Underappreciated Historical Weapons: the Billhook or Bill

[Music] ratings I'm Chad welcome back down to appreciated historical weapons and in this episode we're covering a very iconic and appropriate weapon for this series it is known as the billhook or bill now if you guys are kind of familiar with medieval history and hema and all that suffers there's a good chance actually know about the bill and you might be wondering why is it considered underappreciated well it's from the perspective of how many people outside of our community are actually aware of this weapon and it's not many and that's a crying shame because this weapon was so prominent in the medieval period it's like one of the most iconic polearms in history and so many people don't know about it but there's also a bit of interesting information about the bill its origin how it's used and why it became so prominent so the bill evolved from an agricultural tool and if you're in Britain UK you probably know of it as the bill or bill hook but if you're in the u.s. they're commonly called a brush axe but what's interesting say about the brush axe is that that's generally considered a smaller one-handed tool and the billhook is more commonly associated with being a large long pole arm but the interesting thing is even in the medieval period there were weapon variants that were one-handed so the utility of the bill in its most basic state is quite obvious you have a kind of like a cutting edge with a hook on the end and so if you put that on a pole with some kind that's a bit longer you're gonna reach up sue branches that you couldn't reach you know without this tools assistance get the hook the bladed hook over the edge of a branch and just kind of slice cut it down and even the one-handed variants because with the one-handed ones you don't get too much additional reach so you generally will be coming things that you can reach otherwise but the specific type of blade is very useful with this hooking motion because you can cut it much easier in a pulling motion just hook it around the branch you want just give it a couple of Yanks and you'll cut the branch off long thin branches were very useful in the medieval period particularly for construction because that's one of the main building materials they use for wattle and daub homes these long thin branches into woven into what which would cover the larger gaps in between the frame of a building and then that put bulb on and that's how they made the building so got whole videos on these subjects by the way they would even called to fete many trees by splitting the branches early on to get the trees to grow out in many different long branches and stuff purely for cultivating the wattle for these wattle and daub constructed homes without just fencing as well so with the prominence and utility the long thin branches you can kind of see how a tool was developed that was particularly effective for just cutting off small branches really quickly and stuff and so there here we have the bill and then when you have a tool that is in a fairly large amount of abundance well when war breaks out and there's fighting happening and you have the poorer class who cannot pay for dedicated weapons that were made for the task they resort to looking at tools to see if they can reappropriation weapons and this is clearly how the weapon variant of the billhook came about but it didn't stay as a tool it actually evolved and a couple of additions were placed on the billhook weapon to make it more effective in combat and it was so effective that it basically became a dedicated weapon even in and of itself even though it started out as an agricultural tool the bill became so common in fact that a designation came about to identify the type of soldiers that used it bill men now effectiveness is a reason for a weapon to become quite prominent but it's not the only important thing to consider then one of the other big reasons why the billhook became so prominent as a weapon was that was also cheap even with the evolutions and variants that we see with the billhook which i want to address now just so we can kind of see what shapes the bill was a kind of made in and what we'll see with many of these shapes most of them perhaps not all there are some shapes that obviously look like it took a little bit more work but most of them remain still very cheap to make now why were they cheap well they could essentially made out of a single flat piece of metal so then what are the different shapes well one of the more common types or designs of Bill is one that very much resembles its agricultural ancestor where it's a you have this cutting blade with kind of a hook on the end and the blade is curving around in the inverse curve ending at that point but then what we see is a couple of additions because all right this if you just look at the agricultural it's good at cutting and it has that point to kind of stab into things what about thrusting thrusting is very useful and so spikes were added to the tip to add thrusting capacity and then an additional kind of back end like spike on the back end of the bill so you can flip it around and do big wide sweeping like piercing attacks on that end so this is the kind of iconic and classic style of bill but what we see evolutions around is the cutting end of it okay we see many bills that are much longer which have a very pronounced curve like the agricultural ancestor but then what we also see is some variance of the billhook where that spike curve starts become less prominent they get a bit more flat bit more squad and some of them seem to just have like a flat outwards curving almost acts like head without very much inward kind of curve making it dissimilar enough to its origin yet still the iconic bill and also what's interesting about this flat more squat it's almost very much more similar to a pole axe this variant but it's still much cheaper to make hence why I was still very prominent and popular and it was also very effective of course I just want to quickly expand on upon the prominence of the bill hook you see if you were a soldier in the medieval period any over the poorer class and you wanted to use a pole arm it's very high chances that you would have set ended up using a billhook again because it's cheap and it's really effective