FORGOTTEN WEAPONS! The swords you DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT

that's not a knife this is a knife [Music] hey folks matt easton here scholar gladiatoria so um as you know if you watch this channel regularly that i talk a lot about weapons of all sorts particularly edged bladed weapons knives and swords and things like that and that's clearly what this is now how many of you can guess what this is well if you're not sure so you'll either know or you won't know basically but there are some clues to guess and one of those is the fact that this is a short and very stout sword we could call it a short sword it is very thick very thick blade section it's very heavily built look at the size of that guard very very thick and chunky and heavy it's a full width tang front to back so the tang is the same shape as the grip the grip scales are riveted on either side they seem to be made of wood i think it could be horn but i think they would um and one uh two peculiar features you should note so if you want to learn about identifying uh swords that you might be unfamiliar with two things number one look at the shape of the tip the shape of this tip tells you things now whilst the shape of this tip might be similar to certain types of cavalry sword like 1796 british light and heavy cavalry swords um and indeed similar in some way to certain um you know things like machete as well but also similar to some swords like uh katanas all of those things have something in common and that is cutting basically chopping and cutting this is not a pint which is very conducive to thrusting yes you can jab it into someone but it's not really optimized for that it has what we call an asymmetrical point that is the point is towards the back of the blade rather than center which would be a spear point so it's not very good for thrusting and it's obviously a broad blade it's just not it's not really shaped it's not designed for it but there's another peculiar thing about this knife and that is its cross section you might be thinking matt what are you talking about it looks like a completely normal cross-section to me it's got a big fuller and it's got an edge what's unusual about that well the unusual thing is if i flip it over and show you this side where's the fuller gone tada now you see it now you don't now that is very very particular and peculiar to one particular nation not to say you don't find it occasionally elsewhere you do in fact but in terms of 19th century swords and in this case short swords um this is a thing which is particularly beloved of the country austria or what was then the austro-hungarian empire because austria had um colonized and conquered um hungary and um various surrounding areas so the there were various empires in 19th century europe that everybody knows about the british empire uh probably and uh perhaps you know about the french empire but there was also the spanish the portuguese the um the austro-hungarian um so various imperial nations the russians of course as well various imperial nations in the 19th century taking part in um in trying to be top dog basically um in different parts of the world at different times but the austro-hungarian empire wasn't uh wasn't enormous and certainly didn't spread really very much outside of central europe but it was very powerful um very important and of course it was very important in the politics of europe as well anyway they had their own distinct weapons and that's very important to note is that in the 19th century the way that you designed weapons was politicized it was uh it was associated with national identity um historical prototypes and all sorts and this even goes through as i've mentioned in previous videos into the helmets of world war one the way that certain different nations adopted different styles of helmets because they were associated with their sense of natural identity or particular periods that they took pride in from history or whatever so this knife does look passingly like a medieval messer doesn't it i don't think anyone would disagree yes this you know there's one key difference there's no nuggle sticking out at the side but fundamentally it looks like a medieval messer doesn't it and that is no coincidence because of course when people came to design uh swords if you look in france for example they decided this designed the so-called cabbage chopper or cabbage cutter which looks like a roman gladius because in napoleon's empire they liked to allude to roman imperial symbology and glory whereas the austro-hungarians they went back and looked at their medieval history and thought well we want things that look reminiscent of what our ancestors were using and they in this case associated with the medieval messer it seems i don't think it can be any coincidence that this thing looks like this but what is it well it's a model 1853 was later revised i think in 89 but anyway it's the model 1853 um now i'm going to butcher the german word here fashion messer i think is how the german or austrian uh would call it um the german language would call it a fashion mess but basically it means fascine knife uh in other words a pioneers sword and that's what we would call it in english we would call it the austrian model 1853 pioneers sword now you will notice that it does not have a saw edge very often pioneer swords have saw edges on the back this version doesn't uh of course the cabbage chopper doesn't either what these are predominantly used for are as tools and for that reason is massively overbuilt i should say so if you're thinking about something that's a messer indeed or a weapon or a short sword that is not like this this thing handles a bit like a club hammer but with an edge on it now i should point out this example has never been sharpened which would indicate that it was never issued probably um it's made by a company