HALBERT, HALBERD or HALBARD, a weapon con sisting of an axe-blade balanced by a pick and having an elongated pike-head at the end of the staff, which was usually about 5 or 6ft. in length. The utility of such a weapon in the wars of the later middle ages was that it gave the foot soldier the means of dealing with an armoured man on horseback. The pike could do no more than keep the horseman at a distance. This ensured security for the foot soldier but did not enable him to strike a mortal blow, for which firstly a long-handled and secondly a powerful weapon, capable of striking a heavy cleaving blow, was required. Several different forms of weapon responding to these requirements are described and illustrated below; it will be noticed that the thrust ing pike is almost always combined with the cutting-bill hook or axe-head, so that the individual billman or halberdier should not be at a disadvantage if caught alone by a mounted opponent, or if his first descending blow missed its object. It will be noticed further that, concurrently with the disuse of complete armour and the development of firearms, the pike or thrusting element gradu ally displaces the axe or cleaving element in these weapons, till at last we arrive at the court halberts and partizans of the late 16th and early 17 th centuries and the so-called "halbert" of the infantry officer and sergeant in the i8th, which can scarcely be classed even as partizans.
Figs. 1-6 represent types of these long cutting, cut and thrust weapons of the middle ages, details being omitted for the sake of clearness. The most primitive is the voulge (fig. r ), which is simply a heavy cleaver on a pole, with a point added. The next form, the gisarme or guisarme (fig. 2), appears in infinite variety but is always distinguished from voulges, etc., by the hook, which was used to pull down mounted men, and generally resembles the agricultural bill-hook of to-day. The glaive (fig. 3 is Late Ger man) is a broad, heavy, slightly curved sword-blade on a stave; it is often combined with the hooked gisarme as a glaive-gisarme (fig. 4, Burgundian, about 1480). A gisarme-voulge is shown in fig. 5 (Swiss, 14th century) .
The weapon best known to Englishmen is the bill, which was originally a sort of scythe-blade, sharp on the concave side (whereas the glaive has the cutting edge on the convex side), but in its best-known form it should be called a bill-gisarme (fig. 6). The partizans, ranseurs and halberts proper developed naturally from the earlier types. The fea ture common to all, as has been said, is the combination of spear and axe. In the halberts the axe predominates, as the examples (fig. Io, Swiss, early 15th cen tury; fig. 11, Swiss, middle i6th century ; and fig. 12, German court halbert of the same period as fig. I I) show. In the partizan the pike is the more important, the axe-heads being reduced to little more than an ornamental feature. A south German speci men (fig. 9,1615) shows how this was compensated by the broad ening of the spear-head, the edges of which in such weapons were sharpened. Fig. 8, a service weapon of simple form, merely has projections on either side, and from this developed the ran seur (fig. 7), a partizan with a very long and narrow point, like the blade of a rapier, and with fork-like projections intended to act as "sword-breakers," instead of the atrophied axe-heads of the partizan proper.
The halbert played almost as conspicuous a part in the military history of Middle Europe during the 15th and early i6th centuries as the pike. But, even in a form distinguishable from the voulge and the glaive, it dates from the early part of the 13th century, and for many generations thereafter it was the special weapon of the Swiss. It was also in the 15th and i6th centuries that the halberts became larger, and the blades were formed in many varieties of shape, often engraved, inlaid or pierced in open work, and exquisitely finished as works of art. This weapon was in use in England from the reign of Henry VII. to the reign of George III., when it was still carried (though in shape it had certainly lost its original characteristics, and had become half partizan and half pike) by sergeants in the guards and other infantry regi ments. It is still retained as the symbol of authority borne before the magistrates on public occasions in some of the burghs of Scot land. The Lochaber axe may be called a species of halbert fur nished with a hook on the end of the staff at the back of the blade. The godendag (Fr. godendart) is the Flemish name of the halbert in its original form.