Smallsword

Origins

The long, heavy rapier of the late sixteenth century, like the Swept-Hilt Rapier, was a formidable dueling weapon but an awkward thing to wear every day. In France in the middle of the seventeenth century, fencing masters developed a faster, simpler style built around the thrust, and swordsmiths answered with a shorter, lighter sword. By the 1680s the smallsword had taken its classic form, and with the prestige of the court of Louis XIV it spread across Europe. For about a century it was an essential part of a gentleman's dress, worn at court, in town and on campaign by officers, and carried by civilians of any standing.

Design & Construction

A smallsword has a short, stiff blade, usually around 30 to 33 inches long, most often of triangular section with hollow-ground faces. This design is light, very stiff and suited only to thrusting. Some blades of the late seventeenth century were colichemardes, with a wide, strong section near the hilt for parrying that narrowed abruptly to a slim point. The hilt has a small guard of two shells or a single oval plate, a knuckle bow, short quillons and a pair of small rings called the pas d'âne under the shells. Hilts were decorated in every fashion of the day: chiseled and blued steel, cut-steel faceting, silver, gilded brass, porcelain and even gold set with stones. Blades often came from the great blade centers of Solingen, while hilts were made by jewelers and specialist cutlers in Paris, London and elsewhere.

Combat Use

The smallsword was above all a dueling weapon. French and Italian masters, and in England the famous Domenico Angelo, whose L'École des armes of 1763 was the standard work of its age, taught a precise system of parries and ripostes that is still recognizable in modern fencing. In battle, officers wore smallswords as badges of rank more than as fighting weapons; the regulation infantry officer's sword of many armies in the mid-eighteenth century was a smallsword, and George Washington's surviving swords from the American Revolution include smallswords. Against a cavalryman's heavy blade or a soldier's bayonet it was of little use, and military men who expected to fight carried heavier swords such as the Boarding Cutlass at sea or the saber on horseback.

Legacy

After the French Revolution, simpler dress and the pistol duel ended the custom of wearing a sword every day, and the smallsword survived mainly as a court sword and in ceremonial uniform. Its fencing tradition lived on: the practice foil was a training smallsword, and modern foil and épée are its direct descendants. Smallswords are widely collected today, especially for the quality of their hilts, and they turn up in portraits of almost every famous man of the eighteenth century.