A History of Weapons

by John O'Bryan

  OKINAWAN WEAPONS

  The people of the Okinawan archipelago weren’t samurai or ninja. They were a separate ethnic group who spoke their own language, practiced their own religion, and made their living trading with the seafaring peoples of East Asia. But once the Japanese began to take an interest in Okinawa, things changed. Okinawans were forbidden to own weapons, leaving them defenseless against the samurai who had come to their islands to enforce the shogunate’s laws. The people of Okinawa came up with a unique solution to the problem: they took simple everyday utensils and made them into samurai-stomping tools of pain. They developed their own martial art—kobudo—to serve as a template for using these weapons. All of a sudden, it became a lot less fun to fuck with Okinawa.

  SAI As you might expect, a sharpened sai can leave a pretty deep hole in somebody. But Okinawan police used them in a variety of nonlethal ways too, with the weapon acting as more of a truncheon than a dagger. This made the sai ideal for beating a person within an inch of his life but not completely killing him. A sai is held in one of two grips: with the prong facing out, or with the prong tucked into the forearm and the butt of the weapon facing out. Either end can be thrust into the solar plexus of an enemy, knocking the sweet breath of life from his wind sacs. (If the blow doesn’t kill the target, he’ll probably wish he were dead, as he struggles to suck air back into his collapsed respiratory system.) A kobudo master can flip between the two grips rapidly, much like a baton twirler in a marching band. The forks on the sides are great at catching attacks from swords and staffs. Once a strike from an opponent’s weapon is blocked, the sai is twisted so that the attacking weapon is trapped between the middle and side prong. An experienced wielder can use this hold to break his enemy’s weapon, or make him hit himself in the face with it like a mean older brother. “Why are you hitting yourself, you little puss?” he might say.

  BIRTHPLACE: Most likely the Indonesian island of Java, where it is called the chabang

  MADE FAMOUS BY: Raphael of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; Elektra of the Daredevil comics

  ADVANTAGES: Excellent for defensive purposes; can parry attacks or disarm an opponent

  DISADVANTAGES: Most modern sai are too blunt to kill anything

  FUN FACT: Many kobudo warriors carried a third sai to throw at their opponents

  NUNCHAKU The nunchaku—or nunchucks, as they’re known in America—are one of the most intriguing of the East Asian weapons. Never before has a weapon been so flashy—so dazzling to look at—yet so ineffective in actual combat. They don’t have the reach of a bo staff. They lack the instant finishing power of a katana. And they have tremendous potential to harm the wielder. That’s a 10/10 for style, 2/10 for effectiveness. But before we get into an argument about whether nunchucks could or couldn’t fuck you up, let’s take a look at their mysterious origins. It was once widely believed that nunchaku began as rice flails and were converted to weapon use after the weapons ban. Another legend has them originating as horse bridles that were modified for combat. Still another says they were developed as a means of folding and concealing a bo staff under one’s clothing. The most likely origin is that nunchucks were brought to Okinawa by Chinese immigrants. In fact, the name nunchaku is derived from the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word for “two-sectioned staff.” But that origin story is a real snoozer. So let’s go with this one: Nunchucks were created by a resourceful Okinawan janitor who had to fight his way out of a pagoda using nothing but a broom and an iron chain. He broke the broom handle in half, attached the pieces with the chain, and commenced to beating ass. Hwaaaah!

  EASE OF USE:

  VARIATIONS: Sticks can be smooth or have octagonal edges for more damage

  MADE FAMOUS BY: Bruce Lee

  ADVANTAGES: Looks cool; will totally get you laid

  DISADVANTAGES: Will also totally get you killed

  USED WITH: “HWAAAH!” sound

  Chapter 10.

  EW! WHAT’S THAT BOIL ON EUROPE’S NECK?!

  1300–1500

  FOURTEENTH-CENTURY Europe was not a place you’d want to live. Despite what you’ve seen at Medieval Times, the late Middle Ages was not a time of high adventure and wine goblets. Rather, it was a time of bubonic plague, torture, and dissenters’ heads mounted on pikes. The Black Plague quickly spread across the continent, bringing an excruciatingly painful death via large neck boils and grotesquely swollen genitals. This pandemic was due to the aforementioned dumbasses who threw their feces in the street. The shit brought rats, who brought fleas, who brought the Black Death—wiping out a third of the European population. And as if that weren’t enough, Europeans seemed hell-bent on reducing their population even more. France and England became embroiled in a hundred years of war, and some nutjobs in Spain began to shove hot pokers into the rectums of nonbelievers. Weaponry was getting more sophisticated, too. Even in a suit of full plate armor, nobody was safe.

