Narrator: Tonight, legendary blades
wielded by the most fearsome fighters.
Heads severed, arms lopped off with this sharp sword.
Blood spilled all over the field.
Narrator: From the brutal Viking axe...
Michael Livingston: One berserker warrior kills 40 men with his axe.
Narrator: ...to the razor-sharp samurai sword...
They are single-edge blades wielded with efficiency.
They could slice through anything.
Narrator: ...to the deadliest double-edged weapon of all.
You were not looking to simply win.
You were looking to massacre. No one is to be left alive.
Narrator: We explore history's bloodiest blades
and the warriors who made them so lethal.
No longer was it just punctures from a spear.
Now we're talking limbs and heads flying off of bodies.
Narrator: Not all inventions are made with good intentions.
Unlock the twisted history
behind the world's darkest marvels.
Narrator: 793.
The Vikings raid a wealthy Christian monastery
on the island of Lindisfarne
near present day Newcastle, England.
One of the more frightening events to happen in England,
in the Middle Ages is when what we call the Vikings show up.
And they show up in force for one of the first times on record
at a place called Lindisfarne, and they destroy the abbey.
Kelly Devries: It's an old monastery. It's a rich monastery.
It's existed forever. We've got evidence of its wealth.
And we hear that they went in and killed everybody.
They just wantonly destroyed an entire monastery
that had been there for centuries,
that had a place in a religious society.
The monks did not put up a fight,
and so many of them are killed.
Larissa Tracy: And it's the monks who survive
who write the story.
And they create this image
of Vikings as these most horrific,
brutal, savage, crazed warriors.
Michael Livingston: The terror of this as these Vikings come ashore
and take everything was extraordinary.
These people come off the water in these boats
and wreck the joint, burn it, and then leave.
This becomes the M.O. of the Vikings.
The Vikings were often feared
because they were more of a hit and run force.
They would row up to a dock, disembark,
cause havoc and chaos in the towns.
You know, rape, pillage, grab what they could,
load their boats back up,
and leave before the town could ever put up a defensive
or an offensive against these Vikings.
And they'd just move off to the next town
and do the same thing town, and town, and town again.
Narrator: The key to their successful raids
is an arsenal of deadly weapons.
Kelly Devries: The Viking weapons are heralded in history,
and they should be.
They're weapons of war.
They're weapons of destruction
of a people who were bent on destruction,
often for destruction's sake.
Narrator: But of all their weapons,
there is none more fearsome
and fabled than the Viking axe.
Kelly Devries: If you think about an axe
and the damage it could do to someone.
I mean, if it doesn't hit with a dead-on blow
that penetrates the body or takes off a limb or so,
the percussive force of just the rest of the axe is going to kill the person.
Michael Livingston: So, you have bearded axes,
which have a blade that sort of extends down towards the haft.
And you have other axes, Danish axes, which are longer hafted,
and which you can get a better swing on
to chop down a big tree or chop down a big person.
Shane Adams: For a bearded axe,
there's many different fighting edges,
but the one definite kill edge
is that rounded sharpened head of the axe
with the weight behind it being able to, you know, carve into your body.
Michael Livingston: An axe isn't just for killing people.
It's also something you can use on the fly to repair the boat--
the very thing that you're dependent on to cause this warfare.
So, axes are like a Swiss Army knife, if you will,
but one that's really large and you can decapitate a person with.
Narrator: This versatile tool may also be the weapon of execution
used in a sadistic ritual known as the blood eagle.
Among the Vikings who have become very famous,
one of them is Ragnar Lothbrok.
Now, Ragnar is thrown into a pit of vipers,
a pit of snakes, by King Aella of Northumbria,
and he's killed in this pit of snakes.
And according to legend, in vengeance for that,
his son Ivar the Boneless and his other sons
take their revenge on Aella by perpetuating the blood eagle.
Jordan Wagner: The idea is taking a sword, and you cut open the skin.
Then you're using an axe to break the ribs,
to expand them outward, potentially upward.
Larissa Tracy: So they are open like a pair of wings,
removing his lungs and placing them on his shoulders
while they're still pulsing until he dies.
Of course, they're covered in blood, so it gets the name blood eagle
because it looks like wings of an eagle, bloodied.
