So, what is an "Offensive Weapon" anyway??

Soldato
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A few of the points on some Patterns are sharpish, but with the blades blunt I doubt it would be hard to get past the point of an unskilled wielder. There's a good reason why Fairbairn-Sykes Fighting Knives are very small and bayonets were cut-down for proper trench fighting.

I recall seeing that pre ww1 the prevailing idea for bayonet use was basically as a glaive for fencing with, from the same school of thought of the 400yrd zero, the magazing cutoff and the idea that the machine gun was a dishonourable weapon.

Until it actually happened, and people reverted to a mace and a bag of grenades as a truly effective trench combo when they realised its impossible to fence in a trench and a 400yrd zero does damn all when average combat distance is 50m
 
Soldato
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out of curiosity if you ran someone threw with a sword ona galloping horse wouldn't you nopw have 10st of human on the end of a sord, does that not rip it out of your hand?

Have you got any idea how long it took me to find this?


Answer: Search for "cavalry sword horseback", watch enough of result to confirm it's legit, post link and sarcastic comment, all in under 5 minutes.
 
Man of Honour
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[..]
The problem with cavalry weapons is that they're usually unwieldy, heavy, useless metal clubs... unless you happen to be mounted on a charging horse, from which position they're actually designed to be used. [..]

I'm not sure about that, especially since the person you're replying to was explicitly refering to sabres. A lance, yes, that would be very little use off a horse, but I wouldn't say a cavalry sabre is an "unwieldy, heavy, useless metal club".

Here, for example, is a video about the 1908 pattern sword issued to cavalry in the British army. It's an example of a sword designed wholly for cavalry use and wholly for thrusting only, i.e. to be used like a lance. It's heavier than usual for a sword of that length because the blade was deliberately made thicker than usual to make it more rigid to better withstand the impact of thrusting it into someone at a gallop. The hilt and guard restrict movement and even grip because they're designed for maximum protection and to position your wrist correctly for the impact of thrusting. The balance is too far from the hilt for quick, accurate movement of the blade because of the thickness of the blade. It's about as specialised a sword-as-a-lance you can get without it being more a lance than a sword. But it's still not unwieldy, heavy or useless and if you sharpened the edges it wouldn't be a club. That's for a sword designed wholly for thrusting from horseback - earlier cavalry swords were far less specialised.


It could certainly be used to kill a whole bunch of people in a train carriage today, for example. You wouldn't want to be using it one on one against a skilled sword fighter armed with a less specialised sword, but it's still a very dangerous weapon in a modern civilian context.
 
Soldato
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You need a lot of force behind a sword like that to do damage with it. Not the kind you could muster up easily in a train carriage. A knife is more dangerous really.
 
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Caporegime
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I'm not sure about that, especially since the person you're replying to was explicitly refering to sabres. A lance, yes, that would be very little use off a horse, but I wouldn't say a cavalry sabre is an "unwieldy, heavy, useless metal club".

Here, for example, is a video about the 1908 pattern sword issued to cavalry in the British army. It's an example of a sword designed wholly for cavalry use and wholly for thrusting only, i.e. to be used like a lance. It's heavier than usual for a sword of that length because the blade was deliberately made thicker than usual to make it more rigid to better withstand the impact of thrusting it into someone at a gallop. The hilt and guard restrict movement and even grip because they're designed for maximum protection and to position your wrist correctly for the impact of thrusting. The balance is too far from the hilt for quick, accurate movement of the blade because of the thickness of the blade. It's about as specialised a sword-as-a-lance you can get without it being more a lance than a sword. But it's still not unwieldy, heavy or useless and if you sharpened the edges it wouldn't be a club. That's for a sword designed wholly for thrusting from horseback - earlier cavalry swords were far less specialised.


It could certainly be used to kill a whole bunch of people in a train carriage today, for example. You wouldn't want to be using it one on one against a skilled sword fighter armed with a less specialised sword, but it's still a very dangerous weapon in a modern civilian context.