  MORNING STAR Apparently the flanged mace wasn’t brutal enough for some people. Sometime in the early fourteenth century, a sadistic German arms maker thought it would be a good idea to replace the flanges with sharp metal spikes. These new spiked maces could crush bones just like their ancestors, plus now they could puncture the flesh and tear off large chunks of skin. The enemy was left feeling like he’d been hit in the head with a hammer and mauled by a tiger at the same time. Though the morning star was ideally used on an enemy’s head, the spikes allowed it to penetrate the links of a chain mail hauberk (a long shirt of armor). This meant that any body part the morning star connected with was going to be permanently disfigured. The Germans named this horrifying new weapon Morgenstern (“morning star”), proving that at one point in time, they definitely had a sense of humor. The Germans weren’t the only ones to give a lovely euphemistic name to such a barbaric weapon. The English gave it the lofty moniker “holy water sprinkler.” The Flemish variation of the spiked club was called the godendag, literally meaning “good day.” Warfare had finally found what it had been missing: a sense of sarcastic courtesy.

  DATE OF ORIGIN: Early 1300s

  MADE FAMOUS BY: Fifteenth-century Germans

  VARIATIONS: Godendag (Flemish), holy water

  sprinkler (English)

  USER REVIEWS: “I love my new morning star. But I don’t love cleaning bits of scalp from the spikes. There’s got to be a better way!”

  ESTOC Blunt force wasn’t the only way to deal with heavy armor. One could attempt to pierce it. But this presented difficulties, both in puncturing the metal and dislodging the puncturing weapon. Another strategy was to make weapons more slender with the hope of squeezing between the steel plates and links. One such weapon was the French estoc—a long, slender sword built exclusively for penetrating armor. Shockingly, the estoc had absolutely no cutting edge, which probably got a lot of laughs in the knight community. But its fine tip could slip through the smallest opening. The cross-section of the blade was shaped like a diamond or triangle that widened toward the base—the perfect design for wedging open chain mail links. So even though it was probably amusing for a knight to see a weird, pointy stick poking at him on the battlefield, it was probably less amusing when the estoc found an opening and punctured the knight’s vital organs. Now who’s laughing, stupid knight?

  DATE OF ORIGIN: 1300s

  PRECURSOR TO: Rapier

  ALSO CALLED: Tuck (English); Panzerstecher (German)

  SIMILAR TO: “Mercy dagger,” a slender blade designed specifically to fit through the eye slots of a fallen knight’s helmet; rondel, a conical dagger

  ADVANTAGES: Can slip through openings in almost any armor; diamond shape acts as wedge to force open chain mail

  DISADVANTAGES: No edge. Wielder must be very skilled and accurate to hit “soft spots”; must also be patient enough to wait for openings; must have thick skin to deal with jeers and insults from knights who don’t consider the estoc a real man’s weapon.

  BUCKLER In the early medieval era, it was common for a warrior to go
into a fight with a heavy meat cleaver in his right hand and a big clunky shield in his left. By the late Middle Ages, however, swordplay was becoming more sophisticated. It was starting to be more about finesse and technique—no longer just a sport for testosterone-laden jocks with battle-axes. Swords were getting sent to fat camp, and they were coming back slender, lighter, and faster. The new swordsman needed something other than that big clunky shield he was lugging around. He also needed something that looked like a boob. The buckler was exactly what he looking for. Rather than being strapped to the arm like the shields of old, this new shield was held in the hand. It was lighter, more maneuverable, and sloped on the front to deflect blows. The buckler became every bit as much a fencing weapon as the sword that was carried in the right hand. It was less of a shield and more of a steel boxing glove. The wielder could use it to punch, keeping the buckler in his opponent’s face like a jab. It could also be used to parry, disarm, or knock his opponent off balance. Some bucklers were produced with a sharp spike in the center, making them look even more like boobs. Swordplay suddenly got a whole lot steamier.

