Fascine knife

It served both as a personal weapon and as a tool for cutting fascines (bundles of sticks used to strengthen the sides of trenches or earth ramparts protecting the batteries).

Seventeenth- and 18th-century German, Prussian and Swedish fascine knives were more like cavalry swords, often with a brass handle and a hand guard, but later models were more like billhooks in shape and appearance.

By the 20th century, it became the Pioneer's billhook in the British Army, used in World War I for making machine gun emplacements.

Like the billhook they were used for cutting saplings (e.g. willow, hazel or chestnut) that were bundled up to make fascines or woven into hurdles, or gabions.

Although the Spanish Army called its fascine knives machetes,[2] they bore little resemblance to the common cutting tool.