[Peter Morwood]

The ones I mean weren’t falchions and they weren’t messer. Let me be a bit pedantic while I describe what I don’t mean…

Albion’s upcoming line has an example: the Knecht kriegmesser has a simple hand-and-a-half length scale-on-tang hilt, a simple crossguard, and either (I can’t tell from the drawing) a (simple, of course) shell or ring side-guard, which from period artwork seems to characterise the type from small to large. The peasant men in several of Breughel’s wonderful "historical snapshot" paintings often have these “Big Flemish ur-Bowies with side-rings" hanging from their belts, worn as such a commonplace that the artist gives them no more emphasis than hats or shoes..

Cold Steel have one in their line, ArmArt made a custom version with a more elaborate grip than usual (and an unrealistic amount of curve) and Lutel’s has a more realistic blade but a bastard-sword’s waisted hilt and writhen pommel. (Thanks to Nathan for having photos of the last three so easily available!)

What I’m referring to is the true Schnepfe (“Snipe”; because its blade curve resembled that bird’s beak) – the hand-and-a-half sabre with a far-from-simple half-basket guard; one of which can be seen here as made by JT Pälikkö of Finland, and based quite a lot on the Wallace Collection's A489 (p.148 in Edge & Paddock’s Arms and Armour of the Medieval Knight.)

It seems impossible to me that there wasn’t a specific style of fighting for this weapon: double-edged for only that part of the blade which had a false edge running 10-12 inches back from the point, the rest with a blunt back allowing much more positive off-hand pressure than half-swording a double-edged longsword even with a gauntlet, a (slight) curve which must have prompted more frequent use of draw-cuts than a straight blade, and an elaborate guard echoing those on straight double- and back-bladed swords from the same area of Europe.

While gross/krieg/hieb-messer play must have been quite similar in basic respects to that of the South German/Swiss sabre, there must have been something about the use of the more elaborate weapon to justify the fitting of guards more complex than a single side-ring. Unless, of course, it was something as simple as conspicuous consumption: a wealthy merchant-adventurer (from the Hansa trading ports, maybe, though both geography and period are a bit off) spending a lot of money on sword-furniture for a blade not much different to that carried by the average well-off burgher, just because he could…

Does anyone know if there were fechtbuchen, or chapters in same, dealing with these weapons? I’ve come up blank, and any advice, links or pointers would be much appreciated.

[Martin Wallgren]

Is this what you mean?

scroll down in the article.

http://www.thearma.org/spotlight/heymr.htm

Martin

[Peter Morwood]

Don't you hate it when the power flickers and you lose a carefully-crafted reply before it's posted...?

Martin - sorry but no, the article doesn't help much. The sabre shown is interesting since it's halfway between the simple cross-guard of a gross/kriegsmesser and the very elaborate swept-hilt half-basket of a Schweizersäbel, but the original question (probably lost in my long, wordy introduction) was regarding the weapon's use.

"Are there fechtbuchen or sections of them which deal with using the complex-hilted hand-and-a-half sabre?"

There's plenty of material about one-handed stuff, dussack, falchion and messer. One could make a case that the cross-hilted kriegsmesser, being only slightly curved, could be used like the straight-bladed longsword for half-swording, cross- and pommel-strikes. But the Schweizersäbel intrigues me, because its elaborate guards would seem to rule out any reversed-sword use: so how was it used? Like a katana? - which if true would make me laugh for several personal and professional reasons!

Period illustrations are rare (and in the case of the Schweizersäbel, apparently non-existent); in the fifty-odd likely sources on my own bookshelf I could find only two(!) examples of kriegsmesser drawn at the time they were used. One, dated 1516, is from The Secret History of the Sword (Amberger 1998 - p.ix) and shows two Landsknechte fighting; even then, only one uses a curved blade, the other carries a "standard" longsword. The second picture, dated 1530, is from Landsknecht Soldier 1486-1560 (Richards 2002 - p.46) and simply shows a kriegsmesser worn by a soldier on the march.

I rapidly gave up on finding anything useful through Google; some of the information refers to multiple repeats of the same Wiki article, others refer straight back here or to other forum sites, but 99.9% involved Fantasy Role-Playing, and give the impression that a Schweizersäbel isn't known to be a real weapon, but is just "a cool foreign word".

[Tim Lison]

Peter-

This photo may help to get your point across. There are more photos of this type of sword in the myArmoury albums.

-Tim

[Nathan Robinson]

Peter, unfortunately I have no input on this topic but would like to say I'm hoping that it grows into something, as I also have the same questions you're posing. These types of swords are greatly interesting to me and, like you, I've been unable to find any substantial information on the subject of their use.

[Peter Morwood]

I gave myself a quick :slaphead: for forgetting the convenient presence of the myArmoury photo albums; I'd overlooked them partly because I'd been concentrating on trying to find period illustrations of grossmesser and especially Schweizersäbel in use, rather than more contemporary photographs of real weapons.

Nathan - from the comments on this one I see that Erik at Phoenix was being considered as a source for a reproduction; of course he's since stopped doing custom work, and unfortunately due to Real Life concerns and his own health, he's even contacted me about returning my deposit for that Type 2b rapier-blade schiavona I had on order. Oh well, that's life. I'm probably not alone in feeling sad that such a talent has had to leave the field, especially since I was this close to owning an example of his work. I'd love to have seen what he could have done with one of these sabres...

Of course as I mentioned in my initial post on this thread, there's always this sort of quality from JT Pälikkö of Finland; I'll be able to afford something like this in the new year (I hope he's a custom smith who doesn't object to repeating himself) - and I still need to find out how to use it once I've got it!

