European military officers' swords of the 1880s and 1890s

Hey folks, Matt Easton here, scholar gladiatoria. Now in the late 19th century lots of European militaries moved gradually towards more thrust-centric swords. Many of you will know this as a fact, but generally speaking there was a movement towards straighter, narrower, more thrust-focused swords. And it's interesting because in the middle of 19th century these types of swords did still exist. There were thrust-centric swords, if I just grab one off here, so this one is actually from about the 1880s. But long, narrow, straight blades were still favoured by some people right the way through the 19th century and obviously going back to the 18th century. So in the 18th century we've got small swords, back swords, hangers, there's a hanger there, 18th century hanger there, curved sabres famously, things like, just grab one of these, there's a 1803 pattern here. And sabres were, sabres became popular particularly for infantry officers as well as obviously cavalry, but they became popular for infantry officers in the Napoleonic period and they stayed quite popular through much of the 19th century. But this is an incredibly, could be an incredibly large and long topic to talk about. But by around the 1880s there was a prevailing opinion across Europe that for infantry officers, and this wasn't a universally held opinion incidentally, but it was the prevailing opinion that for infantry officers what was best was a narrow thrusting blade, somewhat like, has to be said, somewhat like a rapier. Now they weren't as long or as heavy as 17th, 16th, 17th century rapiers were. They didn't necessarily need to be, they weren't going up against things like, for the most part, they weren't going up against things like halberds and pole arms and two-handed swords and stuff like this. They were for the most part only going up against other swords or bayonets and very occasionally in colonial warfare things like spears or tilwars or things like this. But for European warfare for the large part thrust-centric blades started to become more popular for infantry officers. Now what I'm primarily looking at here is a comparison between the British answer to that which came with the 1892 pattern blade and I'm going to put a link below this video to an article I recently published on Eastern Antique Arms on my website talking about the British sword of the 1890s. Now the parts that came in essentially was in 1892 this style thrusting blade with the so-called dumbbell section blade where you can see it's got a fuller in the bottom half of the blade and the bottom half of the blade is completely blunt. The top half of the blade is very tapered and narrow and you can see it is a thrust-centric blade but it does have some edge up here so you can debatably cut a little bit with it and it is sharpened a bit at the false edge as well. This incidentally is an example made by Wilkinson that belonged to an officer who served in World War One and World War Two so this is a top quality example of the early 20th century. But this model of blade came in in 1892 and then in 1895 basically this style of hilt came in. Now in actual fact this is the 1897 pattern hilt but it really the main difference between the 97 and the 95 hilt is this folded up inner edge so it's a fairly minor design change and that folded up inner edge is there to make it more comfortable to wear and to reduce wear on the officer's uniform. But the style of grip, the back strap came in in 1895 and the 1895 guard doesn't really differ very much from the 1897 guard so essentially this is a sword that was born in the middle of the night of the 1890s. Now Britain was a little bit behind the curve in this because in 1882, just grab another example from over here, in 1882 and some people email me very kindly to ask if I'm ready to sell this sword yet because it was quite popular when I showed it before. This thrust centric sword so in a way you could say as far as mainstream infantry officers swords were concerned the French led the way in Europe and they came out in 1882 with this model of thrusting sword. Now I'm not going to talk about this I've talked about this in previous videos I might talk about it in a future video but just to show that in 1882 the French led the way with this and it's very clearly it's got some cutting capacity but not very much but it handles beautifully it's a very nimble sword it's got instead of a three bar hilt oh I don't have a unusually I don't have a three bar behind me today but unlike the British three bar hilt this has actually got four bars one two three and then knuckle bow four so it's not fantastic hand protection against thrusts has to be said although it is pretty good protection against cuts assuming your guard's pointing in the right direction at the time that the cut comes in and you guard but the French led the way with that thrust centric design. Now in 1889 the Germans or Prussians because obviously you know Germany was consisted of various different states still does but this is often known as a Prussian sword although I'll refer it refer to it as German from this point in or point on in it is the 1889 Degen I believe it's sometimes referred to which essentially actually means dagger but it's a thrust centric sword and again if we just pull up the French one it is similar proportions you'll notice the blades are pretty much exactly the same length it's about 32 inches very different style hilts and we'll look at the hilts in a minute but they are both about the same length about the same weight and about the same width neither of these swords are going to be great cutters and you can cut with both of them to some extent you will hurt someone if you cut someone across the head or the face or the hand you will do some level of damage but they are catered really towards thrusting and killing people with the point. Now in terms of the hilts let's just turn these up here the French hilt in many ways is a more I would say ironically actually looks more like a British hilt so I would argue anyway the the French hilts that came before this were usually brass hilts and funnily in some ways the earlier French hilts look a little bit more like this German sword here the French hilt looks a little bit more like British hilts ironically but anyway in in the 1880s the style of swords diverged and this is the 1882 French infantry officers sword and this is the 1889 German infantry officers sword. Now in terms of hand protection I would absolutely say that the French sword is superior it offers better hand protection although against a point you will notice if you look at it along the blade if you are holding these towards an opponent the three or four bar hilt in this case four bar