The British 1908 pattern cavalry sword & cut vs thrust

Hey guys, I'm Nathan from Arms & Armor. Today I want to talk about swords as fashion, and in particular the change in sword style from the medieval period into the renaissance. We're going to look at four original swords from the Oakshot collection and talk a little bit of history. I think you'll enjoy it. Stay tuned. So the New York Times recently had an article that I stumbled across saying that renaissance fashion is having a renaissance. I'll link it in the notes below this. And it made me think about how renaissance fashion, right, this is my Lands Connect kit. You can't see how giant the cod piece is. It's gigantic, which is fitting. You can't think about renaissance fashion without thinking about your biggest piece of jewelry, which was your sword. And in particular, rapiers, skivonas, backswords, broadswords, in the renaissance and early modern period became more and more bling. And there was really a significant break in fashion. So let's look at a couple of medieval swords to see what medieval fashion looked like. So this sword is one that was collected by Ewert Oakshot. The blade and the pommel are original, probably mid-12th century. The cross and the grip, he had these replaced based on contemporaneous examples. We can debate whether this cross might have been a little longer time period. It might have been, but it was certainly what we would call cruciform. So this is a classic medieval sword. The decoration is minimal. Its style and its shape are iconic. It's a cross. In fact, this sword, we believe, was on crusade. I'm sure you can't really see it, but if you have, this was, this sword is in a couple of Ewert's books. I think it's in, oh god, I can't remember which one right now, but I'll link it in the video. So you can look and see the etching on it. So there's a bunch of etching on this sword, which looks like it's supposed to represent the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on it, and some Greek crosses, which suggest that this sword was taken on crusade. As the sword of essentially a holy warrior, it makes sense that its semi-austere style kind of speaks for itself, right? This sword is not a bling sword. This sword is a warrior sword. The bling that's on it, let's see if you can, right, so you can see right here what looks like a flower is, in fact, probably a Greek cross on it. The decoration is etched into the blade. This is a super medieval thing to do, right? People sometimes think of medieval swords, all covered in gold and gems and stuff. Fantasy, right? Or swords of state, right? The sword of the Holy Roman Emperor, tons of bling because he was the emperor. The sword of a normal knight was a normal sword. It carried all kinds of symbolism, but it wasn't, you know, an eye-catching giant piece of jewelry. It was a simple piece, by and large. I'll show you another one from a little bit later. This is Moonbrand. It was Oakshott's favorite piece, arguably. This sword is a little later, 13th century. He thought it was just the iconic knightly arming sword. The grip on this is original, so I'm not going to touch it because it's 700 years old, but things to note. It's a cruciform sword with slightly downturned quillins, which is very common in, you know, high Middle Ages. This blade has these four fullers running down about a foot of the blade, and that's really the only decoration on this piece, right? Everything else is pretty functional, right? This big pommel is a hammer for hitting people in the face. This cross guard is unadorned. It's undecorated aside from its quite elegant shape, right? So this and these fullers, I say they're decorative because they are shallow, parallel fullers. They're not reinforcing anything. They're not eliminating weight. They're not structural. They're decorative, right? That's the nod to fashion on this sword, which you couldn't even see if it was being worn, right? In a scabbard, you'd just see the hilt sticking up. So the functionality of this sword, its symbolism as a cross, that's really the important part about it in medieval sword fashion. But as we move towards the Renaissance, things start to change, right? We have a shift in the way that people think about themselves with the rise of an early middle class, the early days of capitalism and of globalization, and the rise of humanist philosophy. We start to get new kinds of individual expression being built into weapons as part of fashion, right? So this outfit that I'm wearing is my Landsknecht outfit, and these German mercenaries famously were exempted from laws prohibiting commoners from wearing silks and fine fabrics because they would only live a short amount of time. So these soldiers made these very fancy outfits out of fabrics that were illegal for most commoners to wear, and they did crazy slashing on these pieces. They made giant cod pieces, short leg on one side, long leg on the other, to express themselves, right? It was fashion, essentially, starting to be as we think of it. And the swords changed quite a bit, too, and they became jewelry. So let's look at a couple. This rapier, original rapier, 17th century. It has some writing on it, which in Latin says, all glory to God. You can see that this piece, although it's a different kind of weapon, right? It's long and stabby instead of shorter and cuddy. But more than that, we can see that the hilt is highly ornate, and it's ornate in a way that isn't just functional, right? It's decorative. It's highly decorative. So let's look at this here. See all of this chisel and file work, right? With this decorative work coming around the guards. The whole thing is worked and decorated and filed, right? This is a sword that's meant to convey something about its owner. And its owner wasn't a king, right? Its owner was probably, you know, a upper middle class guy, right? Maybe a merchant, probably a private citizen. This is a civil sidearm rather than a weapon of war. It's something you wore every day or when you were dressed up to convey the fact that you were a gentleman of taste and fashion, which was separate from your feudal place in society, right? You didn't have to be a count to have a fancy rapier. You just had to be rich enough to buy one. This is a big shift. So we start to see much more complex and decorative pieces for common people during the Renaissance. Another piece that's roughly contemporaneous with this a little bit later is this Schiavone. So this is an Italian broadsword, a little later than the rapier, the evolution really of it, that has this cat's head pommel, which is very popular on Italy. A ray skin grip that is spiral bound, it's twisted, right? Compared to those medieval grips that were much more functional, you know, just plain functional. The metal work on the Schiavone is highly decorative. Yes, it protects your hand, right? It has to do that, but it does other things too. And what it does is display that you are a man of fashion, right? That you're with it and the rest of your clothing would have complemented this. So I'm going to suggest that if the New York Times think that the Renaissance is having a renaissance, we really all need to start wearing really awesome Renaissance swords as our jewelry. We should legalize rapier open carry so that we can have tons of bling. Thanks very much. Take care.