Antique French 'Fantaisie' Swords

Salut, ça va mes amis? So Matt Easton, Scholar Gladiatoria here. How are you? I am looking at French swords today, hence the little bit of French there. So I've talked a little bit in the past about a certain type of French sword that is known as fantasy. Now that doesn't mean that they look like swords from Conan the Destroyer or Lord of the Rings. It means that quite simply towards the end of the 19th century French officers in particular started buying a certain type of sword that was essentially non-regulation. It's what I often refer to as non-regulation, but they did conform more or less to French types of sword. They looked kind of, you know, they looked French as we'll see in a minute. Now this is an example I have shown before and this is a non-regulation cavalry officers sword. The hilt is kind of modeled on the 1882 infantry officers hilt, but this one is in brass. But we have to caveat that with the fact that whilst most people recognize the French 1882 infantry officers hilt and it looks a bit like this but with fewer bars, in actual fact this type of hilt was developed slightly earlier, really kind of the 1850s, 1860s in North Africa. So at the time, much in the same way that the British Empire had its empire around the globe and lots of stuff was going on in India and Afghanistan and places like this, the French Empire was operating a lot in North Africa, most famously in Morocco and Algeria but elsewhere as well. And in their colonies, their colonial officers, much like British colonial officers, were quite kind of independently minded further away from Paris and they had their own ideas about things, they developed their own uniforms, their own quirks and indeed their own swords. And in fact one of those officers was a certain Colonel Mary Monge who I refer to, he's sometimes known just as Colonel Mary, and he wrote a memoir on swords, actually in the French I think it's Memoir sur Armes Blanches, but this was translated by a British officer into English, you can buy the book now, in fact I think it's available on archive.org or Google Books and it's called A Memoir on Swords, Colonel Mary, M-A-R-E-Y, if you just search for that you'll find it, and he was based in North Africa like lots of French officers at the time and so he was sort of on the front line as were and experienced swords used by the enemy, by the populace who were being ruled over and indeed by him and his troops, and he developed certain ideas about swords. Now I'm not going to go too far into Colonel Mary and his ideas, although they're very interesting and I very much recommend you read that book, but here I'm going to talk about these fantasy swords. So why did they come about in the kind of 1880s, 1890s, in fact right the way through to the First World War? I don't really know, it's a little bit difficult to say, but certainly in 1882 the design of swords came into question in France such that, or prior to that, such that in 1882 there was a new infantry officer's sword and indeed there was a new straight model of blade for some cavalry regiments. In fact it seems that many cavalry regiments, I'll just grab the normal, the curved 1822 which is the iconic sword that the American US cavalry sabres were based on and lots of other people's cavalry sabres, but this was used right the way through the period, but the curved sword maybe lost some popularity and straight blades came in, such that in 1882 a lot of light cavalry regiments were furnished with straight swords as the Dragoon and Curassia regiments were. It wasn't the same type of sword, but it was a straight blade. Now this clearly is connected to preference towards the thrust. Now as I've talked about in previous videos you can of course thrust someone with any pointy bit of metal regardless of how curved it is, but certainly the more curved the sword gets the more restricted you are in the ways that you can use the point. There are some ways you can use the point you can't do with a straight blade, but I've talked about that in previous videos. But for whatever reason straight blades like this started to get quite popular in the 80s and 90s of the 1800s in France and in lots of other places and so some officers started purchasing these non-regulation swords. Now this is non-regulation in every way. First of all this is clearly for a cavalry officer because it's a 37 inch blade. Well it doesn't have to be, I mean you know rapiers are often that long, you can use a blade this long on foot, but the fact that it's a brass hilt and they'd moved to nickel hilts for infantry by that time, I think it's probably almost certainly a cavalry officer's hilt. Now I will just mention as well, you won't be able to see so I won't try showing you, but on the underside of the guard here there is actually a crown which indicates that the owner of this sword was an aristocrat. Obviously in France they had the French Revolution so they wouldn't have still been able to use their title but the family presumably still harked back to their aristocratic roots and that is what one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine dots on top of the coronet. I don't know what that indicates in a coat of arms but it could be something like a marquis or perhaps even a duke, something like this. But anyway so from an old French family who were probably knights in their ancestry and so probably a cavalry officer with aristocratic roots and ordered this special sword. Now sometimes these fantasy swords as they're called are regarded, oh and I should also mention I've written an article about fantasy swords, French fantasy swords, I'll put the link to that below this video and that's on my Eastern Antique Arms antique selling website so if you're interested in this topic go and have a look at that video. But what I should mention is a lot of people have regarded these fantasy swords as dress swords, as essentially kind of toys and that they weren't used in anger, they weren't used in war. I think that's definitely not the case and I'll tell you why. I've had about five through my collection now and out of those five three of them have been sharpened, not just like sharpened a bit, sharpened for fun and this is one of those. They are really well sharpened, absolutely sharpened for service. So in my view these were either being used on active service or, and this is another possibility in France that we'll talk about a little bit more in a second, they were intended to be used in private matters of honour, duels. Now while in Britain and most other countries of the West in the 19th century by this point dueling had gone out the window, it was not legal and it wasn't even fashionable anymore, France was a little bit different and this is one of the reasons incidentally why in the 19th century France was still seen as the leader for learning fencing, as in with a foil or an épée primarily. They weren't really seen as leaders for sabre fencing, I think the Italians were more or less seen as that certainly by this period, but in terms of foil and épée the French were still seen as the leaders and part of that I think is the context that the French still had duels. Now they were usually duels of first blood rather than to the death but they did sometimes result in death or very bad injury just until honour was satisfied basically. Anyway we don't know whether these were sharpened for