The swords of British Military Sabre

Hi I'm Nick Thomas from the Academy of Historical Fencing and I'm here to talk to you about some of the weapons that we actually study with, not the ones we train with but what we're actually training for, looking back to the historical weaponry that we're studying and practising in the club. In this particular episode we're going to be looking at the sabre. I keep talking about military sabre, I post videos of sparring military sabre, I'm going to look now at what that actually is, some original examples from different periods. So first of all, the kind of thing you're going to be typically seeing on our videos, this is what we normally call a gothic hilted infantry sabre, popular throughout most of the 19th century and this is a British infantry officer's sword. When you see the steel sabres being used on the videos, this is the sort of thing we're representing. We'll look at that more in detail later on and when you see the black fencer synthetics being used, we're representing an earlier pattern of British sabre like this, which is the 1803 flank officer's sword and has a lot less hand protection, slightly heavier, more curved blade and again we'll be looking at a bit more about that in the future. I want to talk to you about the origins of what we do, the manual we're working from and the different weapons it relates to, because in part calling it military sabre doesn't give the full story. The manual we work from, Roeth, is a Napoleonic manual originally, published in 1798 and it looks at more than just the actual sabre itself. In fact, when the manual was published, the primary weapon of the British infantry officer was this, a spadroon. You see quite a flimsy folding guard, it's flush in uniform, it looks excellent, it can be worn straight down the leg, it's very very fashionable. This would have been all covered in gilt, the blade would have been blue on gilt, so it'd be a very nice looking sword, but was universally known at the time for being a very bad sword for actual combat. It doesn't cut particularly well, it doesn't have particularly heavy blade forecuts in, thrust work is very very flexible, which is really not ideal, the guard is not very strong. What can be said in its favour is, one, as I said, it looks nice and two, for officers that were training with small swords, which is a bit like you'd see in modern epee, this sword can be used for a similar practice of combat using a lot of the thrust work and then incorporating some what you'd consider more sabre cutting technique. So that's by far, in the Napoleonic period, the most common British officer's sword you're going to see. It's also an appalling sword as far as combat goes. Other swords covered in the Royal Oath Manual would be the 1803, which we're going to talk about the origins of that in a little while, and also the Scottish broadsword, which I don't have, but I have an earlier English example here which is very similar as a type of sword, single back-edged blade, blade straight with a basket hilt covering the whole hand, so it's pretty similar to Napoleonic Scottish broadsword. Looking at how we come from one sword to another, the spadrillon as I said was known as a particularly bad sword for fighting men, and then Napoleonic era you started to end up with a lot more sort of skirmish forces, you had flank companies using swords where the officers were having to actually fight for themselves, rifle companies were the same, fusiliers, so any officers that are looking to be on the front line and actually having to fight with their own hands. So a lot of officers started to carry a light cavalry sword, which is well known as one of the best fighting swords that the British ever had. Again, simple stirrup hilt, not a lot of protection, but a very substantial, very curved blade with a lot of cutting power, and this was starting to be carried by officers in the British army that were again out on the front line expecting to have to deal with combat themselves rather than just use their sword to command their own troops. That was frowned upon by the army and eventually in 1803 they caved in and produced this, which is as you see the blade is almost identical to the light cavalry sword I just showed you, but with a sword more fitting of a Napoleonic officer, and in this particular case this is a Grenadier's sword, there's detail in here, and without a doubt it's an exceptional fighting sword. It's a little bit lighter than the light cavalry that it came from, only a little bit, so it's better suited to infantry combat and really does work well. In terms of weight with these swords, this flank officer's sword, you're talking around about 800 grams, ranging up to about 830, that's just under two pounds, about 1.8 pounds, so not a particularly heavy sword at all, and the light cavalry that it came from, only a whisk or more, you're talking about two pounds dead on roughly, maybe a whisk or more for some of them, so not a lot in it, and the Scottish swords, they tend to be varied a little bit more because a lot of Scottish officers used old family blades, so whilst you'll see some standardised hilt patterns, the blades vary quite a bit. Average weight's coming in around about 1.2 kilos, even up to 1.4 for some of the larger examples. So that's looking at the three Napoleonic officers' swords. What you then see is not just the officers using these swords for training, but a lot of other men in the armed forces having to use swords for different purposes, so in the navy they were teaching cutlass according to the same drill, just using a slightly smaller sword. Also cavalry, they were teaching foot combat for cavalry, there are lots of reasons why a cavalryman might need to actually fight on foot, so again we come back to the sort of stuff in Roeth, would be taught using this kind of sword on foot, and it's viable also, they could be using the heavy cavalry, as if you've ever seen Sharp, a Bernal Cornwall series in the books and films, this is Sharp Sword Heavy Cavalry, 1796 Heavy Cavalry Trooper Sword, which is an absolute monster. Straight blade, what you normally call a palash, 34 inch blade and 1.2 kilos almost in weight, it's a real monster, but arguably could be used under the same system on foot. Looking back to the blades of the 1803, we're talking a blade length typically around about 32 inch, and the light cavalry, the particular ones I've got are exactly the same size, normally you'd expect cavalry swords to be a little bit longer than infantry swords, but it's not always the case. On from the early stuff of Roeth, because those are the Napoleonic British swords that are going to be typical, is it was still published over several editions, and you see an 1824 edition, and when that was released the sword patterns had changed quite substantially, and when we talk about military sabre, the assumption is that all the British forces, or officers at least, and similar ranks using swords like NCOs, will be using a sabre, as we've just seen from the Napoleonic period, it's not quite the case. However, when you get to 1822, so two years before the third edition of the manual, the swords change substantially, and you end up with what is this gothic hilt that I mentioned at the start, and this is the piped back version, so how it came out in 1822, so a lightly curved blade, much more on its guard, with more hand protection, a lot of them had folding guards, like this example here, where the actual guard will again fold down for protection, but fold up to fit flush on the uniform, and this here is the fullered version of the same sword from the 1845 onwards, so a fuller blade, but for all intents and purposes, the same sword, and when you get to that example, most, if not all, of the swords being used then followed that similar pattern for infantry use, is around about 32 and a half inch blade, weighing just under two pounds, which is about 850 grams, and they're all very, very similar in design, up until the late 19th century. So there you have it, the selection of British military swords that we're practicing for, the spadroon, almost nobody currently trains for, because it is universally hated by people as it was in the day, as it is now, but it will be interesting to get some training swords for it, I'm not aware of anybody that currently makes them, I am going to produce a video looking at different training swords that we'll use to represent these different swords over the next few weeks, but for now you've got an example here of all the original swords, remember we talk about sabre, most people think of a cavalry sword or modern sports sabre, but the reality is we're training for infantry, British military infantry sabre, spadroon and Scottish broadsword. Hope you enjoyed the video and I'll see you again soon.