spontoon

"An officer doesn't carry a spontoon into battle for show.

The spontoon was one of the only pole weapons that stayed in use long enough to make it into American history.

As late as the 1890s the spontoon could still be seen accompanying marching soldiers.

He was carrying a spontoon that he had picked up from a dead Connaught sergeant.

The leader carried a spontoon with a broad, filigreed blade as a rank insignia.

Harper skewered the man with his spontoon.

The spontoon was in wide use by the mid 17th century, and it continued to be used until the mid to late 19th century.

Then the young marquis took the spontoon from Phillipe's hand, knelt and began rubbing at some dried blood still visible on the head.

He hefted the spontoon.

To his left, three Frenchmen had surrounded the ensign and he was flailing his spontoon around him in a circle to keep them off.

"I'll try to remember that," Phillipe yelled, hanging onto the boy's waist with one hand and gripping the spontoon across his shoulder with the other.

Anthony Wayne came storming back toward them, shaking a bloodied spontoon: "Form up in column of fours!

During the Napoleonic Wars the spontoon was used by sergeants to defend the colors of a battalion or regiment from cavalry attack.

Even at thirteen, Gil had been a commanding presence; the tutor who gave Philip his first rudimentary lessons with the musket and spontoon.

Its last flowering was the half-pike or spontoon, a shortened version of the pike carried by officers and NCOs.

The word itself derives from that of a pole weapon, the spontoon, which was carried by infantrymen of the British Army during the Revolutionary period.

A Spontoon sometimes known by the variant spelling espontoon (or half-pike) is a type of European pole-arm that came into being alongside the pike.

Italians might have been the first to use the spontoon, and in its early days, the weapon was used for combat, before it became more of a symbolic item.

After the musket replaced the pike as the primary weapon of the foot soldier, the spontoon remained in use as a signalling weapon.

Non-commissioned officers carried the spontoon as a symbol of their rank and used it like a mace, in order to issue battlefield commands to their men.

'Broadsword, rapier, Toledo, spontoon, battle-axe, pike or half-pike, morgenstiern, and halbert.

The head of a spontoon often had a pair of smaller blades on each side, giving the weapon the look of a military fork, or a trident.

Out in front of Philip's company, the commander, Captain Walter Webb of Worcester, stood as straight as the spontoon he gripped in his right hand.

Spontoon Tomahawk - A French trapper and Iroquois collaboration, this was an axe with a knife-like stabbing blade instead of the familiar wedged shape.

He received the first charging Cameron on the point of his spontoon, but then a second cut him through the head to chin, making him the only high-ranking Government soldier to be killed in the battle.