Very Curved 'Scimitar' Type Swords are WORSE than Straighter Swords?

they've got curved swords curved swords but are they too curved [Music] hey folks Matthews and here Scotland Gladiator and Eastern antique arms now I deal in lots of antique swords and here's one that's come through my hands this is a rather well sharpened I have to say what the Georgians and early victorians would have described as a scimiter that's right the D and D term uh does apply to real history in a sense the word Scimitar itself seems to be a derivative word from shamshi essentially the Persian word for a very curved sword and this type of blade is found on Middle Eastern swords it's found on North African swords and it's also found on Indian swords but this particularly curved blade seems to have originated really in Persia and you could say the top of the Middle East and North Africa and it spread from there spread to India but it also spread to Europe as well now um Sabers if we call them that Sabers had found their way to Europe really quite early on as early as the time of Charlemagne the eighth ninth Century however they I experienced a real surge in popularity amongst should we say Christian Western European nations in the 18th century this was especially cemented during the Napoleonic wars in the Egyptian campaign where Britain and France were duking it out in Egypt Britain won no spoilers but essentially lots of generals there and high-ranking staff took back mamluk or ottoman shamshi's Sabers killich as well various types of curved sword and they took them as trophies and they wore them and in the generations after even the years after that European makers started emulating them such that yes indeed Sabers had been around if I just grab here the 1788 so that's the British 1788 they're uh polish and Hungarian and Prussian and French and Italian and Spanish equivalents of this so Savers have been around and popular particularly for light Cavalry in the 18th century beforehand but really during the Napoleonic Wars it suddenly became very popular to have these extremely curved blades on certain officer swords particularly for light Cavalry officers and also infantry officers now why infantry officers and that's specifically what we're going to be looking at here because this I believe is an infantry officer's sword although some people might argue it could be a light Cavalry walking out sword in other words a dress sword a little bit difficult to tell but I think it's probably a non-regulation infantry officer's sword of the probably 17 well 1796 to about 1805 probably um and so this is the type of sword that would have been carried by some infantry officers during the peninsula war and anybody who's familiar with the sharp novels incidentally this is the type of sword that sharp initially was equipped with when he became an officer in the rifles if I remember correctly he broke it and it was replaced by or at least it was certainly replaced by the 1796 heavy Cavalry Palace of his commanding officer who died and gave him his sword and everybody knows that heavy Cavalry sword from sharp even though it was completely inappropriate type of Sword to be carried by an infantry on this case rifles officer anyway back to the curved sword this was a type of sword that became very very fashionable because it alluded to the Orient it alluded to the the Exotic East whether it be India or the Ottoman Empire or the Middle East or North Africa Egypt this was a type of sword that became very popular at this time however was it functional did it have any benefits whatsoever well a lot of people have criticized these swords over the years but do you know something I've noticed is that very often these particularly curved sword blades are actually no-nonsense swords they very rarely have decorated blades at least in my experience they usually have relatively utilitarian hilts and bear in mind these are private purchase these are officers swords so these are something that an officer a well-heeled and fashionable officer went out and bought with their own money presumably wanting to show this is the sword that represents the kind of guy that I am and they are not particularly ornate so you'd kind of think well if they were showing off with these extremely curved blades wouldn't they go for something really ornate at least you know a decorated blade maybe blue and guilt maybe a etching engraving or wouldn't they go for a really fancy help but no as you can see I mean this is a really typical example it's in Nice condition but you can see it's a completely plain blue Blade with a very well sharpened Edge and I'll come back to that in a second and a 1796 light Cavalry inspired Hilt with that kicked out guard p-shaped guard brass fittings as was common with infantry officers and also for naval officers incidentally and a horn grip with silver grip wire so it's nice quality but it's not incredibly fancy it's not an incredibly expensive sword for its time it's probably a kind of medium value sword of its time and yet it's got this extremely curved blade and the sharpening point I certainly come to one of the things I've noticed is with these extremely curved blades nearly all of them that I've had through my hands have been really well service sharpened which would imply that they're not dress swords they are fighting swords because these swords were manufactured to be semi-blunt essentially not quite sharp and usually they were only sharpened when going on active service and yet most of these seem to be really well sharpened so the conclusion that I would come to is these are fighting swords these are swords that people chose for some kind of benefit so what benefits do they offer and what detriments do they have well before we answer that I need to insert some