The BEST CENTURY for SWORDS? 17th century cut and thrust swords

Is this the greatest sword design ever? Firstly. And secondly, let's have a little bit of a talk about 17th century swords and how we sometimes oversimplify. Hi folks, Merry Christmas, Matt Easton here. So this is going to be a somewhat rambling, but I'll try and keep it relatively short video based on some new swords which have come into my hands, some into my inventory, some into my personal collection, but they're some awesome, awesome swords. I'll quickly go through them. So first of all, we've got this probably Scottish and possibly English massive backsword. We'll come back to that in a second. And it connects to a sword which I have claimed is one of the best British military sword designs of 1788. We'll come back to that in a second. We'll also mention this 1740s British cavalry backsword as well. We will also look at this amazing Walloon broadsword here with that very attractive hilt. Well, I think it is anyway, your mileage might vary. And finally, we will talk about this so-called rapier from about 1620 German that's just come into my hands. And I bought this at a certain auction recently because I fell in love with it. Right. We'll come back to that. So first of all, let's start off with this massive backsword. This has a about a 38 and a half inch blade. It is massive. Now, many of you will have seen my video I did on the 1788 heavy cavalry, British heavy cavalry sword. Also, you may hopefully have seen the video I did about the CJM swords. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out the links down below under Eastern Antique Arms. There's a research section on there where I put essays up. And one of them is about the CJM swords, which Wilkinson made, which were based on a certain type of earlier 18th century Scottish basket hilted sword, but also certain types of British cavalry swords, backswords, essentially this. So here we go. I've finally got my hands on. Well, I mean, I've had my hands on them before, but I finally owned one of the swords and this is the CJM blade. So this is in fact the exact blade that the CJM sword was based on. And very, very similar to what we find on, uh, not all, but many, or some at least of the, um, 1788 heavy cavalry swords. So what defines this? Well, what's fascinating about this blade design and what's very, very different to most swords out there. So we normally talk about broad swords being double edged, much like most medieval knightly swords, uh, or, uh, swords being backswords. Now this is a good example of a backsword. I'll come back to that in a second, but essentially this is a backsword. So a backsword means single edged, like a falchion or a certain types of hanger or saber. Um, so you could say that a saber for the most part is a curved backsword, but within British or rather English nomenclature, a backsword is essentially a single edged sword. Now, single edged swords are for the most part easier to make, um, depending on the details, but also, um, they can have, uh, it's easier to make quite a narrow edge geometry because the thickest part of the blade is at the back instead of at the middle, like a double edged sword. Um, and they've got certain other advantages as well. And of course, when you've got complex hilts, which mean that you can only hold the blade around a certain way, you can't flip it around the other way. You could argue there's no point having two edges at that point anyway. Although back edges can be used for cutting with the false edge in certain cutting fashions that we see, for example, with a Langmesser and things like that, or indeed with Monchette, which are upwards cuts that we find in certain saber manuals. But anyway, that's a complicated topic for another day. So what characterizes this blade is that it's essentially a broadsword from there up and a backsword from there down. So let's have a little look at that cross section. So exactly like, I would say exactly like the CJM blade, it's actually the other way around. This is that the CJM blade is modeled on this. Uh, so this is literally what the CJM blade is modeled on. So you'll notice it has a thick spine up here with a plain ricasso section, and then it goes into a double fuller. So we have a primary fuller in the middle and a thinner fuller at the back, a little bit like certain French swords with the Montmorency, um, secondary fuller and that continues. So it's essentially, it's a backsword all the way up to here. And then we have, if you can, if it's focused, there we go. We've got this nice shoulder here, and then it transitions into the one fuller remaining for the rest, almost all the way to the point. And this is double edged. Why would you have it like that? Well, there's a number of advantages. So firstly, by having this very thick spine at the base of the blade, it means that the bottom of the blade is really, really stiff, which makes it very good in the bind and also very strong, uh, parrying, um, very robust, durable. Um, but also stiffness is really important. A just generally actually like distal taper normally works. And then the second half of the blade being double edged. Why? Well, first of all, it means that we can now cut with both edges theoretically, but it also makes it more effective at thrusting, uh, because we have less resistance going into and out of targets, but also in terms of handling, it means that this whopping great blade over 38 inches long from the, from the hilt down here is quite light in the second half of the blade, which means that for its size, okay, it's overall weight is quite heavy, especially with that big steel basket, but for its size, it's quite a nimble sword, especially for the length. So in many ways you could say, I've, I've asserted that this is an amazing, a genius, almost ahead of its time, uh, design of blade. It's not totally true. If we go back all the way, actually into the seventh, eighth, ninth centuries, we can find certain types of, uh, central and Eastern European sabers, which actually have this same arrangement, uh, that one of the so-called swords of Charlemagne, for example, actually has a similar, although it's curved, it has a slightly curved, it has a, um, similar cross-sectional, um, uh, sort of design and idea to this. Um, and you know, if we look at Turkish swords, for example, the Kilic, it's similar to this in cross-section