Larissa Tracy: This story has become embedded
in the image of Viking savagery,
and it's associated with their use of weapons,
particularly the axe.
Narrator: Another famous saga with an axe at its center
is the story of Egil Skallagrimsson.
Kelly Devries: Egil is a man in the 10th century.
There's no question he's a psychopath.
He kills for the meagerest of means.
At six years old, he loses in a ball game.
He goes home and gets an axe
and puts it in his opponent's head.
And his mother, she said,
well, he's going to be a good Viking one day.
Narrator: Proving mother knows best,
Egil goes on to murder at least a few hundred more people
during the course of his life.
His legacy earns him the title of berserker,
a unique class of Viking warriors
known to fight in a rage-fueled trance.
Vikings get a reputation as savage and horrible berserkers.
They just go mad with a battle frenzy.
And this is where we get the term berserk.
Somebody going berserk is somebody who's just
going completely mad in a frenzy.
But there's a motivation behind that battle rage,
and it was a way of psyching yourself up to face your enemies.
And you could convince yourself that you were invulnerable
when you were in that state.
And so it has a very specific
purpose on the battlefield.
Berserkers were more psychopathic
than the psychopaths that were Vikings.
Eileen Joy: Berserkers were believed by some
to have taken a kind of hallucinogen
before going into battle to get themselves into a frenzy.
Kelly Devries: All sorts of things about mushrooms
and maybe other psychedelics and so forth.
I think they were just bad eggs in a bad egg carton.
Narrator: One of the most legendary berserker rampages
occurs in a 1066 battle.
Michael Livingston: After the death of Edward the Confessor,
the King of England, there is no clear heir to the throne.
So what ends up happening is a lot of people
want to have the throne of England.
Narrator: Including the King of Norway, Herald Hardrada,
who assembles an army of nearly 9,000 Vikings
and 300 ships to seize England.
Michael Livingston: In what's called the Battle of Stamford Bridge,
when Herald Hardrada comes ashore,
they have essentially a Viking army.
He supposedly gets caught out of position by the English, who marched very fast.
He's on the wrong side of a river without any of his armor.
And supposedly, according to one story,
one berserker warrior of the Vikings
stands on that bridge to buy his comrades time,
and just starts mowing down the English,
and kills 40 men with his axe
before he himself is finally taken care of.
Kelly Devries: Eventually he's killed in the most cowardly way,
by a man in a boat who goes under
and stabs him through the groin with his spear.
Narrator: This ferocity on the battlefield can be attributed
in part to the Viking belief system.
Larissa Tracy: Vikings seemed very fearsome
because they believed in the idea of Valhalla.
Michael Livingston: Valhalla is Odin's hall in the afterlife.
This is about the best place you can go.
When you get there, you get to spend the days fighting each other,
and having sex,
and having lots of things to drink
and lots of things to eat.
I mean, we have to admit, Valhalla's the cool heaven.
Larissa Tracy: And so if they were slain on the battlefield,
then that is how they were supposed to die.
They were happy to face that possibility.
And it's that sense of fated finality
that made them so terrifying to their enemies,
because they weren't afraid to die.
Narrator: Ultimately, the Vikings are defeated by the English
in the 1066 Battle of Stamford Bridge,
bringing an end to their raids shortly after.
But one century later, a sword forged in Japan
would gain even greater notoriety.
Narrator: Kyoto, Japan, 1192.
The Emperor Go-Toba appoints the first shogun.
The shogun, it's a title,
so it means basically the military leader of Japan.
The shogun was the ultimate power.
He could make any rule he pretty much wanted.
Narrator: Supporting the shogun is an elite class
of warrior knights known as the samurai.
Mike Yamasaki: The samurai are a very unique persona.
They're not like your typical warrior per se.
Of course, it's common for a samurai to learn swordsmanship,
how to ride a horse, basic military strategy.
But they also had to learn brush writing and poetry,
how to read the classics,
so they had education on the higher level.
Narrator: Their minds may be sharp,
but their blades are even sharper.
Mike Yamasaki: The sword always got the attention
as the weapon of the samurai,
and it became literally like,
if you didn't have your sword, you weren't a samurai.
Narrator: The samurai's most recognizable sword is the katana.
It's lightweight, single-edged,
with a razor-sharp curved steel blade,
two to three feet in length.
