British 1908 pattern sword and the Indian cavalry sabre in WW1: Cut vs thrust

Hi folks, Matt Easton here, scholar gladiatorius. We've looked a number of times now at the British 1908 cavalry sword and we've talked about the fact that it is a dedicated thrusting sword. This of course was a departure from previous models of sword which have been combination cut and thrust swords and they really threw all of their money into the thrust side of the argument and just went let's just go full thrust and make this the perfect thrusting sword and in a sense maybe for cavalry use if you're going to have a fully dedicated thrusting sword maybe they made the perfect design with an absolutely dedicated thrusting hilt a very protective large handguard and of course a very stiff but narrow blade. Now as I've pointed out in previous videos this is not like a rapier. I liken it to an estoc and the difference between an estoc and a rapier is that a rapier is a specialised weapon really for fighting on foot and duelling on foot and it's got a relatively nimble blade and relatively light. The 1908 pattern cavalry sword is a pointy bar. It's not at all nimble and it's really quite a heavy weapon. It weighs about two and a half pounds which is about the same weight as a rapier but it's balanced in a different way. Its weight distribution is very different. This 1908 is a lot thicker in the foible or the pointy end of the sword. It's a lot thicker than a rapier is. So the rapier is far better suited to use on foot and is a far more nimble and quicker sword. The 1908 is designed to be put into the guard position on horseback and charge at the thing, aim it in the right direction and skewer that thing and then as you ride past extract the blade. It's really designed for heavy impact and penetration at high speed. It is not at all like a rapier. Now the other thing and the final thing I'll say in this video about the 1908 pattern cavalry sword is that it wasn't rolled out through all of the army immediately. Some regiments, for example Yeomanry who are essentially volunteers, a bit like territorial army or home guards type of thing, they saw action in World War I and we know from photographs in World War I that some of them didn't have the 1908 pattern. In fact the 1890 and the 1899 patterns seem to have gone out to the Western Front as well and it's quite amazing when you think about it. The 1890 pattern was really the 1882 pattern which had been updated a few times but that sword still saw service in World War I. So the 1908 pattern wasn't rolled out to everyone and some of you have said, oh I'd rather have a cutting sword. Well, the Indian cavalry did. So what the Indian cavalry had and they didn't get the 1908 pattern dedicated thrusting sword until really the end of World War I and possibly even the 1920s for some of the Indian cavalry regiments and what they had was this and that's right, it's a proper old school sabre and this pattern doesn't really have a name. In fact we're not even really sure when exactly they came into use but it's essentially a combination of a blade that's somewhat like the 1796 light cavalry sabre from more than 100 years earlier essentially. So it's an old school slashing cavalry blade, curved cavalry blade with an 1821 light cavalry hilt, so a three bar hilt. So essentially they put a, it's like a 1796 light cavalry sabre but with a better hilt on it, a more protective hilt. So it's a pretty good sword for what it is. If you want a light cavalry slashing sabre this is going to be far better in a melee than the 1908 is and that's really what I want to say and a lot of people commented in my previous videos about that and I absolutely think that this 1908 is for charging at high speed skewering something or someone and then riding off at high speed. It is not for getting into melees with, certainly not on foot but I would say not on horseback either. It's a hit and run weapon, it's like a lance. You don't want to get into a melee with a lance, it's exactly the same with the 1908. Here we have a weapon that can get into a melee. And of course in an Indian cavalry context that makes perfect sense. The Indian cavalry were used to using sabres, of course they had a heritage of using the tulwar but also they were more likely to get into local skirmishes with rebellious groups of bandits or indeed with Afghan tribesmen or this kind of thing. So it was more likely that Indian cavalry in say the year 1900 or 1910 were going to get into a skirmish, going to get into a melee than British cavalry using 1908s were. So really the 1908 cavalry sword is looking towards what they saw as how cavalry should function now whereas the Indian cavalry sabre really was more traditional and was looking at how cavalry was traditionally used and indeed Indian cavalry almost certainly was more likely to get into the traditional cavalry conflicts. So there we go, in the First World War just within the British army we had several types of sword in use and if we take it one extreme we've got the Indian army's light cavalry sabre and at the other end of the extreme we've got this brand new dedicated thrusting estoc and they really represent two different visions of what cavalry's job was on the battlefield. Cheers folks! 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