Goedendag The goedendag ( also rendered godendac , godendard , godendart , and sometimes conflated with the related plançon ) was a weapon originally used by the militias of Medieval Flanders in the 14th century . It was essentially a combination of a club with a spear . Its body was a wooden staff roughly five feet ( 150 cm ) long with a diameter of roughly four inches ( 10 cm ) . It was wider at one end , and at this end a sharp metal spike was inserted by a tang . The name " goedendag " derives from Dutch , usually taken in English sources to have meant " good day " , with reference to the revolt of Bruges 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 . This derivation of the name may however be spurious : the name is found only once , in a French account from shortly after the Battle of Courtrai . The Flemings themselves referred to the weapon as a spiked staff ( " gepinde staf " ) . The weapon was used to great effect by the guildsmen of Flanders ' wealthy cities against the French knights during the " Guldensporenslag " , the Battle of Courtrai or Battle of the Golden Spurs , near Kortrijk ( Courtrai ) on 11 July 1302 . ( The date is still marked as the celebration of Flanders ' , Brabant ' s and Antwerp ' s independence and Flanders ' national celebration day . ) It is depicted being used against the French knights in the Battle of Courtrai in the carvings on the Courtrai Chest , a 14th - century wooden chest ( discovered c1905 on a farm owned by New College , Oxford , England , and now to be seen in the Ashmolean Museum . ) There is also a now faded fresco from the Leugemeete in Ghent . Use . Exactly how the weapon was used is a source of debate . Contemporary illustrations show it being used as a club but the contemporary chronicler Guillaume Guiart , speaking of the battle of Courtrai , states , " " each held his godendart raised against the French , the iron as one meets a wild boar " " . which suggests it was first used as a spear to meet a charge , then a club as the enemy was halted . The goedendag was probably set in the ground secured by the fighter ' s foot and aimed with both hands . The thicker knob under the spike , a safeguard against the horse impaling itself and then going on to crash into the defender , served the same purpose as the cross bar on a boar - spear . The military historian Kelly de Vries asserts that " " its chief function was to bring down a knight from his horse " " . Verbruggen describes the role of the goedendag thus : The Chest of Oxford ( aka Chest of Courtrai , in English literature : Courtrai Chest ) shows men with Goedendags standing behind a line of men with pikes . Other clubs , maces , swords , or knives could well also have been used by a guildsman for close combat after meeting a charge with the goedendag . On this account , the goedendag was sometimes confused with the halberd , morning star , or Lucerne hammer , a halberd with a hammer instead of an axe blade . In contrast with the goedendag , these were expressly built for professional warriors , to rip a rider off his horse while he was charging or passing by . Such weapons were much more effective but also more expensive , requiring greater craftsmanship to make . They were the weapons of regular infantrymen . This is why regular Flemish troops abandoned the goedendag at the beginning of the fifteenth century ; after that point the weapon was used exclusively by the Flemish " burgers " .