I picked up a Windlass spiked warhammer on sale the other day:
http://www.museumreplicas.com/p-562-war ... spike.aspx
...with the intent of building my own, perhaps scaled-down version, of this weapon:
http://myarmoury.com/feature_higgins_pole.html
It turns out that Sean Flynt did something very similar to this before:
http://myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php ... xe&start=0
This made me think about the usage of long warhammers/short poleaxes in harness. In one hand or two, a hammer or mace should follow similar usage patterns to that of a sword, and a two-handed weapon thus should really benefit from the various longsword teachings. Obviously blossfechten techniques cannot normally be used successfully against an opponent in harness, but a two-handed warhammer, etc., can strike all of the basic cuts and all meisterhau with no more effort than a sword, apart from the higher inertia. "Edge alignment," considering the position of the hammer, spike, or axe face, is also similar to that of a sword. I think you therefore have the capability of employing a battlefield weapon in the exact same fashion you employ a sidearm, with the caveat of being able to use that weapon in a battlefield context directly against armored combatants. The only real factor you have to deal with now is how flexible your armor happens to be, as that will limit the application of longsword techniques with the weapons in question.
Given what little I know of poleaxe fighting, a full-sized weapon is one of the most intimidating weapons I have seen demonstrated. A hand-and-a-half weapon in light of the above context is nearly as imposing, with the promise of being highly agile in the hands of a seasoned combatant in properly fitted and articulated armor. Perhaps this draws parallels to Fiore's sword-axe, as Matt Easton considers in this video, with a very fitting weapon for the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw23Hhuq2Ok
Short single and perhaps two-handed poleaxes which would be used in a similar fashion were covered in this thread on MyArmoury:
http://myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php ... t+pole+axe
In general I'd like to think that such weapons serve to break the idea of armored combat being a slow, circling, or ponderous affair which we might be fixated upon due to considering the usage of the sword in that context... which is barely the right weapon for the job. Instead, you have quite vigorous and straight-forward combat which may not look too different from unarmored or lightly armored combat with swords or axes. An interesting idea, perhaps?