The katana, as a two-handed sword,
was made in such a way that it was not just an offensive weapon,
but also a defensive weapon.
Larissa Tracy: Samurai warriors did not carry shields.
Their swords were their shield.
They were so fast and so skilled with the blade,
the idea is their opponent's blade would never touch them.
So the sword would have to be made in such a way
to be able to take the shock
of blocking another weapon striking it.
At the same time, have that sharp edge
to be able to take limbs and heads
on the next fell swoop.
It's one of the finest edged weapons ever made for combat.
It is one of the most iconic weapons
of the samurai era in Japan,
and it's permeated pop culture.
It's also really effective at what it does,
which is cutting through things quickly and effectively.
Mike Yamasaki: The katana is the weapon of power.
A lot of people I've talked to said
they would rather get shot rather than cut by a katana.
They're razor-sharp and wielded with efficiency.
They could slice through anything.
Daniel Dickrell: It's also much lighter than a traditional longsword,
so it can be swung faster and more effectively in combat.
Narrator: The katana's legendary power begins with its forging.
One of the unique characteristics of the katana is also its material structure.
So, it has very hardened steel at the edge,
which makes it very, very sharp,
but it has a more milder steel in the core
which makes it durable and flexible.
Mike Yamasaki: It is built out of the highest quality iron ore
which is smelted from sand iron.
And that's what makes it so hard-- capable of shaving glass.
Daniel Dickrell: The process of making the steel is taking iron sand,
a very unique form of iron, and putting it
in a very hot fire-- upwards of 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
This process reduces that iron sand down into a carbon steel
which then can be worked and made into the swords.
Narrator: Once the sword is near completion,
it is blessed by a Shinto priest
to spiritually purify it in preparation for the samurai.
Mike Yamasaki: It's like they're inseparable.
A good sword is known to have a good soul, in a sense,
and that soul is what's taken care of
and appreciated by the owner, the samurai.
So if your sword was on the ground,
and somebody stepped over it, they're stepping over your soul.
You're allowed to kill that person.
Shane Adams: Now, as spiritual as the samurai were,
the way they tested their swords was actually quite dark.
The sword would be tested upon humans to see how well it would cut.
Mike Yamasaki: As you can see on this sword,
test cuts were often recorded in gold and silver.
Most likely these were criminals that were slated to be executed.
And they were "volun-told" to be the targets.
So, like, one of these here, it's two bodies,
also cut through the torso.
So they would stack them and then cut down.
Kind of sucks to be the bottom guy
if it didn't go all the way through.
Narrator: But not all test subjects were criminals.
There were other samurai who were bad
who wanted to test their skill or their sword
on innocent bystanders.
Now you have to understand that at that time
the lower class were looked at as pawns
and that their lives didn't matter.
Greg Jackson: There were instances where evil samurai
would hide and wait for a commoner to come by,
and they'd test the sword out by seeing how well
it ran through this commoner.
There's a story about an evil samurai
named Gonpachi, the bridge killer,
and he would go out at night and he would kill for fun.
These people were not the epitome of a true samurai.
To kill somebody for your own selfish reason
is against what's known as the good samurai code.
Narrator: According to legend,
it's not just a samurai that can be evil.
It also extends to his sword.
Shane Adams: There was an old tale
about two swordsmiths, Muramasa and Masamune.
And a challenge was set against them
to see who made the best katana.
The swords were made, finished,
and placed into a river with the edge against the oncoming current.
Muramasa's sword cut through everything.
Fish, leaves,
everything that that blade touched, it cut.
Whereas the Masamune sword only cut the leaves and grass
that flowed through the water.
Narrator: Believing his blade is superior,
Muramasa quickly declares victory.
Shane Adams: Until a monk came by and said,
no, the sword that cut through everything was wicked.
Where the Masamune sword was forgiving,
because it left the fish alone.
Masamune was so great, and Muramasa was so evil.
Shane Adams: Muramasa swords became quite popular
because everybody was intrigued about these blades of evil.
And sure enough, some of these swords
were used in horrific scenes of murder and violence.
Mike Yamasaki: Tokugawa, who was the shogun at the time,
was injured, as well as his father,
by Muramasa blades.
He always had a superstition
that they would cause the death or bad luck of his family.
