What even is a maul in real life?

It's a place where people in the 90's go to shop

Nobody would go into combat with a maul as their weapon. However, it was common for archers to drive wooden stakes into the ground as an anti-cavalry defense, and a maul is the tool you would use to do so, hence there would be a fair number of them lying around.

So if archers at a defensive position found themselves engaging knights in armor at close range, like at Agincourt, it wouldn't be uncommon to pick up one of the heavy sledgehammers and use it to smash some nobleman in the helmet with while your buddies are holding him down.

Nice answer and checked

To wound by scratching and/or tearing.

Thick-headed axe used for wood splitting. Sledge on the other side to drive wedges.

Thank you.

Also in response to...
>And what would be the proper two-handed bludgeoning weapon to replace it (that's not a polearm)
...the answer would usually be "just use a polearm." Anybody looking for such a thing would get a lot more mileage out of a big two-handed axe, some variety of polearm with some kind of choppy/stabby bits (there are many), or a poleaxe.

As far as historical "two-handed bludgeoning weapon that is expressly not a polearm" examples, you're looking at some kind of two-handed club instead of something with an extra heavy bit on the top, like the "morning star", the Japanese kanabo (basically a big studded baseball bat) or the Flemish goedendag (basically a baseball bat with a spike on the end.)

>Nobody would go into combat with a maul as their weapon
Never say never. People have gone into battle wielding tree branches and rocks, not because it was prehistoria, but because they didn't have anything better.
Phrase it more accurately as "no military professional would arm themselves with a maul by choice".

>godendag
>goodday
they had a nice sense of humor

There is an old one of those at my parents summer home. Not viking age, but a hundred years old, maybe. Used for either putting fenceposts in the ground, or stunning pigs before slaughter, depending on who I've asked.

Certainly, I should've phrased it as "nobody would carry a maul into combat *if the had a choice in the matter.*" The idea of an armored knight going into battle with a giant hammer is a fantasy one.

A maul is not intended as a weapon, it's a common tool that can also act as a pretty good way to hurt somebody if you haven't got a better option, just like a shovel or a pickaxe.
And while it's very effective for bashing a French knight in the back with while your buddies are ganging up on him, in a one-on-one fight your opponent would probably just pull back out of the way while you swung and then stab you.

a hammer on one side and a wood splitting wedge on the other.

>The weapon's name "goedendag" is exclusively derived from French descriptions of the Flemish weapon. Guillaume Guiart mentions of a Tiex bostons qu'ils portent en querre ont nom godendac ("... a weapon called godendac") which happens to be cognate with the universal Dutch-language greeting "good day",[2] supposedly a reference to the Bruges Matins massacre in 1302, at which the guildsmen of Bruges purportedly took over the city by greeting people in the streets, and murdering anyone who answered with a French accent.

Good stuff.

My family had a splitting maul we used for firewood. You end up with a bunch of weird tools that look like they would make for decent zombie survival weapons when you live on a farm.

>greeting people in the streets, and murdering anyone who answered with a French accent
Schild en vriend.

Not even close.

There is no use for a maul in warfare as a primary weapon, it's just a weapon of convenience.

Mauls are extremely heavy, why would anyone purposefully choose it as his weapon.

extra large double hammer

youtube.com/watch?v=ufaz96MmOCQ

Using them as a main weapon is not historical. But they existed as tools and someone are bound to have used them as an improvised weapon at some point.

Weapons need to be agile, both for attacks and for defending yourself, hueg weapons are pure fantasy. Attacks with a maul would be slow and easily predictable, and recovering from a miss would be near impossible. Defending with a maul is mostly limited to blocks with the haft, which would act like a short and awkwardly weighted staff. All in all it's a pretty terrible weapon. I honestly think removing the head and just using the haft would be an upgrade.

polehammer

They were used by English longbowmen at Agincourt.

Yeah, the kind of body you'd need to effectively use the thing as a weapon is pure fantasy, no man alive right now is strong enough to actually be fast with it, and even then if you were that strong why not just use something lighter and be even faster.

would they be any use for non-human weilders saay for ogres or giant bugmen?

Adding on to this, the archers at Agincourt also used those mauls to help execute the French prisoners

It's a big stick, pretty hard for it to not be useful if you can swing it no problem, people can laugh at it but if a big stick hits you it's gonna hurt.

Why don't you go and have a good look at And lets face it, with all the "common folks killing those snooty knights" bullshit slapped onto that battle, the reports of a common tool being used to murder knights are probably exaggerated to hell and back again as well.

I imagine an ogre wielding a claymore-like sword with that kind of strenght would be more efficient.
Then again, being bugman or ogres they might just prefer straightforward clubs.

Superhuman strength makes excessive weight less of an issue. But short of for some reason trying to smack right through some pretty superhuman armor that weight won't be of any use really, and it'll be a damn small weapon for them. Unless they're so strong that the weight is a complete non issue they're probably better off with something as big and lighter, or as heavy and much larger so they at least get good range out of it.

>And what would be the proper two-handed bludgeoning weapon to replace it (that's not a polearm).
Long-handled warhammer. Something like pic related

Why does everyone look photoshoppd into this image and why does it make me so steamed?

>Why does everyone look photoshoppd into this image

Because they are? Look at the couple in the lower right. The guy has one foot in shadow and one food on a fully lit surface, but all of him is lit the same.

