Smallsword - What are they and a general overview.

Hello and welcome to another video from the AHF. This is an article about the small sword, which is a weapon which we don't study as a primary weapon in the club. We have practiced it, we do study it from time to time. I own several originals and I own some training swords of this type as well. So I want to give you sort of an overview of the sort of weapon, what it is, what we call a small sword, how it relates to all the different weapons we use and also what I think of it personally as a weapon. The interesting thing about a small sword is that it has its origins, sorry, sport fencing has its origins in this exact weapon. This one I'm holding here is what we would call a collet commande and if my French pronunciation is off on that, please let me know. It's something like that. I'm not much of a French speaker but the collet commande or collet commande is this sort of blade type that has a very, very broad sort of triangular shaped blade section which tapers after its fort or strong to a much narrower section which is still triangular and also hollowed out and is in essence very, very similar to a modern FA blade for the sport fencing. So this is kind of the origins of sport fencing in many ways. This particular one is from about 1730. It's stamped up with the crown of one of the Georges so it's actually a civilian sword for a military officer. That doesn't really tell you anything about the sword itself. The small sword was carried as a weapon of self-defence. It was not a battlefield weapon. It was purely carried for self-defence and also fashion. Now of course many swords have been carried for both of those purposes and they kind of vary in terms of their emphasis of sort of one over the other and in my personal opinion I would say the small sword is one that emphasises fashion a little bit more than function of self-defence than some of the that sort of came before it. Now obviously I'm a rapier instructor so I'm going to be a little bit biased and I'm sure people will say that. Some small sword users will absolutely hate me for my opinion on the small sword. At the same time I can appreciate it as a weapon. I quite like it. I've got some originals but I will give you my honest opinion on what I think of it. The small sword, first of all, where it came from, well it looks like a small rapier if you like and a lot of people would call it a rapier. I mean this one doesn't have a knuckle bow. Some did and some didn't. I mean for example this is another original that I've got which does have a knuckle bow so it's not missing from this sword it's just that some of them didn't have it. They kept the knuckle bow because it's basically tradition from earlier swords. It's not really necessary when you've got a sword that doesn't actually have a cutting edge. This knuckle bow is designed to really protect you against cutting attacks. So okay, the small sword. You're talking about a sword that is, as it sounds, a small sword. It is very small, no doubt. It's like a very downsized rapier. When a rapier would on average weigh between one kilo and 1.3 kilos, a small sword would only weigh between 350 and maybe 550 grams. I mean those are rough averages. There can be a few things either way of that sort of scale but you're talking very, very light compared to a rapier. Typically half the weight of a rapier or less. Also a lot shorter. The blade length on this, I'm sorry if I always mix up metric and imperial, it's just the way I've grown up, but the typical small sword of this sort of 18th century small sword, they're normally around about 30 inch blade length and when you look at most sort of earlier, first half of the 17th century rapiers, they're typically more like 42 to 45 or more. So the small sword is very short compared to a rapier, very light compared to a rapier and with a lot less hand protection. In terms of why it has all those features, well there are a few things. Firstly, it's short enough that it can be worn flush or straight down your leg which is beneficial if the bustling cities of the time that were really building up, it's not going to get in the way, as seen with the hills, much, much smaller. But also just the way fashion was changing at the time, it's easier to carry, it fits better with the sort of clothing people are wearing. And small swords tend to have little to no cutting edge at all. You'll see almost no cutting action whatsoever, typically none, sometimes a few sort of tip slashes. Realistically no actual cutting with a small sword. So even if they taper down to an edge, they're not tapering down to an edge to be sharp for cutting, it's more just the construction of the sword to get it light enough to a point and be good on the point. So this one for example has edges that are quite narrow but you wouldn't think of them as cutting edges by any means. The actual taper of the blade, it's so broad for example because of this triangular section that there's very little taper towards the edge so it's not particularly sharp. This one for example is not far off as blunt as some training swords. Anyway that's the way a small sword normally is, they're not sharp on the edges so you could grab them and you wouldn't expect to actually cut with them. They are a point-based weapon. They existed essentially in a transitional form as rapiers became smaller and lighter. Approximately in the middle of the 17th century, it varies a little bit from time to time. For example in Spain they held onto the cup-hilt rapiers an awful lot longer than most places held onto rapiers, although saying that the Spanish cup-hilts became lighter and smaller and kind of were becoming a small sword that looks a bit like a cup-hilt rapier anyway. That gives you a kind of an overview of the sword. This one is English actually and it's marked up with a crown stamp. It dates to about 1730. It's the college mart or blade construction