The British gothic-hilted infantry officer's swords of the 19th century

Hi everyone, a little video about the so-called Gothic Hilted Sword. So the Gothic Hilted Sword was an infantry officer's sword. That is, officers who were on foot rather than cavalry officers or artillery officers. And it came along in 1822, the first type. And the first type had a folding guard on the inner side, I hope you can see that there. And that's just to make it more comfortable to wear. And the reason it's called the Gothic Hilt, which is a modern term we've given to it, is because the style of the openings is quite like Gothic architecture. And of course there was a Victorian Gothic revival, a very popular style. They brought back medieval Gothic style architecture. And a lot of famous Victorian buildings in London, for example the Houses of Parliament and the Natural History Museum, are built in this Gothic style. And the style of this hilt follows that movement of the time. It came along in George IV's time, formerly the Prince Regent. And it's characterised by these sort of arched sections and openings. It's got a curly quill on at the back and a curly bit there and a curly bit there. And then it has a sort of oval, what we call cartouche section here, which carries the cipher, or the initials essentially, of the monarch of the time with the crown above. So this one's Victorian, so it's V-R for Victoria Regina. And George IV, for example, has G-R with a little i-V for fourth in between. And it was a brass hilt for infantry officers. And then in 1827 they decided that rifles, rifle officers, so there was the Rifle Brigade and there were also certain rifle regiments as well, they were classed as a sort of elite at the time, since the Napoleonic period. And they had traditionally had slightly more combative, shall we say, styles of sword in the Napoleonic era. So after this came along in 1822, five years later, 1827, they thought, OK, well we'll give the rifle officers their own style of sword. So what came along is a steel hilt instead of a brass hilt, because steel hilt is of course tougher than brass. And notice that it doesn't have the folding section on the inner side. So this is actually, although it's a bit more uncomfortable to wear maybe, it's stronger as a guard. And notice also that in the cartouche section they don't have the monarch's letters, the monarch's cipher. They actually have what we call the stringed bugle. So you've got a horn, like a horn for blowing, a hunting horn, with strings coming up from it. And it's a strung bugle with a crown above. And the strung bugle was the emblem of both the rifle regiments and also light infantry. But it's important to note that contrary to some books which have suggested that this was carried by light infantry officers, it was not. It was carried only by rifle brigade and rifle regiments. It wasn't carried by all light infantry officers. The blade was the same on both. So from 1822 to 1845 it was a pipe back blade, which I've spoken about before. And then from 1845 to 1892 it was this type of Wilkinson-style fullered blade. And then from 1892 to 1895, when the sword completely changed, it was a straight thrusting blade, which I've also spoken about in previous videos. So this is the 1827 Rifle Tilt. So we've been through the folding section inner guard. That's the 1822 style hilt that came along. Then in 1827 the rifles hilt came along with steel parts instead of brass. Oh, and another thing I should mention, the back strap of the brass one has decoration of the pommel. The rifles one does not. And they have slightly different shaped pommels as well. You'll notice the brass infantry one is a bit sort of squarer and the rifles one is a bit more rounded. But they both have these stepped sections. And then finally the last thing to change on this gothic style hilt was they decided that that folding section on the inner side, whilst it was good for wearing the sword more comfortable and didn't wear the uniform so much, they decided it was a bit fragile. And in fact a lot of antiques, this section, the pin which goes through the hinge gets broken or bent. And that section essentially either becomes loose or falls off. So the final change was to fix that inner section and make it solid, like the rifle officer's sword. So it became one solid piece of brass. And generally speaking the later ones tend to be a bit more robust, thicker brass, just a bit bigger. And sort of bigger, stronger swords essentially. But it still kept the decoration at the back, same style pommel and so on. And this is known as the 1854 style hilt because in the dress regulations of 1854 there's a suggestion that the hinged section was no longer a requirement. However in my observation of collecting swords for many years is that actually a lot of examples of this pattern of swords still have the folding section until about 1859. So although we call it the 1854 pattern when it has a solid section on the inside here, in my opinion they didn't really change on average until about 1859. And in actual fact I have examples with folding inner sections on the guard that date as late as the 1880s. So they did keep making the folder inner section. The grips on all of them were essentially the same. You've got shark skin, shagreen as it was called, with copper wire between the bulges. And the copper wire was gilt. And I should also mention that originally most of these brass hilts, perhaps all of them, were gilt plated. So they were gold, very thin, very very thin gilt covered. So they kept a gold sheen and they didn't tarnish like the brass tends to. But because the gilt was very thin, the gilt tends to rub off and just leaves the brass. So, thank you.