Thank you Corrado for that supportive detail and the title of that reference!
It is most important to have such details as we pursue this unusual topic, which seems to have been largely unnoticed in most works except Wagner's.
As I have mentioned, this seems to have been a 'field application' and certainly nothing either done or permitted in arsenals or officially purposed armourers. It is good to know (and quite frankly not surprising) that the Prussians have instances of this practice as well. In discussions with other authorities I have been told the same of some French swords in these periods.
Again, the Protiva reference seems to carry forth the same suggestions from the Wagner reference, while the other Prussian related note is of the same type circumstantial mention as with the French case I noted.
It is important to note that the larger European armies including France and Prussia adopted what were known as 'grenzer' units which were auxiliary forces for skirmishing and foraging. The Austrians continued these as well although the original 'pandour' units of von Trenck had been disbanded.
The 'grenzer' term meant 'border guard' as these were essentially what the original pandurs had been prior to adaption to military purpose
The idea that these forces were actually intended for foraging suggests some strength in the idea that they would be engaged in collecting such useful items after battle. However why then would 'officers' swords be notched as well? would these 'duties' not be ascribed to regular troopers?
Also, if these notches were so intended, why then are some placed effectively 'backwards' where they could not serve as a 'hook' ?
The next important question for the pallasches would be that a notched blade would not only snag in a thrust, but in many cases, effectively remove the now imbedded weapon from its user and expose him to other combatants unarmed. In a melee, this would mean his end in mere seconds from surrounding enemy.
The idea of the horrifying notion of toothed blades (as Burton addressed and I noted in my earlier post) as deliberately inhumane weapons intended to frighten the enemy is actually more 'lore' than reality. In my personal findings on this I found that the most well known of the 'toothed' bayonets, the Schmitt-Rubin of the 1880s used by German forces in WWI, generated these kinds of stories among the British forces. The British, thinking these were 'designed' for this horrifying purpose, offered no quarter to any soldier found with one of these. For this reason, many of the German forces took to grinding down the back of the blades. I do not recall the source of this data but I think it was the late Roger Evans who told me that.
This same hatred toward lancer troops was well known in the Napoleonic campaigns, as the lance wounds carried all manner of debris and infecting material into the wound which brought an excruciating and often prolonged end to those who survived the initial thrust wound. The idea of 'worsening' a thrust wound physically, at the risk of imbedding the weapon out of service, is of course most unlikely in my opinion.
While the more pragmatic ideas of utility have a degree of plausibility, they seem equally unlikely (there was some levity as I talked with several fencing masters at one academy, and one suggested 'can opener'?...in jest).
While I think even Occam would have thrown up his hands on this one, there HAS to be an explanation to this less than usual, but profoundly notable practice in these times on blades.
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