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The baselard, Schwiizerdolch in Swiss-German (also basilard, baslard, in Middle French also badelare, bazelaire and variants, Latinized baselardus, basolardus etc., in Middle High German beseler, baseler, basler, pasler; baslermesser) is a historical type of dagger or short sword of the Late Middle Ages.
In modern use by antiquarians, the term baselard is mostly reserved for a type of 14th-century dagger with an I-shaped handle [1] which evolved out of the 13th-century knightly dagger. Contemporary usage was less specific, and the term in Middle French and Middle English could probably be applied to a wider class of large dagger. The term (in many spelling variants) first appears in the first half of the 14th century. There is evidence that the term baselard is in origin a Middle French or Medieval Latin corruption of the German basler [messer] "Basel knife". [2] [3]
Both the term baselard and the large dagger with H-shaped hilt or "baselard proper" appear by the mid-14th century. Several 14th-century attestations from France gloss the term as coutel "knife". [4]
Depictions of mid-14th-century examples are preserved as part of tomb effigies (figuring as part of the full military dress of the deceased knight). By the mid-14th century, the baselard is a popular sidearm carried by the more violence-prone section of civilian society, and it retains an association with hooliganism. One early attestation of the German form pasler (1341) is from a court document of Nuremberg recording a case against a man who had injured a woman by striking her on the head with this weapon. [5] Several German law codes of the 14th to 15th centuries outlaw the carrying of a basler inside a city. [6] By the late 14th century, it became fashionable in much of Western Europe, including France, Italy, Germany and England. Sloane MS 2593 (c. 1400) records a song satirizing the use of oversized baselard knives as fashion accessories. [7] Piers Plowman also associates the weapon with vain gaudiness: in this case, two priests, "Sir John and Sir Geoffrey", are reported to have been sporting "a girdle of silver, a baselard or a ballok knyf with buttons overgilt." [8]
Wat Tyler was slain with a baselard by the mayor of London, William Walworth, in 1381, and the original weapon was "still preserved with peculiar veneration by the Company of Fishmongers" in the 19th century. [9]
In the Old Swiss Confederacy, the term basler seems to have referred to the 14th- to 15th-century weapons with the characteristic crescent-shaped pommel and crossguard, which occurred with widely variant blade length, and which by the early 16th century had split into the two discrete classes of the short Swiss dagger (Schweizerdolch) and the long Swiss degen (Schweizerdegen), indicating a semantic split between the formerly synonymous terms Dolch and Degen . The baselard proper falls out of use by the early 16th century.
The term baselard and its variations persist for some time, but lose their connection with a specific type of knife. French baudelaire could now refer to a curved, single-edged hewing knife. Basilarda is the name of a sword in Orlando Furioso .
Also in English, the term could now refer to a Turkish weapon like the yatağan. [10]
A very late occurrence of the term is found in 1602, in the context of a duel fought in Scotland, in Canonbie. The document recording the agreement on the weapons used in the duel mentions "two baslaerd swords with blades a yard and half quarter long". [11]
After this, use of the term is restricted to antiquarian contexts.
A dagger is a fighting knife with a very sharp point and usually one or two sharp edges, typically designed or capable of being used as a cutting or thrusting weapon. Daggers have been used throughout human history for close combat confrontations, and many cultures have used adorned daggers in ritual and ceremonial contexts. The distinctive shape and historic usage of the dagger have made it iconic and symbolic. A dagger in the modern sense is a weapon designed for close-proximity combat or self-defense; due to its use in historic weapon assemblages, it has associations with assassination and murders. Double-edged knives, however, play different sorts of roles in different social contexts.
A sword is an edged, bladed weapon intended for manual cutting or thrusting. Its blade, longer than a knife or dagger, is attached to a hilt and can be straight or curved. A thrusting sword tends to have a straighter blade with a pointed tip. A slashing sword is more likely to be curved and to have a sharpened cutting edge on one or both sides of the blade. Many swords are designed for both thrusting and slashing. The precise definition of a sword varies by historical epoch and geographic region.
This is a list of types of swords.
Swordsmanship or sword fighting refers to the skills and techniques used in combat and training with any type of sword. The term is modern, and as such was mainly used to refer to smallsword fencing, but by extension it can also be applied to any martial art involving the use of a sword. The formation of the English word "swordsman" is parallel to the Latin word gladiator, a term for the professional fighters who fought against each other and a variety of other foes for the entertainment of spectators in the Roman Empire. The word gladiator itself comes from the Latin word gladius, which is a type of sword.
The English language terminology used in the classification of swords is imprecise and has varied widely over time. There is no historical dictionary for the universal names, classification, or terminology of swords; a sword was simply a single-edged or double-edged knife.
A messer is a single-edged sword of the 15th and 16th century, characterised by knife-like hilt construction methods.
A stiletto is a specialized dagger with a long slender blade and needle-like point, primarily intended as a thrusting and stabbing weapon.
The Swiss dagger (Schweizerdolch) is a distinctive type of dagger used in Switzerland and by Swiss mercenaries during the 16th century. It develops from similar dagger types known as basler which were in use during the 14th and 15th centuries. The characteristic mark of the Swiss dagger are two crescent-shaped, inward-bent metal bars delimiting the hilt.
The fascine knife was a side arm / tool issued to 17th to 19th century light infantry and artillery. It served both as a personal weapon and as a tool for cutting fascines. It could be straight or curved, double edged or single edged with a sawtoothed back.
The Swiss sabre is a type of two-handed sabre design that was popular in Early Modern Switzerland.
A combat knife is a fighting knife designed for military use and primarily intended for hand-to-hand or close combat fighting.
A push dagger is a short-bladed dagger with a "T" handle designed to be grasped and held in a closed-fist hand so that the blade protrudes from the front of the fist, either between the index and middle fingers or between the two central fingers, when the grip and blade are symmetrical.
The yoroi-dōshi (鎧通し), "armor piercer" or "mail piercer", is one of the traditionally made Japanese swords that were worn by the samurai class as a weapon in feudal Japan.
An anelace was a medieval dagger worn as a gentleman's accoutrement in 14th century England.
Italian martial arts include all those unarmed and armed fighting arts popular in Italy between the Bronze age until the 19th century AD. It involved the usage of weapons. Each weapon is the product of a specific historical era. The swords used in Italian martial arts range from the Bronze daggers of the Nuragic times to the gladius of the Roman legionaries to swords which were developed during the renaissance, the baroque era and later. Short blades range from medieval daggers to the liccasapuni Sicilian duelling knife.
The Swiss degen was a short sword, an elongated version of the Swiss dagger, with the same double-crescent shape of the guard. It was used as a type of side arm in the Old Swiss Confederacy and especially by Swiss mercenaries, from the first half of the 15th century until the mid 16th century. The native term used in the 15th century for this weapon was baselard. The term Schweizerdegen is first attested in 1499.
The Swiss developed a number of characteristic weapons during their period of military activity in the 15th and early 16th centuries, perfected further during the Early Modern period.
The Elmslie typology is a system for classification and description of the single edged European bladed weapons of the late medieval and early baroque period, from around 1100 to 1550. It is designed to provide classification terminology for archaeological finds of single-edged arms, as well as visual depictions in art. It includes swords which are from the Europeans Middle Ages and currently breaks them down into five main types, which each have several subtypes. Historian and bladesmith James Elmslie introduced the typology 2015, as a complement to the Oakeshott typology which covers double edged swords of the same periods.
