Flail (weapon)

The military flail or simply flail is a weapon commonly attributed to the Middle-Ages but for which only a limited amount of historical evidence currently exists for most of this era. There is evidence for the long-handled flail as a weapon of war from Germany and Central Europe in the later Middle Ages. In the poem Le Chevalier Délibéré written by Olivier de la Marche and first published in 1486, there is an anonymous woodcut depicting a knight carrying a rather simple morning star with spikes mounted in an asymmetrical pattern, as well as a flail equipped with a single spiked ball, known in German as a "Kettenmorgenstern" (literally chain-morningstar) which is technically a military flail.

In spite of the lack of frequent historial reference to use of flails, the weapon (sometimes called mace and chain or ball and chain) was a stock figure in Victorian Era Medievalist literature and thus has become entrenched in popular medieval fantasy and thus the neomedievalist imagination.

Typically, the weapon is depicted as one (or more) weights attached to a handle with a hinge or chain. Modern authors have used multiple conflicting names for this weapon: the "mace and chain" is the equivalent of the German "morningstar and chain" refered to above, but the latter term is rarely used in English. Additionally, the English terms "morning star" (a rigid haft topped with a spiked ball), and even "mace" (a bludgeoning weapon similar to a morning star), which properly refer to non-chained weapons, have also been used loosely (and incorrectly) to refer to the military flail.