Longsword

The longsword is a European straight, double-edged sword with a long grip designed to be used with both hands, or occasionally one, distinguished from a shorter arming sword by its extended blade and hilt, and it became a prominent weapon of knightly and civilian self-defense from roughly the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries. Its long hilt allowed a wide range of grips and techniques, including half-swording, in which a fighter grips the blade itself with a gloved hand for greater leverage and control in close-quarters or armored combat, and detailed surviving fencing manuals, or fechtbucher, from masters such as Johannes Liechtenauer and Fiore dei Liberi record structured, sophisticated combat systems built around the weapon. Though associated in popular imagination chiefly with knights, longswords were also used and taught among urban civilians and members of fencing guilds, and the weapon's fencing tradition, documented across a substantial body of surviving medieval and early Renaissance manuals, has become a major subject of modern historical European martial arts reconstruction.