Antique French Sword Sizes Compared

Hey folks, Matt Easton here, Scholar Gladiatoria. So I'm just working today on updating the Eastern Antique Arms website, which is more or less one of my day jobs now, as well as making videos for you guys. And I was handling some French swords, I was uploading some French swords and it occurred to me, I have spoken about certain models of French sword in the past, but it occurred to me this is a rare situation where I've got some French swords side by side. And one of the French swords that I've been adding to the website, in fact it's up for sale now or at least the point of filming it is, I can't promise it will still be by the time you watch this video, is this 1822 Heavy Cavalry sword. And this is a big sword and that's really what I wanted to point out to you, but I wanted to do a comparison with the other end of the spectrum. We're not going to go all the way down to the things like the artillery swords and the sort of sidearms, hangers, things like that, but this is an infantry officer's sword. Now this is the 1821 pattern infantry officer's sword, this one is actually dated 1827. You'll notice incidentally both these have got quite dark blades, just patina, but they're actually in reasonably good condition. So traditionally French swords of this period tend to have brass hilts, this is a brass hilter there. It may look black on camera, that's just because it's got again oxidization or patina on it, you could clean all that off and make it bright brass if you wanted to. And this has only got a 29 inch blade, whereas the Heavy Cavalry sword here has got a 38 inch blade, so 29 inch blade and 38 inch blade. Now I usually talk about British swords on my channel or indeed earlier period weapons, you know medieval period and renaissance era swords, but in reference to the Victorian British swords that I normally talk about, this is longer than most of them, okay, and this is shorter than most of them. And I just think it's kind of an interesting juxtaposition that on one hand you've got the French infantry officer of the 1820s has a sword which is shorter than the British infantry officer, and at the other end of the spectrum you've got the French Heavy Cavalry using a sword which is longer than the British Heavy Cavalry. So in that sense British swords are kind of more in the middle and French swords are more exaggerated or more extreme. Just to talk about this for a second, why might that be the case? Well, the short answer is I don't fully know and I don't think anybody really does have a complete answer. If you've got your own ideas, if you're an expert on the French military, French army of the 19th century, then by all means post underneath, I'd be I'm always happy to learn, I'm very happy to learn and find out, but I have always found it interesting that French infantry officer's swords do tend to be shorter than British infantry officer's swords. So the standard length in, I'm going to use inches because that's what's kind of come straight to my brain and I can reel off without crunching the numbers rather than centimetres, but within the British military infantry officer's swords had a fairly standard length of 32 and a half inches, and this goes all the way back to the 1796 Spadroon. And in fact you could say it goes back earlier than that as well because this kind of 32-33 inches is quite a standard length for lots of infantry officer's swords in the British infantry, but it became absolutely set in stone with the 1796 Spadroon and then after that the 1822 Sabre that came in that also had a 32 and a half inch blade. In contrast, the French blades tend to be about two, even three inches shorter than that. So this is the 1821 pattern, the 1845 model rather that came in later varies a little bit in length but they tend to also have around a 30 inch blade. So this is 29 inch, they're usually about 30 inch, the British ones are usually 32 or 33 inches. Why did the French want a shorter blade than the British? Despite the fact that they're fundamentally similar swords, you can do similar things with them, they're cut and thrust swords, slightly curved, you can thrust, you can cut with them, you can do all of those sort of things. They've both got brass hilts with sort of what we call a half basket or at least a knuckle bow and a bit of side protection on this one. So they're similar swords on paper. Why were the French ones slightly shorter? We don't really know. Is it that French people are on average slightly shorter than British people? I don't know, that is the case in the modern world, I don't know if that was the case in the 19th century. Quite simply, who knows, but for some reason the French wanted a slightly shorter blade. But contrasting that, why did the French heavy cavalry want a blade that was particularly long? Well I should say, I should caveat that with the fact that the horse guards, the guys you see around Buckingham Palace in the centre of London in Westminster, wearing red with a breastplate and a