This MYSTERIOUS Spanish SWORD is NOT WHAT YOU THINK!

It's a Spanish rapier. No, it's not. It's a Bilbao. No, it's not. It's a backsword. No, it's not. It's a broadsword. What the hell is it? We're going to look here at some Spanish swords. Hi folks, Matt Easton here, scholar gladiatorial and eastern antique arms. Now we're going to come back to this sword in a minute and work out what the hell this thing actually is. Now, many of you have hopefully by this point seen my previous video on the Bilbao broadsword. Here I have one, which was one of the ones featured in that video, which we're going to look at in a second. But before we do, I want to highlight the fact that most people in the modern world see a sword with a hilt like this and immediately think it's a rapier. And in fact, many of them are. This is my very own personal Cavettan Spanish cup hilt that I use on a week to week basis in fencing. And indeed, this has a full cup hilt, long cross guard, knuckle bow, pommel, relatively short grip, quite characteristic Spanish hilt style. But this is a long 45 inch narrow blade, and this is unquestionably a rapier. This is a thrust centric sword, not to say you can't cut with it. It's not very good at cutting, but you can give good cuts with it to certain targets when the opportunity arises. But it is primarily a long thrusting sword. That's what it's mostly for, is the use of the point. Now, the Spanish, I think a lot of people don't necessarily realize this. They watch Dogtanion, which I've referenced before. That's the second time I've referenced Dogtanion in the last month, I think. But they watch musketeer films and they see cup hilts, which were mass produced for movies, whether it's movies about Sir Francis Drake or pirate movies or musketeer movies. And they see cup hilts and they immediately think 17th century rapier. Now, the interesting thing is cup hilts actually weren't very common on rapiers until really relatively late in the history of the rapier. OK, so for most of the history of the rapier, we actually have things like this swept hilt here. OK, so most of the history of rapiers actually saw the use of swept hilts with a series of bars and the cup hilt didn't really come around until relatively late in the history of the rapier. After the year 1600, bearing in mind that rapiers have been around since what we could vaguely call rapiers from about 1550 onwards, obviously there's a grey area with is it a scythe or is it a rapier, but more or less from the 1550 to 1600 period. And then cup hilts start to come around in the early 1600s, but don't really become popular, even in Spain, don't really become popular until about the 1620s, 1630s. So, and funnily enough, not only Spain. So there are forms of dish hilt or cup hilt which also become popular in parts of what's now Germany, in England and elsewhere. OK, so the Spanish cup hilt really was in its heyday around 1630, 1640, but stayed around all the way to the 19th century, as we're going to see in a second. Now, these are very effective hilts. There is a good reason why in HEMA, loads of people use cup hilts, even when they're not practicing Spanish rapier, myself included, because they are really protective. It's a really brilliant, simple solution for protecting the hand in a thrust-centric fencing style. It gives really good frontal protection and even gives very good protection from all other angles, especially when coupled with these long quillons or guards. Now, it should be mentioned that certain other nations of people who used cup hilts, the southern Italians, the English, didn't have these long cross guards, but they did have dishes and bowls. Maybe we'll look at that in a future video. If there's any interest in that, post down below and maybe we'll look at English hilts or southern Italian hilts. But, by and large, this cup hilt, I think the Spanish kind of got to a point where they thought, that is the ultimate hilt, that's brilliant, we don't need to evolve it anymore from here. And unlike most other nations who went towards the small sword, the Spanish, not to say they didn't use small swords as well, but they stuck with these sorts of cup hilts on rapiers. Now, as we've discussed in the past, rapiers with long narrow blades are brilliant in a duel, brilliant in self-defense, not very good in war, or at least they weren't that popular in war. They were used in war, they were carried in war sometimes, particularly by infantry, not very popular, not very effective as cavalry swords for various, perhaps obvious reasons that I won't go into here. But that meant that the Spanish were in this unique position where they considered they developed the perfect hilt, but they didn't always want the long narrow blade that they would use in dueling, they didn't always want that in war. So, as we saw previously, what they devised, oh and incidentally here is an original version of, an original Spanish