Italian Military Sabres (After 1871) - Innovation of Design

Hey folks, Mathewson here, Scholar Gladiatoria and Eastern Antique Arms. So apologies for my absence incidentally for the last week or so, I've been quite poorly with the nasty flu virus and just generally busy with life stuff as well. Now I've spoken a lot on this channel about British military swords and I've spoken a little bit about other nationality military swords from the 19th century but a nationality of swords that I haven't spoken about very much are Italian swords. Now this is only going to be a very brief introduction to one aspect of a particular breed shall we say or species of Italian military sword, largely because it's quite difficult for me to talk at the moment without coughing all over the camera. So we're going to start off with the Italian 1871 pattern. Now the reason that I'm starting with this is this was a break away from the designs of Italian sword that had gone previously, largely due to input from a Captain Del Frate and he essentially pioneered him and perhaps a few other people, perhaps there were other points of input as well, but the primary credited person with the new design was Del Frate. Now any of you who've read Sir Richard Francis Burton's book in English on a new system of sword exercise, he has an appendix at the end talking about hilt designs and he refers to this hilt and he shows the hilt that went before which was the 1860 pattern which has the same kind of guard as this but a very different type of grip. Now the important parts to note of the grip are that the grip in this case is smooth wood but you'll see that it's very much shaped for the bottom for the little finger there and the pommel extends beyond that and you'll also notice that the back strap is very straight and flat which is good to put your thumb on but moreover the really important feature that Burton and others talk about is that and you will notice that there's a little place to stick your thumb in. Now there's some debate about how much the thumb should go into that or whether it's purely to sort of save the end of the thumb from impacts. Now if I just grab a British sword for a second, I've actually got quite a few here, here you go Royal Engineers Officer's Sword by Wilkinson with a dedication on it, you'll notice that we've got a checkered area, just zoom in, we've got a checkered area here for the thumb but there's nowhere for the end of the thumb to go should, pull this bit stiff in the scalp, should I thrust into something and meet resistance the end of the thumb will jam into the bottom of the guard. Now this is something that is mentioned in British sources and in fact for practice weapons they advise putting some leather or even a little pad and we sometimes we find an equivalent to this even in modern fencing swords and indeed sabers, a little pad under there to save the end of the thumb and I myself I have to say have thrust people in sparring and had the end of my thumb kind of jammed. I actually keep my thumbnail very short, I mean I keep my nails pretty short anyway but I keep my thumbnail particularly short on that thumb for that reason because the nail jamming into the bottom of the guard is actually quite uncomfortable but you'll see that with the Italian sword here, the 1871 which was the first model of Italian sword to feature this, the end of your thumb is saved to some extent. Now let's just have a little look at the construction there, so what you've got is you've got a little almost like a roof and it's enclosed, you'll notice it's enclosed in there, there are some other nationality, if you're wondering what that hole is that's for a sword knot incidentally to essentially attach it to your wrist so you can't lose the sword on horseback, so your thumb goes up there. Now you'll notice if I engage the bottom of my hand so the little finger, I've got relatively long hands, I don't have very wide hands but I've got quite long fingers and if I do that, if I engage my little finger with the bottom there as I believe you should do, although not everyone agrees with that, and extend my thumb up you'll notice the thumb doesn't actually fully go inside that hole but should I jam the sword into someone especially on horseback and that gives me a little bit of kind of essentially crumple zone or kind of security distance between the end of my thumb and the top of the guard. Now you could argue why not just make the grip longer so that the thumb is further away from the guard and yes absolutely you could do that. My observation is that one of the issues with making grips too long, and we have seen this in recent years with certain models of gymnasium or practice sabre for modern HEMA, if you make the grip too long it makes the sabre handle quite strangely, so generally speaking I think you want a sabre to have enough space that you can get the thumb up the back but not so much space that you've got more than you really need because it makes the sword handle in a strange way. And you'll also have to notice that when this came in, this sort of innovation, it pretty much encourages you to have the thumb up all the time and in 19th century sources they differ in opinion on whether you should have the thumb up all the time or some of the time. The usual British advice is if a sabre is heavy, and this would class as a heavy sabre because it's a cavalry sabre, if the sabre's heavy then most of the time you should actually have the thumb down for added strength and security, especially on horseback, and you should only put the thumb up when giving a thrust, when giving point, and then you should bring the thumb back down again and hold it in something more like a handshake or a hammer grip. However there are other treatises that basically tell you to keep the thumb up all the time, and British sources equally do say if the sabre is a light sabre, not a light sabre but a light sabre, then you should keep the thumb up all of the time. So this was the first Italian sword, the 