Halberd

It can have a hook or thorn on the back side of the axe blade for grappling mounted combatants and protecting allied soldiers, typically musketeers.

[7] A Swiss peasant used a halberd to kill Charles the Bold,[8] the Duke of Burgundy, at the Battle of Nancy, decisively ending the Burgundian Wars.

[7] Later, the Swiss added the pike to better repel knightly attacks and roll over enemy infantry formations, with the halberd, hand-and-a-half sword, or the dagger known as the Schweizerdolch used for closer combat.

The German Landsknechte, who imitated Swiss warfare methods, also used the pike, supplemented by the halberd—but their side arm of choice was a short sword called the Katzbalger.

[10] As long as pikemen fought other pikemen, the halberd remained a useful supplemental weapon for push of pike, but when their position became more defensive, to protect the slow-loading arquebusiers and matchlock musketeers from sudden attacks by cavalry, the percentage of halberdiers in the pike units steadily decreased.

Antonio de Pereda's 1635 painting El Socorro a Génova depicting the Relief of Genoa has all the soldiers armed with halberds.

The most consistent users of the halberd in the Thirty Years' War were German sergeants who would carry one as a sign of rank.

With this development back spikes are directly integrated into the blade construction and become a universal part of the halberd design.