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Hank Reinhardt
Industry Professional
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 Posted: Tue 15 Nov, 2005 4:32 pm Post subject: Brown Bill |
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I would take exception to it being an 'ineffective" weapon. I probably would be on board ship, but Silver considered it one of the best of two hand weapons. There is a lot of confusion regartding ther term "Bill", Brown Bill, Forest Bill, etc. No one has ever established a concrete terminology. What is shown is what I would hav e called a "guisarme" but it not an English Bill. Manyu pole arms were made out of a steely iorn. One method of "tempering" was called forged tempering. One the piece was pretty mcuh forged to shape it was then quickly cooled, taen out of thed oil, the residual heat then builds up again, is is cooled one more. This is also called slack tempering. In the Tower there is a beautiful Brown Bill, Once I get my camera set up I'll take some pictures and also copy some photograph. There are many that have been excavated. I had one made exactly in the same process and same tempering process. It will sheer mail and smash people quite easily. Most people believe that they were called brown bills because of the rust. However in essence it is a halberd, with a slightly different shape.
Hank Reinhardt
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Benjamin H. Abbott
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| Posted: Tue 15 Nov, 2005 7:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | And from that period there is ample evidence that the bill was regarded as an ineffective weapon by the proffesional soldiers of the day. |
Well, as I said, Sir Roger Williams, writing in exactly that time period, still considered the bill/halberd to be useful.
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D. Rosen
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| Posted: Tue 15 Nov, 2005 7:34 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks again everyone! Welcome to the forums Hank! I'd love to see some Tower pics.
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Danny Grigg
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| Posted: Wed 16 Nov, 2005 1:16 am Post subject: |
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There's a german version of the Bill, call a Kriegsgertel, translation War ???.
See pic attached.
Does anyone have any information about this weapon?
Was it a development from the English Bill or Italian Roncone or did it develop independently?
What time period was it used? Was it only used by Germans? Was it popular in other countries?
 Attachment: 83.25 KB
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Wolfgang Armbruster
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| Posted: Wed 16 Nov, 2005 5:08 am Post subject: |
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| Danny Grigg wrote: | There's a german version of the Bill, call a Kriegsgertel, translation War ???.
See pic attached.
Does anyone have any information about this weapon?
Was it a development from the English Bill or Italian Roncone or did it develop independently?
What time period was it used? Was it only used by Germans? Was it popular in other countries? |
There is actually no real translation for Gertel or Hippe.
The Hippe was (and still is) a gardening-tool used for cutting/removing bushes and branches.
While Hippe is the German name for it, the Swiss-Germans call it Gertel. The main difference is that the Gertel is longer (40 centimeters).
The so called Kriegshippe/Kriegsgertel was a weapon made from these farming tools. It was used during the "Bauernkriege" or peasant-wars (16th century) and during the 30-years war.
There are lots of other farming-tools which were made into weapons. There are weapons called Kriegssense (war-siccle) and Kriegsflegel (war-flail). These weapons were only used by peasants who couldn't afford a halberd or other polearms. They were also easy to make. In most cases all you had to do is to mount the farming-tool on a pole.
The Bauernkriege were over rather quickly (but quite bloody nevertheless). One of their leaders was a priest named Thomas Münzer. This guy was a dreamer who thought that angels would help them defeat the empirial armies. Well, the Landsknechte didn't care about that.......
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This is a standard topic