No way you could use one on a train carrige in any way effectivly.

You'd be tripped and on the ground way to fast due to the narrowness of the walk way
 
Soldato
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I'm not sure about that, especially since the person you're replying to was explicitly refering to sabres. A lance, yes, that would be very little use off a horse, but I wouldn't say a cavalry sabre is an "unwieldy, heavy, useless metal club".
Having actually tried to wield a number of cavalry weapons on foot and found them to be as described, ie designed for use on a horse, I'll maintain my assertion, thanks.
If they were any good as foot weapons, they'd have been issued to non-Cavalry too...

Here, for example, is a video about the 1908 pattern sword issued to cavalry in the British army.
Yeeeeeeeeees....... Can you find something by someone a bit more reputable than Matt Easton, do you think?

but it's still a very dangerous weapon in a modern civilian context.
By that logic, you might as well cite a .50cal machine gun designed to be mounted on a tank. Yes, it can kill, but in the context of the quotes above (which were partly in humour anyway) most people wanting to do some damage will pick up something easier to wield.
 
Man of Honour
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Having actually tried to wield a number of cavalry weapons on foot and found them to be as described, ie designed for use on a horse, I'll maintain my assertion, thanks.
If they were any good as foot weapons, they'd have been issued to non-Cavalry too...

I'll try another tack.

Can you understand that there are possibilities other than "useless metal club" and "good as foot weapons"?

If not, we may as well leave it here.

I'm not saying that a specialised weapon designed for use on a horse isn't designed for use on a horse. That would be silly. I'm saying that some of them can be used off a horse. Not as well as a specialised weapon designed to be used on foot, but well enough to kill people with and particularly so in a modern context. Many people stuck in a location wouldn't react efficiently when faced with a person wielding a sword with the intent to kill people, especially after the first death. Maybe they'd be lucky and there would be someone like you there, someone who could recognise the sword as being just a useless metal club and simply take it off the attacker, but probably not.
 
Soldato
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Having actually tried to wield a number of cavalry weapons on foot and found them to be as described, ie designed for use on a horse, I'll maintain my assertion, thanks.
If they were any good as foot weapons, they'd have been issued to non-Cavalry too...


Yeeeeeeeeees....... Can you find something by someone a bit more reputable than Matt Easton, do you think?

Which cavalry weapons and why is Easton an unreliable source?
 
Associate
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I've seen some bizarre things confiscated from people and them charged with carrying an offensive weapon. A "sharpened coke can" was probably the strangest one.
 
Soldato
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I sold it on. I'm not a Sharpe fan. :)
Whilst I do enjoy Sharpe, the Baker is a classic and has ties to my former regiment, so it always had a 'special' place in our hearts... not that we'd ever want to use it, mind!!

Can you understand that there are possibilities other than "useless metal club" and "good as foot weapons"?
Yes, it is still possible that someone could deliver some very slow, hefty blows and thus kill someone, making it an offensive weapon even when utterly blunted.
Can you understand that the whole thing was meant to be a joke about people getting on the tube with horses?

Which cavalry weapons and why is Easton an unreliable source?
A few 18-something Pattern Cavalry Sabers, Light Sabers and the like, along with a couple of American ones. I was actually coerced/baited into trying them by some proponents of different systems to mine during conversations about them. I wasn't interested enough to recall exactly which ones, but they had a decent selection and their techniques made sense.

Unless he's changed in the past couple of years, Easton is generally regarded as a complete fool and a joke (I think that's the politest term I've heard) by the vast majority of his peers. He likes to put his own views on things across, rather than either using source material and/or citing other more learned instructors. He also fails to stand up and prove his point, which is pretty telling, but at one stage he was quite a plagiarist as well - Used to send his students "undercover" to other schools to spy on their teachings, sometimes stealing the methods and claiming them as his own work (despite them actually being the authors' of original historical documents).
Imagine a more pathetic version of Mike Loades (Weapons That Made Britain was one ridiculous example) and you're along the right lines of Matt Easton.
 
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