War Scythe

A war scythe is a polearm with a long, curving, single-edged blade sharpened on the concave side, made by reforging an ordinary farming scythe blade to sit at a right angle to its shaft and reinforcing the joint with a metal collar or bolts, producing a blade thicker and sturdier than a farm tool. Because scythes were common and cheap, peasant and rebel forces who could not afford swords or firearms carried them into battle, from the Hussite armies of Jan Zizka in the fifteenth century through the rebels at the Battle of Sedgemoor in 1685, the Vendee revolt, and Polish, Danish, and Transylvanian uprisings. Its most celebrated use came during the Kosciuszko Uprising of 1794, when Polish scythe-armed peasant units, the kosynierzy, charged and captured Russian artillery, and war scythes continued to appear in Polish resistance as late as 1939.