Antique Victorian Heavy Cavalry Officer Swords - 1821 & 1896 Patterns

Hey folks, Matt Easton here of Eastern Antique Arms. So here we're going to talk about the heavy cavalry officer's sword and I'm going to talk a bit about the patterns and basically the fact that I think it's one of the best designed British military swords of the 19th century and in fact it ran into the 20th century as well. So to start up I'll just give you a little glimpse of what we're talking about here. So this is the, let's call this video looking at the Victorian period heavy cavalry officer's sword. Now at the beginning of Victoria's reign, 1837, she came to the throne, there was a pipe back blade. We're not going to look at pipe back blades, I've spoken about pipe backs and how they were replaced in 1845 by the new so-called Wilkinson pattern blade. In fact this model of blade that Wilkinson introduced in 1845, you can find an article about this incidentally on Eastern Antique Arms website in the research section, it wasn't a completely new design but Wilkinson kind of promoted this particular fullered and spear-pointed style blade as a replacement for the pipe back blade. The pipe back blade had some issues, some like them, as I've spoken about in previous videos I personally think actually pipe back blades are quite good if they're broad then they work well but if you make the blade narrower then the pipe back design sort of falls apart, doesn't really work very well. But we're not going to talk about the blade so much here, we're going to look at the post-1845 heavy cavalry officer's sword. So the first thing to say is in 1845, at the beginning of our period that we're looking at, you had light cavalry and you had heavy cavalry. Very simply speaking they had slightly different jobs on the battlefield, although already by the Crimean war, certainly in the British army, we start to see really that the roles of light and heavy cavalry are sort of similar. Really the Crimean war, the charge of the light brigade, the charge of the heavy brigade, was probably one of the last occasions in British military history when we really see light cavalry and heavy cavalry used in distinctively different ways. Traditionally heavy cavalry were the more direct hammer blow charge, kept back for the final sort of the best moment, a bit like French cuirassiers, for them to really plow into the usually the flank of an opposing infantry formation and scatter them at the moment when they were the most vulnerable. That wasn't the only use of heavy cavalry, cavalry as a whole did have other duties as well, scouting and covering the advance of or covering the movement of infantry and all this kind of stuff, attacking artillery and so on and so forth. But by and large heavy cavalry was the kind of the shock troop and light cavalry was usually for scouting, skirmishing, reconnaissance type stuff, also kind of protecting flanks from other cavalry, perhaps zooming in to take out enemy artillery quickly, hit and run. Basically hit and run, so highly mobile, moving around, striking and then moving on. So generally speaking heavy cavalry was more about getting stuck in, light cavalry was more about hit, run, hit again, run again. By kind of the end of Crimean War that had kind of fallen apart, or kind of fallen by the wayside shall we say, and cavalry were more often doing similar roles. But the reason I'm talking about this is that there were two different types of swords in the British military and in fact it has to be said in most European militaries, there were light cavalry swords and there were heavy cavalry swords. Now what I've spoken about the role of light and heavy cavalry dictated that partly, so on a very sort of simplistic point of view, let's have a look at, so I will have shown this quite iconic three-bar hilt which was used by light cavalry officers. So we're just looking at officer's swords now because that was based on the troopers' swords, so the normal men of the cavalry are known as troopers and then they have NCOs, non-commissioned officers or some certain types of warrant officers, so corporals and sergeants and things like this, and then you have officers who are commissioned into the force, so there's a division between officers and men and the men are known as troopers in the cavalry and they had three-bar hilts in the light cavalry and more protective and bigger and slightly heavier hilts like this in the heavy cavalry. Now the heavy cavalry officer's sword is like this, it is modelled pretty much on the earlier 1796 heavy cavalry officer's hilt. Now note these hilts are different to the troopers' hilts, so the heavy cavalry troopers' hilts don't have, they're not as ornate as this, they don't have as many sort of perforations if you like, they don't have this scrolling, as we call it, decoration, but this that you see here on this Victorian one is modelled on the earlier Napoleonic heavy cavalry officer's hilt. The troopers' weapons were simpler and they didn't have so much decoration, they didn't have so many sort of holes in the in the hilt as it were. The reason the