A hybrid sword design for Indian cavalry in British service - antique swords

Hi guys, Matt Easton here. So during the 19th century lots of Indian cavalrymen served under British officers, under British command, and irregular cavalry were allowed to use their own weapons and wear their own clothes. They didn't have to wear government uniforms, and a lot of them, in fact most of them, certainly initially used tulwars. However, over time it was found that a more consistent quality of weapon could be gained if British government-made weapons were supplied. And of course there's an economic element to this as well, because by supplying the Indian soldiers with British-made equipment you're essentially paying your own arms manufacturers to supply the troops that you're paying. So it's a bit like the economics of modern warfare, modern military equipment, whereby you want your own soldiers and your allies to use the equipment that you make, because that benefits your own economy. But without getting into the economics of it too much, most irregular cavalry troopers probably until about 1860 used tulwars. However, as I've mentioned in previous videos, a lot of tulwars did actually feature British blades, both of the 1788 pattern sabre and the 1796 pattern light cavalry sabre, and additionally, of course, German-made blades. So many tulwars that I've actually showed in previous videos, and Ferengi and other types of Indian sword, actually feature European-made blades made in Solingen, a lot of them in Germany. So it was found by the middle of the, by the kind of 1850s, by the middle of the 19th century, that actually a lot of Indian cavalry troopers really, really liked the 1796 pattern light cavalry sabre, which by official standards had gone out of use, it had been made obsolete. One of the advantages, therefore, was that there were a lot of stocks of this old pattern sword that was no longer in official British service around, and they could be pressed into service in India or sold off to independent Indian states. Actually, during the Indian Mutiny, we know that Hodson, of Hodson's Horse, actually found a stash of these old 1796 light cavalry sabres and distributed them to his own irregular Indian cavalry, many of whom, of course, then used them in preference to native-made swords, simply because, in some cases, they were better quality blades, they'd been proved and tested, and they were of modern industrially made steel, industrially made by the standards of the day, of course. However, one of the drawbacks of tulwars, and indeed of the 1796 light cavalry sabre, is that, at best, they have a single single knuckle bow protecting the top of the hand and protecting the front of the hand here, and clearly some form of barred basket hill offers better protection. Now, there is a sword that I've shown in a couple of other videos, I think, that's raised some questions, and it is this, and what it is is essentially a hybrid between something close to a 1796 light cavalry blade, but with a three bar 1821 pattern hilt, and what this does is it marries the best of both worlds. It offers a pretty good level of hand protection, it's not a full basket, of course, it's not even a half basket, it is only what we call a three bar hilt because you've got one, two, three bars, and this is the standard 1821 pattern light cavalry hilt, also used by the Royal Artillery, incidentally, but it marries a better guard than the tulwar or the simple knuckle bow of the 1796. It marries it to a big curved cutting blade, and this blade is very, very similar. Oh, just briefly to mention the scabbard, you'll notice the scabbard is leather. It's not entirely like a a tulwar scabbard, but it's very similar and it's kind of inspired by, and anybody seeing a sword with a scabbard like that, certainly in the sword sort of sword collecting world, immediately thinks India, and it has, it's got very obvious Indian undertones to its design. The sword itself, this I believe to be an officer's version, that is an Indian officer. In the Indian army at the time, there were British officers and Indian officers, and then there were, the soldiers were Indian, so essentially you had the rank and file Indian, then you had Indian NCOs, that is corporals and sergeants, then above them you had Indian officers, and then above them you had British officers. The British officers were very, very small in number and they required the Indian officers and the Indian NCOs to provide the bulk of the sort of command structure. So the reason I believe this to be an officer's one is because, I hope you can see in the light maybe there, it's actually got wire in the recesses of the grip. The trooper's versions tend not to have that, and also just the quality of the finish is very high. It's got a checkered section on the back strap there for the thumb, when you hold it in the sabre grip, and these are not typical features of the trooper's weapon. The blade is really, really light and incredibly thin in the foible. It's quite sharp, so I have to be a little bit careful doing this, but if I just push it into my palm and just apply a bit of pressure, you'll see how easily it flexes. It's similar to some tool wires, not all tool wires are this thin and this light, some tool wires are really thick and sturdy as I've shown in previous videos, but this is a particularly light and slicey blade, and as I mentioned before, its thrusting capacity is really zero. It's made for someone who is really going to cut and slash, primarily with the drawing cut as well. So there we go, we did have a sword that is essentially, it marries a Napoleonic period 1796 light cavalry blade with a later Victorian three-bar hilt, and it was given to Indian, regular and regular cavalry in fact, and this model of sword, although it's not terribly common, it's not that uncommon, you find them, they come up in auction and you'll find them on antique dealers websites, not infrequently, and they were in fact used until the Second World War, and by the end of the Second World War, unfortunately I would say, the Indian cavalry were basically re-equipped with the thrusting model of sword, the 1908. In actual fact, there's an Indian version of the 1908 that's essentially cheaper made, it's got a wooden grip instead of the special kind of vulcanite type grip, and it's just a bit more basic, but that replaced, the dedicated thrusting sword replaced this. I know that I'll then get comments, why, why did it replace it? Well you've got to remember this is World War One, whilst cavalry did have some important actions in World War One, it was a very different type of war obviously to everything that had gone before, and there were, I won't say there were no, but there were almost no cavalry against cavalry actions, there were very few cavalry against infantry actions. Cavalry were really operating in a very different way by the end of World War One, and so the kind of the lance or the skewer kind of hit and run, don't stand, don't get into a melee kind of thing, or don't don't come against other cavalry, was kind of more of the cavalry thinking by that point, and if you look at Patton's cavalry sword and Patton's cavalry manual, it hasn't like no defence in there whatsoever, it's basically just point and shoot and run, okay, so a very different mindset to cavalry fighting than what had gone in the 19th century, because they were looking at fighting mechanised enemies, perhaps attacking baggage trains, attacking machine gun posts, this kind of thing, not getting into melees with Afghan tribesmen. So there we go, a curved cutting sword, a Talwar-ish blade, although as I've said in previous videos, the 1796 blade is reasonably different to the actual Indian-made Talwars, and a Victorian three-bar hilt, and you do see these in photos up until about 1918, and after which they're replaced with the thrusting model of sword. There we go guys, cheers!