Battleaxe
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A Battleaxe is a axe intended for battle (duh). Wherever there were trees and a need to chop firewood, people found an abundant need for axes. In a fight an axe will chop through a leg or a skull just as it would a log, so people took them along to fight. Once it was established that they were good weapons, axe-makers began made axes specifically to be weapons, tweaking the design to better serve in that capacity.
Though they have nothing wrong with swords and maces, battleaxes are the go-to weapon for your average Dwarf in most fantasy settings. Vikings also are famous for their use of battleaxes, particularly because it was the weapon commonly associated with the legendary Viking bezerkers, though again they were generally perfectly fine using swords and spears.
Battleaxes in warfare
Axes are bloody old, almost as old as maces. Both are "mass weapons," but the main difference is that an axe focuses the kinetic power of the swing into a sharpened edge while the mace strikes with pure concussive force.
An axe is a heavy bladed wedge of hardened material on the end of a handle. It does damage by swinging that bit into the foe at high speed. On impact it delivers a lot of kinetic energy to a concentrated point with a cutting edge to drive it deep as possible. This can chop through shield, muscle, bone and armor. Even if it does not go through armor, its blunt force trauma can shatter bones. Battleaxes are great at killing people quickly, as their hits not only wound but also shock and cripple target, while mortal wounds from swords, spears or bows usually do not kill the target instantly, allowing it to strike few final blows before passing down.
The problem is that Battleaxes are cumbersome. To make them work as well as possible, they need room to get a good swing going to impact with full force. Swinging an axe at such distance also takes time. If your first strike is not lethal, your enemy has a fair amount of time to strike you while you get the next one ready. This also means that they are not the best weapons for confined quarters (for example, in a cave or a mineshaft), and it fucks up one's ability to fight in a tight formation, which was a very, very critical component of pre-modern warfare. Though if things broke down into a swirling melee, an axe-wielder would fair better.
Axes also tend to stick inside armour, shields or just enemy bones, unlike mauls and warhammers which are also good against heavily armoured targets. An axe's pole is usually much tougher than one on a spear or a polearm, sometimes with a metal core, since it isn't as long and, as a mass weapon, it needs less finesse to handle. It generally couldn't be snapped by a one-handed sword, but greatswords are quite capable of destroying an axe with lucky swing. That's why axe-wielders that aren't the throwaway arrow-fodder like militiamen usually carry some fallback weapon - short sword, dagger, or another axe.
Axes are also quite cheap compared to swords, though not as cheap as spears. Axe heads need much less metal than swords, but also require a good smith, unless you're pretty OK with your axe blunting after the few hits. Unlike swords and spears, axes also could be used outside the battle to chop some wood or to construct a camp. As mentioned earlier, if you are a peasant there would typically be some wood axes around if you needed a weapon and had little money. In desperate situations axe could be thrown, but unless this particular axe was designed to be thrown and the wielder was specifically trained to throw axes results are usually quite poor. However with proper training and design throwing axes are quite devastating, able to one-hit-kill or at least cripple a man even through shield and heavy armour - something arrows and javelins are unable to do.
Today, battle axes are still used in modern military applications, usually taking the form of hatchets or tomahawks, and are built as multi-purpose tools that can be effective as both a tool for helping with labor or as a weapon for chopping some unlucky sod's head off.
Types of Battlexe
In addition to the typical battleaxe, there were many other forms of axes meant to be used as weapons.
- Tomahawk: An axe similar to a hatchet favored by many Native American tribes (and later some European colonists) that could be used both as a hand-to-hand weapon and as a throwing weapon. Older versions had heads made of stone or deer antler, but metal was later used when the colonists first landed and trade between Europeans and Native Americans began. Some were modified with a hole drilled down the center of the shaft and a hollow poll so they could also be used as tobacco pipes; these were crafted as trade goods to be presented as gifts. (Some historians have noted that such pipe tomahawks could be viewed as a metaphor for Native American-European relations, as it could be used either as a peace-pipe or a weapon, much like how Native Americans and Europeans could both engage peaceful trading or wage war against each other.) Modern versions continue to be used in the military today. If equipped with a back spike and/or some sort of edge for thrusting, they are surprisingly versatile weapons hence their continued use in combat.
- Spontoon Tomahawk: A variation of the tomahawk developed by French fur trappers that replaced the traditional wedged axe head with a knife-like stabbing blade.
- Shepherd's Axe: An axe with a long, straight shaft and a head which is sharp on one end and flat on the other. The head was designed to fit comfortably into one's hand without chopping it off, and could also be used as a hammer or a walking stick. As the name suggests, it was mainly used by shepherds in the Carpathian Mountains (i.e. much of Central Europe, including Poland, Ukraine, and Hungary) who needed to defend themselves against bandits and wild animals.
- Poleaxe: As the name suggests, it's an axe head on a pole, making it a form of pole-arm. Compared to a halberd, it has a smaller head, which focuses kinetic energy onto a smaller area and lets it cut through armor more effectively. The spike on the end of the pole's butt also made it useful for thrusting attacks, and it could be used to block in the same way as a quarterstaff.
- Halberd: Another pole-arm, differing from the poleaxe in the long spike on the top of the axe head and the hook on the back of the axe's blade, which was ideal for pulling a mounted knight off his horse. It could be used as a spear as well as an axe in close quarters.
- Danish Axe: An early battleaxe with a single-edged blade with pronounced "horns" at the top and bottom of the blade. Its blade was rather light and it had similar proportions to a modern meat cleaver, making it excellent for cutting through flesh and bone-the Bayeux Tapestry depicts a warrior decapitating a Norman knight's horse with one blow using it.
- Throwing Axe: These axes were explicitly designed for throwing and are best thrown in an overhead motion- that way the axe head rotates as it flies through the air, preferably into a victim's body. While harder to aim than a throwing knife, it is far more lethal if it connects. The tomahawk and francisca are both forms of throwing axes.
- Francisca: An early throwing axe used by the Franks during the Early Middle Ages. The head is too heavy for it to be useful in melee combat and it's difficult to aim even for a throwing axe, but it doesn't need to be accurate- it bounces when it hits the ground, giving it a nasty tendency to cripple anyone unfortunate enough to have their legs struck by a bouncing axe.