Best sword ever�. Bane of the European battlefield

Its not the sword that makes cavalry good or bad. British cavalry during penisualr war was fleeing in panic when saw polish lancers even if outnumbered them 10 to 1. At Albuera 50 lancers routed whole regiment and single regiment of polish lancers made whole british brigade running away.

http://web2.airmail.net/napoleon/Albuhera_battle.html

And here some info from:

http://web2.airmail.net/napoleon/BRITISH_DEFEATS.html

6. British cavalry "galloping at everything" ?

. . . It was Wellington who said: "It is occasioned entirely by the trick our officers of cavalry have acquired of galloping at every thing, and their galloping back as fast as they gallop on the enemy." It is not surprising that after the little controlled cavalry charges at Waterloo, Wellington issued detailed instructions to his cavalrymen.

. . . We read about the British cavalry being too willing to charge and "galloping at everything", about their lack of discipline but anyway routing the French. But strangely enough one can't find any descrption of their defeats.
In 1815 the 7th Hussar Reg. "Queen's Own" was in the 5th Brigade commanded by Maj-Gen. Sir Grant. This regiment was the "embodiment of dash and panache". On June 17th at Genappe (in Belgium) Lord Uxbridge wanted to give them a "taste of glory" - the hussars charged but each charge "was not in the favor of the 7th Hussars. Finally the 7th Hussars refused to charge the French lancers." At Waterloo the hussars also didn't charge the lancers and also seem that they refused to charge into the flank of cuirassiers.
This is so surprising, the British cavalry suppose to "gallop at everything" and everytime, and only the Dutch/Belgians were the ones who cowardly refused to charge the "French rascals".
. . . If you believe the British authors, the British cavalrymen were only too willing to charge. OK, but when Verners ordered the charge upon the cuirassiers he soon discovered he was quite alone ! The hussars didn't follow him and he had to flee. Please tell me now in how many books you read about the Dutch/Belgian cavalry refusing to charge at Waterloo ? This fictional crap invented by Uxbridge is almost in every English book. Now, in how many books you can read about the British cavalry refusing to charge ? None.

Sabers and swords are important but it is horsemanship, discipline, personal courage of the soldries and tactics which made one cavalry better than other. The statement that one cavalry was better than other cavalry because had better swords i find ridiculous.

I dont want to offend anyone's national pride but the fact is that british cavalry didnt have any fearsome repution. In eastern Europe it would be nothing more but a cannon fodder.

You have posted that because british had so good sabers other cavalry units were running away when only saw brits with their sabers and were refusing to attack the british. Whats more, you wrote that because of saber british cavalry was superior to any other cavalry in the french service.

You are mature, adult, rational and credit to the moderators of this forum.

Thanks for such an intelligent comment.

I think there was definately Austrian influence there. The heavy cavalry sabre was a direct copy of the Austrian heavy cavalry sabre and the light cavary sabre certainly had an Austrian guard, hilt and tang. I think it's Talwar heritage comes from the blade shape and it's heavy tip. So it could be described as the result of a fusion of Indian and Austrian technology

The 1796 Pattern Light Cavalry Sabre is rated by most experts as the finest mass produced sword ever. Individually forged blades however could be better quality. The one time Katana's were mass produced , WWII over 150 years later than the 1796 Sabre, they were inferior in quality.

As for Katana quality, the technique for forging katanas, folding, was invented in China between 800 & 600 BCE, it passed through Korea and arrived in Japan probably around 200 BCE. Up until the arrival of the Spanish many katanas were poor because the Japanese weren't very good at making steel. As good as a smith was, only really top smiths found themselves smelter who could produce top quality steel. When the Spanish arrived in Japan, Japanese metalurgists eyes nearly popped out at the sight of Toledo steel. It was in the early period of the Tokugawa shogunate that the katana made it's reputation. Broadswords were outlawed, there were no wars and the katana replaced the bow in importance as the Samurai's main weapon. It's then the sword schools grew and styles were invented. The Japanese had the smelting knowledge and with demand at premium an abundance of top class smiths.

The trouble was, they were producing an ancient Chinese sword in the Renaissance when the rest of the world's swords had moved along many generations.

The Chinese surpassed the technique as early as 400 BCE with a similar and slightly superior technique Pattern Welding around 400 BC. Which instead of going east travelled west reaching Germany by about 100 BCE and was still used in Scandinavia in 1000 CE. Few people know the swords the Samurai and Vikings used were so similar both using variants of an ancient Chinese forging technique and the viking swords slightly the better.

The finest swords history gives us come from India. Indian sword forging had always been superior to the rest of the world and by 400 BCE the Indian's developed Wootz steel miles ahead of anything Japan, Europe or China ever produced. Wootz spread to the middle east in the middle ages. Wootz is in fact so good, it's virtually as good as the finest modern steel.

Wootz steel was lost a few hundred years ago, like most ancient steels but proved really illusive to recover. It was only in the 1980's that we were able to make it again. It's last uses were in making Scottish daggers in the renaissance and swords from southern Russia. One in four attempts to make the stuff fail even using the best modern technology and full knowledge of it is both rare and still not fully known. If you want to learn more try here where the few pepole in the world who know how to make it hang out,

www.swordforum.com

Damascus steel is a flawed term and best not used, the name came into use from a mistake and causes confusion to this day.

Pattern Welded steel became obsolete in Europe around the 10th century. The pattern comes from the folding of high carbon steels and soft irons together to create durability. Folding together the differewnct colour metals creates the characterist silverand grey pattern that make it so beautiful.

Wootz steel is also characterised by the formation of a pattern of blue/grey streaks, not caused by folding but by the heat treatment.

When the crusaders travelled to the middle east they encounter the arabs using Wootz swords, knowing nothing of Wootz they wrongly assumed they were Pattern Welded and refered to them as Damascus steel. Hence the confusion, if you say Damascus steel are you talking about Wootz or Pattern Welding? The term is just best avoided.