[Victrix]

Yes Jim, I find the Austro-Hungarian Empire quite fascinating in the way it was polyglot with people marrying each other across ethnic groups and speaking many languages with nationalism (as opposed to patriotism) being essentially a 19thC invention.

I did not know that Magyar swords with "Transylvanian knots" were popular in Arabia. Were the blades produced in Styria and N.Italy and then marketed by Hungarians? Would love to learn more about this topic.

The war in Hungary was very cruel (reading a history book on the subject is a hairraising experience!) with weapons developed to match the intensity of conflict. I'm afraid that notch which you mentioned was designed to inflict maximum damage in the opponent when withdrawing the sword from a stab wound. In Wagner's book on p.339 he writes about a heavy Austrian cavalry broad sword: "The tooth, cut into the back edge, helped 'the old heavers' to aggravate the wound when thrusting, especially when cutting with the back edge of the broadsword, where there was no room or time to put much strength into the cut."

Many thanks to Ibrahiim for providing the sword bibliography where I saw the book by Moudry which Jim mentioned earlier. There was another one about German sword manufacturers which should hopefully cover Styria as well.