helmet, sitting on a horse, they're the British equivalent of the French cuirassiers and the French cuirassiers did have a sort of 38-39 inch, well between 37 and 39 inch blade. This is a 38 inch blade, it's the same kind of length. The British horse guards, royal horse guards, so essentially the the lifeguards and the royal horse guards, do also have a blade of a similar length to that but they're unusual. The typical British heavy cavalry swords, all of the other heavy cavalry regiments, used a 35 and a half inch blade, so you know that's quite a bit shorter and it just so happens I have a French 1822 light cavalry sword here. So there we've got the French heavy cavalry at the bottom and the French light cavalry at the top, and you'll notice this has actually a 36 inch blade, so even the French light cavalry sword is slightly longer, half an inch longer, than the British light and heavy cavalry swords at 35 and a half inches. Why were the French using longer blades for their cavalry than the British were? I don't really know and it has to say the British weren't particularly unusual, so most nations in Europe used blades of about the same length as the British did, so Prussia for example, Italy, this 35 and a half inches or 34-35 inches is quite typical for cavalry swords at this time. So why were the French using longer swords? Why were their heavies using 39 inches and why were their lights using 36 inches? These are big swords, these French swords, and I don't really know the answer. I don't know if it was that they were using larger horses or if it was just a pride thing, maybe it was that their cavalry was particularly well trained, which I think it was. Maybe they could handle slightly bigger swords, I don't know, maybe it was compensation, maybe they were insecure about something, possible, just don't know. So there we go, a comparison between the three swords that they all used in the 1820s. So in the 1820s we've got at one end of the spectrum the infantry officer with his puny little 29 inch blade, almost a hanger really, it's only sort of between a hanger and a typical sabre length, really quite short. At the upper end of the spectrum we've got the heavy cavalry sword there with its 38 inch blade, sometimes longer, sometimes 39, and then we've got the 36 inch blade of the light cavalry sabre above it here. What I will say finally about French swords is that they are nicely made, really nicely made, and one of the things that the French did that was different to a lot of other nations in Europe at that time was they had centralised government inspectors and only a few factories who were authorised to make swords and other weapons for the army. So there were probably two, maybe three, main arms factories at this time in France. There was Châtellerault, there was Klingenthal, and arguably there was Saint-Étienne, and then there were a few other smaller ones but they were the three main ones, and really Châtellerault and Klingenthal were the two main ones. And for that reason, because they were sort of government monitored and run arms factories, the standards were very very high and anything that didn't meet the grade got thrown out, and so you often find these little markings, stamps, which you do find on British swords admittedly as well, but you find these stamps on the base of the blade on Rocasso which are called pensions in French, which are just stamps, and they are showing that the weapon has been tested and proved. And obviously this was done in Britain as well but at this date it was less centralised. It became centralised later on but really the French led the way, and if you go to Germany or Italy it wasn't as centralised, it wasn't as regulated as this. So French swords, very good quality. There are a few controversial things about their designs. You'll notice one of the common factors between all three of these swords, all for different branches of service, is they have exactly the same style of point, a bit like a katana, with the point to the rear. British swords tend to have spear tips, spear points for example, and at least on paper theoretically the spear point is better for thrusting. That being said, the French did favour the point so they were obviously happily thrusting with their swords as well. Anyway there we go, the main point I wanted to make, and at least two of these swords are up for sale now on my website, but the main point I wanted to make is there is a huge variety. People often talk about sabres as if they're just one object, one monolithic entity, and sometimes people incorrectly refer to infantry sabres as cavalry sabres. They use the word cavalry sabre to refer to any sabre, and of course that's ridiculous because look at the size difference between these two things, huge huge contrast. Anyway thanks a lot for watching, give us a like and a subscribe if you haven't done already, and cheers for following the channel and I'll see you again soon for another video. Bye 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!