Leonardo da Vinci sketched a scythed chariot, a wagon fitted with rotating blades intended to slash through opposing soldiers or horses. The concept appears among his studies of military machines and battlefield tactics.
A scythed chariot used long blades attached to wheels or rotating assemblies. Leonardo’s version was powered by horses and included mechanisms intended to keep the blades moving as the vehicle advanced. Like many of his war machines, it remained a design rather than a documented battlefield invention.
Ancient armies had used scythed chariots long before Leonardo, especially in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world. Leonardo’s drawing therefore represents a Renaissance reworking of an older weapon idea, not the first scythed chariot ever conceived. Modern illustrations sometimes exaggerate the mechanism beyond what his surviving sketches actually show.