Antique swords: The British 1821 light cavalry sword is a good sword

Hey folks, I'm Matt Easton. So I recently in fact just put up a video that I actually filmed ages ago talking about the 1821 British Light Cavalry Trooper's Sword or Sabre, whichever you prefer to call it. And I actually filmed that video months and months ago, in the winter in fact, and for some reason forgot to make it public and I was just having a clean out in my videos and I saw it there so I edited it slightly and uploaded it. And one thing that I didn't make very clear in that video but I really want to make categorically clear is that the 1821 Pattern Light Cavalry Sword is a good sword. First up, there is a lot of rubbish written in modern books about antique swords by people who know a lot about the objects and they have studied lots of the antique swords, however they don't necessarily know how to use a sword and in some cases sadly they haven't read many of the original source accounts describing swords in use. And I hope that if there's one thing that I feel relatively qualified to talk about, number one it's the use of sabres, number two it's the actual antique sabres now because I've got quite a lot and I've been collecting for quite a long time, but also thirdly it's the original source material and this is my bread and butter, this is where I put my hat, this is where I hang my hat, is particularly 19th century source material, descriptive first-hand accounts of fighting, of combat and the use of weapons. I find it absolutely fascinating, very rewarding and luckily the 19th century has left us with tons of source material, much of which has yet to be published and I'm working on trying to remedy some of that. But the 1821 sword gets a bad rap for a number of reasons I think. Firstly there are the people who believe that there is truly an answer to the cut and thrust debate and they believe that the answer is the 1908 pattern. For them the 1908 pattern skewer, as I would call it, it's not a bad sword, it is a spike, but for them the 1908 pattern is the height of development, it's the best sword that you could possibly create in their minds. Of course the 1908 pattern was only used in combat for a small period of time really in World War One and debatably a couple of actions after World War One, but it saw relatively limited use and it was used in a very specific way by and large, it was used as a hit-and-run weapon, it was used much like a lance to be honest, it wasn't really used in cavalry versus cavalry melees and it wasn't really used by dismounted cavalry fighting on foot and these kind of situations. And you know if you're charging at high speed with a spike and then moving off again the 1908 is fine, however if you get mixed in with a bunch of Pathan or Afghan or Sikh cavalry and you're fighting for your life in a melee I wouldn't want to have a 1908 pattern. For the very simple fact it doesn't handle very nicely at all for fencing, if you want to call it that, or for fighting in that type of melee type situation. You can't cut with it, you can hit with it and it will hurt someone, but you can't really cut with it because it just doesn't have the wrong blade geometry to have a decent cutting edge. You can only thrust and it's just not a very good sword for that kind of use, it is really a little lance. In contrast the 1821 pattern which gets a bad rap, why does it get a bad rap? Well firstly as I've mentioned because some people believe that there's an evolution that is always towards better and they haven't watched my videos where they would come to appreciate that there's different weapons for different situations and there's also personal preference and there's many reasons why the world is full of a variety of weapons, not everybody has ended up with the pointy stick or the 1908 pattern sword, quite simply because it doesn't fit into all of those situations. So they believe that there's a height of evolution and this is left behind and this was improved upon, but also because this is a compromise design and they think that when you compromise you make something crap, well that's not true, that's patently not true. Most technology that we use in our day-to-day life, whether it's military, whether it's modern army rifles and tanks and planes and helicopters or whether it's cars and motorbikes or laptops and computers or your mp3 player, there are compromises in all of those designs and the fact is that yes some compromises work out better than others, however for a while they basically reinvented the backsword didn't they and the backsword was used for hundreds of years incredibly successfully all over Europe, it was used from the 16th century right the way through to the end of the 18th century, you know it was used pretty much from 1500 to 1800, that's 300 years of use by both cavalry and infantry, a very successful sword and it came in various different formats, you know you've got broadswords which are double edged and you've got backswords which are single edged, but by and large they do pretty much the same thing, it's a straight and some sabres are only very slightly curved and this is only very slightly curved, so as a blade what is there to criticise about this, well not an awful lot really, it's pretty much similar to backswords that have been around for hundreds of years before it came along, it's a pretty good cutter, it's a pretty good thruster, it can do either of those things and in fact this type of sword cuts very well, it cuts as well as a highland broadsword and as well as a backsword, it might not cut as well as a 1796 light cavalry sabre, but you know what, in an actual fight I'd much rather have this than a 1796 light cavalry sabre, this is