In the 1890s a rapid succession of regulation changes happened to British infantry officers' swords. The overall movement was away from a cut and thrust sabre blade and towards a specialised straight thrusting sword.

The introduction of the new thrusting blade was quickly followed by improvements to the handle and guard of the hilt, intended to provide a better grip and greater protection to the hand. Some authors have claimed that this resulted in a better military sidearm than the old 1845 pattern sword, though given the quite different context and frequency of use of swords in warfare between 1845 and 1897 this is hard to judge from the available sources.

The British infantry officer had carried a regulation sword which had not officially changed in design since 1845 - article on the 1845 pattern blade.. The regulation allowed for some variation, so some blades were straighter or more curved, a little longer or shorter, a bit wider or narrower, or simply heavier or lighter. It can be surprising to see how much one 1845 pattern infantry officer's sword can vary compared to another, both in appearance and even more in handling (and therefore in use). One example of these swords can feel like a foil while another feels like a cleaver. This is without even considering the material quality variance between different makers. Making general statements about this pattern of sword is therefore fraught with difficulty. Some were good cutters, some were good thrusters, some were adequate at both and some were awful at both.

By the 1880s there were various commitees looking at the regulation British cavalry sword. A 'sword scandal' had erupted in the press, over the performance of British cavalry swords in the Sudan campaigns. And a gradual momentum gathered to revise the design of the infantry officer's regulation sword, which had been in used since the Anglo-Sikh Wars and Crimean War. Certain voices in both the military and the press had long criticised the British infantry officers' swords, on a number of grounds. Some claimed that compromise cut and thrust blades were inherently inferior to specialised blades, some claimed that the handles and guards of the hilts were poorly designed. Many critics, in typical British fashion, pointed to foreign weapons which they considered were superior and called upon a patriotic effort to give British officers something better. Though many of these armchair critics disagreed as to what this better weapon should be. Meanwhile, officers all over the Empire and beyond were using 1845 pattern swords to defend their lives and take others'.

It should be explained at this juncture that while the 1845 regulation sabre blade was officially mandated and was the most widespread type between 1845 and 1892, some officers who felt strongly about sword design ordered non-regulation blade types. These came in a variety of forms, curved and straight, broader and narrower. In simple terms, these non-regulation blade types were intended to produce a more effective fighting weapon, according to the individual officer's own preferences, and tended to either accentuate the cut, the thrust, or attempted to combined cutting and thrusting more efficiently than the 1845 pattern blade had.

These non-regulation swords and the people designing them played a part in influencing the new regulation infantry swords of the 1890s, as will be detailed below in the case of Colonel King-Harman. Some officers had elected to have specially made thrusting blades on their regulation hilts since the Crimean War and earlier (the so-called 'Percy' and 'Toledo' type blades offered by Wilkinson were more specialised to thrusting for example). Some of these earlier non-regulation blades were not greatly different in function to the 1892 blade which would later become regulation.

The cut and thrust debate went back centuries. It was debated in fencing manuals, newspapers and military journals. We can see the matter discussed explicitly in English as early as George Silver's treatise of 1599. In the 18th century the smallsword had utterly specialised in favour of the thrust, backswords retained the ability to both cut and thrust and the most curved sabres were virtually (if not literally) specialised to cutting.

In the Victorian period, different individuals championed thrusts, cuts or a combination of both, and in some cases this varied for combat on foot versus mounted. Brigadier-General John Jacob, for example, was strongly in favour of thrusting swords for fighting on foot and curved cutting swords for fighting on horseback. This was due to his own personal experience, where he had run through an opponent with his point while mounted and had his sword wrenched from his grip and the blade bent in the process, leaving him effectively disarmed. Conversely, Sir Richard Francis Burton writing some decades later suggested that this was due to Jacob's own error of technique.

Disagreement on the topic was rife at all levels of the military, as well as in interested civilian circles. Regardless of all the debate, specialised cutting swords and specialised thrusting swords continued to be used successfully by different exponents on active service. Each could be used successfully in the right hands. By WW1, British cavalry was using an utterly specialised thrusting sword (essentially an estoc), while Indian cavalry in British service was mostly using a specialised cutting sword, with a blade based on the old 1796 pattern light cavalry sabre.

To summarize, the regulation changes were:

1892 pattern - New blade introduced (with the brass hilt remaining basically the same as the 1845 pattern weapon).

1895 pattern - New steel guard and straight fully-chequered steel backstrap to the grip.

1897 pattern - New steel guard with the inside edge turned down and holes made smaller - this is still the current regulation for British line infantry officers.

