Windlass – Maciejowski Chopper

The Maciejowski Chopper from Windlass has been updated with improved steel and has a sharpened and well tempered blade of 1075 high carbon steel and is based on a sword shown in an illuminated manuscript. The design is very tough and robust, with the thick blade tang fitted and riveted between two riveted grip scales of wood.

The Windlass Crusader Chopper is a reproduction of the single-edged falchion seen the illuminated Maciejowski / Morgan Bible. As no known examples survive, it is unknown whether this unique bladed weapon actually existed outside of the imagination of a fanciful medieval illustrator. Various reproductions produce a working design that can chop and hack with notable power, and the various angled flanges seem purpose-built for puncturing chainmail and helmets.

If it existed, it seems likely that the weapon would have been adapted from a scythe-like farming implement into a bladed pole-sword. While suitably efficient, this single-edged weapon without a complex hilt would have been much easier and cheaper to create than a sword and thus may have been a real weapon for peasant levies and poorer men-at-arms, though its design may have been limited geographically.

If anything it does possess a certain aura of intimidation caused by its coarse geometry and its flanged spikes; it is a cunningly adapted or purpose-built weapon for the butchery of the battlefield wholly absolved of any notion of chivalry. Its simple construction also provides a plausible explanation as to why no surviving examples exist. Many finely-crafted swords and other arms were passed down through the generations and their symbolism and attachment to a family or an owner caused them to be preserved when nearing the end of their usefulness. A comparatively crude fighting blade such as this Maciejowski Falchion would instead have its steel repurposed by a pragmatic peasant or simple feudal man-at-arms when it outlived its purpose.