called uh s stribern i think it says um but i need to research that this is a new acquisition it does also have a helm helmet on it which might be kirschbaum made now a lot of weapons in the austro-hungarian empire were actually imported from germany well what later became germany from solingen um so you know there was a free trade in weapons from solingen to everywhere else in the world everywhere from the sudan to uh poland and russia to south america to england so um the sullingen blade trade was huge but this is a very very robustly made pioneers knife and um i think that this is a good uh candidate to enter into my playlist of um little-known weapons should we call it for now so the the name of this playlist is still being devised i've thrown it open to my patrons on patreon to give me suggestions on there but you're welcome to give suggestions under here as well and this is going to be an example of what i consider a little known although it was probably quite well known in the middle of the 19th century but a relatively little known weapon by most people today it's the austrian model 1853 pioneers sword now i should reiterate once more i really want to hammer this home that this is like a hammer this is a really heavy object that's predominantly for chopping up wood clearing areas for gun emplacements it is it's a tool it can be used as a weapon and the fact that it has this guard on it obviously makes it look like a weapon more than a machete it's not like a machete machetes have thin blades this is a very thick blade so this can double up as a as a hatchet as an axe potentially you could even use the back uh to hammer something in the whole hilt is incredibly robust as well so you could potentially smash things with the back end of it also if you need to so it is really a tool that at a push could be used as a weapon now what i'm going to show next is an unidentified not flying but an unidentified object and on the surface of it let's grab it down here on the surface of it it does look similar to this pioneer's knife it's a similar length it's got similar attributes and characteristics it has a broad chopping blade it has a guard it has a hilt that's a full width tang and knife like construction but it's incredibly different in the hand these two things almost couldn't be more different and that comes down to one basic fact whereas this pioneers sword is incredibly thick and heavy this whatever it is is incredibly thin so i can flex it like that now this is basically like a machete but it differs from a machete in some very very critical ways first of all let's look at the hilt so the grip is actually very very similar to a machete even down to the hook design at the end here which you do find on quite a lot of machetes going all the way back to the 19th century the construction is a full width tang riveted on wooden scales checkered so very very uh similar to machete grips i will talk a little bit more about that specific pommel hook in a second but it differs from the machete in uh two and it's also got a very thin blade like a machete but it differs from a machete in two very very important and critical ways that tell us something about what this was what it was intended to be and how it was intended to be potentially used number one and very very important is the guard generally speaking you don't need a guard on a machete unless you're aiming to use it as a thrusting implement for some reason usually thrusting implements are used as weapons but i'll talk about that more in a second um or to keep your hand from riding up onto the blade so usually a machete has a a projection purely to stop your hand from coming up onto the blade in handling but generally speaking guards like this are not important on machetes not put on machetes so that guard suggests that this is at least partially intended to be a weapon and not just a tool so not only does this guard indicate that this is at least partially perhaps even entirely intended to be used as a weapon that also the form of the guard as well if you can look it's almost like a cross between a shell or bowl guard and an s guard it's not just simply a bar it is a a great big dish which actually provides if you hold it point on quite a fair amount of protection particularly from thrusts coming down the blade if you're using it as a weapon but the other big giveaway with this is you know what machetes look like that's not what machete points normally look like now indeed you could have a machete which is a bit more pointed than normal and if we look at ethnographic weapons there are certainly in some parts of the world philippines and elsewhere there are types of large knife or short sword which are used primarily as bush knives and as tools which do have points on them but bear in mind that those are also the the tools that are also intended to be used as weapons so that point isn't necessarily making them better as tools but it gives you the option of being able to thrust if you're also using it as a defensive weapon and remember also that in a lot of parts of the world we i think a lot of people watching this channel and even me tend to fixate on weapons used against humans and you have to bear in mind that in a lot of parts of the world you don't want a weapon primarily to fight other humans you want a weapon primarily to protect yourself from the wildlife so um you know if you're in the bush in parts of africa or a lot of parts of asia or south america and elsewhere or even in the north pole then your primary purpose to having a weapon actually is to protect yourself from creatures um you know types of bear and and wolf and and uh big cats and and all sorts so um at all potentially also in hunting as well so if you're if you're out there hunting for your food uh whether it be with a bow or a firearm um then very often your your uh the animal you