Because these three main changes were introduced separately, there are technically three different sword patterns. The 1892 pattern was really just a change of blade, replacing the 1845 pattern blade (although the grip became universally straight also, where it had only sometimes been straight previously). Presumably some officers purchased a new 1892 blade and had them mounted in their earlier hilts, but as the hilts are identical it would be impossible to tell this now. The 1895 pattern was an entire hilt update, with a new steel guard and new chequered backstrap. The 1897 pattern was the final refinement of the hilt design, which is still the British Infantry regulation officers' sword today.

Here is shown the development from 1845 to 1897.

The precise measurements, including the length, width, taper and weight vary between examples. The point of balance also varies between examples. Despite numerous descriptions of the time stating that this blade was lighter than the previous 1845 pattern, in my experience this is incorrect as a universal statement. Some examples are lighter and some are heavier than average 1845 pattern blades - there is a considerable overlap in the weights. Overall, I would say that both patterns of blade vary a lot between individual examples and if the tendency is for the 1892 blade to be lighter than the 1845 (which I am not convinced it is) then the difference is very slight indeed.

Where the sword may feel 'lighter' in the hand to some people, this is due to having a more tapered blade with slender point. This different mass distribution may lead to the illusion that the sword is lighter, because of less intertia required to move the tip around. This being said, some examples of 1892 type blades are quite thick at the tip and not very nimble at all.

The backstrap of the 1895 pattern hilt often gets overlooked in modern works on antique swords, but was in fact one of the most important features of the new sword.

For decades writers on swords had been asking for an improved military sword grip. It was generally regarded that for a thrust-centric sword which did not have finger-rings a rectangular handle gave the most secure grip. Especially where the thumb was to be placed up the backstrap to improve edge alignment in the cut and control the point in the thrust.

Fencing foil grips were rectangular in section and therefore many fencers wanted a similar feature on combat swords. The rather narrow rounded backstrap on both infantry and cavalry officers' swords before 1840 provided a slippery surface on which to place the thumb and so by the 1840s many officers' swords received a chequered area to place the thumb. This chequered thumb-placer became common by the 1860s and basically universal by the 1870s.

The 1895 pattern backstrap took this development to its natural conclusion by flattening and broadening this thumb-placement area, making it even less prone to slipping in use, as well as chequering the entire rest of the backstrap. The 1895 pattern backstrap was also completely straight, whereas a lot of earlier backstraps had been more or less angled or curved. This is a somewhat interesting design choice, as other thrusting swords had more angled 'pistol' type grips, to bring the point more easily online. However, for whatever reason, the designers of the 1895 hilt elected to put the grip in line with the blade (unlike the 1908 and 1912 pattern thrusting cavalry swords).

The resulting grip was copied over to cavalry, Rifles and artillery swords after 1895, as seen on the 1896 pattern cavalry officers' sword. In fact it can be a useful dating feature for Royal Artillery officers', Highland Field Officers' and Rifles officers' swords from the 1890s (as well as Cavalry officers' swords between 1895 and 1912). Generally, if only the thumb-placer is chequered then it is pre-1895, if the whole backstrap is chequered then it is post-1895. Once you recognise the 1895 type backstrap, it is easily spotted.

The 1895 backstrap is attached to a smooth domed pommel, in contrast to the stepped pommel of earlier infantry officers' swords. The new grip was to measure between 5 and 5 3/4 inches, according to the preferences of the officer.

Criticism of the brass guard went back at least to the 1850s and in 1862 John Latham of Wilkinson had himself criticised the use of brass for a sword guard in a series of lectures he gave, due to it being able to be compromised by a strong cut from a weapon such as a tulwar. In fact, many non-regulation swords ordered by officers from the 1850s onwards had at extra cost substituted this brass guard with a steel version, which was then gilded to match the look of the regulation brass guard for parade purposes, while providing the protection in combat offered by a steel guard. These gilded-steel guards were particularly popular with officers serving in India, for obvious reasons. On antique examples the gilding is often lost with age and the bare steel guard remains.

While many official and press sources proclaimed the new blade to be functionally better, we know from contemporary letters that not all Army officers agreed. Some authors lamented the lack of cutting capacity with the new blade and so it seems likely that some officers decided to retain the old 1845 style blade as a matter of martial preference. A similar situation occurred in the cavalry with the introduction of the thrusting blade after 1912, whereby some officers ordered newly made cut and thrust swords of the 1896 pattern (which had an 1845 type sabre blade) even after the 1912 pattern thrusting sword had been introduced.