holes are there incidentally is so that you can use a thick metal guard and make it lighter. If you used thin sheet metal it would be more prone to damage, so you could have thin sheet metal without so many perforations and that would be fairly light but it'd be more prone to damage. The advantage of having a guard which has small perforations that are not really big enough to let a blade through is that you can make the guard itself of thicker steel for the same weight and it's much more robust and less likely to bend and that kind of stuff. So as we've seen the light three-bar, so now this is actually a Royal Artillery officer's sword but you'll notice that uses the three-bar hilt as well, so generally speaking the light cavalry and the artillery use these three-bar hilts, the 1821 pattern light hilt, as opposed to the 1821 pattern heavy officer's hilt, heavy cavalry officer's hilt, and the reason is for those two different roles that I've spoken about, so they've got a less protective hilt and it was deemed they didn't need such a robust hilt because they were faster moving, they were sort of hit and run, they weren't supposed to get there and stuck in and sort of thrash it out. Now, coming back to the heavy cavalry officer's sword, so as mentioned this style of hilt came in in 1821 initially with a pipe back blade and in 1845 the fullered blade shown here, the Wilkinson type blade, so it has a fuller and a what we call a spear point, so the point is central to the width of the blade and there is essentially a midrib, it's a flattened diamond section, so it's basically a double-edged blade for the last roughly eight inches and then it's a backsword blade below that. Now this heavy hilt is, so this is personal opinion, one of the absolute best hilts that we've ever had in British swords, in all the different designs of British military swords you can find, in my opinion this is one of the best hilts. It's a great, first of all it looks cool, but it's a great design that combines great strength with actually not an awful lot of weight because it's got so many perforations, so many holes in it, you end up with a very, you can use a very thick gauge of steel, so it's a very thick rigid strong guard, but none of the holes are really big enough for certainly a military sword to pass through. Technically yes, something like an epee or a small sword could pass through those holes, but remember if you're actually fighting someone with a small sword for example, then you're moving your sword around and actually your arm is more vulnerable to the inside and outside of the hand and more vulnerable to a small sword thrust than actually directly the hilt is and remember that if a point did go in there and you're moving your sword, there's a chance it might bend or break the point off the point that gets stuck in there. Same goes for bayonets incidentally, so a blade getting stuck in there is not necessarily a bad thing, it might defend. Now, so it's a very protective hilt and also importantly you will notice it is almost symmetrical, it projects slightly more on the right hand side than on the left hand side, but only slightly. The reason is because for a right-handed person you have more meat to your hand on the right hand side than on the left hand side, but nevertheless it is a relatively balanced and symmetrical hilt. Now an advantage of that is obviously it provides more protection to the inside line of your hand, but additionally it means that the hilt is very well balanced. You will notice that the three bar hilts are not, they had a tendency sometimes, there was accusation against them occasionally, that they had a tendency of wanting to turn in the hand on certain cuts. So on a cut number one for example, the extra weight on one side of the hilt might lead to you slightly messing up the edge alignment. Now I think that's a little bit of a kind of, I could happen, I've never personally found that to be a problem when drilling or cutting with three bar hilts, but I can concede, and you know John Latham who took over the Wilkinson Saw Company from Henry Wilkinson, he was his son-in-law, he did make this point that a symmetrical hilt is a more balanced hilt, so not only is it more protective but it also has less tendency of turning in the hand. So I'm not going to belabor that point, but so we've got this guard, now this had been in from 1821, when the new 1845 pattern blade came in they kept this hilt, but there was another change. Now this is the point at which I want to dispel the idea, so we've gone 1821, 1845, this is an 1821 pattern heavy cavalry officer's sword with an 1845 pattern blade, so it starts to get a little bit confusing. Now there was another change, that next change came in the form of the back strap, okay, so this sword is a sword that dates to around the 1880s, and you will notice that this sword has on it, if I just make the camera focus on the sword instead of my face, has a checkered section there, and it also has a checkered pommel, again make it focus up there, a checkered pommel up here. Now the checkered pommel quite simply