shoot uh will need to be dispatched and um a common way of dispatching animals is of course with a thrusting implement at close range once you've once you've shot them and tracked them down but anyway i i digress slightly the point is that there's a point and that is the point um and so that really makes this different to a normal machete makes it very very different to the normal considerations of a machete so despite the fact the construction of the grip and the the thin flexible blade is like a machete so think about places where machetes were used historically that gives us maybe a clue to where this might be from and there's other clues i'll talk about in a second the fact that it's got a point a clipped point at the end which looks like either kind of like a disney pirate sword or actually more like a langmesser from medieval germany um and the fact that it's got this type of very specific type of guard which i don't remember ever seeing on a knife like this means that this is a little bit more than normal intended to be optimized for if you get into a fight this will be useful as well and it is like a giant bowie knife and actually how much thickness do you need to a blade if you're predominantly needing a machete and a weapon actually combining the two things is a really really good idea you don't necessarily need a big thick heavy blade like we've got on the um on the pioneer sword if you're not going to be splitting wood with it if what you're mainly going to be doing is chopping through vines and chopping through forest and then occasionally having to fight a a jaguar or um or another person then then indeed this is quite a good combination it's like the combination of a large bowie knife a very large bowie knife it makes crocodile dundee's knife look rather small actually with with the benefits of a machete so very very different to this even if superficially they look similar now the big reveal where do i think this is from well i think there's a few clues the the method of construction is very similar to machetes machetes in the 19th century were being uh a lot of them were being produced in germany in solingen a lot were being produced in britain and in bits of france and elsewhere as well and exported all over the world you could find them in africa in asia in south america all over okay usually places where you find thick forest particularly rainforest jungle things like this but these were particularly machetes and large knives of this machete-like construction were particularly being exported to south america now there's a few other clues which make me think that this is south american or middle american okay that hook i said i'd come back to that that hook at the pommel is found a lot on south american machetes and knives this seems to be something which is really really common in south america and the middle of america as well um the northern part of the southern half of the continent as well also the addition of guards onto things like this is also quite common in parts of south america including as and if we go up to middle america or mexico and the bowie knife shape also was adopted it was probably pretty much pioneered in north america but also in british exports to north america but this type of shape was adopted quite early on from about the 1850s uh in mexico and and filtered right down into um the rest of the southern half of the americas um so i think when we combine uh there's one other factor as well in uh so we all know bowie knives and you know bobby knives can be quite big but if you look at mexican bowie knives specifically mexican 19th century bowie knives the mexicans took the idea of the bowie knife and made it bigger so um it's funny because you know we make lots of uh kind of like um jokes and statements about how big your bowie knife is and stuff like this but actually in the 19th century it seems to have been the mexicans that had the biggest ones um bigger than you know texan ones so there was a tendency for large bowie knives in um mexico and everything south of there so my uh my where i put my money as an antique dealer and dealing in these sort of things for many years and uh collecting is that this is from somewhere in in probably in south america probably south of uh mexico and venezuela it could be could be somewhere like brazil um maybe maybe as far as argentina where you do also find quite a lot of um north american influence things like bowie knives um and even certain styles of what their cowboys are wearing and stuff but anyway there we go really just to show you two types of utilitarian large knife that whilst on the surface they looks kind of superficially like earlier medieval messes um or potentially even really big bowie knives are very very different to both those things in a number of ways although this is more similar to a to a mess in fairness but they are utterly different to each other even though they look similar on the surface they are completely they just if you close your eyes they feel so completely different in the hand this is insanely light for what it looks like and this is insanely heavy for what it looks like the kind of opposite ends of the spectrum anyway i hope that's been interesting to you and i'm going to be looking at more this is building on what i previously looked at with the taiwanese knife i'm going to be looking at more forgotten and unusual and neglected weapons on this channel so if you've got any particular suggestions that you'd like me to look at then feel free to suggest away and i'll see you really soon again for another video on scholar gladiator channel cheers 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

Channel: scholagladiatoria

Views: 126,633

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Id: qjlJAoLrWA0

Length: 18min 44sec (1124 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 06 2020