So he made a law stating that it was illegal
to possess Muramasa blades.
And today there are very few because so many got destroyed.
Narrator: But the katana isn't the samurai's only blade.
There are others with a much darker purpose.
Narrator: The katana is the weapon most associated
with samurai warriors of feudal Japan.
But there are two other samurai blades that are just as lethal.
One is the wakizashi.
Mike Yamasaki: A wakizashi is known to be
the companion sword to the katana.
And it's because katana were only allowed to be worn by samurai,
but wakizashi could be worn by people of other classes.
So that's why there was a lot of wakizashi made,
and their numbers outnumber katana by far.
A wakizashi is 12 inches to 24 inches,
and a katana is 24 inches and longer.
Narrator: Last but not least is the tanto.
Greg Jackson: The tanto comes to Japan around the 9th century
and it gains a lot of popularity.
It's a very short blade.
And because of that, it's easy to conceal,
it's easy to wield, and it catches on.
Mike Yamasaki: The tanto, it's basically a knife, a giant knife or a dagger.
They were designed for stabbing or for slicing.
And they were very thick,
up to 9 or 10 millimeters thick.
They still had a razor edge, but they were very strong.
So you could almost punch through some parts of armor
depending on the type of armor it was.
Greg Jackson: So the tanto's our short one,
the katana's the long one, the wakizashi is our middle length blade.
The middle child if you will.
Narrator: The skills required to wield just one of these blades
can take a lifetime to perfect.
But in the 17th century,
a legendary swordsman invents a new style of fighting
using two of them at once, known as Niten Ichi-ryu.
Mike Yamasaki: Well, Miyamoto Musashi is heralded
as Japan's greatest swordsman.
Musashi was actually way ahead of his time.
He was a pioneer as far as strategy goes.
A lot of people would fight with their longsword only-- one sword.
That was kind of like the unwritten rule.
And he fought-- boom. Guy blocks.
He pulls out his short sword and kills the guy.
And now he can use two swords.
That's going against what was the unwritten code.
So he developed all these new strategies,
and that's what made him dangerous.
He had over 60 matches, and he died of natural causes,
which tells you he was very good.
Because generally when you lost a match back then,
you didn't live.
Narrator: But death doesn't always
come at the hands of the enemy.
When a samurai had to face dishonor
or wanted to escape dishonor,
he committed what's called ritual suicide,
or hara-kiri seppuku.
Greg Jackson: Seppuku is to take a sword,
typically using a tanto or the wakizashi,
plunge it into your gut, and basically debowel yourself.
This was a way to preserve their honor as they leave this world.
Samurai believed that their soul came from their stomach.
So in times of seppuku,
they would make an incision
and open up their stomach,
so their intestines would come out.
And then eventually that samurai would die
either, of course, of the blood loss,
or would have an assistant with them
that would then behead him at that point in time.
The most famous story about seppuku
was the story of the 47 ronin.
Narrator: In 1701, Lord Asano Naganori is ordered to commit seppuku
after assaulting a corrupt court official.
When Naganori's death leaves his 47 samurai without a master,
they become known as ronin.
And their only goal in life was to avenge their lord,
but they knew by doing so
they would have to give up their lives.
Narrator: After about two years of planning,
the 47 ronin finally retaliate
and kill the court official.
Mike Yamasaki: They took his head, present it at the temple,
and then waited there to get their punishment,
which was, of course, because they were samurai,
they were allowed to commit seppuku.
Narrator: 46 of the 47 ronin
end their own lives in ritualistic fashion.
One of the men is pardoned,
some say due to his young age.
Everybody respects them to this day for what they did and how they did it.
And they proved how deep the loyalty and honor was for a samurai.
So in that sense,
that's a pure example of what seppuku was.
It was an end to the honor.
Narrator: Seppuku isn't abolished until 1873,
but some engage in the practice well into the 20th century.
So there's an episode of modern seppuku
by the famous author Yukio Mishima.
Narrator: On November 25th, 1970,
Mishima, with the help of one of his followers,
performs seppuku in front of the Tokyo army base
after they fail to incite a coup.
Mike Yamasaki: And he had one of his top students be his decapitator.
The first cut hit his shoulder. The second cut hit his head.
And he's, like, totally panicking by now.
