Pen is mightier than the sword

[Hotspur]

This sword was re-introduced as a side arm as the French foot artillery short sword of 1816 and the later variants including the US 1832 model. Now, this 'later' sword type was not well liked or was extremely effective in combat and was known by the French as the coupe choux (cabbage cutter). It ended up being used mainly as a machete for cutting wood, cutting brush and creating trails.

Wasn't the purpose and role intended exactly that. There is somewhere reference in either WWI or WWII asking once again for a cq weapon but the short swords of the worlds military did continue field what were basically fascine knives through at least WWI. Then there are any number of bolo and later smachet. Obviously, the falchions and other lighter artillery and engineer swords were more plentiful but many nations ended up with one version or another at some point in their development. Grips varied but the fish scale grips were for the purpose of aiding grip, as were the more common simple concentric grooves. For a big ding donger of a blade, there was the oddity known to the Welch Fusilliers sword of a crowbar.

www.rwfmuseum.org.uk/nb.html

Aside from not just the two later French blade types (1816&1831) they seemed to be popular in the cutlass or artillery role in Confederate America. Examples ranging from very coarse to southern copies of the Ames 1841 cutlass. Those more similar to the French 1831 infantry sleeker leaf blade. Heck, even the British had a go and imported many "1855 Land Transport" single edge (but variants show up) swords.

A rather odd one turned up on Sunny Tampa's list a couple of years ago and was probably in the theatrical or fraternal vein. Hollywood had a go as well.

Cheers

GC