in that you essentially have a double-edged foible, but a single-edged fort. Very, very interesting anyway, but one of the reasons why I might assert that this is possibly better than the 1788 or the CGM swords is the hilt because you have one of the most protective hilts ever devised here. Um, the, um, the basket hilt. Now we'll look a little bit more in more detail at these swords in a future dedicated video. Um, but just really at this point to point out, this is a complete iron basket. What I would say, bringing it back and saying why the 1788 is so good is one of the characteristic feature of these types of basket hilts is that you have these sidebars joining at the side there, and they do limit and restrict your hand movement somewhat. Okay. Now you do get used to them. You can get used to them. Um, and certainly if you are used to them, it is easier to be more dexterous with these than, than if you're not used to them, but the 1788 only connects at the front. So it's, it's like a saber hilt. So in that sense, I would say it's easier to use that type of hilt, but again, everything's balanced. This is more protective than the 1788 hilt. So what the 1788 hilt did was slightly reduce the protectiveness, slightly reduce the protectiveness, uh, for a result. It's a bit like a skivona, but it still gives you a lot of, um, mobility. Right. So next we're going to come over to the, um, pure backsword or is it a pure backsword? So there's a couple of interesting details about this, and I'm going to do a dedicated video on this because there's actually a very interesting story connected to this model of sword. The Royal Armouries have a few of these, but it is a rare sword. And you'll notice that the basket hilt is brass, and that is part of the story. It helps us identify it with a certain regiment or regiments, but also one particular hero of the, um, the middle, slightly earlier than of the 1700s. So this dates to about 1740, thereabouts, and it was used by certain cavalry regiments in the British army in the wars on the continent there. But anyway, there's a very interesting story. I'll do a dedicated video, but purely to point out, uh, interesting point, brass basket instead of normally the iron basket, but you'll also notice it is not symmetrical. So this is something that I think not a lot of people are aware of, that some 18th century basket hilts, they project more around the outside of the hand, around the back of the hand there, than they do on the inside of the hand. Why? Makes them slightly easier to wear, more comfortable to wear, makes the basket slightly lighter, cuts down on some of the weight. This would have probably had a leather liner inside it, which, incidentally, so would this. So although they have open bars at the moment, originally they would have had, um, leather, um, and sometimes with, uh, red or other colored fabric on the inside. They don't always have that, and funnily enough, actually with this, it doesn't have a full liner. The surviving one that has one actually just has a liner at the bottom here, but that does mean that if you're fencing, or fighting, against people with thrusting swords, and you're fighting with your arm extended out here, it means that their points can't easily go straight through the top of your hilt into your hand. So that is, in some ways, um, it's also not a typical backsword. So I won't say that this is typical, although funnily this is actually more typical, although it's hard to find those now in the collecting world. This is extremely rare, and is less typical, and funnily enough, although I call it a backsword, it is predominantly, um, so it has single edged spine, one fuller, but it does still, much like later sabers, it does still have a sharpened back edge, false edge up here, which in this case has clearly been sharpened in its service life. So again, that assists thrusting in and out. You could theoretically use it to cut with, but I don't really think that they did. Right, so what's interesting is those basket hilts, they have their ancestor, they start in the 16th century, really quite early in the 1500s. So, uh, Mary Rose, the Mary Rose sword is a type of early basket hilt, and we find already in the 1530s, Mary Rose sunk in 1545, incidentally, but we find already in the 1530s types of basket hilt, and as mentioned, I think, in my Skia Vona video, and incidentally I have another video coming up on basket hilts filmed at the auction, and there are more auction videos coming, but there are essentially three main famous, at least, areas where basket hilts developed. One in Britain, two in Germany, particularly in more southern Germany and Austria, and three in Venice with the Skia Vona, which I've done some videos on recently. For various reasons, we can talk about that in detail at a later point, but what's interesting is the basket hilt comes around in the 16th century and becomes quite popular in the 17th century, but already at that point in the 17th century, some people were looking at hilts which still offered a lot of hand protection, but gave more openness to the hand, a more sort of flexibility of movement, and also less mass, and so we start to see these hilts, these Walloon hilts, and here we've got a very nice sword, probably dates to the late, well, definitely to the late 1600s, possibly to the 1670s, 1680s, 1690s, could be as late as 1700, and there are some that are dated just after that. This one is actually written in the fuller Mifecet Solingen, so it's German, or at least the blade is German. The hilts are often Dutch, or Walloon indeed, which gives us its name, but it should be pointed out that these were also carried in England, Scandinavia, and elsewhere, and France incidentally, so this was a popular model of sword, and now the funny thing is, although this was around at the same time as basket hilted swords, although this is an 18th century sword that these types of hilts were already around at this point, so late 1600s we've got various types of basket hilts, but we've also got these hilts here. Now why would people choose these? Quite simply because, as I've said, it's lighter, it gives more mobility to the hand, more sort of dexterity essentially. They are usually, but not always, fitted with thumb rings, and again, I've talked about those in the past, and I'm sure I'll talk more detail about them in the future, but what I