War and Military Atlas

How Battles Were Fought
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Weapons System

Goedendag

Medieval

The goedendag was a weapon originally used by the militias of medieval Flanders in the fourteenth century, essentially combining a club with a spear in a wooden staff roughly 90 to 150 centimeters long and 5 to 10 centimeters in diameter, widened at one end where a sharp metal spike was set into a tang. It was used to great effect by the guildsmen of Flanders' wealthy cities against French knights at the Battle of the Golden Spurs near Kortrijk on 11 July 1302, and it appears in contemporary depictions of the battle including carvings on the fourteenth-century Courtrai Chest. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Weapon Class
Polearm (club-and-spear) 1
Introduced Year
1302 1
Earliest specific dated use recorded, at the Battle of the Golden Spurs; the source places the weapon origin generally in the 14th century without a firmer year.
Weapon Class
Weapon Class (category)
Sword / Polearm / Bladed 1
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Goedendag
Wikipedia
  • en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goedendag, lead paragraph
    The goedendag was essentially a combination of a club with a spear.
  • en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goedendag, lead paragraph, Golden Spurs sentence
    The weapon was used to great effect by the guildsmen of Flanders' wealthy cities against the French knights at the Battle of the Golden Spurs near Kortrijk (Courtrai) on 11 July 1302.
  • Introduced circa 1302 per the entity's own sourced description text; no pre-1900 weapon system remains in current active military service.
View the Source
Wikidata: Goedendag
Wikidata Q1371963, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source
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