Historical Information about Russian Weapons

Rivkin · 14th April 2006, 06:35 AM

Until XIXth century most of the arms used by russian cavalry was either purchased in Europe or, much rarely so, made by local masters (often Solingen masters invited to Russia). Formal patterns as such did not exist; slight uniformity was achieved through the fact that there were a few big contracts for thousands of blades, therefore certain units had somewhat uniform weaponry; however, sabres and more importantly their maintenance were de facto responisibility of individual troopers - while there were 2-3 arsenal that employed on average 20 or so workers that were formally responsible for repair, the nessessity to repair/maintain tens of thousands of swords was too much for their meager resources.

As a result until 1820 or so all you can see de facto is that troopers were purchasing weapons according to their means and even to lesser extent according to their units - like palashes for cuirasiers and so on.

Interestingly that when the government tried to catalogue weapons that cavalrymen had on hands after napoleonic wars, you can find almost everything in these records - even persian wootz, but mostly Solingen.

14th April 2006, 06:35 AM	#4
Rivkin Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 655	Until XIXth century most of the arms used by russian cavalry was either purchased in Europe or, much rarely so, made by local masters (often Solingen masters invited to Russia). Formal patterns as such did not exist; slight uniformity was achieved through the fact that there were a few big contracts for thousands of blades, therefore certain units had somewhat uniform weaponry; however, sabres and more importantly their maintenance were de facto responisibility of individual troopers - while there were 2-3 arsenal that employed on average 20 or so workers that were formally responsible for repair, the nessessity to repair/maintain tens of thousands of swords was too much for their meager resources. As a result until 1820 or so all you can see de facto is that troopers were purchasing weapons according to their means and even to lesser extent according to their units - like palashes for cuirasiers and so on. Interestingly that when the government tried to catalogue weapons that cavalrymen had on hands after napoleonic wars, you can find almost everything in these records - even persian wootz, but mostly Solingen.