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 d'Utzigen belonging to the Daxelhofer family, Switzerland, and is now in the collection of M. Charles Boissonnas of Geneva. The halberd cannot have enjoyed in its earlier days any general prevalence; for as late as 1475, according to the journal of a curé of St. Michael of Angers, Louis XI of France ordered "nouveaux ferrements de guerre" called "hallebarden" to be made, an entry which proves them to have been a novelty, at least in France. The 1547 inventory of the arms and armour in the Tower of London and at Greenwich, mentions the halberd continually; but in one short list it gives two spellings of the word:

Halbardys. . . cccvj^e. White halberdes w^t playne staves. . . cxxvj. White halberdes garnyshed w^t crymsen velvet. . . iiij^{xx} xv.

The German and Swiss types of halberd of XVth century date are essentially businesslike, simple in their outline and free from decoration, save for occasional coarse inlays of brass. As a family they are distinctive and easily recognized. In the country of their origin they are eagerly sought for by the collector, with the result that countless forgeries are made, chiefly in the neighbourhood of Lucerne and in certain known "fake" factories in Germany.

From the close of the XVth century England, France, Italy, and Spain adopted the halberd for use alike in actual warfare and on occasions of ceremony and parade—and to this latter use they are still put even at the present day. Very broadly speaking the English halberd is somewhat lighter in construction than the foreign type. We give illustrations of six heads of different nationalities which show the variations of form which the halberd took during the latter part of the XVth and the commencement of the XVIth centuries (Fig. 926). There seems to have been no standard length of haft, or, as it was termed, "hampe"; those made for parade halberds appear to have been longer and were often decorated. The hampe of the fighting halberd is generally some five feet in length, the metal bands from the head occasionally continuing the whole length. We should add that the use of the halberd was entirely confined to the infantry of nearly all ranks. In 1515 Nicholas Lagudino, the Venetian ambassador, describes the appearance of King Henry VIII's guards as "all handsome men with halberds, never saw finer fellows"; but whether he used "halberd" in our modern sense of the term it is impossible to say. In a document of the year 1518 we remember an allusion to the payment of 48s. for halberds