Well said, those dress swords of the infantry and cavalry for officers, which were more of a 'heavy' version of civilian small sword type hilts, were not held in particularly high esteem by officers.
As you note, the saber was seen in the flamboyant (=exotic) hues of the 'hussar phenomenon' of Europe with the introduction of the 1796 pattern stirrup hilt for light cavalry. While this was the first 'regulation' pattern , however the so called M1788 had been in use already by light cavalry.
With this being the case, the saber was of course more attractive as carrying the highly fashionable 'hussar' image. The 'exotic' flair of these sabers, as previously noted, was not lost on naval officers, who though not cavalry, still had their own image to embellish.
With the British M1796 light cavalry stirrup hilt saber, there seem to have been numbers of variations overall. With those for troopers it seems that in some degree there were slight deviations with makers, possibly by their own takes on certain elements but still in the general image of the form.
I recall in my early days of collecting British patterns, there were a number of us trying to assemble the variant exemplars on the British M1796 light cavalry
sabers, as there was distinctly a spectrum of them.
It was obviously far more so with officers sabers, as we have noted.
As can be seen in this great illustration, it was all quite a fashion show, so as you say, without distinct provenance or markings, what officers whim and what military, yeomanry or other unit he was in....it is anybodys guess, but clearly a Georgian or Regency period example.
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