And then the third cut, he finally did it.
Narrator: While ritual suicide falls out of favor,
there another grisly sacrifice that continues in modern day.
Greg Jackson: The yakuza is an organized crime syndicate,
and they would use the tanto.
For them, it was the ritualistic blade
if you had committed an offense to the organization.
So what they would do is, if they did something wrong,
they take out their finger, cut it with a tanto,
and then wrap the finger up ritually
and then give it to their boss as an offering.
And most cases, it was a tanto that was used for this ritual.
Narrator: The samurai blades have left their bloody mark.
But there's another weapon that's believed to have killed
the most soldiers prior to the invention of the gun.
Narrator: Over a 1,000 years before the samurai first swing a katana,
another deadly blade helps forge what would become the Roman Empire.
Its name-- the gladius.
Kelly Devries: The gladius was a short stabbing weapon.
Sharp at the tip and devastating to have the blow.
Devastating not because of the weapon itself,
but devastating because of the man who wielded that weapon.
The Roman soldier.
The most disciplined killer in history.
Narrator: But the Romans' initial inspiration for the gladius
is found in the hands of their enemy.
Narrator: 218 B.C.
Rome declares war on Carthage,
triggering the second in a series of wars
fought for dominance over the Mediterranean.
These are known as the Punic Wars.
Narrator: After their crushing defeat at sea in the First Punic War,
Carthage, now led by the Great General Hannibal, has a new strategy.
Joyce Salisbury: They have land armies with elephants,
and Hannibal does the unthinkable.
He takes the war to Italy, to Rome itself.
He marches with his elephants coming over the Alps.
So, he ends up in Italy
and begins marching down the peninsula.
Narrator: The two forces finally collide
near the ancient city of Cannae,
and Hannibal's men are armed with a secret weapon.
Known as the Gladius Hispaniensis,
the sword originates from the Iberian Peninsula in present day Spain.
Hannibal and his warriors were up against 80,000 Roman troops.
Now, he knew that he only had 50,000 troops himself.
But a lot of the warriors had sword in hand,
up against those Roman soldiers with spears.
It is a very effective weapon, the shortsword,
and the Roman armies are not prepared for it.
And that sword that they were wielding
turned the tide in that battle.
It's utter carnage, and one of the worst losses
that Rome suffers, and really establishes Hannibal
as the greatest general of all time potentially.
Narrator: By most estimates,
the Romans lose between 55,000 and 70,000 men.
The Romans could hardly bury all their dead.
There were limbs, there was blood.
Hannibal is there for more than a decade,
and he is just going up and down Italy just destroying things.
The massive amount of damage,
the massive amount of loss,
it's an incredible invasion.
And then the Romans get smart.
The Romans, I think, took back from that battle, not just a loss,
but they learned from their mistakes and learned about that sword.
Narrator: The Romans improved the Spanish blade
by changing the material from iron to steel,
which makes it stronger, lighter, and sharper.
Daniel Dickrell: They added the pommel at the end
to prevent the hand from slipping off,
and various features that made it more usable
on the Roman battlefield.
Narrator: The Roman gladius measures less than two feet long,
with a three-inch wide double-edged blade.
Weighing just under two pounds,
it can be swung with enough force
to produce a gaping wound four inches long.
A gladius has a wasp waist.
So, the blade swells,
and then it comes into a wasp waist,
and then it broadens out again at the hilt.
Narrator: This new and improved version of the gladius
helps Rome level the playing field against Carthage
during the Battle of Zama in 202 B.C.
No longer was it just spear cuts
and, you know, wounds,
punctures from a spear.
Now we're talking limbs and heads flying off of bodies.
Needless to say, the Romans won, Second Punic War is over,
and that's how the gladius becomes the kind of weapon
that will change the future of ancient warfare.
Narrator: 197 B.C.
Another enemy is standing in the way
of Rome's complete dominance of the Eastern Mediterranean.
After the Romans had defeated the Carthaginians,
they turn their attention to the east, to Macedonia,
who had been an ally of Carthage.
Narrator: The Macedonian forces
are led by King Philip V,
but he's no match for the fiercely armed Romans.
When the gladius was introduced on the field of battle,
very quickly King Philip saw his army began to get decimated.