which is very very broad at the base and it flares out quickly after the It's triangular section. It is the forebearer of the epee, the sport fencing epee. This is exactly where the epee came from. You can tell from the blade construction and this was very very popular in a period basically early 18th century for around about 30 or 40 years and it lasted in essence until swords were no longer carried which for civilian use which is late 18th century where civilians weren't carrying swords anymore. They didn't always have this kind of blade construction. You will find small swords like this for example, still triangular shape but without the characteristic college mart sort of blade type. This is a much later late 18th century small sword. Now in terms of how do they compare to everything we do? Well you will often see the spadroon coming up in the conversations of our videos and this is a spadroon compared to a small sword. Even with the college mart sort of blade this still looks quite substantial and this looks even more substantial in many ways in profile. The reality is this is a 450 gram sword this is a 700 gram sword so you're talking a massive difference between the two. They're also the same length and have equivalent guards. The guard is a bit more substantial I suppose than this but not much. It's mostly in the blade and the spadroon is a militarized version of the small sword so this is the kind of sword being carried in civilian self-defense. This is the kind of sword being carried for officers who have been trained to use this and want to use similar technique and what they've learned from this in war with this. So there's the spadroon and this one is a French one. I've shown you in the past the British 1796 pattern spadroon. This one is a 1821 gendarme sword which is French paramilitary. The gendarmes still exist today but it's essentially a military pattern spadroon for the French and you've seen this one is actually double edged as well as opposed to my single edged British pattern. So yeah the spadroon, sorry the small sword is in essence the ancestor of the F.A. Now the F.A. is obviously what they use in Olympic fencing today and you can see kind of how it's evolved essentially is that they've dropped this construction completely. It still tapers to a wider sort of thickness than it is at the tip but it's comparatively thin. The boulder's got a substantial bit larger and also these pistol grips have developed but in actual fact the F.A. blades are quite good representatives of the small sword if you want to actually practice small sword it's quite beneficial. The downside is they're a bit too long so you need to use a junior blade or shorten an adult blade but yeah the F.A. blades are quite good you just you don't want to be using these pistol grips and you need a smaller bowl than that because it's absolutely gigantic. What do I think of it as a weapon? Now small sword users will hate me for this because I'm a rapier practitioner and I didn't just sort of come to rapier and think everything else is terrible. I actually use loads of different other swords and different types. I like lots of different types and I can appreciate lots of different types and I use them myself and experiment and what I've found with the small sword is I find that it's martially unsound and what it comes down to is this. The first point it cannot cut and I find that a sword that cannot cut in an armored situation which is what this is going to be used in is too much of a compromise. In rapier for example there is still plenty of cutting an awful lot of cutting it's not the primary sort of attack but there's still a lot and it's a primary way that we stop people closing against us the kind of aggressive opponents going to hanging parries we cut around it's stuff you just can't do with a small sword so I don't think it's martially sound for the basis that it cannot cut it's a massive problem. The next one is that it's so incredibly light and so incredibly fast on the disengage and the double disengage that I think the number of double hits is just unacceptable to a weapon of self-defense. Now saying that I also think the rapier solo is not particularly suited to self-defense either I think it needs to be used with a companion weapon like a dagger ideally but the small sword was intended specifically to be used solo and therefore I'm going to judge it on that basis. Yeah I think it's martially unsound I think it's interesting it's a bit of fun to spar with would I ever actually want to use it to defend my life with? Hell no. So yeah I think it's kind of interesting they're pretty they're dainty they'll look nice with sort of fashionable clothing of the 18th century but I'm really not a big fan and you'll see they don't actually have as much in common with the rapier as at my first scene for example these finger rings most of them are not actually intended to wrap the thing around it's too tight to actually get a comfortable grip in it they're really just there for fashion the same way that the knuckle bow remained on some of them so it's actually more designed for resting thumb on the sort of flat and index finger behind it for these kind of actions because again you've got no edges so like sport fencing you engage on either edge well there aren't actual edges per se so you haven't got a true edge and a false edge and worries about flats because I believe that this triangular section is effectively just as stiff and strong in every direction so there you go there's the small sword small sword is a latter part of the 17th century and 18th century gentleman's weapon of self-defense and obviously dueling but almost every sword is a weapon for dueling in its time and place am I a fan of it no I think it's kind of curious but I don't like it so thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed the video please subscribe if you haven't already and keep watching my videos thank you