Like with all swords, hand protection tended to evolve and become more elaborate and protective as time went on. It's believed that the original Polish sabers came from the Polish encounters with the ottoman Turks who used swords such as scimitars and shamshirs. If you look at later period cavalry sabers versus they're dueling saber counterparts, you'll notice the hand protection is much slimmer, then it is on said dueling weapons.
For the katana the tsuba is for protecting against your own blade rather than someone else’s, so is there a Japanese blade with more hand protection, or do you have to parry?
Love your videos man. I had made a comment saying I want to learn sword martial arts, but I can't bc of how remote I am, then you made a video using a training sword on a BOB (which I have from training boxing), and now I'm looking into getting that training sword. Do you have some sort of lessions, or any suggestions?
Im going to comment this untill @sellsword Arts replies a use for reverse grip dual weild to sword of the same type turn one reverse grip and figget spinner slash like levi from attack on titan
Also, better hand protection makes it more cumbersome to wear them as sidearms, which is one reason why medieval swords had less hand protection (also gauntlets, shield,...), and later ones didn't have full baskets anymore, either (more common firearms -> sidearm).
@@nathangrim4420 not really, did you confuse this short with a video by Matt Easton of scholagladiatoria? 😅 I do not disagree with David's points, I just wanted to point out that there are also other major factors.
It is nice to hear from someone who knows the weapons very well. Many of the different swords are just slightly different from other swords but those differences are there for a reason. Glad to hear why.
Matt Easton (scholagladiatoria) is fit as hell. It's hard to see, but the dude is jacked. (Not to take anything away from oldmate here who is obviously also very much in shape)
@@yorulaney8563 I mean he's not though? Sure he isn't as limber as ye ol Sell-arts here but the dude is pretty average in girth. Also 9/10 Brooks is wearing bulky armor on. He's normally wearing a padded gambeson underneath brigandine (mind you while looks padded is actually riveted plate). Some people are just built differently, not everyone can even think about obtaining the twinkiness we got going on here. Man looks like if the Pixar Sinbad didn't eat enough proteins.
@@yorulaney8563 For some people it really isn't. Metabolism is a thing which works differently in everyone. Hell as Cartman from south park would state (despite being a fat f@cker) "I'm just big boned". Hell there are some professional athletes and body builders out there who can't obtain that level of lean and can only build muscle at certain points. Sure Shad has a bit of a gut, but the moonface I mean... Some people just have faces like that plus there are other ways to get such a visage than just being overweight. Shad is pretty average maybe a tad overweight at worst, nothing super unhealthy. It's not like he's on 300 lbs life and the sofa is attached to the dude, he seems active enough, I mean swinging around those swords all day is exercise in of itself.
@@dcrash937 I'm not sure if this is a troll comment but reverse grip is still a bad way to attack with sword unless on certain circumstances. He made a swing from down to up, not reverse grip.
Many later infantry sabres were still slim on the handguard so that you could move effectively with a sword at the hip, because it would be for self-defense or paired with a handgun or rifle of some kind.
I would agree with the idea of it being primarily a cavalry weapon and that adds to the lack of a guard; although there are some additional reasons for those sabers and just in general that I would add. First, nice Hungarian saber, been looking at getting one of those from Purpleheart, I'm curious as to how it feels. For Polish and Hungarian systems specifically, there is a unique reason for not necessarily wanting to up the hand protection, the false edge. So the Hussars and their styles of saber combat make use of the false edge more often than most, if not all, other saber systems. In Hungarian living lineages the false edge is used frequently in parries, cuts, counters, and feints, and usually in more than one way. A larger guard could possibly get in the way of some of these maneuvers as they can be quite tight in terms of space; more importantly it adds weight to the area around the hand putting more strain on one's wrist, and som of the false edge techniques can get a little strenuous without the added weight. The guard of the saber you showed in the end for example I personally would hate trying to make false edg counter cuts or rising false edge cuts as the back could probably bite into my wrist; causing pain and interrupting the flow thereby affecting the effectiveness of the cut. Another reason is just a more general one, that being is more hand protection worth it? Majority of swords and peoples don't really have much in terms of hand protection, a cross guard is pretty widespread and popular, but so is no guard or a small disk guard. Large handguards like what eventually became popular in Western Europe aren't really a thing throughout most of the sword world. There are a multitude of reasons, but some broad ones could be the added weight, it adds weight to a sword and could possibly change the point of balance, certainly changes the weight distribution. Also can limit how small and tight one's movements can be from the wrist, it cost more in terms of resources to do and can more easily get in the way of drawing it or using it in certain situations. All of that for making the hands safer, but many of these systems either have ways of doing that with the weapon itself or a shield, is it worth it really, I suppose that's a personal choice. Lastly, as someone who primarily practices Eastern European/Hussar Saber, avoiding hand hits is really not as difficult as intuition would have you believe. If you block like you were showing at the end or according to say British saber styles where you move the hand and arm out to meet the blow and face it, then yeah hands are vulnerable. They'll probably get frequently, especially against false edge tactics. In these systems you tend to move the whole body more than the arm, rotating into the blow and usually adding retreating/offline non-linear footwork to it. This changes where the opponent's blade will meet yours, causing it to land on the knuckle bow. Assuming a solid bind this manner of blocking mostly protects you from initial false edge tricks too. Hope this was an interesting read and not too long, wonderful video so keep up the awesome content.
