Swords of a Thousand Men
1981 single by Tenpole Tudor
"Swords of a Thousand Men" is a song and single written by Eddie Tenpole, and performed by the English punk band Tenpole Tudor. It was first released on Stiff Records in March 1981. It entered the UK Singles Chart in April that year, reaching number 6 and staying for 10 weeks on the chart. On 1 June 1981, the single was awarded a silver certification by the BPI in the UK for sales of over 250,000 units.
Charts
Skyclad version
In 2001, British folk metal group Skyclad released the song as their second true single (after 1993's "Thinking Allowed"). It featured two versions of Skyclad's cover of the song, one with Tenpole Tudor, plus a re-recorded version of one of their earliest tracks.
In other media
The lyric "Over the hill with the swords of a thousand men" was used by writer Garth Ennis as the title for a story arc of his comic series The Boys, consisting of issues 60–65. This lyric was again used as the title of the third episode of the second season of the Amazon Prime Video adaptation of the comic.
The song enjoyed a new lease of life thanks to being used as the opening titles theme for 2012's The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Swords of a Thousand Men” as 1981 single by Tenpole Tudor. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7659355. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1981, 2001, 1993 and 2012.
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This entry incorporates text from “Swords of a Thousand Men” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.