  DATE OF USE: 1200–1600

  USED WITH: Single-handed sword, rapier

  EVOLVED FROM: Shield

  ADVANTAGES: Light, fast, looks like a tit

  DISADVANTAGES: Small, may not provide much coverage against arrows, wielder must be fast to use effectively, some people may call you a puss for using a tiny shield

  PRECURSOR TO: Parrying daggers

  VARIATIONS: Spiked buckler; square buckler, which had sharp corners for slicing

  MAUL If there was one thing peasants had access to, it was the tools of manual labor. Some of these, such as the maul, could easily be used in warfare with little or no conversion. The maul was a heavy sledgehammer used to drive carpentry stakes, so what it could do to the soft extremities of the human body goes without saying. There’s no real technique when using a maul—just swing hard, preferably at the head or knees. Your opponent is guaranteed to feel the blow, even through a motorcycle helmet. In the fourteenth century, the maul was used as a weapon by rioting French peasants. A century later, the English military stole the idea from the French and stocked their own arsenals with mauls. In the Battle of Agincourt, the English archers used mauls as secondary weapons, scrambling the brains of their French opponents, who probably regretted turning the maul into a weapon in the first place.

  EASE OF USE: (strength required)

  USED BY: French peasants, English archers

  TYPE OF DAMAGE: Smash!

  MADE FAMOUS BY: Donkey Kong; that “ring the bell” strongman game at carnivals

  WAR HAMMER Unfortunately for knights, another weapon was emerging to deal with massive plate armor. This one was called the war hammer, and it had a bachelor’s degree from the University of Knight-Stomping, with a major in Fucking Up Armored Dudes. The first war hammers were made with flat heads, dealing pure blunt force to everything they touched. But eventually a set of claws was added to the hammerhead, allowing the hammer to grip armor more easily. This ensured that every strike did maximum damage and prevented blows from glancing off the plates. In the right hands, this new, improved war hammer could rip apart the strongest armor in seconds flat. Even if the armor wasn’t breached, it could be bent and misshapen to the point that the knight lost mobility in his joints. That’s when the hammerer would flip the weapon over and use the pick, which could easily puncture armor when swung with full force. But there was risk involved in piercing the armor—the pick would often get stuck in the victim, leaving the warrior without a weapon for a couple of seconds. This was typically when the other knights would run to their buddy’s aid and kill the hammerer with their longswords.

  LENGTH: Typically under two feet

  VARIATIONS: The bec-de-corbin (“crow’s beak”), essentially a longer version of the war hammer

  ADVANTAGES: Can break bones, even through plate armor

  DISADVANTAGES: Can get stuck in plate armor, leaving the wielder defenseless

  USER REVIEWS: “Does anyone have a spare war hammer? Mine got stuck in that knight’s head.”

  Calling Bullshit

  THE SPIKED FLAIL

  In the fourteenth century, heavily armored knights began to run unchecked across the land, stealing the lunch money of everyone in Europe. The peasant class was left scratching its lice-infested head, trying to think of creative ways to kill this plate-armored juggernaut. One way was to use the threshing flail—a farming tool that had been modified for battle. It was simple: two pieces of iron-studded wood, hinged together by a couple of metal rings. The Hussites, a band of fifteenth-century Czechs, used the hell out of this segmented whacking stick. They cracked so many noggins with it that it became their national symbol. The iconic spiked “ball and chain” flail, on the other hand, seems to be largely a work of fiction. Though it’s one of the coolest-looking weapons ever to come around, it was severely impractical. In order to use the spiked flail effectively, the wielder would have had to keep it in constant motion, spinning it around his body like a chain whip. There was always the distinct possibility of the flailer hitting himself, his friends, or his horse with his own weapon, resulting in an epic flail fail. Some flail supporters even claim that the weapon could generate more force than a hafted morning star, due to the extra length of chain. This claim is particularly bullshitty, since one could achieve the same force by simply lengthening the shaft of his morning star. In fact, the weapon with the solid shaft would probably generate more force, since the flail’s chain absorbs some its momentum. So the next time you see a guy carrying one of these at the Ren Faire, do everyone a favor: push him over, hit him in the head with a morning star club, and tell him to put a solid shaft on his weapon.

