h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

While most Americans probably think this is something that comes in aerosol cannisters, this is, of course, a particularly unpleasant hand-to-hand weapon used in medieval times to mash your opponent into a pulp.

Commonly a spiked ball of metal and/or wood attached directly to wooden shaft 12 to 24 inches. The worst type look like massive elongated cogs, a core of metal with a radial spray of narrow fins... kind of hard to explain, but lethal looking. The weapon combined the impact potential of the common club or cudgel with the chance of a gapping puncture in flesh or ragged tear in heavy plate armour. If pulping or mashing was the primary aim, the mace was the weapon of choice.

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This is precisely what I meant by the start of my original comment. Then again, given the narrow band of history open to non-Native Americans, most can't appreciate a weapon that doesn't involve some form of chemical propellant or a battery!

Can I just make the point that very few, if any, genuine Medieval maces ever had "Spikes" of any length?
The last thing that you need in battle is to not be able to retrieve your weapon after a blow, spikes would make fast recovery from delivering a blow very difficult, since they would remain embedded at differing angles.
Most maces had a solid head with blunt, short protrusions, or a series of flanges.
The other thing which I have noticed some confusion over is the "Morning Star", this was NOT a ball on a chain, this was termed "Mace and Chain" the Morning star had a solid, star-shaped head on a solid shaft.
A related weapon was the War Hammer, literally a hammer-head on a longish haft.
The war hammer usually had a square striking face, with a diamond-shaped protrusion in the centre, and a short spike in the position of the claw on a carpenter's claw hammer.
The war hammer was capable of penetrating plate or mail armour easily, and was often a knight's weapon of choice for serious combat.

My descriptions were based on real mace seen in a museum context (though for the life of me I can't remember which... probably somewhere in the south-west or Wales). There was a fiendish display of arms and armour, and as a fan of roleplaying I was amazed at just how heavy and lethal some of the weapons looked. Aside from the nasty looking mace, the two-handed swords were also formidable and quite awe inspiring.

The Apprentice

Fighting with hand weapons of any description is an exhausting job, the weight of even a perfectly-balanced broadsword makes Hollywood fights, such as the famous one between Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone in "Robin Hood", which go on for more than a few minutes, pure fantasy.
Even a war-hardened knight, with a lifetime's practice behind him, couldn't swing a sword for any length of time.
Also the idea of "Fencing" with the broadsword is quite impossible, your sword (mace, axe, hammer) was for offence, your defence was your shield, no doubt some blows were caught on the sword, but more by accident than design.
If you want to see a reasonably accurate Hollywood representation of Medieval combat I recommend the film "Ivanhoe" made in the fifties, the final Trial by Combat is between an axe and mace-and-chain, the effects of the weight of the weapons, the damage done to the shields, and armour, and the brutality of the whole thing is very well done.

Even a war-hardened knight, with a lifetime's practice behind him, couldn't swing a sword for any length of time.
Also the idea of "Fencing" with the broadsword is quite impossible, your sword (mace, axe, hammer) was for offence, your defence was your shield, no doubt some blows were caught on the sword, but more by accident than design.

Not completely true. having practised a bit of historical swordfighting with a long sword I can say that there are loads of defensive techniques for it (what do you think the cross guard is for?). This was one of the beauties of the weapon. No shield etc was needed for defence, it was 'all in one'. and relatively long fights can occur. after all, a normal longsword only weights between 1.2 - 1.6 kilo's. With practice one can swing this around for quite a while, since because of it's balance swinging it becomes sort of a natural motion (bit like a pendulum)

Rod