Folding Guard or Attack Hilt Sword

[Cathey]

Hi Guys

My apologies for not getting back to this post. Yes the information is definitely helpful and much appreciated. I have been experiencing difficulties posting replies, so today I am trying another browser.

Cheers Cathey

[fernando]

[Cathey]

Hi Fernando

I think I know where my posts have been going. I set up an account for a friend who struggles with computers and it looks like I have accidentally replied under his name, that will confuse people.

Anyway back to the Folding Guard. Your reference to its French name SABRE A GARDE TOURNANTE is most helpful and has provided a number of excellent examples. I was wondering if Sim Comfort is correct when he suggest that that the original attack hilt (Folding Guard) design originated from a Parisian sword maker named Coullier in the 1780s. I haven't been able to find out anything about Coullier so it is difficult to know how Sim has come up with this view.

Cheers Cathey and Rex

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Cathey

... I think I know where my posts have been going. I set up an account for a friend who struggles with computers and it looks like I have accidentally replied under his name, that will confuse people...

I thought something like that has occurred and deleted all double posts in the cutlass thread. I only left above post #6 in this thread as it contains an unrepeated paragraph referring your options on what concerns affording swords

Originally Posted by Cathey

... I was wondering if Sim Comfort is correct when he suggest that that the original attack hilt (Folding Guard) design originated from a Parisian sword maker named Coullier in the 1780s. I haven't been able to find out anything about Coullier so it is difficult to know how Sim has come up with this view.

Well, there is no smoke without fire ... but it is indeed hard to find references on Coullier. He did certainly exist as a 'fourbisseur' (french for sword smith). I have read of him HERE but i spotted no trace of his possible (probable) garde tournante invention. Madnumforce is visibly well documented on French armoury; maybe he could come up with some data...

.

[Madnumforce]

I'm not much versed into specific manufacturers, but after a brief search on Google, Coullier, successeur de Monsieur Pichon à Paris, doesn't seems to have any connection with sabers at all, only relatively classy smallswords, that's why he bothers mentioning on the blade he's the swordsmith of the count of Artois. The sabres à garde tournante are about as opposite as one can get to the type of smallsword he (and his workshop) was making.

an exemple of a Coullier smallsword on an auction website
another exemple from the Wallace Collection

I don't see how one could positively conclude that this fourbisseur created the garde tournante. I'd be rather curious to know how Mr. Comfort came to that conclusion.

[Cathey]

Hi Guys

The exact extract from Sim Comfort's book is "So where does this attack hilt come from? It appears that the original attack hilt design originated from a Parisian sword maker named Coullier in the 1780s. In 1791 a special military guard was established for the king and another special guard for the protection of the Assemblee Nationale. This type of movable guard hilt was used for the swords for these two special guards. As this particular sword bears the inscription 'LA PATRIE LA LOI LE ROI', it seems most likely that it formed part of the king's guard and, who knows, it may well have been recycled and, like Captain L'Heritier's attack hilt fighting sword, found its way to sea."

It looks like the only option remaining is to Contact Sim and ask him what he has based his view of the origin of the Attack Hilt on. I think I still have his email address somewhere from previous correspondence so I will drop him a line and let you know if he responds.

In the meantime does anyone out there have a view as to when and where these odd hilts first surfaced and who invented them?

Cheers Cathey and Rex

[Madnumforce]

Mmmhhh...... I'm quite sceptical.

It's a bit difficult to know exactly with he means as he's using vague terms for things which are very specific, but what he's talking about sounds like it could either be the Garde Constitutionnelle du Roi (personal guard of the king during the constitutional monarchy era, and obviously stopped with it), or what was successively called "Garde de l'Assemblée Nationale", then "Gendarmes Nationaux", then "Grenadier Gendarmes près la Convention" aka "Garde de la Convention", as it was at the center of the intense political turmoil of the period. The very political turmoil makes it a period quite difficult to sort things through, especially things that anecdotic. But anyway, I did my research, and I don't happen to fall on Mr. Comfort conclusion AT ALL.

First, what seems to be a fine exemple of the Garde Constitutionnelle sword... marked on both sides from the fourbisseur Coullier!!! Its authenticity leaves no doubt:
the sword

Then, an officer sword of that ever-changing parliament guard with a thousand names, and small size scans of an article in the Gazette des Armes depicting what is clearly the same type/model:
the sword
the article

Of course, none of this has nothing to do with gardes tournantes, and the very explanation Mr. Comfort gives in regard to its origins contradicts everything I read from the French collector community (also that emphasis on naval use, which makes no sense: it was just so commonplace in both the infantry and light cavarly that it could have end up anywhere, much like a briquet).


Pétard and Ariès, in a leaflet dedicated to fantaisie sabers from the second half of the 18th century (in cahier XXII from 1974), show various gardes tournantes, but the early ones are more like split branches, like those we can see on Walloons and such. But they also give the following drawings in attachment. We can clearly see the beaded branch style (garde perlée) of germanic/eastern influence, and the well formed garde tournante mechanism. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly the decade during which this style was fashionable in France, but it surely was by the 1780's, and not so much by the 1790's. The other saber is more 1790's-ish.

But there also is a variety of other petits Montomrency à garde tournante, or other infantry or cavalry sabers with a garde tournante (and I mean that specific kind garde tournante, with the leaf lock and all) that can be dated to the late years of the monarchy, i.e. late 1780's, because they're otherwise similar in every other aspect to similar sabers of the period.

I don't think we will ever figure out who invented the garde tournante, if there ever was such a person, but we can safely assume that it evolved from previous designs (like those on the Walloons), and during a brief and intense period of time, a bit before the Revolution and during it (and you can read in periods accounts that people were really smelling something huge was in the air even before anything "serious" had really started), with an amazing technological coincidence as hilt fashion turned the way it had (many parts fashioned from sheet metal), making it extremely compatible with that specific garde tournante system, it rapidly gained a very significant popularity, and also fell in about a decade as the political situation changed as well as fashion in hilt designs. Not that it's only French, of course, but it's typically French, and I really think this can't be taken out of the equation.