Picked up the package at one of my neighbours across the street when I got home from work.
This small sword is smaller than the Napoleon small sword replica I ordered too. That one is about 12 cm longer in its scabbard. But then, it has a service blade.
Re reading the above post makes it obvious I am loosing it, what with all this blabbering about approximate dates. The Austrian? has a date. It is engraved in the spine for God's sake, as noted in the original post. Full text: ?? Fabrica de Toledo Ano de 1817 A G W. What is the meaning of that first letter and A.G.W.?
Blade length is 74 cm. Width is 21 mm, with a thickness of 6 mm. A nice stiff and flat backsword blade with a false edge of 13 cm at the tip end, with just enough flex to make this an excellent thruster with some slicing ability too.
All of my small swords have some form of nasty and very effective thrusting blade. Why? These are made for ceremonial use, so, as far as I am concerned, the blades could have been made from spaghetty. Who cares? Or why not bold the hilts directly to the scabbards. Saves material,since most of the blades would never be drawn in anger anyway, except of course if one wanted to nail some yapping rug rat to the parquet what is constantly trying to pee up your freshly pressed uniform pants. Saves some weight too, so more hours could be spend dancing and munching those awfully salt and wet sardine with peanut butter sandwiches served at those boring parties thrown by the Misses Kelly from the American Consulate. But no, mean killer blades they have, all of them.
This blade stands out though. It is flat, where the others have a triangular section and are hollow ground. The length is about the norm.
The workmanship on the pommel and knuckle bow is of medium quality, with rather coarsely and uninspired engraved detail. It is not of a French standard of workmanship by a long shot. It is not bad, just not French.
The sablé background is not very well done here. Notice how the decoration seems to sink into the sablé instead of ,,floating'' on top of it.
The front grip plate has some small pieces missing on one side, but it is a wonder so many of them survived anyway. What is a wonder too, is that artisans at that time were able to work this sea shell material. It is extremely hard, while the thin slices break easely.
Since in France, according to l'Hoste, the Nike or Victory emblems are present only on the hilts of Superior Officers swords, it seems safe to say the Austrian? belonged to a SO too. The Nike, as depicted here, is in a rather naughty mood. Her breasts are bare and she shows quite some leg too. This in contrast to the more demure Nike on the knuckle bow of the French small sword shown above.
As for it having a non French origin, a case can be made to support that. Though the pommel design appeared in the early years of the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty, this design would have been available at every cutler in Europe. French taste and fashion still ruled, whether France was defeated or not.
The guard is atypical also, as in not French. Considering the old blood ties between Austria and Spain and Spain at that time being allied, it is not suprising to see a Spanish blade on an Austrian small sword. That said, a case can be made it is Spanish also, or British, or from one of the German states. Even Russian or American.
The only thing to do is to wait until a picture pops up depicting another small sword with that guard. I think the secret lies there.
Cheers.