  EASE OF USE: (you’re going to get very tired and very injured)

  SIMILAR WEAPONS: The threshing flail, which is decidedly not bullshit

  ADVANTAGES: Looks awesome; intimidating to face in battle

  DISADVANTAGES: Difficult to control, exhausting to use

  MADE FAMOUS BY: Liars at Renaissance Fairs; Millhouse, who accidentally knocked out that guy in the army surplus store on The Simpsons

  SWORD BREAKER Believe it or not, some people prefer not to go into a fight with a shield or buckler in their left hand. Who knows, maybe they just don’t like being alive? If you’re one of these people, I highly recommend investing in a parrying dagger. These nifty little left-handed blades came in a variety of shapes and sizes, many having elaborate crossguards and elegant quillons (those things that protect your hand). The sword breaker, on the other hand, comes with deep, ferocious teeth in the back of the blade, like an open crocodile mouth that’s just daring you to step inside. This doesn’t just make the dagger look awesome—it also serves a practical purpose. The swordsman parries with this side of the dagger, hoping to catch the opponent’s sword in the teeth. If successful, the wielder can twist the sword breaker to—you guessed it—break the enemy’s sword. But unless the enemy was using a sword made of peanut brittle, this probably didn’t happen too often. More likely, one would use the sword breaker to trap the enemy’s weapon and pull it from his hand. Sure, it’s less awesome than actually breaking the sword, but it still got the job done.

  ADVANTAGES: Looks cool; can trap enemy’s sword in its “teeth”

  DISADVANTAGES: Probably won’t actually break enemy’s sword

  RELATED TO: Main gauche, a left-handed parrying dagger used with the rapier; “trident dagger,” a parrying dagger with two more blades that spring out from the sides

  HALBERD The Swiss have invented some pretty amazing things over the years: chocolate, cuckoo clocks, and money laundering, to name a few. But let’s not forget the halberd, the steel-cleaving polearm of the Swiss Middle Ages. How effective is a halberd against a knight in full plate armor? Put it this way: if a knight were a lobster, then the halberd would be the cracking utensil that pulled the succulent meat from its shell. This bad boy of a polearm features at least three
ways to ruin a knight’s day. The axe can be swung in large sweeping angles, generating enough force to separate limbs from torsos. The hook on the back is used for grappling. As impregnable as steel plate is, it’s bulky, and presents lots of corners for the knight’s enemy to snag. Simply use the halberd hook to grab on to a piece of the knight’s armor, and you can pull him around like a show pony. Once you’ve got the knight in a vulnerable position, use the pike on the top of the halberd to puncture his breastplate. Better yet, use this pike to catch him coming in on the horse, and you won’t have to worry about fighting him at all. But don’t miss. If the knight is fast enough to get inside the reach of your halberd, you’re going to be considerably fucked.

  DATE OF ORIGIN: Late 1300s

  FAMOUS VICTIMS: Duke of Burgundy

  ADVANTAGES: Versatile and powerful; can spear, grapple, and chop effectively

  DISADVANTAGES: Like all polearms, it’s not ideal for close combat; user can’t carry a shield

  MADE FAMOUS BY: The Swiss, who also make hot cocoa and neutrality

  SIMILAR TO: Pike (a big metal infantry lance used to stop cavalry); voulge (a similar axe-like polearm); fouchard (same thing only different)

  ENGLISH LONGBOW While the rest of the world was making composite bows out of horn and sinew, the English were kicking it olde schoole. They made self bows from a single material, usually from yew, ash, or elm. After the wood was cured in a four-year process, it was used to make a resilient bow with a ton of stored energy. Simply put, this weapon could knock a knight off his horse at two hundred yards. But more than that, the longbow was a volume weapon—while the crossbow could fart out one or two rounds per minute, a trained English longbowman could shoot about twelve, and he could shoot them with accuracy. But training for the longbow was a bitch and a half. It required a lifetime commitment, with English boys typically beginning their archer lessons at around seven years of age. Over the next ten years, these lads would learn to pull a bowstring with a draw weight of over a hundred and fifty pounds. The training of these longbowmen was so famously hardcore that their skeletons have been found to have deformities in the arms and hands. (Insert masturbation joke here.) These highly skilled English archers first made a name for themselves during the Hundred Years’ War, particularly the battles of Crécy and Agincourt. Even when outnumbered, they released volley after volley of bodkin-tipped arrows (a special diamond shape used to pierce armor), bringing the wrath of Her Majesty the Queen down on the forces of Frenchdom. The longbow remained relevant even during the early phases of firearms, until the French got their revenge by blowing the English to smithereens with their newfangled cannons.