context into you so the standard sword for most infantry officers at this time was a spadron now we've spoken a lot about Spa Dunes on this channel although I have to say I haven't spoken about spartoons for a while and it actually feels quite familiar and nostalgic to be talking to you here again about spadrons but speedruns are essentially thrust-centric swords that can or also cut so they can have double-edged blades they can have single edge blades they are usually straight they are relatively narrow they can cut in the same manner that a Rapier might be able to cut so they're not cleaving swords but they can give a cut that will do things to people and have an effect but they are primarily straight thrusting swords and not always but very often they have this type of boat shell type guard with a knuckle bow and a simple separate pommel sometimes they don't have the boat shell sometimes they just have a d guard or whatever okay but they generally have relatively minimalistic hilts but often more hand protection than you'd find on a light Cavalry saber or indeed on the curved saber that we're looking at here so they tend to have more hand protection they balance a bit closer and they are my point point um thrust Centric and they were intended to be used essentially like a big beefy small sword so if you were familiar with foil fencing AKA small small fencing then you could apply everything you know to that method to the to the spadoon just adding in some of the back sword or saber cuts and boom you're doing spadoon fencing so this was the default sword now some officers weren't happy with the spadron and so they went to Cavalry Sabers okay now Cavalry Sabers are obviously are bigger or heavier they're more robustly built they are great cutting saws they're less Nimble than the spadron depending on the type they're sometimes less adapted to thrusting due to curvature or the shape of the tip or whatever or just because they're less Nimble and this is the kind of beefy end of the spectrum so you've got spadrons and you could say small swords as well so small swords and super drones at one end of the spectrum and you've got Cavalry swords and if you're Richard Sharp all the way up to a heavy Cavalry palash it's not even a saber it's a straight chopping sword made for heavy Cavalry at the other end of the spectrum and other forms of Cavalry sword and then therefore this type of Sword this very light very curved saber actually sits in the middle because it's extremely light and it's very very Nimble it's also very very curved like a Cavalry sword and has a hilt in the style of a Cavalry sword and just for those of you who like the numbers I just weighed this and this is 630g grams so it's pretty damned light it's that's heavier than most small swords are but it's lighter than some spadroons are it's about the same weight as the spadron but just in a different shape so you know what are the advantages and disadvantages of this particular choice over should we say and compared to a spadron but the first thing obviously is the blade shape one of these swords is straight and thrust Centric and the other one is curved and cut Centric and in many ways this is the most fundamental point to make we're really here talking about the difference between cut versus thrust now I'm not going to make this into a big video talking about cut versus thrust everybody knows that the thrust is potentially more fatal however it can be more insignificant where depending where it lands the cut can sometimes be incapacitating or a can stop an opponent without necessarily killing them and the thrust enters a person's body and the cut passes through it and of course the cut thrust moves in a straight line and a cut what describes part of a part of a circle so in fencing terms these were almost two opposites but they're kind of not because bear in mind that the spadron also Cuts some of the time and theoretically you could stab or thrust with the saber some of the time as well it's just that most of the time you're going to be thrusting with this most the time you're going to be cutting with this and that has a different physical effect on the opponent when you hit them now it should also be mentioned that because this is a straight blade and this is a curved blade they actually have a similar amount of Steel in them this is something many people don't think about they look at the spadoon they say well the spadron is a longer blade technically if we measure around the curve you'll actually find if we measure it like this that the curved blade will actually come out about the same as the straight blade if we could straighten out and you know heat up to forging heat that curved blade and Hammer it out straight you'd find that you've got a similar amount of Steel in this curved blade as you have on the straight blade but yes indeed in their final shape if we're reaching forwards the thrust will be able to hit the opponent with the straight blade before the curved blade can even contact and that effect is made even more compounded by the fact that the thrust first makes contact with the tip whereas a cut first makes contact about here and then drags the rest of the blade through so not only does the curved blade mean that I have a much shortened range but it also means that because I'm hitting there and I'm cutting rather than thrusting I have to be much much closer to my opponent so if we just uh compare this for a second the reach that I have with a spadron with the thrust is the full length of my arm plus the full length of the blade the reach I have when offending an opponent with a cut with the saber is actually the full length of my arm plus only about 18 inches maybe 20 inches at Best of the blade and this is only a 28 inch blade bearing a man I'm