Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 3).djvu/149

 weapon. However, whatever the original form of the glaive may have been, we give illustrations of two weapons that are nowadays known as "glaives" (Fig. 899, a, b). These are both to be seen in the Wallace Collection. They are of XVIth and even XVIIth century date, the present writer being unacquainted with any weapon of the so-called "glaive" type that can be assigned to the XVth century. The glaive, in its later form, we find alluded to as the fauchard, and constant references to fauchard de parade appear in late XVIth century French inventories, meaning decorated glaives.

As to the voulge, it certainly existed at a very early date as a particular shape of head set on a hafted weapon. What, however, its shape was we are at a loss to determine, and consequently refrain from pronouncing any definite opinion; though we illustrate a portion of an ivory casket of early XIVth century date which shows a warrior armed with a shield and with a hafted weapon that comes within the category of what is now called the voulge (Fig. 900). Père Daniel declares that the voulge "was a form of halberd, something like a boar spear, as long as a halberd and with a large pointed blade—but the blade of the voulge was to have a cutting edge and be broad in the middle." M. Demmin shows us illustrations of a cutting axe-*like implement that fails to conform to Père Daniel's description of the weapon; while Meyrick illustrates a dwarfed and blunt-headed partizan head as his conception of what the voulge may have been. We ourselves must confess that we are at a loss to imagine any form of head set on a hafted weapon which will answer to Père Daniel's description of the voulge; but we illustrate two hafted weapons that, according to the Baron de Cosson, might possibly be classed as examples of the voulge (Fig. 901, a, b).

The partizan, the ranseur, the corseque, and the spetum we will elect to consider as one and the same weapon; indeed, they might be comprehensively classed as the pole-arm which the Italians knew as the brandistocco; for judging from Pietro Montis' accurate description of the weapons in a rare work, printed in Milan in 1509, we know that they all possessed a central double-edged cutting blade with lateral projections more or less developed. The ranseur, the spetum, and the roncone (rawcon) have the slender central spike, mostly of flattened diamond-*shaped section, to which the two lateral blades that issue from it on either side appear to be purely auxiliary. It is popularly supposed that the particular formation of these lateral blades decides the provenance of the weapon. But in our opinion it is not the provenance but the period in which they were popular that can be determined by the formation of the