there are other pole arms of course when it comes to pole I'm Sarah sorry many variants but the billhook is one of the more common ones okay now if you are more wealthy you didn't have to be a knight or add nobility anything but if you just had more money generally it seems like weapons such as the pole axe or halberd were picked over the billhook not necessarily because they're better but there is a bit more procedure it's a bit more expensive to make those types of weapons they look a bit more fancy and of course they are very very effective and when it comes to standard types of say a pole axe there are certain additions on the standard designs that are very beneficial you have Lang gets on the side which helps fix the pole arm head and is kind of a small discard that also helps your hand from sliding down all the way and gives you a bit more protection so when it comes to a dedicated battlefield weapon generally uphol axe has some advantages over a standard billhook and this is the same with a hull that as well but those advantages aren't huge and if you didn't have a lot of money the billhook would be a perfect option now you might have just had a bill as you know at all in your shared while you'll never [ __ ] man you know lying around your home somewhere okay or you could purchase a bill that was made as a dedicated weapon but it'll still be cheaper because they're cheaper to make now going back to how they're cheaper to make because they're made out of one sheet of metal even the more complex kind of designs you can see how they're actually made for instance look at this bill here where you see a kind of strong curve and a spike you can see how that was actually made where the curved part of the blade and the spike will once one and they just you know Smith just split it down the middle and then curved that spike over keeping the rest kind of flat and then they can either branch so the spike they can branch off a bit on the side and then hammer it out so it's sticking on end flatten it extend a base of it and then curve it around so it can curve around the head of a staff and then you have a very standard type of bill and it was pretty cheap to make you see in contrast to this when you look at a house or pollaxe generally it seems like the accident spike and even the back ends are made separately and if not separately a bit more fiddling and difficulty to make especially if you're adding those side kind of legate's right it seems like some of these pieces would need to be made separately and then Forge welded together now as to the effectiveness of the billhook in battle well you can kind of see it's mostly self evident because you have a lot of options if you're using this type of pole arm you have a strong cutting kind of end down out cut it also depends on the design because there are certain bills that have a much more curved kind of blade and then ones that are have a much more flat acts like head but with either of them you still have a lot of cutting power now the type of bill that has though a stronger curve that has a lot of penetrative capacity and okay but you also get that on the back end spike now one of the classic ways that bill hook is said to have been used is to utilize the hooking capacity of this weapon and that was particularly effective for dismounting opponents on if someone is riding at you with a horse and they're trying to hit you you can find a knock aside the weapon or try and hit them in return and even if you don't land a boy of that duals damage or even kills the opponent it has a high chance of hooking into the opponent's clothing or armor especially if it's plate because of this strong hook and even if it's not just the hook on the cutting portion of the bill if you switch it around to that spike that is more prominently and generally put on many types of builds well that also can do the same thing but of course the the actual hook portion because it's curving inwards like that has a much better chance of hooking something than just a straight spike that doesn't have kind of you know curved down to really grab into things and sorry a general strike with the cutting end has a very high chance of hooking and grabbing on to someone and of course if you're on a horse and you have something that's just latched on to you there's a good chance that that will pull yourself off your horse and your dismounted and then it's pretty easy for the guys to dispatch you now this also makes sense in regards to the type of people who are commonly associated with using the bill which is the poor a kind of class of soldiers and that would generally mean that they wouldn't be mounted cavalry and not being mounted cavalry there is still a good chance that they might be fighting people on horses and so having a weapon that is you know has certain advantages to combat people on horse as well gives you a certain advantage but that's not to say it's you know only use is for taking on people's you know enemies on horses it's still a very effective weapon to combat out in our opponents on foot you have a strong cutting end a really powerful thrusting in and in your foot round you have a very powerful piercing end with a big wide strike so it's a versatile cheap and effective weapon so just with those three things put together you then have one of the more prominent polearms of medieval history the good old bill so there we go now if you are depicting or adapting a medieval setting whether it's for whatever role playing fantasy writing and such please do remember the prominent place that the billhook has and if you have common you know lesser not as rich soldiers and stuff like that this is a very prominent weapon that they would logically be equipped with depending on how true your being to medieval setting thank you for watching I do hope you have enjoyed and of course I hope to see you again so until that time [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Shadiversity

Views: 284,875

Keywords: billhook, medieval, middle ages, history, historical, bill, polearm, halberd, poleaxe, knight, knights, fantasy, dnd, dungeons and dragons, d&d, billman, game of thrones, lord of the rings, medieval weapon, RPG, VIDEO, game, roleplaying

Id: O7jIfgxaL70

Length: 11min 35sec (695 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 18 2019