The first mention of this weapon occurs in the fourteenth century. It was used by footmen only, and is somewhat varied in form. It usually has a somewhat square or crescent-shaped blade, with a sharp hook-like projection or forks on the back, and sometimes a spike from the face, but always a spear at the top. In the fifteenth century the nearly straight form prevailed, with a spur behind, while the crescent-shaped blade appeared early in the sixteenth; and the hinder spur became broader and more blade-like, and with a downward curve, while the spear at the point became much longer. Double-bladed halbards were not uncommon. The length at the end of the sixteenth century was about five feet, and being shorter than the pike was better adapted for hand-to-hand fighting. Silver says the length ought not to exceed five or six feet. The halbardiers had charge of the standard. The halbard and the partizan were the great infantry weapons before the pike came into general use. They were still to the fore in the reign of George I. The pageant halbard is usually perforated, engraved, and otherwise ornamented. Hewitt gives a figure, from Holbein’s “Costumes Suisses,” of a Swiss halbardier of the first half of the sixteenth century. THE PIKE, PARTIZAN, SPETUM, RANSEUR, AND SPONTOON. The pike is a footman’s weapon used greatly in conjunction with the halbard and harquebus; and these three were pre-eminently the weapons of the infantry of the later “middle ages” and the “renaissance.” It was probably introduced into England in the reign of Edward III., being mentioned by Froissart, anno 1342, and did not fall into disuse much before the time of Charles II., when a writer in 1703 refers to it as a weapon “formerly” in use, the bayonet having superseded it. Viscount Dillon states in _Archæologia_, vol. li., p. 221, that “In 1515, Pasqualigo, the Venetian, writes that he had seen in the Tower pikes for 40,000 infantry, and that they have a like store at Calais, a place near Scotland!” The pike has a narrow lance-formed head, to which long strips of iron four feet in length are attached, which are screwed down the sides of a long wooden pole, the end of which is shod with iron, for fixing into the ground, to resist a charge of horsemen. There is a tassel along the shaft for easing the shoulder when the weapon is carried at the “port,” and also for preventing the rain from running down the shaft. The earlier length of the pike was ten feet, but Sutcliffe, in his _Practice of Arms_, speaks of it as up to twenty-two feet in length. A statute of 1662 fixes the length at sixteen feet. During Elizabeth’s reign the cost of a pike was three shillings and eightpence, and it was “fifteene foote long besides the head.” The usual length, however, was about ten feet. It was the bayonet that deposed the pike.