A German Mystery Sabre: The Finale.

Cossack Scouts entering Utrecht in 1813.


Introduction.

I bought the mystery sabre from Stewarts Military Antiques: stewartsmilitaryantiques.com/swords.50.html .
Why? Because it looked like a Blücher with side bars. Never saw that before and the price was very compelling. Terri Stewarts gave excellent service and so there was no hassle with Customs and import tax claims of an kind.
We stayed in contact during the entire operation. I had my doubts in the beginning, as a good looking website doesn't make for a reliable business partner, but Terri proved me wrong.
I can whole heartily recommend Stewarts as a good and safe source for antiques.
It is also interesting, in view of remarks about ,, sellers blurb'' later in this post, that for once the text on Stewarts did not try to set me up with expectations of Waterloo, Mexican wars, or Dutch Volunteers.
No. Terri just said it came from the collection of her husband Larry, that it obviously looked like a 19th century make and that they had not the slightest clue of what it could be.
Larry found the F.H. stamp on the drag and the scabbard pointed to a Blücher sort off.
That was all. That is the way it should be done. No strong tales.
So, thank you Terri and Larry for this interesting new item for my collection. I hope we can do business again soon.

Tip of the hat too for Edelweiss who came up with the SFI, Ebay and F@ganArms links,many pictures and his Google Drive stash.
The link to Edelweiss's Google Drive is in the notes. Edelweiss's pictures and comments are in the Mystery sabre new info thread.



German Made Mystery Sabre: The Finale.

I would like to start with some notes I took while working on this ,, mystery sabre '' and two links to threads here on SBG about the restoration project and provenance research.

Links:
Pictures of mystery sabres: sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/thread/57353/german-mystery-sabre-new-info

More about the cleaning: sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/thread/57819/german-blucher-sabre-variant-scabbard


Notes taken during work.

The hilt and the scabbard are covered in a thick layer of oily rust.





The scabbard has thin walls, under 1 mm, so I have to watch out with sanding the dents.





1. Diagonal lines in the fullers are from grinding. The blade just had a very elementary polish.
2. The uneven spine thickness attests to that too.
3. The edge, from the ricasso to the end of the fuller is about 1.5 mm wide and flat.
Never seen that before.





4. The bars may be later additions, hot forged on. Easy to spot the points. They do not have the same level of workmanship as the rest of the sabre it looks like. May be wrong here though.
Yup. Wrong. Other examples have the bars too and they look just like mine.
5. All in all this looks like a low grade haste job. Was never really finished to a higher grade.
6. Plenty small lamination cracks and two large lamination faults on the edge of the right side of the blade.





7. This blade probably never had any polish to speak off. (See 1). I will keep it low at 240 grid max.
8. Same diagonal grind marks on the spine too.
9. Some serious contact marks. Only the tip portion after the fuller is a bit sharper.
10. Looks like Cavalry used? There is a slight torque in the blade. (from a good hit or training or Sunday afternoon apple chomp sessions?).
11. Replaced the missing wooden liners and the washer. This sabre now feels solid and ready to go.
Despite the dings in the scabbard the blade locks with a satisfying ,, clunk ''.
12. With acid and a soft brass wire brush brought out the F. H. stamp on the drag.





13. The broken grip piece under the pommel repaired. It should, with the new leather in place, end on the same line as the pommel cap.
Cut space under the back strap for the new cords and leather to go under the metal. Like it should.
Channels for the cords are already pressed in on the old grip. Will just have to follow these.
Fix with super glue and when dried, with lots of wood glue to keep the cord in place and impregnate the grip against the water coming from the leather wrap.
Soaked cord of the right thickness in thinned wood glue. It will be a lot easier to work with this way.
Hung it out to dry tied to a weight to keep it straight.

Well, superglue does not work like I expected it to do. It holds here and there and than it doesn't.
So, I have to work in stages. Did the cords on the first half of the grip and secured those with fast setting wood glue. (Edit: The wood glue prevents the super glue from setting somehow. Will not use wood glue in the future. Only AFTER the cord work is done).
At least now the cords will sit tight while I work on the last bit.
It does not look like much now.
With the leather glued on it looks much better. In fact pretty good.
I just start painting. May need a lot of layers to get the right look.
Did five layers, the last two with a mix of glossy black and dead flat varnish.
That worked out really well. Now with wax on the high points it should get a semi antique look.




Notice the low seated and still pointy grip wings on this probably second generation Blücher.







The grip repair doesn't look too bad compared to the original above.



Overall impression.