hilt is somewhat exposed to a point of a weapon coming in there and hitting the top of your hand the Prussian guard actually offers more protection in that sense but it is brass. Now this is where we're getting into an interesting point the Germans famously were with a very minor couple of exceptions were not a colonial power the Prussians latterly Germany was not really a colonial power in the 19th century Britain and France were they were the prime obviously Britain was the primary colonial power but France was a very was the second biggest colonial power after Britain. Now that meant that swords were used all over the British empire and the French empire and obviously the Belgians in the Belgian empire as well and this meant that they used swords against other people who were using things like Tulwars or you know Southeast Asian swords, African swords that in many cases had a greater degree of cutting power and potential. Now in British military circles in the 19th century it was an acknowledged problem of brass hilts that brass hilts could be damaged or cut through and that could mean literally cut through or just damaged to an extent that your hand still gets wounded and this was a problem and so one of the reasons that the hilt changed to pull up the British sword again one of the reasons the hilt changed in the 1890s is because for a long time British officers and people writing about swords in Britain had called for a steel hilt because they didn't deem the brass hilt to be strong enough against things like Tulwars or Shamshirs or kind of like Barongs and things like this things that you might find yourself facing in a colonial hand-to-hand fight. Now this wasn't really of concern to the Germans because in that time the Germans weren't going to find themselves fighting those people. The only exception of course is and this did happen is Germans serving in the British or the French military and in fact there were German officers who joined the British army and British navy and French and French army and navy and so sometimes there were in fact Germans who you know but they would have had the British service sword or the French service sword. Now an interesting thing is reach behind the camera here more swords here is an earlier Victorian sword that dates to about the about 1870-ish and you'll notice it I hope anyway it has a steel hilt. Now actually the regulation as I've spoken about in previous videos the regulation British officers hilt was made of brass but some officers who cared about their swords or thought that they might be going to India or the Sudan war or things like this where they might have to use their swords for real got better quality swords sometimes they got longer blades thicker blades better you know they sometimes chose non-regulation swords and sometimes they made sure that they got a steel hilt instead of a brass hilt and so that they met parade regulations they had those hilts gilded and in fact I doubt you'll be able to see in the light here unfortunately but on the inside of this hilt is the remnants of gilding maybe you can actually just about see that so you'll see it's goldy colored in here so in fact once this was all gilded the steel hilt would look like a brass hilt but it would have the strength of a steel and this absolutely would stop a cut from pretty much any type of sword so by the 1890s the British had moved towards a steel hilt as regulation now what you'll notice is not only is the steel but it offers a huge amount more hand protection than either the French sword of 1882 or indeed the German sword of 1889 so purely talking about hilts I would assert that the British hilt is far far superior to either the French 1882 or the German 1889 there's an interesting just before I leave the subject of hilts there's an interesting difference as well between the if we compare the French and the British sword for a minute so one important aspect of the British sword is you'll notice this so-called back strap here is fully checkered from the thumb stop which is squared off so when you hold the sword with your thumb up as you should do with this type of sword it's got a nice flat surface it's not going to slide off the side so it's kind of rectangular at that bit and then although this bit is rounded in shape it's fully checkered all the way up so you have an absolutely fantastic grip hold now earlier patterns of British sword did in fact have this but not as regulation in 1895 it became regulation for all swords in the British army and this gives you a really good grip so it's very utilitarian despite the fact you might be thinking oh in 1890 1892 95 they you know swords weren't used very much in combat anymore true I would never argue otherwise but nevertheless in Britain they were still thinking about what's the best weapon to give our officers they weren't thinking about well let's just you know just give them a really good revolver and not worry about the swords they were still concerned about making a good fighting weapon they didn't need to check this back strap they didn't need to make it squared off if it was just a dress accoutrement or something to point your soldiers in the right direction with but they were trying to create a proper fighting weapon which is really notable and the French sword in contrast is utterly smooth and rounded on the back so despite the fact the French sword is also supposed to be held with the thumb up it doesn't have any of these fighting considerations that the British military sword has it's got a rounded back no checkering at all it's very smooth quite slippery okay so whilst this I like the French sword I like the French 1882 and I think it's a good it's a nice sword very nice in the hand personally speaking I prefer the blade of the French sword to the British one but in terms purely of the hilt without a shadow of a doubt the British hilt is a more serious and effective fighting weapon it's a bigger guard it's a steel guard with without big holes in it it's definitely better against cutting because it covers more of the hand it's definitely better against thrusting because it doesn't have those holes to get through and the grip is more secure it's a more martial grip that's that you're not going to your hands not going to slip around on the German sword is even worse the German sword is a brass guard it's very narrow doesn't offer very much protection it's as a fighting weapon the hilt of the German sword is not good but it does have one nice feature of the on the German 1889 and that is the shape of it and I have to say I really really like the fact that they've gone okay this is a straight thrusting sword this is this is for aligning with the forearm and thrusting with so they have given it a curved pistol-like