going to be making contact about eight inches down from the point so about 20 inches and then dragging the rest of the blade through the Target or across the Target that actually means I have to be a lot closer to my opponent the spadoon has about a 32 inch blade so that's about 12 inches that's about one foot or 30 centimeters reach difference in being able to offend the other person whether it be with the cut or with a Thrust now you could also say that in some ways in defensive terms this sword appears to be weaker or inferior in defense than the spadron why firstly less hand protection okay secondly less reach okay you've got more blade sticking out in front of you with this Patron and thirdly point to balance so the point of balance is not crazy far out on the saber but you can see that it's about seven or eight inches from the guard most spadrons however it's not true of all patrons but most patrons balance far closer to the hand that's only about three inches so it's about twice as far the central percussion is about twice as far with the saber that's because they're different types of swords intended for different purposes in terms of where the mass is it's also because we've got a lot more metal on the hilt of the spadron here than we do on the saber but the fact is this is a cutting sword so you want the point of balance to be further from the hand this is a predominantly thrusting sword so you actually want the point of balance to be closer to the hand so in defensive terms you could say this one is a little bit slower if we want to term it like that it's got less hand protection and it's got less less blade in front of it so is it inferior in defense possibly um in terms of how you hold the sword that's also important as well because this type of kurd saver you don't have much hand protection so your guard positions are going to be things like premium second they're going to be a retracted form of terse or medium or cut down here so you maybe if you're practicing um more Eastern European Styles there might be a vom tag equivalent a high guard guided the outer type equivalent up here as well and perhaps a window so the hand is brought back that means that to defend you do have to bring the hand out actively or counter cut into the cut prep sometimes with a with a step or a passing step depending how what type of footwork you're using whereas the spadron is going to be because the nature of the health and the fact that this is a point the point um Centric fence style is going to be held out in front of the body which means that again you're presenting the weapon in front of the body which theoretically some people might argue I wouldn't fully incidentally but some people might argue is better defensively because you're keeping the opponent further away and you're keeping the weapon further from your body and closer to the opponent which makes defense in some way simpler and more visceral more obvious whereas in order to defend with the curved saber which is kept with the hand further back you have to extend the sword out and cut or Parry to do it so you could say in defensive terms in other words an officer defending themselves which you've got to remember these are weapons of Defense on the battlefield they're not the office is not expected to be running around cleaving down enemy ranks they're supposed to essentially this is for a last-ditch defend defense of themselves usually it's someone with a Bayonet as a defensive weapon you could say that the spadron is a better choice than the saber so at this point you might be starting to wonder Matt surely you're just singing the Praises of this badoon here what is the point of this type of infantry officer saber with a highly curved blade is it just fashion is it just that people thought they were awesome what possible advantages do these have well they do have some okay now the first one I'm going to start off with is actually incredibly simple so simple I think that lots of people Overlook it and that is the under pressure or through lack of training most people tend to hit okay now given that most people's natural inclination if I just grab a stick when someone's under extreme stress whether you know because they're being attacked or indeed if they just don't really know what they're doing and you give them any stick-like object most people's natural response is to Flinch defend like this or like this to put things up to cover their head and then to respond bam like this with a downwards cut or something times a sideways swipe bam okay now if their inclination is to do that they're actually more likely to have success with this saber than they are with this badrin the spadron I would argue to Be an Effective weapon and it can be a very effective weapon requires more discipline and more training if you are trained to fence I would argue that this is the better weapon if you keep a very cool head when people are trying to kill you with bayonets I would argue this might be a better weapon however if you are not very well trained or you are more likely to respond to your instincts then I would argue this might be a better weapon because the fact is that while thrusts for example I mean if we're just talking about attacking you know reposting or attacking a person or defending yourself and then responding which is a repost actually Landing a Thrust on someone in a place that's going to incapacitate them requires some degree of training and practice whereas just hitting someone downwards on any part of their body be it their shoulder their arm their head obviously their neck with one of these is going to leave a massive great old gash and have an immediate debilitating effect on them potentially they could bleed out if you hit them in the neck if you hit them in the