I think you missed the whole point. You have all the room in the world to swing such a thing - it MAKES the room. Your allies aren't bunched up behind you, be

I think you missed the whole point. You have all the room in the world to swing such a thing - it MAKES the room. Your allies aren't bunched up behind you, because they know what you're carrying. Making the room is the whole point - you're trying to break up the enemy formation. These were rare "shock troop" weapons used by a scant few guys in the center of your line to scare (or pummel) enemy troops out of formation. These scant few guys were shock troops - blackguards, dopplesoldners - specially selected guys of unusually large stature, outfitted with unusually good armor, paid unusually well, and taking a high risk. Showmanship was a big part of it - the guys we're talking about were the Sandor Cleganes of their time; gigantic guys specifically selected to look scary, but also to legitimately be dangerous. Just like football players can fall back a few steps, so too would their allies - to give them enough room to swing something like this around and basically punch a hole in the enemy line - knock a few guys down, make a few trip over each other whilst trying to get out of the way - whatever. Once this was done, the flail would get dropped like a baseball bat (the shock trooper would switch to some sidearm like the gladius (or katzbalger, really) you mentioned, because now the fighting switches to close-quarters), and the shock trooper's allies (standing just a few paces behind him, just at a safe distance) would charge forward to make a wedge and try to divide the opposing line. Because they were at the ready and on their feet (as opposed to the enemies who just got knocked down/maimed), they had an advantage of maybe 30-60 seconds over them. Enough to get in there and cut the line. This was one of many, many techniques used to break up close-quarters fighting and neutralize the advantages of the enemy formation. Formations were everything - if two forces were fighting on equal terms, whichever one could break the other's formation could win the battle - and not just against even odds, but also against overwhelming odds. One of the most famous examples of this was Ceasar's Battle of Alesia - by punching through the gallic lines, he divided their forces, and was able to isolate and panic one major group of them with a cavalry charge - because that group was cut off from the rest of them, and they seemed (locally) to be completely outnumbered, they panicked and ran, leaving all of their compatriots behind, letting the romans beat them piece by piece. Likewise, in another major historical incident - this was also basically how Arminius defeated the three roman legions in his famous rout - he caught them in the woods, on ground where they couldn't assume the testudo formation. He planned it. The point is that outfitting a few soldiers with exotic "crowd control" equipment was a small price to pay to potentially win a battle, especially when the soldiers in question were fully functional as regular fighters by just switching to the sword at their belt. Anyways, I've said my peace, so I won't be reading any further replies. Folks can get entire degrees studying this stuff, and this is pretty well established that these were a thing.