rapier, but you'll notice, unlike the full, there's a minor, minor variation here, unlike the full circular cup, which is the true cup hilt, we actually have here, which is called a shell hilt if we translate it from Spanish, because it's like two shells, and actually this ran alongside, this was also as popular because it offers the same degree of coverage really. So you've got two big shells on either side, and then a series of bars in between, actually if you look at the Alatrist movie for example, he actually uses something like this. But overall it's the same end result as a cup hilt, because you've got the same coverage all around here, you've still got two long quillons, a short grip, a knuckle bow, so on and so forth. So this is an original Spanish rapier from Leon, from probably dating to about 1660, something like that. But as mentioned, when they went to war, they often, particularly for people who were going to be mounted on horseback, but also people on boats and various other types of soldier, marine and sailor, decided what they needed was what we now commonly call the bilbao, or bilbo, broadsword. This one is a broadsword. I'll come back to how we define a broadsword in a second, and you'll notice that this essentially, if I pick up my modern rapier, is extremely similar. Very, very similar in size, in coverage, they've both got a knuckle bow, they've both got long quillons, they've both got a cup hilt. Very, very, very similar hilts, but utterly different blades. Admittedly this is a blunt one for rapier fencing, but you can see it was pretty similar to the antique rapier I was holding a second ago. So if I put the rapier down, so the bilbao, or bilbo, is defined by having a broadsword kind of war blade. So not to say that they didn't carry these in civilian life, but these primarily are the military sword that Spain used. So we've got this funny situation whereby we've got a hilt which we commonly associate with rapiers, but as an overall weapon, this definitely isn't a rapier. This is a broadsword. So how do we define a broadsword? In this case, the blade is relatively broad. It's broader than we would ever really call a rapier. There are some swords that are sometimes termed as rapier swords. I'm not really a big fan of that expression, but that is when you, if I just pick up the antique rapier for a second, it's when you have something which is roughly halfway between a broadsword and a rapier. So we do have things, and they're more akin to something like a spadroon in width, so we do have something that comes halfway in between. But in Spain, for military purposes, this was a very popular and successful sword design with a broadsword blade similar to what you might find on a highland basket hilt, or an English mortuary hilt, or various types of, you Right, so here's where it gets a little bit funny. So we now got, we know what a rapier is, we know what a bilbo is. A bilbo is essentially a broadsword blade on what would otherwise be a cup hilt, or sometimes double shell hilt, Spanish style hilt. But there is another thing. Sometimes those double-edged blades are only single-edged. Now when it's a backsword therefore, so a backsword is where instead of having two edges, you only have one edge, we generally call that a backsword in English. However, that is still known, if you have a Spanish hilt with a backsword blade, it's still known as the bilbo broadsword or bilbo sword, military sword, just a bilbo sometimes, bilbo. But here's an interesting example. So here we have a more or less classic, I'll talk about some of the details in a second, hilt, very similar in basic format to the earlier rapier hilt here with two shells. But you'll notice this is simplified. Now in the 18th century, I mentioned that the Spanish continued using this essentially, you know, this basic format of hilt. This hasn't been cleaned by the way, this is straight as it's come to me before I clean it up and sell it probably. But you'll notice it doesn't have the connecting bars in here. So this is just a simpler, more mass-produced military version of the hilt, but we've essentially still got two shells. And notice that the outside shell, so for a right-handed person here, you need more protection on the right-hand side than the left-hand side. And you'll notice that the right-hand side shell is slightly bigger than the left-hand shell, it comes further around. But you've just got the shells, you don't have the connecting bars. However, functionally you've still got a short grip and a little pommel, a knuckle bow, two relatively long guards and two finger rings inside. So the basic format of the hilt in terms of coverage and size and shape is not that different to the cup hilt which was evolved in the 17th century. However, this is early 19th century, this is actually Napoleonic. This is the same era as the 1796 light cavalry sabre or the various spadroons that we show on this