really wanted to say about these is what's interesting is actually in the coverage that these give, and in terms of the overall kind of shape of these, I'm just trying to grab a sword which would be a good example, there we go, here's a Victorian sword, they actually occupy a similar amount of space and interact with the hand in similar ways to later sabres. You can notice that they connect at one junction at the front of the pommel, they are asymmetrical, they project slightly more on the right hand side than the left hand side because your hand is, assuming you're right-handed, is balanced in that way, it's not symmetrical. The only big difference really is the thumb ring, which more or less disappears on later sabres, but they actually interact with the hand, they've I mean even got the rear quill on, so in many ways we could say that later military sabre hilts that are seen so much on this channel, because that's obviously a lot of what I study and deal with and own, actually are functionally quite similar to these early Walloon hilts, so these are sort of ahead of their time, we'll come back to that a second. Now bear in mind that sword dates to about let's say 1670, okay, so if that sword dates to 1670 we only have to go back to 1630 and you've still got swords like this, this amazing rapier, or is it rapier? Oh no, it isn't, I don't think, we'll come back to that in a second, but that is a swept hilt. Now the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice while this is a genuine antique, don't worry I'm going to oil the blade afterwards so don't post in the comments, don't touch the blades, I'm going to clean all these in a second, this is a swept hilt of a German style. Now let's just go over here for a second, oh look, isn't that similar? That's the windlass town guard sword, Munich town guard, very very very similar style of hilt and it's a very German style, so that style of hilt very popular in Germany and it's a type of swept hilt that goes all the way back into the 1500s, so you can find hilts very similar to this, it's quite sharp so I'm just going to hold it by the hilt, you can find them all the way back into the sort of 1560s, 70s, something like that, all the way through to even as late as the 1640s, so an incredibly long-lived and successful hilt style and yet you have to bear in mind that that style of swept hilt was around at the same time as basket hilts and at the almost the same time, yeah pretty much, as the earliest woolloon hilts. So the 17th century I think gets underappreciated particularly amongst YouTuber historians, sword historians like me, and I intend to redress that in 2025. I'm getting more and more interested in 17th century swords and as you can see I'm starting to lay my hands on more of them, so I will be dealing with more 17th century swords, it's an incredibly interesting period, it's also of course a period where firearms are being used massively alongside swords which are also being used massively, as well as obviously things like halberds and pikes and things like that. So what I really wanted to say was what's interesting is these are all cut and thrust swords, okay, none of these are what I would class really as true rapiers, certainly none of these are small swords, none of these are hangers, these are all swords with quite long cut and thrust blades of a certain width that are essentially broad swords or back swords, and that's right, this sword here, while in fact in the auction catalogue it was described as a rapier, rapier as I've said in so many videos is such a loose and vague term, I personally wouldn't call this a rapier, I think it's more correctly known as a riding sword or just a sword, and again I know I quote Swetnam quite often but if we look at Swetnam he says and I would call this a long sword, the blade is about 38-39 inches incidentally, so I would call this a long sword, why? Because it's not a dedicated thrusting blade, this has actually got quite a lot of width on it, quite a bit of flex on it, it's not particularly stiff, and the blade on it is very comparable in size and shape to the Walloon broadsword, which we call a broadsword, no one would call this a rapier, so to me this is not a rapier, functionally a rapier, I would use this more like a big sabre or big side sword, and it's got a lot of cutting capacity, it feels absolutely amazing in the hand, and we'll do some more videos looking at these in the future. So really just to say that I think we get sometimes we pigeonhole swords into oh that's a rapier, that's a basket hilted broadsword, that's a Walloon broadsword, but as we can see in a period between 1600 and 1750 we've got a bunch of swords which actually all have blades which really do the same thing and are about the same size and about the same weight, but they have wildly different hilt designs, and it's so interesting that you get hilt that looks something from the 1500s alongside a hilt which functionally is actually really quite similar to 19th century hilts. So it's a massive meeting point, the 17th century, we have hangers that look like things that were almost like 19th century hangers, we've got small swords coming in which are still being carried in the late 1700s or 1800s, so the 17th century is this wonderful meeting point between renaissance swords and what I would call industrial era swords. Fascinating, fascinating period. Anyway I hope that's been somewhat thought-provoking, all of these swords will be featured in future videos and some of them will get deep dives. If you don't see me before Christmas then have an absolutely wonderful time, but I am going to keep putting videos out and I have a lot of pre-recorded stuff anyway so there's going to be more videos coming from the auctions looking at specific objects including basket hilts as it happens and various other very very cool things. Anyway thanks a lot for watching this far, any questions, comments, requests get posted down below, maybe at some point over the festive season Lucy and I might do a live stream as well. If you'd like to see us do a live stream again let us know down in the comments down below. I hope I'll see you back really soon, have a fantastic Christmas, take care of yourselves, much love, peace and all of that kind of stuff and see you really soon back here on the channel. Cheers folks! 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