This is also why we English drive on the left side, it’s because in the middle ages whenever we rode a horse it was hard to slice any foes coming from the left side making it easier to slice any coming from the right, like thieves and any other hostilities.
That's the reason why in Olympic style sabre fighting legs don't count because you would be on your horse and you'd focus on the upper body compared to the legs.
Sorry if this comes across harsh, but this is absolutely not the reason. Olympic sabre is not meant to emulate horseback fighting (and if it were, both would be sitting on a horse, in which case leg cuts are one of the best ways to disable your opponent) but duelling sabre. At the time olympic sabre evolved, duelling with sabres was mostly focussing on the upper body because low cuts were held in very low regard and, in Germany for example, there even existed rulesets for duels which deemed hits below the navel as forbidden. There is a great story about a french guy around 1870 having to duel one of the best fencers and winning by striking to the thigh, which his opponent was unprepared for because it never happened due to the understanding of honour at that time. He lost reputation that day, but he did come out of the duel against a better opponent unscathed.
@@vaseleth But WHY was it considered in such low regard? Could it be that it's because it only works in practice between unhorsed combatants, who we must presume to be lowly commoners?
@@nessesaryschoolthing because a well placed cut on the legs means instant death, same with guns and bullets thats why they shot to the chest when wanting to stop someone
@@nessesaryschoolthing I think its pretty obvious... A cut on the leg isnt going to have as much lethal potential as a cut above the waist where you know all the organs are...
i find it really interesting how they had to think of these at the time while creating snd testing different ways to make the best sword at the time. and that so many places in the past and so many different kinds is really cool. its like houses i think. they changed over the centuries with practical use and every place did it differently.
Hey man don't know if you'll see this but I just wanted to let you know that you're the reason I got into hema and jousting. I've been studying the blade for a couple months and I'm currently looking for people to spar with. I'm very happy that I got into a hobby like this and thank you for being such an influence for me. Also I still watch your videos for guidance and history of a weapon for certain understanding!
It wasn't until several close call which saved many their fingers did they round it up at the bottom and originally they tried keeping the maiming aspect of it still, by adding a pike at the bottom but it kept jabbing the musketeer everytime they leaned and what not so they removed it. A victorian era cutlass with a pike at the bottom could be consider a 1st edition of the redesign cutlass.
Sabers were issued to our Cavalry until 1934 and we'd fought WW1, The Civil War, the Spanish American war, the war of 1812, the Mexican American War and the Revolutionary War (all wars that consisted largely of guns) by then. the more you know...
It wasn't the advent of 'dueling use' that created the more protective guard for fighting with the sabre. It was the adoption of sabres by European navies for fighting on boarded ships. The close quarter fighting in restricted space caused swordsmen to 'bind' sword to sword until one can muscle or manoeuvre themselves to make a decisive cut or thrust. The guard shape enabled a quick roll off and disengage against an opponent trying to 'bind'. From this popular use, spawned the dueling with this particular style sword.
This is the point that I make again and again with Weapons is that the primary thing they’re used for is being carried and the more weight they have the last utility they have because they are carried far more than they are used. Obviously they have to be fit for function, but it remains a trade-off between weight and function.