British 1845 Pattern Blade with 1895 Pattern Infantry Officer's Hilt:

 British 1845 Pattern Blade with 1895 Pattern Infantry Officer's Hilt:

This is interesting because it shows that some officers were still considering their swords as serious fighting weapons even in WW1 and in fact swords were occasionally used in that war. The first British 'kill' of WW1 was in fact committed by a cavalry officer, Captain Hornby of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards on 22 August 1914, near the Belgian village of Casteau, with his sword.

The solid tang does undoubtedly create a stronger sword (though whether the additional strength is necessary is a different matter), but with the arguable drawback of additional weight. Patent Solid Hilt versions of swords tend to be slightly heavier than their standard counterparts.

This example below is a late example by Wilkinson, dating to 1910:

Period opinions of the new swords varied. Many official publications were in favour of the new blade and hilt - change had long been called for and had finally come. In fact the new steel hilt was almost universally approved of once it was introduced in 1895, but the 1892 blade was not so universally accepted. Some commentators did not like the move to such a dedicated thrusting blade, and some exponents of the thrust did not like the details of the new thrusting blade. Some argued that the new blade was not stiff enough, while others argued that it was too heavy for nimble use of the point. It was noted that the new regulation sword did not very closely match the characteristics required of the new Masiello-devised 1895 Infantry Sword Exercise, which specified a lighter sword with a point of balance close to the hilt, which could also cut. Some simply thought that a dedicated thrusting blade and hilt could be designed which would be even more effective than the new sword.

From The Army and Navy Gazette of 2 Apr 1892:

John Wilkinson Latham (British Military Swords) relates a word of mouth family anecdote whereby either Wilkinson or Mole submitted a design for the new 1895 hilt mounted on a dummy blade and this dummy blade was inadvertently accepted as well as the hilt design, leading to the mostly-blunt-edged 'dumb-bell'-section blade. This seems utterly implausible, given that the blade was adopted in 1892 and the new hilt was not adopted until 1895. Also, as we will see below, the design of the 1892 blade seems to have been very much deliberate and talked about in 1892 and 1893, with comparisons drawn to earlier custom swords.

Colonel George Malcolm Fox, Inspector of the Army Gymnasia, probably played a prominent part in all aspects of the new sword design. He commissioned Maestro Masiello to create the new Infantry Sword Exercise and he certainly later played a large part in designing the 1908 pattern cavalry sword, allegedly sculpting the gutta percha prototype for the 1908 grip himself. Fox sat on the various committees behind the design of a new cavalry sword at the beginning of the 1900s, seemingly butting heads with Captain Alfred Hutton, and it seems highly likely that he was somehow involved with the design of the infantry swords of the 1890s. Robson (Swords of the British Army) directly attributes the design of the 1892 'dumb-bell' blade to Fox, but sources from Fox's time that I have found do not directly attribute it to him.

Colonel Fox as Inspector of Army Gymnasia in 1895 at Aldershot:

In an account by Private John Gordon (The Army Isn't All Work, Campbell, 2012), Fox related his experience at Tel-el-Kebir as commander of D Company of the 1st Batallion;

"I leaped to the top of the trench, found myself on a platform with three 'friends' all ready for me. The swing of my sword took off the head of one, the point of my sword killed another, but before I could get at the third the beggar put a bullet into my thigh."

Colonel Fox is featured in De Neuville's painting 'The Storming of Tel-el-Kebir'. He is the officer to the left clutching his shoulder (it should have been his thigh!):

In the 1880s he had Wilkinson make a special non-regulation thrusting sword to his own design and when the 1892 and 1895 pattern swords were announced he noted some of the similarities to his own design in various publications and lectures.

The hilt, except for the fairly standard grip, is utterly different to the eventual regulation 1895 and 1897 pattern hilts. King-Harman's hilt seems to offer very little hand protection for a service sword.

To add further to the confusion, and diminish King-Harman's claim yet further, there are earlier non-regulation swords from Wilkinson and other makers that share similar characteristics, but pre-date King-Harman's design (even pre-dating him commissioning as an officer). 

In Montreal, my friend and fellow researcher Maxime Chouinard discovered this sword (McCord Stewart Museum copyright) pictured below (shared for research only), which is recorded in the Wilkinson proof book as a 'Toledo rapier blade', and dates to 1859! It was ordered by an officer of the Scots Guards and has nothing to do with King-Harman, yet clearly shares a convergence of design ideas. In fact the Foot Guards officers were often ordering non-regulation blades in this period, and I have a number in my collection, which often show a preference towards dedicated thrusting designs.

For several years Italian fencing instructors had been gaining favour in the UK, despite the continuing popularity of some British instructors such as Captain Alfred Hutton and French masters of the foil. In the mid-1890s Colonel Malcolm Fox of the British Army Gymnasia officially engaged Maestro Ferdinand Masiello of Florence to create a new system for the new British infantry officers' sword.