1871, Del Frate's input, don't know if it was 100% his design but definitely he pioneered this, and this style of hilt did have fans in other countries and I will just allude to this but there are other designs of swords from other countries, particularly Spain and Britain, experimental models in Britain, that also have a hole or a dip or a recess for the top of the thumb or to save the top of the thumb there, and in fact there was an experimental model of British cavalry sword from 1904, as we know they ended up going with the 1908 pattern which has a different solution for the thumb, but the 1904 actually has a little hole there to prevent the end of the thumb being jammed up against the guard, the weakness of that of course is you've got a hole in your guard over your thumb so you can be thrust through it which is perhaps unlikely but still would be fairly unpleasant being thrust in the end of your thumb. So the 1871 pattern, I'm not going to talk about the blades for now, you'll notice it was a pipe back blade, slightly controversial as a choice of blade in 1871, but there we go that's what the Italians chose. So next up we've got the, and this has just been sold actually, this is going to be packed up and posted off which is one of the reasons why I chose to do this video now, this is the 1873 for an officer. Now this is a very light, very light and nimble sword, quite well sharpened as well, you notice it's got a clipped back point, you'll also notice it is fullered not piped back, officers had a few different options, they could have a piped back blade but they very often went for a fuller blade and it's got an unusual blade section in that it's got double fillers up in the foible up here which is the end of the blade. But looking at the hilt you'll notice it's a different style guard, it's actually a more protective guard, it's a bit like a three bar guard that we'd find on a, I actually don't have one here, I was going to grab one but I don't have one here, a bit like a three bar guard you might find on a British or French sword but it's in flat sheet steel instead which offers quite good protection but you'll notice they yet again have gone, if I focus on the back strap, it's not exactly the same as the 1871, it's got a little bit of checkering down here for the heel of the hand, it's got a flat checkered section up there which is just the same as we find later on British swords and then it's got a recess for the thumb up there which is closed, let's get it to focus on there again, it is closed in there with an extra little plate so it's like a little roof that goes over the top and then it's closed at the front. This is a very differently handling sword, it's a slightly later model and it's an officer's version and it's much much lighter and more nimble but essentially the same or very similar, not exactly the same grip actually, the grip as you'll notice is a little, it's still smooth wood but it's a little bit more curvy, a little bit less straight and angular compared to the 1871 but very much the same solution for the back strap and the thumb and just to finish off, a related sword, I believe this is also a 73 but it's a could be later, could be 1880s, I'm not an Italian sword expert but you'll notice again we've got again a slightly different grip shape, it's a bit more swollen here but similar pommel to the 71 and a slightly different back strap, check it up here, check it here but again very flat and angular and straight here for the thumb to sit on and pipe back blade again and you'll notice that the solution for the thumb is basically exactly the same as the 1871 pattern. So there we go, I'm not going to waffle on anymore, I've done quite enough already but you'll see if I just hold them all up together, the 1871, this was the first one, you'll see that there is a continuity of design that goes through, in fact right the way through to the First World War with Italian swords, of having a very straight back strap or at least straight where the thumb goes, checkered where the thumb goes and then this kind of roof as it were for the thumb to, if not sit in, then for the end of the thumb to at least have a kind of a zone where it can, the shock can be absorbed by the thumb moving a little bit into it there and you'll see the continuity of design of those Italian swords. So I may talk in the future a little bit more about Italian swords but they are very very distinctive, they share some features with some other nationality swords, we could say that the guards, at least the three bar type guards, maybe have some parallels with British and French swords, the back straps probably partly inspired the later British 1895 back strap and the blades, very often they went to pipe back blades after about 1871 and that's similar to Germany and Switzerland and to a lesser degree Austria as well. So pipe back blades, when we're talking about British swords we always point out that pipe back blades were popular in the late Napoleonic period and through to the 1840s and then they fell out of favour but bizarrely in Italy, certainly northern Italy, Switzerland and some of Germany, Prussia, pipe back blades actually got popular after the middle of the 19th quite bizarrely so quite contrasting to the story of British sword blades. Anyway I hope that's been somewhat useful and interesting, Italian swords, if you want to see better pictures of these incidentally look at the link below for Eastern Antique Arms and you can see some high res photos, one of these swords isn't listed there yet but it will be soon, one's for sale and one's been sold but I'm sure I'll have more Italian swords in the future and at some point I'll have another one of the 1860 models that came before these, different type of design and we'll look at those and contrast and see how different the earlier Italian swords were compared to the swords which came after 1871. Thanks for watching, I'll see you again soon for another video. 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!