I always talk to my club mates about how historically swords spent most of their time being worn and sometimes a sword made to do that well will give up some hand protection. I have hunting sword and a full basket hilt with very similar blades, but opposite sides of the hand protection to wearing spectrum. It's interesting to sparr and wear both of them for contrast.
In Poland, Lithuania and Hungary they used that very hand guard you showed commonly and for a long time in non-cavalry contexts. It does offer good protection from cuts if you turn the grip. Polish saber style, at least as I have learned it, needed the slimmer hand guards in order to perform the many moulinet common to the style. It’s true later down the road the guards became more substantial but never as substantial as their western counterparts. That said, my own training swords have the same style guard as your sword, and I do not commonly take hand hits, and I attribute that to the way Polish saber uses the blade a bit different to French, German and English tradition.
Yes. And that is also why you see a lot of hanging guard in sabre, because you get hit a lot less in the hand when parrying with the point down (parrying prime-seconde and septime, it has many names but here we were taught to hold a "roof-like" guard, or "parade en toit").
Huh, I have a ceremonial saber that I earned as part of a program I went through as a teenager. Based on the hand protection, it's designed after the dueling saber rather than the Calvary saber. I never realized there might be a difference until today.
Eventually the cavalry saber did start to have more complex hilt. But if you look at a cavalry saber versus one specifically designed for dueling, you'll notice the dueling saber has a much more protective health than the cavalry saber. There's still similar though, and the one that you have is from a later time. And the one I showed. The saber I'm holding is a very early Hungarian saber. Probably sometime in the 14 or 1500s
The earlier sabers/cuirassier weapons were also often worn with brigandine or "lobstered" aka articulated gauntlets, which is why there's a ton more room in those handguards too. I'm talking Stuart to Georgian era not later Napoleonic weapons.
It's one of the easiest ways to tell at a glance what purpose a sword was used for. A curved sword is good for slashing, which for calvary is what you want when riding by quickly. A heavier blade is harder to control when bouncing around in the saddle. As guns became more prominent and armor began to be phased out, you began to see the transition from medieval longswords (among others) and bludgeoning weapons to sabers.
Sometims the hand protection is smaller to cut costs as well. Masking fancy pieces of hand protection is a lot more time consuming than making a simple and small one
Another very important reason is that those sabers with less hand protection were also more often used with the full arm instead of only the wrist or quick cuts. Ernst W. B. Eiselen in 1818 states that in his treatise.
Personally a katana guy cause I trained in kendo but I also fensed for a bit and for had guards I really like the old fashion guards for rapiers not sure how effective they are but seems like quite a good guard and the elegance of them I always enjoyed looking at
It is not to protect ur finger nor is that the focal point. It is the bottom that is important and it was use to maim peasant. Rather than using knuckles, musketeer would hit people in the face or rib with the hilt. And found that having that extra piece of metal can be quite damaging. Especially on a close up slash, it was a perfect way to disorient an enemy who had a knife and got in too close, and line them up for the side or forward slash
@@SellswordArts Yep. I immediately recognized it was the Hungarian sabre from Purpleheart 😀 How well does it fit a gauntleted hand? And it is more of a heavy sabre or a light sabre?
Any type of fighting, my hands are first on my mind. They keep me alive or can end those that would end me. Legs and feet are second, they can move me or help me flee to fight another day.
Eventually, towards the end of the plains war and the beginning of WW1, sabers just became long spikes, meant to use only for stabbing at full gallop, but horseback combat was completely eclipsed by modern rifles and machine guns, so saber development ended and became strictly ceremonial
Cav Sabers were primarily designed to stab from horseback while moving. Straight swords would get yanked out of the riders hand, where as the curve of the saber allowed easy retraction
Broke my index knuckle while fencing with an antique Hungarian police sabre. Doesn't matter if your glove is thick or the blade is dull. It will still mess you up if you aren't protected.
The calvary saber also looks wider, probably due to dealing with more speed and taking hard hits when riding and slashing. Lighter sabers for dueling, for fast maneuvers
You can tell the intended use of a sword by its length and curve of the blade. As he says, this is a Calvary sword for attacking people from horse back. It has to be good at going through people at higher speeds, the larger curve helps with that. Same thing with the guard. Just enough if the user accidentally hits something or someone it would protect the hand, but nothing big and bulky that would protect against another sword.