In the meanwhile, here are those two illustrations; not Schweizersäbel unfortunately, but interesting nonetheless.

[Nathan Robinson]

Since we're talking about reproductions now, here is one from Patrick Bárta at TEMPL Historic Arms:


Click photos for full-sized versions


And one that Lutel created:


Click photo for full-sized version

[Patrick Kelly]

I love this kind of sword, which is strange since this usually isn't my type of thing. I'd love to hear more about them.

I think this one by JT Palikko (already mentioned previously) is my favorite recreation.

[Bill Grandy]

[Peter Morwood]

Bill –

I agree about similarities of use between cross- and complex-hilted longswords, and I’ve already mentioned that I feel the elaborate hilts on Schweizersäbel – and by extension, straight-bladed swords with similar sweeps, loops and half-baskets – would rule out some of the most characteristic reversed-sword hilt strikes (these would probably be your “handful of specific techniques”.)

That said, I’d question if use of messer, dussack and falchion techniques was “identical” to those of a hand-and-a-half whether curved or straight, simple or complex. Some techniques would have been very similar – I’ve no problem accepting the intent not to overcomplicate matters – but all three weapons were one--handed to such an extent that fechtbuch illustrations usually show the wielder’s off-hand behind his back, or used for defence – not, however, grasping the weapon by either hilt or blade, which in hand-and-a-half longsword practice seems more common than not.

I’ve a feeling that thrusts and half-swording would remain fairly standard with a straight sword regardless of hilt form; the long, deep false edge present on a number of Schweizersäbel (though less often on kriegsmesser *, which frequently seem to have a clipped point) combine with the relative straightness of blade to suggest the same hand-on-blade use – though perhaps less than with a true straight blade. Based on the premise that form usually follows function, where a curve is present (be it ever so slight, as opposed to a completely straight single-edged back-blade) suggests to me a shift of priorities from thrust-and-cut to cut-and-thrust.

Of course, to add variety to the mixture, I found some wild cards. Since most are in the Albums section, I’ll link rather than post images.

This one is listed as a straight-bladed Swiss sabre; but is it more correctly a Swiss-style bastard-hilted backsword? The short crossguard and half-height knucklebow(s) are both very unusual.

This one isn’t actually described as having a straight blade, and photographs can be deceptive, especially if the sword is turned slightly to show the hilt. Even so…

This one is a giant step away from the slightly down-market look of most messer since according to the caption it was made for the Emperor Maximilian.

Here are some of the Emperor’s Landsknechte, carrying kriegsmesser.* Unless the entire rig is just parade dress, those shields might indicate another (and rather scary) “broadsword and buckler” style in which the weapon was used.

* Has there been any agreement on terminology? Peter Johnsson’s upcoming reproductions for Albion Armourers are, respectively, a one-handed grossmesser as per Talhoffer and a hand-and-a-half kriegsmesser as per the couple of illustrations in my last post. Adding to the confusion, I’ve also seen the bigger one called a hiebmesser – (literally, a “slashing-knife”, though “hewing-knife” might be a better translation.) But what’s correct? Enquiring minds – mine, anyway – want to know.

Finally, another step away from simple rivets-and-scales – though not so impressive as Maximilian’s – these are the same weapon from slightly different angles. I couldn’t find them on-line any faster than I could scan and Photoshop, so here they are.

[Bill Grandy]

[Martin Wallgren]

I heared a rumour there is a Japanese blade in the Armoury of Skokloster castle here in Sweden that is hilted with a swept hilt of some sort. Just a thing I rememered reading this post. Is there anybody who knows if this runour is correct?

[Peter Morwood]

[Martin Wallgren]

I think what I heard was that the Tashi blade came to the Castle in the 17 hundreds and the cutler or armourer there didnt know what to do with it so they rehilted it with something that looked more familliar, i.e a swept hilt!

It is a cool armoury the one at Skokloster Castle!

[Bill Grandy]

Hey Martin,
I don't know about the particular sword you're referring to, but it wasn't uncommon for rich people in the 17th century and beyond to collect Japanese swords, and in many cases have the blades hilted with European styles. In fact, the reverse is also true, where the Japanese used European weapons with Japanese decorations. There of course are also examples of weapons from another culture that were copied but using local decorations. In the Philedelphia Museum of Art there's a beautiful Japanese smallsword hilt that, at first glance, looks very European until you look at the motif.

http://www.myArmoury.com/albums/photo/3505.html

I know I've seen pictures somewhere of swords from 17th century collectors that had European hilts mounted to katana blades, so the example you mention sounds like it may possibly fall into this category.

Peter,
I don't understand what you mean by reversed-sword use. I also don't understand what you mean when you say the complex hilt gets in the way. Could you clarify? Thanks!

[Peter Morwood]

[Bill Grandy]

Ah, now I understand. Thanks, Peter.

That's an interesting point about the complex guard, and one I hadn't thought about. I've used complex hilted bastard swords to strike with the hilt, but they didn't have guards that covered the full grip, so it's not quite the same. Hmmm... interesting.

On the other hand, the mortschlag isn't ideal for all longswords, as the blade type really has a lot to do with it's effectiveness. Very sharp, thin cross sectioned blades feel awkward and wobbly for this type of strike. Stiffer blades that have less acute blade geometry, such as type XVa's and XVII's, tend to feel much better in the hand. I don't know what kind of blade is typical for a two handed saber, but I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't really see these types of strikes commonly used with them, but with other longsword techniques prominent.

[Nathan Robinson]

[Chris Holzman]

[William Carew]