Cathey, thank you so much for this reply and especially for the remarkable grouping of examples of these British light cavalry swords. You are clearly a most discerning collector and the weapons you have presented have always been outstanding.
With these you have clearly shown I was quite mistaken on my impressions with these cavalry swords in the early 19th century. I retrieved many of my old notes and had entirely forgotten about the 'quill point' and 'latch back' blades. The term pipeback also is among the semantics in terms describing these. Apparantly in 1994 the late Geoff Worrall wrote an article in Classic Arms & Militaria on these swords with blades like yours, and termed them the 'Waterloo pattern' with officers carrying them c.1812-21.....exactly proving your assessment of a variant in the blades on the stirrup hilt M1796.
Clearly you and Richard are correct in your period classification.
In an article out of Classic Arms & Militaria (Vol.XIV, #2) titled 'The 1796 Light Cavalry Sword", somehow authors name not noted, it states that while the group of swords with these rounded back, pipeback or quill back blades do not present an official pattern, they were quite fashionable in the period just before Waterloo and represent move away from the pure cutting function of the standard 1796 hatchet point blade to a compromise of cut and thrust.
I will note that the rather rare sabre to 10th POW hussars of c.1810 (per Robson) had a blade with raised yelman (latchback) and the 27 swords ordered by the Prince of Wales (I have been told there may be as many as 41) for his officers. These were German blades with false damascene and mystical symbols believed to have been purchased from the cutler Robert Foster around 1798, with the swords hilted by Prosser. Apparantly some of the ' variant' blade 1796s were also mounted by Prosser, who was prominant and handled hilting of swords officially. Since he was primarily involved in mounting etc. his blades seem to have typically come from German sources. Perhaps these interesting blades were indeed German and prototypes for the later German patterns I described. The sources I have do not indicate blades on the earlier examples, nor possible existence of these on the Blucher sabres (1811).
The script remains a conundrum and while it does have a tempting similarity to some of the Naskh form, the characters bear resemblance to a number of these alphabets in Indian languages and dialects, such as Devanagari. It does seem possible that a rather stylized application might have been used to accent the false damascene apparantly popular around the time of the POW blades. It was also noted that acid etching was in place and that on one blade for an officer in India an image of a Mughal temple was included.
I think this also supports the style motif you have suggested.
Thank you for sharing this sword here, and giving us all (especially me
a chance to learn more on these early British cavalry swords.
All the best,
Jim