The Godendac was the name given by the Flemings to the Halbard. Guiart, describing the battle of Courtrai, in 1302, has this very curious passage:—
"A grans batons pesans ferrés
Avec leur fer agu devant
Vont ceux de France recevant
Tiex baton qu'il portent en guerre
Ont nom Godendac en la terre.
Goden-dac, c'est Bon jour à dire,
Qui en Francois le veut décrire.
Cil baton sont long e traitis,
Pour férir a deux mains faitis."
Should the axe-stroke fail, then the skilful halbardier repairs his mishap with a prompt thrust of the piked head:—
"Et quand l'on en faut au descendre,
Si cil qui fiert y veut entendre,
Et il en scache bien ouvrer,
Tantot peut son cop recovrer,
Et férir sans s'aller moquant,
Du bout devant en estoquant
Son ennemi."
The halbard, consisting of an axe-blade balanced by a pick, and having a pike-head at the end of the staff, is figured on Plate xxxi. of the Painted Chamber.
The Faus (falso: from falx) appears to have been a kind of spear with a broad, cut-and-thrust blade. It is made synonymous with the spear in this passage of the Synodus Nemausensis, in 1284: (de Clericis) "Enses non deferant, nec cultellos acutos, nec lanceas seu falsones," &c. But in the Statuta Eccles. Cadurcensis, in 1289, it is distinguished from the spear: "balistas et arcus, lanceas, falsones, costalarios seu alia arma non deferant." In the Statute of Winchester, as we have seen, (ante, p. [211],) it was placed at the head of the humbler class of weapons prescribed to the militia of small means.
The Faussar, a kindred word, was probably a kindred weapon. Like the falso, it most likely presented some variety in the exemplars turned out from the village weaponers' smithies. One kind was three-edged, and had a second name, the Trialemellum. At Bovines, "Ante oculos ipsius regis occiditur Stephanus de Longo Campo, in capite percussus longo, gracili Trialemello[376], quem Falsarium nominant[377]." The faussar appears to have been sometimes used as a missile: thus, in the Chron. de Duguesclin (of the fourteenth century) we are told that the combatants
"Gettent dars et faussars, moult en vont ociant."
The Croc was probably the Bill. It is named by Guiart among the weapons of the Ribauds in 1214:—
"Li uns une pilete porte,
L'autre croc ou macue torte."