Aaron Irvin: You are now hacking limbs, killing enemies,
literally cutting your way through the enemy's formation.
This is not a war of attrition.
You are now looking to do as much mortal damage
as you can to the enemy.
You are not looking to simply win,
you are looking to massacre.
No one is to be left alive.
Narrator: The Roman army completely annihilates their enemy.
Roughly 8,000 Macedonian soldiers are dead,
and another 5,000 are captured.
Joyce Salisbury: King Philip witnesses the scene
with his army devastated, heads severed,
arms lopped off with this sharp sword,
blood spilled all over the field.
And King Philip flees the scene ignominiously,
never to be seen again.
The Romans had demonstrated once and for all,
armed with the gladius, the eastern armies
could not stand against them.
Greece fell,
and Rome continued further east.
Narrator: For the next three centuries,
the Roman Empire grows,
reaching its peak in 117 A.D.,
spanning over 2.2 million square miles.
The gladius is what gives the Romans their edge on the battlefield.
It allows their tactics to be effective
and ultimately allows them to become
the military superpower over the Mediterranean
that they are still remembered as to this day.
Now, the gladius was just a small sword.
But throughout history, that gladius had become
one of the most devastating weapons to mankind.
It has taken more human lives
than any other weapon until production of the gun.
Once Rome achieves its superiority on the battlefield,
it achieves superiority in politics, and economics,
and so many ways across the Mediterranean.
It's the Roman sea as far as they're concerned.
And all of this goes back to the gladius,
and its capabilities as a weapon of war.
The Roman concept of warfare was not about attrition.
It was not about wearing out the enemy.
It was not about coming to agreements afterwards.
Warfare was about wiping your enemies off the face of the earth.
You could live happily because you were the only one left alive.
The gladius itself represents punishment.
It is the embodiment of Roman power.
By the time we get to the imperial period in Rome,
we see individuals who are sentenced to capital punishment
being sentenced "ad gladium."
In other words, those who have violated the laws of the state
are punished by the gladius.
The gladius is itself death.
Narrator: The deadly sword is so iconic
that it will become synonymous
with the most legendary bloodsport in history.
Kelly Devries: The gladius will change
when it becomes the weapon of the gladiators.
Joyce Salisbury: And in fact, the term "gladiator"
comes from the gladius,
which is Rome's favorite weapon.
Kelly Devries: Gladiator games are there for one purpose,
to fulfill the bloodlust of a crowd.
What are all these 50,000 people showing up to the Colosseum to see?
It's not somebody get poked. It's somebody get slashed.
Something to get cut. Bloodshed all over the place.
And the more gruesome, the more violent, the better.
They're there to show men hacking other men to bits.
Shane Adams: These gladiators wielding the gladius,
though they were trained killers,
they were also trained to keep each other alive.
They were trained to be able to just show blood,
to be able to cut flesh in such a way
that the person would be able to continue to fighting
and would be able to survive for future fights to come.
But you can just imagine the gallons upon gallons of blood
that was spilled in that sand.
It's entertainment,
and entertainment will change the gladius.
It's become a weapon for the Romans' pleasure.
Narrator: The blades of the Romans, samurai, and Vikings
each transformed history.
But there's another that literally dwarfs the competition.
Narrator: In the 15th century,
a deadly new sword is gaining traction
amongst mercenaries across western Europe,
leaving behind bodies and bloodshed.
Shane Adams: A Zweihander is a two-handed sword.
A great, big, long two-handed sword.
Michael Livingston: In fact, that's basically where it gets its name.
"Two-hander" is what Zweihander means.
Narrator: The sword consists of a long steel blade
averaging about five feet in length
and weighing upwards of ten pounds.
They were impressive to see. Some of them have wavy blades.
They are double-edged, and they can be wicked sharp.
So, it has some usability as a weapon
because of its size, but that's also its downfall.
Aaron Irvin: You're not carrying this thing around one-handed.
You're not using this like a traditional sword anymore.
It's sort of almost a cross between a spear
and a longsword simultaneously.
Larissa Tracy: Now, carrying one of these swords into battle
might be somewhat unwieldy.
And, of course, wielding a Zweihander
for too long can get tiring.
But when you train with a Zweihander,
you are learning specific moves,
specific parries that are designed
to essentially use the momentum of that blade itself.
