Bec de corbin
Literally: raven's beak
Also known as: bec de corbeau
A late medieval polearm war hammer fought mainly with its beak, not its hammer face; it gave its name to a nickname for nobles of the French royal household.
Quick Facts
About the weapon
The bec de corbin, Old French for raven's beak (modern French bec de corbeau), is a polearm of the war-hammer type, popular in late medieval Europe. An antiquarian survey places the earliest written traces in Burgundian inventories of the late 14th century, notably in the 1379 weapons inventory of Philip the Bold; we have not found this dating in encyclopedic sources. Unlike the Lucerne hammer, fighting was done mainly with the beak, not the hammer face. That face tended to be blunt, without the several points of the Lucerne hammer, the beak was stouter and the apex spike shorter and less slender. The beak was better suited to piercing plate armour as well as the quilted padding called a gambeson. According to the same antiquarian survey, the weapon measured 1.5 to 2 metres, weighed 2.2 to 2.8 kilograms, and the ash or beech haft was reinforced in its upper roughly 40 centimetres by riveted iron langets. The distinction between bec de corbin and bec de faucon, falcon's beak, is subjective and depends on whether the beak resembles a raven or a falcon more. The name is now also used loosely for various kinds of war hammers and horseman's picks. The weapon gave the nickname Gentilshommes à bec de corbin to the ordinary nobles of the French royal household (Gentilshommes ordinaires de la Maison du Roi).