As standing armies, unlike feudal tax, developed in the 16th century, the military use of the sword began to develop separately from civilian practice. By the end of the 17th century, military swordplay was already characterized by a massive application very different from civilian requirements. A knight of the city needed to be able to use the sword to resist the attacks of the thugs and fight in duels. These requirements were met very well with the small sword, which combined speed and finesse for the duel or unexpected encounter with an elegant appearance that made it an appropriate accessory to attract knights. It was a weapon designed to be used in situations where you could focus on the opponent or the opponents in front of you, an opponent that could be dispatched with a well-timed lunge delivered with a certain element of composure.
The military requirement was different. Now the swordsman was riding on horseback in a mass of cavalry charging or fighting hand-to-hand with a mass of opponents. Encounters with any opponent were brief, a shove or a cut, and passed on to the next opponent. The emphasis was on the shock value of the mass of troops, not skillful one-on-one duels.
To meet this requirement, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, weapons were increasingly standardized, and issued in a standard pattern for all soldiers and NCOs. Commissioned officers, drawn almost exclusively from the wealthy classes and social elite, knew how to use a small sword as part of their education, and officers’ swords often retained the small sword pattern, in some armies to this day. from today. However, the sword the soldier carried was a heavier weapon, either of the broadsword or saber pattern, and was used for both cutting and thrusting. The cavalry saber in particular was a very effective thrusting weapon.
It is important to note that the armed forces of various nations experimented with a wide variety of sword patterns. Gunners in the United States Army in the period up to the Civil War carried a short sword that closely resembled the Roman short sword. The dragoon regiments of the French army used swords and bayonets, compound weapons that could serve as either a sword or a bayonet, but not as effectively as either. And the standard weapon for sailors in almost all navies remained the machete, a short sword optimized for combat on board, until World War II.
The American Civil War (1861-1865), the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) and the campaigns against the Native Americans of the west, marked the end of the sword as the main weapon of combat. Revolvers, rapid-fire carbines, and rifles made the cavalry more efficient as mounted infantry and scouts than as charge shock troops. Although officers, both on foot and mounted, continued to carry swords in the field until 1900, their use became increasingly symbolic.
The last sword designs in both Great Britain (the Model 1908) and the United States (the Model 1913) were for cavalry sabers, both of which entered service immediately prior to World War I. These were the last example of the military combat sword, optimized for use. mounted at a gallop as a thrusting weapon. And they saw very little combat use as the European front quickly settled into trench warfare. Three of the last mounted cavalry charges occurred in World War II. Of these two were saber charges from the famous Italian cavalry regiments, the Savoy Cavalry, a heavy dragoon regiment, near Chebotarevsky in the Soviet Union and the Alessandria Light Cavalry at Perkhasica in Yugoslavia, both in 1942. The another was a United States Army 26th Cavalry charge (Philippine Scouts) in retreat to Bataan against the Japanese, and this was a mounted pistol charge.