Kelly Devries: A baseball player, you can think about
the same way you hold the bat.
You're holding this weapon back.
But it really is nothing more than a big blunt club.
So what it's doing is it's hitting somebody,
and killing them with a percussive blow
rather than chopping them in two.
And if you hit with enough force,
and you hit the different quadrants of the body,
you can slice through,
or you can crush, or you can break bones.
But you also have enough agility with the Zweihander
to stab and thrust with both hands,
and actually pierce and run your opponent through.
Narrator: The warriors bold enough
to wield this weapon are known as the landsknecht.
Larissa Tracy: Landsknecht emerge in the 15th century,
and they are both Swiss and German mercenaries, essentially soldiers for hire.
Kelly Devries: They're paid to go in and just kill people.
And they do it with the Zweihander because it's there
and it can kill very, very effectively.
Narrator: The sheer size of this two-handed monstrosity
has a psychological effect as well.
Kelly Devries: And we have to think of this as an imposing symbol.
If you can imagine a mercenary going into a village,
he wants everybody to run because he's carrying one of these Zweihanders.
He wants that weapon to be feared.
Narrator: But the most notorious Zweihander
belongs to a man named Grutte Pier,
and it's believed to be the largest European sword
ever used in battle.
Greg Jackson: Grutte Pier lives in northern Europe,
and he's also extremely large.
The man stands at seven-foot-tall.
This man is quite literally a giant,
but he's a gentle giant.
Aaron Irvin: He is reported to be an excellent swordsman
with the Zweihander.
In fact, his own Zweihander
measured somewhere upwards of 15 pounds.
Greg Jackson: He's a peaceful guy. He's a farmer.
He's happy with his wife, his two kids.
Then the Black Band comes through.
Shane Adams: The Black Band were a group
of landsknecht mercenaries hired by the Saxons
who would basically carry out the dirty work
that the Saxons didn't want to be really recognized for doing.
What they would do as part of any campaign
is loot and rob and rape and steal
from the surrounding countryside.
As a result, the Black Band
is incredibly notorious across northern Europe.
Greg Jackson: They come through Grutte's area.
They wipe out his farm. They rape and murder his wife.
They level his church.
Basically, they destroy everything he cares about.
Aaron Irvin: He is left homeless, property-less.
He has nothing whatsoever.
And so Pier takes it upon himself to put together
what becomes known as the Black Hope of Arum,
his own mercenary band who is not looking to get hired,
they're not looking to really get paid.
They're really just looking to get revenge against the Germans,
the mercenaries, the outsiders,
who are within their territory.
And the gentle giant turns into a war machine,
and raises his own force
and takes the fight to the Black Band.
Shane Adams: Grutte Pier, meaning "Big Peter,"
with having a frame the size he had,
he was easily able to wield that Zweihander.
Where most people would not choose to use that weapon because of its length,
Big Peter could twirl it around like a normal sword.
In Pier's hands, the Zweihander becomes an incredibly deadly weapon.
His sword is like a weed-whacker,
just ripping through the countryside,
leveling everything in its path.
He's able to take out multiple enemies
with a single swing of the blade.
And the blade itself, his blade is heavy enough
to cut through arms, cut through armor,
cut through shields.
Nobody is able to stand against him.
Greg Jackson: Basically, become a David and Goliath in one.
He is little David taking on this much larger evil band,
and yet he is physically Goliath.
He is himself a massive giant.
Now, the rampage does not last forever.
This is basically a four-year period,
and Pier dies right after that.
So he has a pretty short life, and frankly so does
his beloved weapon of choice, the Zweihander.
It's just too big to be wielded in a practical way on the battlefield.
And by the 16th century, you're really only gonna find it in a museum.
Aaron Irvin: Now the Zweihander was still a very intimidating,
very showy weapon,
and continued to be used in ceremonial circumstances,
continued to be put on display all the way, really, up to the present day,
even though its effectiveness on the battlefield was ultimately very limited.
Like its famous wielder, the Zweihander legend lives on,
just as Pier's does.
Narrator: Whatever their size, shape, or body count,
blades like the Viking axe, katana, gladius,
and Zweihander made legends of the warriors who wielded them,
inspiring fear and fascination,
and forging a lasting legacy in blood.