Colonel Fox in Vanity Fair, Sept 1896:

The characteristics of Masiello's 1895 manual were an extended and forward-leaning lunge, a very extended arm position in the guards and cuts given from the elbow rather than the wrist. Bizarrely there were no leg attacks or defences included, apparently for reasons more related to the fencing hall than the battlefield.

Some plates from the 1895 Masiello manual:

Hutton and his good friend Captain Cyril Matthey were exponents of their own system, which had evolved over three decades and was in form more closely aligned to French methods. They championed more relaxed and less extended guards, a more conservative lunge with the body upright and the general inclusion of battlefield considerations.

Hutton's less exagerated lunge, following the standard lunge taught in French foil, as shown in 'The Swordsman':

Hutton and Matthey were two of the earliest pioneers of what we now call historical fencing - that is, the study of older methods of fighting. They proposed to incorporate older battlefield techniques into the combat systems of their day, most famously adapting George Silver's 'grips and closes' (from 1599) to the British infantry officer's sword of the 1890s. They were primarily concerned with equipping British soldiers with a simple system that would work in service conditions, in uniforms and boots, on rough ground and against opponents who would use all manner of weapons in 'uncivilised' ways. They introduced the use of grabbing, wrestling, strikes with the hilt and other (for the time) unorthodox methods. Hutton and Matthey argued that this was 'sword fighting' as opposed to 'fencing', and they detailed their beliefs in several publications and many lectures. They also produced systems for the rifle-mounted bayonet and the hand-held knife and truncheon.

Because of their vocal opposition to both the new 1892 blade and the 1895 manual, they naturally came into conflict with some of the exponents of these new introductions. There seems to have been no love lost between Hutton and Fox. Hutton would again clash with Colonel Fox's opinions at the beginning of the 1900s, when both sat on committees trying to design the new British cavalry sword which after a few abortive prototypes would eventually lead to the 1908 pattern.

After the introduction of the new 1892 blade it was quickly noted that no new sword manual had been issued to accompany the new blade, even though the new blade would certainly necessitate a different method of fencing to the old 1845 type blade. From The Globe, 29 Mar 1893:

In his manual of 1891 "The Swordsman", Captain Alfred Hutton outlined a simple method of cut and thrust military swordsmanship which built on his works of the previous 30 years. In his 1898 second edition of The Swordsman Hutton included an appendix titled "The Grips and Closes - A Defence Against an Uncivilised Enemy". This took his work with Captain Cyril Matthey into published form. Hutton and Matthey had been working for a decade on interpreting fencing treatises of previous centuries and had both come to the conclusion that older fighting techniques offered some answers to the problems of military hand to hand combat in their own time. Laing had been coming to similar conclusions and collectively there was a movement to try and create a new type of military swordsmanship which was more practical for actual service in the field.

The assertion by some more recent authors that the final British Army regulation infantry officer's sword was the finest design ever produced seems over-enthusiastic. Assessments from the period when the sword was still occasionally used as a weapon were mixed. Some authorities did indeed approve strongly of the new weapon, while some others thought that the design had either not gone far enough towards thrusting specialisation, or had gone too far and that a cut and thrust blade would still have been better.

This of course stemmed from the never-ending argument of cut versus thrust, which is such a huge topic as to warrant an article (or book!) of its own.

In other words, opinions on the new regulation sword were very varied, more so in regard to the blade than the hilt. The hilt seems to have been universally regarded as a big improvement.

The 1895 manual for the use of the new regulation sword does not seem to have been widely liked in either military or fencing circles, though it did have its exponents and champions.

Perhaps more pertinently though, by 1897 combat involving swords had become very rare and isolated to particular conflicts, for example the Omdurman Campaign of 1898, the ongoing insurgency operations on the North-West Frontier and in the last period of regular hand to hand combat in Western warfare, the trenches of WW1, where the trench knife and club for the most part took over from the sword, even for officers.

Therefore it seems challenging to realistically assess the effectiveness of the 1892-1897 pattern infantry officers' swords in attack and defence, given that they were so infrequently used in combat.

In contrast, the 1845 pattern blade had been extensively used in combat in numerous conflicts all over the World, from the plains of the Crimea and cities of India, to the forests of New Zealand and rivers of China. Whether the 1892 pattern blade was in fact better or worse in combat than the 1845 pattern we cannot really say. Data for the 1892 blade is too scarce, even though a little data does exist and we know that it was occasionally used to dispatch opponents.

The Belfast News-Letter of 28 Dec 1899 sums up the prevailing attitude to infantry officers' swords by the end of the 19th century:

Copyright Matt Easton 2017, revised March 2024.