[Jim McDougall]

Though this saber and looking into this hypothesis clearly did not bring much attention overall, except as always the valuable input by our late Fernando (miss him)...for me these 'cold cases' never rest.

Today I came across an older auction which sold a BATE M1796 light cavalry saber for sale, and described as 'scarce'. I had never thought much on the Bate name on the spine of the blade, but looking further it seems Thomas Bate (on Aston St. in Birmingham) did not operate singly for long.

Joseph Reddell (Careys Court) in Birmingham, not far from Bate seems to have begun operation c. 1800, same as Bate. These are of course directory entries so may be approximate . Whatever the case, by 1804, the two men were partnered as REDDELL & BATE.
This partnership dissolved in 1807.

With this particular saber, the style of the hilt seems an earlier version of the M1796 in general appearance and without ribbed grip. Also, the BATE name on blade spine is cursive, rather than the block letters (as with the Reddell & Bate stamp).

In the original investigation of this saber, which for me began in 1977! one of the key questions pertained to the odd markings on the langet. While of course the initial reaction was 'this might be CSA, Confederate!' as it was well known that many English swords were supplied to them in Civil War. The earlier noted M1796 Bate had S.C. markings on it, so there again the suggestion of Civil War came in.
All research in that area revealed that among other ranks weapons of Confederate forces, there were few, if any, such markings applied, aside from Virginia.

So, how did this early Napoleonic period British saber end up in Italy, further, in the armory of Castel sant Angelo at the Vatican? As we have noted, while Garibaldi campaigned in unifying the Italian states, the Papal states and Holy See were final holdouts. Catholic volunteers were recruited from many countries, including of course England, and these non Italian forces were termed 'zouaves'.

While it is tempting to think that these volunteers may have brought their own arms, the fact that this much earlier saber might well have been in the Castel sant Angelo armory for some time before. Perhaps it was among a number of arms acquired by the Holy See years before, and along with the volumes of obsolete weapons dispersed by Great Britain.

There seems to have potentially been some official activity by Great Britain toward the incursions of Napoleons forces into Italy , and we know of certain naval movement there may have been other British forces as well. By this, perhaps the arrival of some British arms might be accounted for much earlier than the presumed use by Papal forces in 1860s.

With that, there is another anomaly with this saber.....the curiously applied and deliberate 'notch' in the blade tip. As perplexing as the rest of the elements of this saber are, this one is almost bizarre!

The first picture is the auctioned Bate M1796, the rest are of the saber in discussion.