical material we are all just putting forward our best guesses here. That said, this is a great discussion that is bringing out a lot of good info and I hope it continues.