Antique French & British Non Regulation Swords: Similar Empire Contexts

Let's look at one way in which the British and the French had an awful lot in common when it comes to 19th century swords. Hey folks, Matt Heaton here, Scholar Gladiatoria. Now, recently in my antique sword antics, in my dealings, I've actually had quite a few French swords come to me which, in due course, will be coming onto the website. But a number of them are outside of the normal models, the normal patterns. They're essentially like special order or unusual non-regulation swords, shall we say. Now, for regular viewers of this channel, you'll know that my core collection and the main thing that fascinates me is British army, Victorian era, non-regulation or special order swords. So therefore, the French ones interest me a lot. And incidentally, Italian, Austrian, any swords interest me a lot if they're a little bit outside of the norm. Because this, to me, shows kind of, I suppose, individualistic thinking in the 19th century. We have to admit this is an era in which swords and swordsmanship are, you know, on the decline, essentially, or at least that's the common perception due to increased firearm development, longer range, more accuracy, higher rate of fire, these kinds of things, and breach loading, and so on and so forth. But that being said, there is a way in which the British and the French are quite similar to each other and quite different to most other European and indeed American powers. Now, anybody who's studied antique swords will notice that the British and the French seem to have taken swords really quite seriously right up until, in fact, the end of the 19th century and beyond, really, actually, until World War I. It was probably World War I that really started to change quite rapidly, change, I suppose, how seriously people viewed swords as weapons. Not that swords weren't used in World War I, in fact, they were used quite extensively by cavalry, both on the Western Front and out east as well, and in the Russian Revolution, but, and indeed in colonial warfare. But that is where, that last bit, there's the clue, is where the British and the French are similar and differ, when we're talking about weapon technology, from many other nations. Now, the simple fact is, during the 19th century, in the post-Napoleonic period, Britain and France, had been for a long time, were in competition in their colonies and in colonialising the world. Now, there were other countries involved as well, of course, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, and even Germany as well, and Russia, in fairness, and various other countries. So, basically, the great game, the scramble to gain control of various bits of the globe, famously Africa, but also large chunks of Asia as well. And this is where, really, Britain and France stand out a little bit separately from a lot of their European neighbours, in that, of course, both Britain and France held very extensive territories in Africa and in Asia. Obviously, Britain, most famously, the British Raj in India, which was formally up until 1858 under the Honourable East India Company, but also bits of Africa, most famously, perhaps, South Africa, and after 1882, Egypt and the Sudan. But France, actually, and I guess this might surprise some viewers, France actually held more countries, more land in Africa than Britain did. But, it must be said, if you look at a map of Africa from about 1890, it's pretty much carved up between, well, all of European countries, actually, but mostly Britain and France, with quite a lot of other bits to Germany and Spain and elsewhere as well. So, Britain and France had a slightly different military perspective, because an awful lot of their military activity was to do with policing, maintaining their colonies in Africa and in Asia. And remember, in Asia, I mentioned Britain and India, but you've also got to bear in mind places like Nepal and Afghanistan. And then, for France, you've got the whole of Indochina. You've got both countries being involved together as allies in China a number of times, and the Boxer Rebellion as well, where a whole coalition, multi-nation army came together to invade China, of course. So, there was a huge amount of military involvement outside Europe. Now, in those places, as many, many of you realise, there was perhaps, arguably, a greater need for things like swords and bayonets than there was when we come to European wars. If we look at the Franco-Prussian War, even if we look at the Crimean War, there was probably, because of the height of firearm technology and the availability of artillery, very, very important, and this kind of stuff, there was probably, on average, less bladed action, if we call it that, in Europe from the middle of the 19th century, all the way to World War I, than there was out in the colonies. And, in fact, we still see swords being used on the northwest frontier of India after World War I. So, cavalry, in policing the northwest frontier between India and Afghanistan in the 1920s, cavalry was still super, super important. You know, they couldn't use armoured cars, they couldn't use tanks, they didn't have aeroplanes available out there. Cavalry was still very, very useful out there, despite the fact that they had bolt-action rifles by that point. So, to cut a long story short, Britain and France had a particular and peculiar colonial, imperial need for certain weapons, and that led to swords still being treated quite seriously later in the 19th century than, perhaps, we see in certain other countries, for example, in Prussia, for example. So, if you look at Prussian swords, they seem to have become less and less important towards the end of the 19th century. And, in fact, by World War I, a lot of German cavalry had switched to lances, and whereas the British and French still took the sword very, very seriously, similarly, it seems that the sword was taken less seriously for infantry officers in the German army, for example, whereas the British and French were still carrying swords up until the end of 1914, when it went down into trench warfare, and they went, okay, stop wearing