longer so it's got better reach, it cuts almost as well but it can cut from further away which is incredibly important, I'd rather cut slightly less well but from further away than have to get closer to someone to give them a bigger win, but you know it's a different philosophy, toolwells are generally shorter and they cut fantastically and were used very effectively, but toolwells were designed to be used with a shield or a buckler, with a sword alone being able to hit from far away is a good thing and this has got a much more protective help than the 1796 light cavalry sabre, so to my thinking for most combat applications be it on horseback or on foot, and remember cavalry didn't always fight on horseback, cavalry did dismount to fight in many situations, there's no point riding around on a horse in streets, if you're at the siege of Delhi you have to dismount and fight on foot, it's as simple as that or the siege of Sebastopol or any other siege or indeed a lot of sort of village fighting, if you're fighting some rebels in a village and you get into some mud huts, staying on your horse is probably a bad idea, dismounting with a sword and a revolver or pistol is a better idea because you're a big great big target sitting high up on a horse and you can't move around very easily, so for most situations I think this is a better sword than the 1796 light cavalry sabre, although I love the 1796 light cavalry sabre, it's an iconic and amazing weapon, it's a fantastic cutter but I think this is better, and then it's got definitely got a better guard and better reach but comparing it to later sabres, well in actual fact you know people go oh the 1853 was a vast improvement over the 1821, really in what way? Oh look I've got an 1853 here let's just grab it, there we go there's an 1853, let's just have a look at these blades, holy crap the blades are identical, they are not absolutely identical but they are exactly the same length, by eye at least, they are the same thickness, if I push them on the ground, amusingly the 1853 flexes more easily than the 1821, so the 1821 is actually stiffer, they are the same breadth, their fullers are the same length, they have the same star point, a sphere point, with the same length false edge, the blades are the same, so the only difference really between the 1853 and the 1821 is the hilt, okay well they've both got three bar hilts of essentially, bring it close to the camera, essentially the same design, even the thumb guard is the same shape, more or less, okay so the guards are the same, now the grips are different, the characteristic thing of the 1853, and I will do a video specifically about this series of swords in the future, the 1853 is a full width tang, and now that is the Reeves patent, Charles Reeves in 1853 patented his full width tang, which means that the grip, let's turn this around, there we go, the tang is the full width of the grip, let's just put the 1821 down for a second, it's quite difficult navigating in this room with so many swords, I'll tell you, you'll see the tang running all the way up there, as I say I'll talk a little bit more about those swords in a future video, so the tang is the full width of the grip, so it's stronger, at least in theory, a lot of sword blades actually break up here rather than down there, but in theory it's stronger, so yes that's a bonus, however a disadvantage of that style of grip is they tend to be quite cylindrical, as I've mentioned before, and they tend to turn in the hand, and in fact Alfred Hutton mentions this in his book of 1867 called The Cavalry Swordsman, talking about the 1853 patent, so and that is not an issue with the 1821, because the 1821 has got the traditional style grip with wood and leather with a back strap, so it's more of a rectangular shape, and it doesn't turn in the hand, so edge alignment's better than this, just to conclude, because I don't want to waffle on for too long, essentially what I want to say is this is a good sword, the 1821 patent was a good sword, I wouldn't say that the 1853 was worse necessarily, but it really wasn't very different, and people, modern writers who write about antique swords and suggest that the 1821 was, oh it was awful, it was a compromised design, it didn't do one thing great, it didn't do another thing great, basically they're just spouting bullshit, they don't actually know how to use swords, I haven't met a single one of these people who actually says that, who has a clue about using swords, and most of them haven't even read the period accounts talking about these swords, so these were decent swords, and you know, the final kind of bit of evidence I would throw in here to say is, as I said in my previous video, Hodgson, a fricking awesome swordsman who trained regularly with his Sikh comrades in his cavalry, in Hodgson's horse, in his cavalry troop, he trained with them on a regular basis with lance and sword, and he was an outstanding swordsman, he killed numerous opponents in fighting, both with a boar spear and with a sword, and was wounded by swords in fighting. He chose one of these, and the thing to remember is that the officer's version of this, the officer's version of the 1821, I'll just grab one there, stayed in use, it stayed in use until 1896, that didn't get supplanted, and that was an outstanding sword, and still is an outstanding sword. So there we go guys, the 1821 Patton Light Cavalry Trooper's Sword was a good sword, and it was used by good swordsmen out of choice, and it was retained in use, the officerised version of it was retained in use until 1896, and in fact in areas beyond that as well. Cheers guys! Thank you for watching, please subscribe and feel free to follow us on Facebook.