Leonardo da Vinci’s scythed chariot used rotating blades to attack people around a horse-drawn chariot.
Leonardo’s drawing shows a vehicle surrounded by long, rotating blades driven by the motion of the wheels. The machine was designed to cut through groups of soldiers as the chariot moved across a battlefield. It belongs to his extensive studies of military engineering, which included weapons, fortifications, bridges, and transport machines.
The concept was dangerous to its own operators as well as to the enemy. The blades could injure horses, drivers, or nearby troops, and the vehicle would have been difficult to control over uneven ground. There is no reliable evidence that Leonardo’s version was built or used in combat.
The idea also has an ancient precedent: scythed chariots were used in warfare before Leonardo’s time. His version is therefore best understood as a Renaissance redesign of an older weapon, not an entirely new category of battlefield machine.