denotes, certainly in the military, usually denotes cavalry, as opposed to some other branch of the service. That being said, you do find what are called stepped pommels, and I'll just grab an example of a stepped pommel here, on this, this is actually a Royal Artillery officer's sword, but it's quite similar to light cavalry, there we go, you can see stepped pommel here. Now you do find stepped pommels on cavalry swords, so it's not a universal rule, but I want you for now to ignore the pommel, so stepped pommel, checkered pommel, doesn't matter, okay. Generally speaking, if you have a checkered pommel, it's a cavalry sword, either light or heavy, or Royal Engineers sword. If you have a stepped pommel, it can basically be anything, it could be rifles, artillery, light cavalry, heavy cavalry, okay, so don't fixate on the pommel. But what I do want you to think about for a second is this thumb section here that is checkered. Now anybody who watches this channel, or anybody really who does military sabre fencing, or even modern sports sabre fencing, will realise that that checkered section is for you to stick your thumb on. Quite simply, it means that when you're holding the sabre with the thumb up grip, which admittedly not all people do, at least not all the time, and some people never do it, some people hold it in a hammer grip or a handshake grip, but if you have the thumb up, it means that having that checkered section on there is now very very much more secure for you to grip it. Now that checkered section was something that was never really regulation in the period that we've talked about so far. That was something that came in because it was useful and a good modification of the smooth backstrap. Now when these swords first, when these hilts first came in in 1821, the backstraps were completely smooth and lots of people very clearly, when they put their thumb up, found that their thumb was slipping off the backstrap. So by about the 1840s and 50s, we start to see increasing numbers of these swords with a checkered thumb placer there, and by the 1880s that was pretty much normal. It's actually unusual by the 1880s to find one which doesn't have a checkered thumb placer. But some people, and this is a light cavalry sword, but I'm going to, we're just talking about the backstrap at the moment, some people went a step further. So if I just make the sword, the camera focus on the sword here, you will notice that this entire backstrap, and in fact the pommel, but we're not, we're ignoring the pommel for now, the entire backstrap is checkered. Now this sword dates to around 1880, so this wasn't a regulation thing yet, but people who found the thumb checkered section useful thought, well why not make the whole back of the grip checkered, because just like a checkering on a gunstock for example, it gives you a better grip. And in fact if we look at John Musgrave Waite's treatise, he talks about taking your sword on service, on active service, and he suggests whipping, wrapping cord which has been waxed around the grip to suit your grip shape. So you can make the grip whatever shape you prefer, but also it's waxed and it gives a better more friction in the grip and your hands are less likely to slip. He also criticizes backstraps in general and says they don't need to be there. Just a very quick tangent, why were backstraps there? Well quite simply they make the hilt stronger, okay, they make, they mean that if the wood splits the hilt's not going to fall apart, but more importantly they actually protect the wooden grip from splitting, they make it less likely that the wooden grip will split. But, so they're there for strength but they are a bit of an impediment to actual good gripping of the sword. But you can see that this guy who ordered his sword from Wilkinson in about 1880 or 1879, there's about thereabouts, actually had the whole backstrap checkered. Now it just so happens that that became such a popular thing that by 1895 with the new infantry officer's sword, the 1895 pattern, they decided to introduce a fully checkered backstrap. Now I'm actually going to show a royal artillery officer's sword to demonstrate this because it's the same backstrap and you can see it a bit better and you will see that the whole backstrap here is checkered all the way down the back and it even has a flatter section for the thumb. So not only have they checkered the whole backstrap but this section around here is now also like a flat plateau for you to rest your thumb on. So it makes it much more difficult for the thumb to slip off on either side of the grip. So this is without a doubt, functionally speaking, an improved backstrap and that was first brought in as regulation on the 1895 pattern infantry officer's sword. But it seems that from 1895 onwards all other swords in the British army, at least usually, and there may have been exceptions, got the same backstrap. So despite the fact this is a royal artillery officer's sword and it could be a heavy cavalry, it could be a light cavalry, it could be whatever, a royal engineer's sword, they all follow this style and get