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George Hill
Location: Atlanta Ga Joined: 16 May 2005
Posts: 614
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 Posted: Fri 05 May, 2006 5:29 pm Post subject: antique pollax buttspikes? |
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From what I have learned recently, when fighting with the pollax (Aka, pole axe and pole hammer) the use of the buttspike is of great importance.
According to my limited read of "The play of the Axe" (Le Jeu de la Hache) it is likely that the experinced enemy will appoach with the buttspike forward, and use that like a spear until he has you in a good position, then he will crush you with the other end.
As a result, I am most interisted to get a look at the buttspikes on the originals, if the buttspikes survive. The buttspike seems to be called a queue, which of course got many references to lists when I tried to search.
Does anyone have any good photos of original poleaxe buttspikes? Carefully constructed replicas would also be intersting, (As would 'guess' replicas, but label those clearly please!)
To abandon your shield is the basest of crimes. - --Tacitus on Germania
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Sean Flynt
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Greyson Brown
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| Posted: Mon 08 May, 2006 9:52 am Post subject: |
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| George Hill wrote: | | According to my limited read of "The play of the Axe" (Le Jeu de la Hache) it is likely that the experinced enemy will appoach with the buttspike forward, and use that like a spear until he has you in a good position, then he will crush you with the other end. |
I can tell you that this technique worked quite well when my brother and I were doing some slow-motion sparring. The hardest part was not going too fast bringing the axe blade around for the cut. In a real fight, you would get a lot of momentum going, and it wouldn't take much for a very devistating cut.
I thought there might be a picture of a butspike in Arms & Armor of the Medieval Knight, but I couldn't find it. My memory might have been conspiring against me. 
-Grey
"So long as I can keep the path of honor I am well content."
-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The White Company
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Fabrice Cognot
Industry Professional
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| Posted: Mon 08 May, 2006 1:44 pm Post subject: Re: antique pollax buttspikes? |
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| George Hill wrote: | | The buttspike seems to be called a queue |
Hi George
the queue is rather the lower end of the shaft, wether there is a spike or not - and the latter is called in period sources the dague (de) dessoubz.
Le Jeu de la Hache does not precisely states wether the axes that are used have a dague dessous or not. Actually, all of the techniques work with an un-bottom-spiked axe, ; to the point that I believe that if this specific feature was present on the typical Le Jeu poleaxes, the author would have not only mentionned, but used them very precisely.
Anyway, this does not answer your question.
You'll have a drawing of the butt of the famous French poleaxe now in the Wallace Collection in Viollet le Duc's dictionaire raisonné du mobilier médiéval, easily downloadable from http://gallica.bnf.fr ; though this one poleaxe was not the type used in Le Jeu IMO ; and as Sean says, Talhoffer 1459 (Gotha) has a nice drawing of various poleaxe elements.
Fab
PhD in medieval archeology.
HEMAC member
De Taille et d'Estoc director
Maker of high quality historical-inspired pieces.
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