Flail
Also known as: kisten, mangual
A striking weapon with a striking bar or a metal head flexibly linked to the haft by a strap or chain; peasant flails were deployed in large numbers by the Hussites.
Quick Facts
About the weapon
The earliest attested type, the kisten with a head, spiked or plain, joined to the haft by a leather strap or cord, appears in the 10th century in the territory of Rus, probably adopted from the Avars or Khazars. It spread into Central and Eastern Europe in the 11th to 13th centuries, westward in the 12th and 13th centuries. Three types are distinguished. The long two-handed infantry weapon has a shorter striking bar flexibly attached to a long haft. A short handle carries one or more metal heads on chains, usually shorter than the handle so the head does not strike the hand. The third type is a two-handed counterpart to the second, with a longer handle and chains markedly longer than it. Between 1420 and 1497 the Hussites deployed large numbers of infantrymen with the peasant flail. Spiked flails appeared in the German Peasants' War in the early 16th century, and in Spain and Portugal a type called the mangual was popular from the 15th to the 17th century. Some German fencing manuals (Fechtbücher) of the 15th to 17th centuries show how to fight with the peasant flail and how to defend against it. In the first decade of the 21st century some historians doubted whether the flail with a metal head on a chain existed at all: several museum specimens turned out to be 19th-century forgeries. Further research called this doubt exaggerated, though it was a rare weapon.
Parts of the weapon
- Weight