The British Armed Their Men With Swords That Could Not Stab, Cut, Defend, or be Gripped
The 1796 British Infantry Officers Sword, commonly known as the “1796 Spadroon”, was the British Army’s standard issue line regiment’s officer sidearm during the Napoleonic Wars. It was widely, and deservedly, criticized for its poor design. Its defects were particularly problematic, because in that era, officers’ swords had not yet been relegated to mere decorative accoutrements accompanying dress uniforms as is the case today. Instead, swords were actually used as weapons in combat.
Spadroons are straight bladed, flat backed, single edged light swords of the cut and thrust type, and were not bad weapons in of themselves. Swords had been around for millennia by 1796. Nonetheless, the 1796 Spadroon’s designers managed to take that simple weapon to the drawing board, then come back with a sword that was bad at cutting, thrusting, defense, and to top it all off, was badly manufactured.
The first problem was the hilt. The designers gave the 1796 Spadroon the hilt of a smallsword – a purely thrusting weapon, such as a rapier. That ruined the sword’s ergonomics, and made it ill suited for the hand grip necessary for cutting and slashing. If an officer overcame that problem and managed to get a good grip for cutting, the blade was too light and too flexible to make a telling cut: it often bounced off, even from naked skin. That excessive flexibility also made the sword ill suited for the thrusting its hilt was designed for. The thrusting problem was made worse by the lack of a profile taper – the 1796 Spadroon’s point was not as sharp and pointy as it should have been for piercing.
Another hilt problem was the guard: instead of a solid saucer to protect the user’s sword hand, the guard was a foldable clamshell secured by pins. That made it liable to give way and break off under impact. The poor hand protection was exacerbated by a weak and thin knuckle-bow (the projecting piece on the hilt) that often bent under impact or pressure, and ended up smashing or pinching the user’s hand. As a British general of the era summed it up: “Nothing could be more useless or ridiculous than the old infantry regulation [sword]; it was good for neither cut nor thrust and was a perfect encumberance. In the Foot Artillery, when away from headquarters, we generally wore dirks instead“.