swords. But, up until that point, when war started, the French and the British all marched off to war with their officers carrying swords and waving swords around, leaving their men in bayonet charges. This was a thing. So, if we look at French swords, we see a similar pattern, too, in Britain, in that we find certain things which are non-regulation. Now, this sword is the old favourite, which has been featured on my channel for years, and I still haven't sold it. I've still got it because I really, really like it. And I have formally described this as an 1882 pattern. Now, actually, in hindsight, now that I know more about French swords and I've read more books, I wouldn't necessarily call this an 1882 pattern because of the particular details of the hilt, and you'll notice these raised bars in the middle here, and this being a steel hilt, not a nickel hilt, I believe that this is probably a colonial officer's sword. It could be from around 1882, could be from slightly after, but I suspect it could be from slightly earlier. So, I think, and this type of cannula blade does appear before it becomes regulation in 1882. So, whilst this could be a post-1882 infantry officer's sword, I suspect, because of the details of the hilt, that this is actually a North African-serving French officer's sword, perhaps from the 1860s or 70s, but French sword experts out there, I'd be interested to hear your views on this. I suspect this is a slightly earlier one. And that led into the actual 1882 pattern, and this is an actual 1882 pattern, and you'll notice it has a cannula blade, but it has a nickel, in other words, alloy, non-ferrous hilt. And with that particular design up here, which you'll also notice what I think is a North African officer's sword does not have. It's a slightly different design, as well as not having those raised bars, and as well as having a steel hilt instead of a nickel hilt. So, this is the 1882 pattern sword, and yet, and that's why I picked this one, this isn't regulation either, because I don't know whether you can see, this is a standard sort of 32-inch blade. This one, below, is a 35 and a half inch blade. So, this officer, and this is marked, incidentally, this is actually made in Châtellerault, this is manufactured at the National Arms Factory of Châtellerault, obviously it's in French I'm translating. In April 1911, this was made for an officer of infantry, the model of 1882. So, this was made actually before the First World War, three years before First World War, but it was made with a 35 and a half inch blade, which is pretty damn long. It's basically almost a rapier blade, isn't it? But it's still the same cannula blade design. The cannula blade, incidentally, is where the fuller on this side is at the back, and the fuller at this side is at the front. So, the fullers are very deep and they're offset like this, which means you can make a very stiff and light blade without having the fuller, and have very deep fullers that can kind of go past each other. Very clever blade design, and as I say, it produces a very stiff and light blade. Really a purely thrusting weapon. Yeah, you could just about cut with it, but it's primarily a thrusting weapon. So, this officer wanted a particularly long blade. Who knows why? Perhaps they were intending to spend a lot of time on the horse, perhaps they were serving, again, in North Africa and they wanted to keep opponents with nimchas or whatever were coming at them in Algeria or Morocco. They wanted to keep them well away from them, who knows? And finally, this is another type of sword which actually has the superior officer's type blade with the double fuller, double edged, but this is a completely different style of hilt. It's more like a British hilt, actually, with two bars at the side, but you'll notice it has a nice little detailing on it, and a completely kind of individual style cap to the back strap. So, this is its own sword. It's made by Coulot & Co, who were a famous sword making family, and a lot of these unusual French swords were made by Coulot, very highly rated makers, equivalent to like Wilkinson. So, yet again, this is a steel hilted sword. It's not the 1882 pattern, it's probably something that dates to earlier than that, could be as early as the 1850s, probably more likely the 60s or 70s, and this is a very individualistic sword. And if we look on the Eastern Antique Arms website, I've got an article I'll link below, actually to fantasy swords, and the French actually went for, particularly in the 1890s and beginning of the 1900s, went for these completely custom individual designs of particularly cavalry officers' swords. They didn't fit within any of the models, but sort of conformed to some French models of sword. For example, the blade cross-section was usually somewhat like the So these were very individual sword designs. So, to conclude, when we look at French swords, non-regulation, special design French swords, I think there's a lot of parallel to what we see going on in Britain, with officers getting things like patent solid hilts, or unusual types of blade, or regimental specific guards, and this kind of stuff. And I think the reasons are the same, is that because the British army and the French army were inextricably connected with colonialism, maintaining their colonies abroad, and still doing cavalry patrolling actions, and still going off into the desert and fighting against tribal peoples, or into the jungle, or into these areas where they were more debatably more likely to come into close hand-to-hand combat, swords were still treated more as weapons. And I still think they saw them still like this when they marched off to World War One, still wearing their swords at first. Anyway, I hope that's been thought provoking and interesting. French sword experts feel very free to post underneath and correct anything I've said about French swords here. There's some very good books on the subject, but nearly all of them are written in French of course, so I read them as best I can, but my French is comme si comme ça. So thanks a lot for watching, and à plus! 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!