HALBERT, Halbard (French, Haleharde), a weapon consisting of an axe-blade balanced by a pick and having an elongated pike-head at the end of the staff, which was usually about 5 or 6 feet in length. Various derivations have been suggested for the term, but M. Demmin seems to have hit the right one in the German Halbbαrthe. “half battle-axe.” The earliest halberts represented in the miniatures of the 14th century, or preserved in the collections of Switzerland and Germany, have the axe-blade often prolonged beyond the end of the staff, and thus resemble the English bill of the 15th century. Fauchet, in his Origines des Dignitez, printed in 1600, states that Louis XI. of France ordered certain new weapons of war called hallebardes to be made at Angers and other places in 1475. The Swiss had a mixed armament of pikes and halbards at the battle of Morat in 1476. We find the same mixture of billmen and halbardiers in the English army at the same period. In the 15th and 16th centuries the halbards became larger, and the blades were formed in many varieties of shape, often engraved, inlaid, or pierced in open work, and exquisitely finished as works of ark This weapon was in use in England from the reign of Henry VII. to the reign of George III., when it was still carried by sergeants in the guards and other infantry regiments. It is still retained as the symbol of authority borne before the magistrates on public occasions in some of the burghs of Scotland. The Lochaber axe may be called a species of halbert furnished with a hook on the end of the staff at the back of the blade.