head you might stun them you might just put them out of completely laid out on the ground you might knock them out if you hit them on the arm you might sever tendons or muscle incapacitating them immediately even though they won't die from it whereas I myself have seen blades inserted in people unfortunately and the fact is that very often people get stabbed don't even realize they've been stabbed they just carry on doing what they were doing in Modern Life crimes sometimes people are stabbed multiple times 10 15 times and they're still fighting back and they're still doing things they still somehow sometimes run off and try to run home or try and run and get help and they're full of holes so thrusts often do not have the debilitating effect depending where they land obviously if it's in a throat or a head or a heart that they will do but in many parts of the body they won't whereas a lot of the time are cut and instinctively given Flinch response smack will have more in effect moreover there's another thing here let's think about context when an officer needs to pull a sword out and use it it's a bit like the video I did recently about cookery versus Feb and Sykes dagger it's often going to be in very close distance in a horrible bloody melee mess where everything's just gone to [ __ ] and people are trying to stab and bludgeon each other with the butts of their muskets and with the bayonets and everything else and in that situation if you're all up rammed up close against other people this spadron is actually a really difficult weapon to deploy because you're trying to get the point into people at an extreme close range you can punch them with the hilt but if you try and Bash them with the blade it's a rubbish cutting weapon to be honest whereas at this range suddenly this curved blade which is sharp all along it's difficult to grab difficult to Grapple with suddenly comes into its own because you're now at very close range to people with a weapon that you can move around at close range and be slashing all over and especially if even if you're just stuck up here defending yourself like this with a preem second high cut High terse and then just slashing downwards you can offend people basically bam at punching distance with the edge of the blade that's going to have a decent effect on them so actually in brawling distance if you think kind of like trench raiding distance I actually think this might be a better weapon there's one final thing okay and this is kind of out of the left field the extreme curvature of these blades does with a bit of training give you some other options and I actually use this inspiring myself because I have three Sabers that I use in sparring one straight one slightly curved one's really curved and the Really curved one you can often nail people with the point because it comes around their blade so with some training if you come in with the front edge here and they defend you can come around with that and go dump and nail them in the face you can equally come upwards into the hand with this point like this so actually all of this time we've been talking about this as a cut only weapon and not being able to thrust that point is actually quite pointy and it's sharpened so actually if you know what you're doing and if you target things where it's going to have the most effect such as hands groin and face and neck then actually you can get this point into places really quite deftly from angles that people don't see it coming in at because it can comes around a bit like a show towel it comes around the defense so I would say that this is not at all a useless weapon and actually if we talk about the context that swords were actually used at this time they predominantly military swords were not used for dueling at least not by the British military they were in the French but in the British military they were predominantly used as Weapons of last ditch defense for officers when things went wrong and when things went wrong when your lines were broken and when the Cavalry was amongst you and or the enemy French square had had broken that saw a French column had broken your line in that situation you're going to be predominantly facing people with muskets and bayonets and you're predominantly going to be in a close-in brawling melee and actually in that situation I can totally see why these extremely curved Sabers which let's remember were very popular in India the Middle East and North Africa while these very very curved Sabers actually became popular over what seems to be the superior sword for the one-on-one duel and fight actually in a brawling military situation I can see why these Sabers came into their own and indeed in some situations why people preferred just to carry a Cavalry sword well I suspect that there were actually more officers carrying more infantry officers carrying Cavalry swords than we maybe realize at this time anyway I hope that's been thought provoking and interesting if you've got further thoughts things that I missed things that I overlooked things that I should have mentioned and you just feel that uh I need to know about it then post below and also suggestions for future videos as well if you don't catch another happy Christmas message from me um before Christmas then Merry Christmas to you all but I'm going to be continuing to make videos so you'll see more of me over this period thanks for watching and I'll see you soon cheers folks thanks for watching we've got extra videos on 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Channel: scholagladiatoria

Views: 175,825

Keywords: curved swords, scimitar sword, rapier sword, sword types, cut vs thrust, fencing history

Id: SAvM3rQInJg

Length: 22min 17sec (1337 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 23 2022