Flail (weapon)
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The Military Flail or simply Flail is a weapon commonly attributed to the Middle-Ages but for which little historical evidence currently exists. In spite of this, it was a stock figure in Victorian Era Medievalist literature and thus has become entrenched in popular medieval fantasy and thus the neomedievalist imagination, particularly as a result of the influence of the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying game on popular medieval fantasy.
Typically, the weapon is depicted as one (or more) weights attached to a handle with a hinge or chain. Modern authors have multiple conflicting names for this weapon; the terms "morning star" (a stick with a spiked tip), and even "mace" (a bludgeoning weapon similar to a morning star) are used interchangeably with "flail", because of historical fallacies.
Historical evidence for the use of a long-handled flail as a weapon of war does exist from Germany and Central Europe in the later Middle Ages.
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[edit] History
Throughout the Middle-Ages, agricultural flails were sometimes employed as an improvised weapon by peasant armies conscripted into military service or engaged in popular uprisings.
[citation needed] The Hussites fielded large numbers of peasant soldiers with flails. [1] [2]
These weapons had studs or spikes embedded in the striking end, so are not simply agricultural weapons snatched up in a hurry.
The modified flail was also used in the German Peasants War in the early 16th. century. [3] [4]
[edit] Variations
The agricultural flail was not just used as an improvised weapon in Europe. In southeast Asia, short agricultural flails originally employed in threshing rice were adapted into weapons such as the nunchaku or sansetsukonn. Flails could be easily modified. Many were customized to be used with one hand by shortening the handle and chain. Multiple heads could be attached to the chain, or multiple chains with individual heads could be mounted to the shaft.
In modern history, improvised flails were also said to been used by members of organized crime during the Depression-era period of the United States; The flails were described to been made with a sock and a bar of soap and were swung with great force.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Stephen Turnbull : The Hussite Wars 1419-36, Osprey MAA 409,2004
- ^ media:344Wagenburg der Hussiten.jpg media:Hussites massacre.jpg
- ^ Douglas Miller : Armies of the German Peasant's War 1524-26,Osprey MAA 384,2003
- ^ media:German Peasants War.jpg