>And what would be the proper two-handed bludgeoning weapon to replace it (that's not a polearm).

Large club, like a kanabō, gunstock club, etc. Some maces were big enough to be practical in two hands, although an unbalanced weapon and no shield is problematic if you don't have a lot of armour. Warhammers could be two-handed, although most of them were pretty pointy rather than blunt. The most popular two-handed blunt weapons are probably staves, which were actually wielded more like two-handed swords or big clubs than that 'Robin Hood' style, held near the middle.

Big flails were also actually used as primary weapons and considered very scary (although you would have a hell of a time defending yourself or fighting in formation with one).

sounds like something a pleb would do. tell me about it, citizen.

A gangster's girlfriend.

>Swede
>Impliying Swedens weren't vikings
???

Nice try punanon

GO FUCK YOURSELF.

This is the best Maul in the galaxy. Prove me wrong.

Woah, don't know if I agree with that.

So what's up with that OP image? Did those not exist or were those what the stake-driving tools looked like?

Vikings were people that didn't fit in with society. It was a way to get rid of them during the winter months, either they came back with wealth or slaves or they were permanently not their problem anymore

Because archer's would hammer stakes into the ground, they were a weapon of convenience and not a primary weapon.

>Galaxy far, far away
Objectively, literally, wrong.

Not all Swede's went out a Vikining.

Viking is a profession you braindead moron

A poleaxe

Nobody?

...

They're used to slaughter livestock. Back before pneumatic hole punchers, you wanted a way to drop a cow without it freaking the fuck out and murdering you. A gigantic hammer was about the only reasonable way to do it.

the image seems to come from a replica shop
wulflund.com/weapons/axes-poleweapons/heavy-war-hammer.html/

>Did those not exist

As a weapon? No. That's pure fantasy bollocks. Sledgehammers and mauls obviously existed, but they weren't intended for use on people. The one OP posted looks like it was made yesterday to look like the fantasy stuff.

Like most weapons, its based off a re-purposed tool. And someone, somewhere whacked a fucker with one and everyone realized he was onto something. But bigass mallets weren't a thing in yee olde war. Speed or reach were your best properties and they would have neither.

Actually you have got it all wrong, mauls were used in battle for a very long time until metalworking got better. Here is one found at the site of battle of Tollense (bent because it spent thousands of years lying in the swamp, but you can see it's obviously a wooden maul).

Half-tempted to dump Crecy again but I'll resist the urge.

You realise wooden clubs are light, retard? Theres a difference between a wooden club with a weighty head and a maul with a heavy metal head. You're stupid as fuck.

Have you ever touched old heartwood, you imbecile? Here is a spoiler alert for inbred morons like you - heavy wood like ash or oak is not a plywood, you cretin, it's durable EXACTLY because it's dense and heavy. Do walk out of your basement and whack yourself on head with oak branch, results might surprise you.

Have you ever used a maul you stupid urbanite? I've made clubs myself, even the heaviest club is still not as unbalanced and unwieldy as a maul with a heavy iron head. Go back to the city you weak contrarian faggot, try going into battle with a maul and see how that works out for you. wanker.

Yes it is dense and heavy and as strong as a metal topped maul. What a great point. This mallet is exactly the same, indeed.

whats this from? I'm guessing Crecy but can someone give more sauce pls

Crecy by Ellis.
imgur.com/gallery/XqJod Here you go. Good read.

thanks very much

lmao, Sicilians did the same during the Vespri Siciliani. They asked any suspeced frenchman to pronounce the word "ciciri" (chickpeas) as a shibboleth.
The french would fuck up the pronunciation and be killed.

I love Veeky Forums
You guys are the best

A maul for military purposes was essentially a slightly heavier war hammer on a longer shaft. Go to a hardware store and the sledgehammers under 5 pounds are a good example of how they would handle, similar to how modern carpenters hammers handle similarly to the war hammer. In trained hands these weapons also can be swung fairly quickly as well, with a one handed hammer landing quite a few blows to a helmeted head in a short period of time by someone skilled with it. These weren't some massive chunks of steel but rather similar to what were used as tools, only spikier and with a reinforced shaft often.

We only had a mattock, not a maul.

Is this character supposed to sound like an uncultured moron? Or is it the writer who is the idiot? John of Bohemia's advantage was that he wanted to die in battle. Not so stupid if he gets what he wants, eh? Also while 1200 knights is about right (might even a slight underestimate), that 30 000 Frenchmen were killed at Crecy is bullshit. Seriously guys, you wiped the fucking floor with the French army and secured favourable peace terms while outnumbered 2-1, there's no need to pretend you killed three times as many dudes as you actually did.

Its a fucking peasant user, did you expect a high level of discourse?

>why is a random peasant talking like a random peasant

>what is an unreliable narrator
I swear, this new generation of /pol/shits and Tumblr rejects completely lack all ability to distinguish reality and fiction, or to read between the lines in a work.
You see a statement, and you immediately take that to its logical extreme and assume that the author must have some kind of ulterior intent.
The narrator is an English peasant who's probably never counted to two hundred. It would be more unrealistic if he was to know the historical facts, in the era before statistics was more than someone looking out over the battlefield and squinting.