Multiblade maces are a kind of maces , the tops of which are made with faces (blades) designed to enhance damage and increase piercing force.
The blades could be obtained, as a rule, by sawing at the top of the recesses. The tops themselves were made of different materials - bronze , burl (hard growth on trees ), stone , but mainly from iron . The tops could be spherical or cylindrical in shape, and the ribs (blades) were triangular or rectangular in cross section, often parallel to the axis of the handle, but sometimes spiral. [one]
In Byzantium and Islamic countries, similar maces were used in the X century . According to the anonymous treatise "Strategy", attributed to the emperor Nikifor Fock , among the heavy cavalry of Byzantium - cataphracts - in the 10th century siderabradata stood out , armed with siderorabdion (lat. Siderorabdion) - three-, four-, six-bladed maces [2] .
Archaeological finds show that in Russia they spread in the XII - XIII centuries (almost 7% of all found tops) [1] . It has also been found in Europe since the 12th century - German and Italian earliest clubs with spiral blades are believed to have been borrowed from Arabs from Sicily . Independently multi-lobed tops were invented by some Indians .
In the XIII - XIV centuries in Europe and Asia began to weld plates, and not saw blades. This led to the emergence of six - feathers and feathers . According to some classification systems, these are varieties of multi-blade maces, according to others, they are a separate type of weapon [3] .
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 Brick workers “Old Russian weapons. Issue 2. Spears, shulits, battle axes, maces, knives of the 9th-13th centuries. ” Maces type V.
- ↑ Taratin V.V. Cavalry in war: The history of cavalry from ancient times to the era of the Napoleonic Wars. - Mn., 1999 .-- S. 181.
- ↑ Military Corporate Heraldry (link unavailable)