grip now we see this in in other swords famously in the British 1908 and 1912 pattern cavalry swords which are very much purely thrusting weapons really they're S-Docs and they have pistol grips and in fact if we look at modern fencing you see sort of pistol grips and then later on orthopedic grips to assist with the delivering of the point it's kind of strange that in Britain they went with a weapon that's essentially a purely thrusting weapon and yet kept a completely straight grip now why did they do that now my suspicion is because experiment with because some people had non-regulation curved grips in early periods experimentation in defense against strong cutting weapons like tool wires and such like they had found that in defense a straighter grip was more likely to offer you a strong parry against strong cuts rather than the curved grip the curved grip is very good for point play and if you're fencing but it's not so good if you're trying to parry really strong cuts from things like tool wires or cascaras or shamshirs if you're parrying strong blows from other things a straight grip puts your wrist in a slightly more robust angle to put strong guards and parries in so I would argue that essentially what the Germans did was they created a really nice thrusting blade a really almost like fencing grip which which accentuates the use of the point but then they equipped it with a crap guard and they didn't think about what might happen if you fought against a dervish with a cascara or an afghan with a polwar because they were never going to have to do that so the final thing to talk about the blades which do I prefer it's a very subjective thing all of these are dedicated thrusting blades but there is an interesting thing to note about them the German and the French sword can probably thrust in terms of stiffness they are basically the same distal taper as each other they're about the same thickness at different points along the blade they're pretty much the same profile taper and a very similar point and blade shape the French sword is double edged which is interesting because you can do back edge cuts as well as front edge cuts with the French sword the German sword is single edged except for at the very tip but even there it doesn't really have it has a tiny false edge so the German sword is essentially a single edged sword it's essentially a narrow back sword or almost a spadroon the French sword is more like a short rapier now they're both very nimble and light swords and they feel very very nice in the hand when you pick up the British sword it's an entirely different beast it's a similar shape looking at it this way it's a similar length it's heavier though it is a heavier blade and for the most for most of the blade most of the taper most of the distal taper along the blade in terms of the thickness it retains a thicker section further up along the blade the end result is that when you feel the inertia of these swords when you move them around the German and the French swords are very much more nimble in the tip now for a dueling weapon that's probably better they're lighter quicker swords in terms of moving the tip around even even left-handed I can probably move the and I'm right-handed incidentally but even left-handed I can move the tip of the Prussian sword or German sword around more quickly than I can move the tip of the heavy Wilkinson British sword the British sword is more like a sharpened bar the the Prussian and the French sword of swords are more they feel not like small swords but they feel more like dueling swords and I think this is where the big difference lies I think that fundamentally the Prussian or German sword is a bit like a dueling sword it doesn't have a big guard it's got a very nimble blade the French sword is somewhere in the middle it's almost like a dueling sword with a sort of military leaning and the British sword is a purely military sword this wouldn't be a very good dueling sword it's not very nimble despite what you might read in some articles the British thrusting sword that's still regulation today for infantry officers the 1897 pattern is still regulation today it is not a lighter sword than the earlier 1845 which I showed here these swords weigh basically the same they're the same length and they weigh the same they're just a different shape the earlier sword is a cut and thrust sword and it can cut really well can cut as well as earlier back swords can cut as well as arming swords the later one is a stiff thrusting sword and cannot cut well at all but it is better for thrusting it's more rigid and it's got a narrower pointier point and it's also got a better guard on it as well so quite fundamentally I think the military experiences of different nations very much in the late 19th century despite the fact that all of the main nations of Europe moved for infantry officers towards thrusting swords the military experiences of those different countries very much dictated the end product and you can see that absolutely almost you know black and white starkly between the German and the British sword despite the fact that they're both the same length and they're both thrusting swords and they're both straight they are utterly different designs because the military experience of both nations in the 1890s was utterly different the last war the last major war that Germany had fought was against France it was a European war fought at long range with bolt-action rifles and breech-loading rifles of various kinds needle rifles and such like whereas the British had been fighting all over the empire fighting in Afghanistan in India in Africa with a lot more hand-to-hand combat a very different very different context and experience so there we go I hope that's been moderately of interest I haven't featured many German or Prussian weapons on my channel before but I hope to feature more and I think it's really really interesting people sometimes dismiss swords of the 1890s because they think this is after the period where swords saw much use or were very interesting but in terms of their design actually the 1890s is a very very interesting period for sword design in Europe because all the different nations of Europe were still trying to produce weapons that they thought might get used in some context some countries like Britain had more reason to believe that those swords would get used than than other countries but nevertheless they came to very actually in some ways similar and in some ways very different conclusions just to remind you again I have written an article about the British swords of the 1890s linked below I hope you enjoy that and see you in my next video cheers folks thank you for watching please subscribe and feel free to follow us on Facebook