channel. This is a Napoleonic sword, moreover, this is literally the type of sword that the Spanish cavalry were carrying in the Peninsular War. So if you've ever read or watched the Sharp series of stories by Bernard Cornwell, where the British army is in Portugal and Spain and eventually in France, that indeed this is what the Spanish cavalry were armed with. Unlike British or French patterns which are very regimented and regulated, my observation is the Spanish pattern has a lot more variation in it. So I suspect they were being made in a number of different places or at least different workshops to a general pattern, this, but they were equipped with a number of different blades. Now indeed some of them have double-edged broadsword blades, this is an earlier one by the way, this is an 18th century sword. Some of them have double-edged blades, some of them have single-edged blades, but they're all generally either known as a bilbo or simply a Spanish heavy cavalry sword. But this is one with a twist. So bear in mind that during the Peninsular War, the Napoleonic period, Spain was sort of divided. Officially the Spanish were allied with the French. Hence at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, when Nelson won his stunning victory, he wasn't just fighting against the French, he was actually also fighting against the Spanish. So it was the British versus the French and Spanish fleet, and in fact the biggest ship present was a Spanish ship. Maybe we'll look with Dracunafil at some point at the Battle of Trafalgar because there's lots of interesting things to say about that, and close combat weapons and things like that. So the Spanish were very powerful, very powerful army, very powerful navy, but they had more internal problems than the French should we say, so there were some Spanish actually fighting on the other side as well, it gets complicated. But nevertheless, here is an interesting detail, this is not a standard blade on this Spanish peninsula or hilt, this is actually a French cuirassier blade. What do I mean by that? Well it just so happens I have one right here to demonstrate. So many of you will have seen my videos on the French cuirassiers, they are the heavy cavalry that wear helmets and breastplates still, and they were musket-proof, bulletproof breastplates. So the cuirassier sword is a gargantuan great thing for the time, the blade's usually about 37-38 inches but they can be up to 39, and it is characterized, just put the scabbard down for a second, it is characterized by a single edged double fullered blade with a spear point, although the Napoleonic era ones, this is a later, this is an 1854, but the earlier ones actually have a hatchet point on them, but it is a long straight blade that is a palash. Now, bear in mind that the Spanish were predominantly allied with the French and so for some reason what we find here, just put that French palash down, is a French blade on a Spanish hilt, so it actually tells a story about the Napoleonic wars. So, to wrap this up, the Spanish cup hilt is famous for, and was developed really for, rapiers and evolved for rapiers in Spain, but they were so happy and loved that hilt so much that they stuck it on everything else, they stuck it on every kind of blade, and as mentioned there was the shell hilted version, the double shell, the conchas I think they call it, conch shell, and they stuck it on broadsword blades and backsword blades, and as we see here, and this is a or we could say it's a palash blade, they occasionally mounted it up as a cavalry sword, presumably for heavy cavalry, perhaps for Spanish cuirassiers, I think they had cuirassiers at that point, get posting down below. Do you know, does anyone out there, are there any Spanish people watching this that might know the exact reason why we have a French cuirassier blade on a Spanish Spanish heavy cavalry hilt? The only other thing to mention about this hilt is a little bit non-regulation because we actually have a faceted pommel, which is a little bit unusual, they're normally just round, so this is a little bit unusual in various ways, maybe this was a cavalry sergeant, perhaps even an officer, I don't know, but anyway, really interesting sword and hopefully you've now learned a little bit more about Spanish swords going from the 17th century all the way through the 18th to the beginning of the 19th century and the Napoleonic wars. Let me know in the comments down below, did you know any of this? Did you expect to see a French cuirassier blade on a Spanish hilt? I didn't and that's why I had to buy it! Anyway, thanks a lot for watching, I have been Matt Easton, of course I'll continue to be, any particular questions about Spanish swords, French swords, Napoleonic wars or the battle of Trafalgar, get posting down below and I hope to see you back on the channel really soon. Cheers folks! 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