war or sharpened for the duel but they're sharpened so they were clearly meant to be used in some kind of capacity, they weren't just dress swords. So this is the sword you've seen before, now these are two swords you haven't seen before. What's interesting to me is that most of those fantasy swords as they're called were actually made for cavalry officers but two have come into my hands which are I believe made for infantry officers, the reason I say that is because of the size. Now the first example you'll notice it's got quite a similar hilt to what we were just looking at, it's more or less the form of the 1882 infantry officer sword but it's in bronze rather than, notice I don't say brass and that's because of the colour of it, it's very clearly bronze and the way the A beautifully made guard, quite robust and because of the proportion of this it's a 32 inch blade instead of a 37 inch blade, I believe that this is not at all for a cavalry officer, I think this is for an infantry officer. You'll notice this is quite a flexible blade incidentally but you'll also notice just like the other one it's very very pointy and more than that it's quite similar to what in Britain was known as the Toledo pattern blade. Up until that point this whole section is blunt okay so it's got fullers front and back and it's got a central fuller in this case the British ones don't but it's completely a bar okay so this whole section of the blade is for parrying with and it's completely, if I just try and bend that section I can flex it but it's very stiff. This bit is for parrying and everything above that is for cutting and thrusting. Now you're not going to be able to cut extremely effectively with this because it's quite a light flexible narrow blade without really fantastic edge geometry for cutting. That being said anything with a sharp edge can cut and you will be able to do harrying and annoying cuts to the face and hands and things like this, perhaps the thighs, anything that's got less clothing over it you're not going to chop through someone's jacket and through their arm or anything like that with it but you can do some level of cuts with it and it's a very very quick and nimble sword and clearly primarily a thrusting sword and yes yes kids this is somewhat like a spadroon it is essentially a spadroon isn't it it's a light cut and thrust sword with a stronger leaning towards the thrust. It is incidentally quite it feels quite back heavy in the hand funnily enough it doesn't balance that far that close to the hand it actually balances kind of a normal distance out for a for a saber but the hilt does feel very heavy it's a very chunky bronze back strap a very deep back strap unusually big pommel and thick guard and this kind of stuff so that's right thick and yeah so it feels very very nice and very very nimble with the point i can by moving the back of the sword you get a lot of control over the tip you don't have to keep the just move from the wrist to move the tip around you can sort of move the elbow and the wrist at the same time to get very nice movement you could get some very subtle and nice blade engagements with this so it would function very very well for fencing or dueling and i think that's one of the contexts now you have to remember in france and all over europe the view of france was that the cult of the small sword i.e the foil and fencing was very strong in france they still had dueling until really quite until into the 20th century in fact they they were the leaders of foil and epee fencing the small sword was a french weapon it was a french system used french guard names all over the world you know prime second terse cart and french terms it was a french science or french art with french terminology and french blade designs and it was very much the thing that in france i think officers saw their personal weapon perhaps the one that they wanted to wear around in the street but when they were not at war and sometimes at war as well they wanted to be able to use like the small sword like they like they the same way they fenced in their fencing classes and this the final one i'm going to show in this video is the final evolution of that it is literally a small sword bladed what would we call it we're not going to call it a saber are we it's a sword so it's a it's a hilt which is yet again similar ish but with fewer bars this time far fewer bars it actually doesn't provide very much thrust protection at all or very much cut protection because these bars are quite flimsy it's a very minimalistic guard but it's very light but the blade on this is a completely functional sharp epee blade so an epee blade is triangular hollow ground as this is just have a little close-up look at the blade you can see that's triangular exactly like an epee and exactly like a small sword so uh small swords and epees basically have the same blades um you can get small swords which are double edged and um different sections but the famous most common type of small sword by the by the let's say the napoleonic era was a triangular section blade hollow ground triangle exactly like this exactly like an epee the result that you get from that is a relatively a very light blade that is relative to its lightness quite stiff very good at penetration no real edge to speak of bear in mind this is real antique i'm hitting myself with ow it hurts a bit um but you're not going to cut very much with that you could possibly make those triangular the edges of the triangle kind of edged but they never see i've never found a triangular bladed small sword which had the edges sharpened but they're always sharp at the tip and this absolutely is a feather light really i mean it's it weighs about the same as a fencing foil as a modern fencing foil it's super super light the point of balance is very close to the hilt it's about one inch two and a half centimeters away from the hilt very very light in the tip absolutely you could duel with this funny that they didn't give me a better hand protection i can't say why i would have personally gone for something like that which had a little bit more frontal hand protection um but who knows maybe you know maybe this is really mostly for show maybe it's something that you know that you could use in a duel if you need to but basically it's for wearing i do think that that is more of a dress sword than that um and i do think that the cavalry one is not a dress sword at all so i did i'm not going to say categorical statements about they are dress swords or they are fighting swords or dueling swords i i think that there were many different types of these fantasy swords and i think individual examples were made for different purposes right i'm going to wrap it up there but simply to say i've linked my article below and uh these three swords that i've shown in this video are going up for sale on my website easternanticarms also linked below um so there we go folks i hope that was somewhat interesting but just to remember that in the 19th century swords were made for many reasons yes sometimes just for dress sometimes for war sometimes for dueling and sometimes in fact very often swords had to fulfill all three or at least two of those functions cheers for watching and i'll see you for the next video bye folks thanks for watching we've got extra videos on patreon please give our 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