this straight, fully checkered backstrap. It's a new grip design essentially. So that was in 1895 that that new backstrap comes along and as a result in 1896 something else happens in conjunction with the heavy cavalry officer's sword. So this is the 1821 pattern hilt with the 1845 pattern blade. You'll notice that the backstrap is only half checkered for the thumb. So this is an 1880s sword but in 1896 a new regulation came in that said that all cavalry officers, whether they were light or heavy, should use a version of the heavy cavalry officer's sword. But because this was in 1896 everyone by that point had adopted the straight, fully checkered backstrap of the 1895 pattern infantry officer's sword with the result that we get a new cavalry sword. You'll notice the guard is basically the same design as this, there's slightly different shapes because they're different models of sword, but the backstraps are different. The backstrap on this one is only checkered here and then it's smooth up here, just like backstraps have been for decades before, but the new backstrap is straight and you'll also notice they tend to be longer as well which kind of encourages you to stick the thumb up, it gives you more space to get the thumb up without ramming it into the back of the guard. So essentially the heavy cavalry officer's sword became the universal cavalry officer's sword for light and heavy in the 1896 pattern. Now it just so happens this grip is a little bit different yet again because this is a Wilkinson patent solid hilt so it's a full width tang but that was an added extra that wasn't standard for this model of sword so this is the 1896 pattern cavalry officer's sword. Now I'm going to have to correct a misunderstanding that happened I think decades ago, probably in the 70s or 80s, whereby a lot these 1896 pattern swords and sometimes these 1821 pattern swords, heavy cavalry officer's swords, started being called by collectors and and aficionados of antique swords as the 1887 pattern. Now there is no 1887 pattern sword in the British military anyway, so when you see something that looks like one of these and has a heavy cavalry hilt and a fullered 1845 pattern blade it is either an 1821 pattern heavy cavalry officer's sword or it's an 1896 pattern universal cavalry officer's sword which is basically modeled on the heavy cavalry officer's sword. The only difference between the two is that the 96 here in my left hand has the 1895 pattern straight fully checkered backstrap and usually a longer grip. The earlier pre-1896 sword has a non-fully checkered backstrap so it's only checkered for the thumb stop and it's a bit curved it's not a straight and it's usually a little bit shorter grip. But fundamentally they are the same sword that just got a new backstrap from 1895 or 1896 onwards. So this is the 1896 pattern, this is the 1821 pattern, both have the 1845 pattern blade and there is no 1887 pattern sword. It does not exist, it's a complete misunderstanding that has been repeated from person to person to person even in some cases from book to book or magazine or whatever. The 1887 pattern is not a thing, it does not exist and I would reiterate the point that I consider this one of the absolute finest designs of any model of sword from any country in the period that we're looking at the 19th century. I think it's a great blade, everybody knows that I'm a of the 1845 pattern blade. It is a great combination cut and thrust blade that cuts as well as lots of other swords from history and is also a good thruster and is also quite nimble and quite well weighted and good for defense and everything else. And this hilt is one of the most protective and robust and I think attractive sabre hilts that you can find of any nationality from the 19th century. Anyway I hope that's been useful and remember there's no 1887 pattern sword, it's either an 1821 pattern heavy cavalry or it's an 1896 universal cavalry officers sword with an 1845 pattern blade. And just to finish off actually, the 1896 pattern stayed in service until officially 1912 when it was replaced by the 1912 pattern cavalry officers sword which was a more ornate version of the 1908 pattern but many officers preferred these to the 1912 pattern and I have seen examples, in fact I've owned examples of these that were dated to the first world war after 1912 so people were still ordering these after the 1912 came in because presumably some people just preferred a cut and thrust sword than the new dedicated thrusting sword. Anyway I hope that's been useful, I will see you really soon again, link below to Eastern Antique Arms, I've got articles on there if you want to read some more about the 45 pattern blade or various other articles I've got on the website and we've also got a Facebook page, I'll put the link down there as well for Eastern Antique Arms and thanks for watching, thanks for looking at my swords and reading my articles and I'll see you again soon, cheers folks! Thanks for watching, we've got extra videos on Patreon, please give our Facebook a like and subscribe if you haven't already, cheers folks!