This sabre model looks and feels like it was made for the civilian and/or militia market.
The build quality is good enough, meaning it will not fall apart easily, although my impression is that with it's light hilt, thin blade and iffy scabbard it just isn't suitable for heavy duty service.
The lack of (Army) stamps on all the diverse mystery models that turned up so far seem to underscore the civil market notion.
It has proportions close to a LC Officers P1796 I have, though my mystery sabre is 240 grams heavier.
That said, my P1796 LC Officers is of Solingen make, so in how far it is representative of a P1796 LC Officers model in general ( Is there even a regulation P1796 LC Officers model?) is questionable.
The reason I have for dragging my P1796 LC into the fray is because I think the mystery sabre was modelled after a type of Officers P1796 LC and not after a later generation M1811 Blücher. Remember that the first generation Blücher itself was an exact copy of the P1796 LC when Prussia started producing the sabres behind the front lines in Silesia, after the period when they had to import the P1796 LC from England because Solingen was lost to the French and production in Silesia still had to be set up.
The heavy Blücher is a second generation model which still had the low seated grip wings, typical for the P1796 LC. Some even argue that the second generation heavier model only appeared shortly after the Napoleonic wars. (See the Deutsche Blankwaffen note)




Blücher line up. The oldest, probably a second generation sabre, is on the left.
Notice how the grip wings move up over time.


Provenance.

The scabbard is stamped with the Friedrich Horster jr. mark. 1825-1875 (See image above).
These dates undermine the suggestion made in the SFI thread (See notes) that the SFI sabre might have been involved in the later part of the struggle with French occupation forces in Utrecht. This suggestion is based on the sabre in question having a city of Utrecht stamp. Utrecht was liberated in 1813 by Cossack scouts and there is no mention of active militia at the time. The French had already pulled out. Maybe years later there was a city militia or a student corps, however I am not sure here. I could not find any accounts of any militia corps, student or other.
It also must be noted that there is no image of the sabre with the Utrecht stamp, nor an image of the stamp itself.
The claim could be valid, but the evidence is simply not there.
The Dutch army, by the way, never used this mystery sabre model.(See the Dutch army note)
Other claims, made in the Ebay sellers blurb and the outstanding and hilarious stories for two sabres at F@ganArms (See the notes) are very entertaining, but since there is not a shred of evidence given, it is just stories, conjecture and suggestion to lure in buyers.
Without  facts the Confederate, Dutch army/militia, Mexican war, Belgian war and other spurious connections are just so much cotton candy.



Dutch army in 1815.


As there is nothing in the way of hard facts, the provenance of the mystery sabre is still shrouded in mist.
Though it might be that the source of the sabres was in Solingen. The Blücher type scabbards this model has and my F.H. stamped scabbard seem to point in that direction. What the Blücher type scabbards also seem to suggest is that this sabre model came on the market at a time when the Blücher still was relevant and recognized by the target audience as the front line weapon that beat the French.
The Blücher scabbard as selling point? This line of thought would give a date from 1825 (Horster) to somewhere in the 1830's. After 1831 the Blücher slowly disappeared from view, meaning it gradually lost much of it's former lustre and still later on it was turned into an Artillery sabre.
If the Blücher type scabbard was not a selling gimmick then why not sell the sabre with a standard model scabbard?
Conjecture of course, but something to mull over.
That said, after the Napoleonic wars, there was really a trend to move away from the simple Hussar style hilt to a hilt type with side bars offering more protection. The Dutch M1814 MK III attests to that trend in an early phase, though these sabres only appeared in about 1820, a date that seems to neatly tie in with the Horster 1825 date. (See: sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/thread/53996/dutch-m1814-light-cavalry-officers .
And let's not forget the British P1821.







Other examples of this model.

There is one on Ebay and one on SFI.





Above is the SFI sabre. It looks like this one has the wings already higher up the grip.
The SFI sabre does not have numbers attached.
F@ganArms has one in the catalogue under the heading of ,, Horseman's sabre'' that is quite similar. (See the notes) The F@ganArms ,, Mexican'' also is a mystery sabre, albeit of a slightly different make.
F@ganArms does not give numbers as far as I am aware.

The numbers for the Ebay mystery sabre:

Overall length: 93 cm (36.61 inches)
Length of the blade: 80 cm (31.5 inches)
Width of the blade at the widest point: 3.2 cm (1.26 inches)
Thickness of the blade spine: 32.74 mm (1.2 895inches) This is wrong of course. Must be the 7.4 mm.





The numbers for my mystery sabre:

Overall length: 92.5 cm.
Length of the blade: 80 cm.
Width of the blade at the widest point: At the ricasso this is 32 mm. At the foible this is 35 mm.
Thickness of the blade spine: 7 mm.
Weight of my sabre: 930 gram.








The numbers for my LC Officers P1796 type sabre, marked: C. v. Keller a Solingen.
He is listed in Bezdek as: Christoph von Keller, Solingen, 1817-1850.
Made high quality Cavalry sabres. Mayor of Solingen 1848.

Overall length: 95 cm.
Length of the blade: 83 cm.
Width of the blade at the widest point: 32mm.
Thickness of the blade spine: 7+ mm
Weight: 690 gram.




A typical Officers sabre. Not suitable for line service at all.
And yes, I still have to clean this one. And many others too. Dang!

Other examples of mystery sabres can be viewed in the above mentioned SBG thread.


Epilogue.

And so we come to a close of the Mystery Sabre story.
It is time to finish the Spanish timeline thread with the last two swords.
I think it has been an interesting and entertaining ride thus far and I get to have a nice and cleaned up addition to my collection in the process. What more does one want?


Cheers.






Notes.

The moderation here is a bit over the top. I cannot link to F@gan Arms as the software doesn't like F A G S as in F@gs. What the hell? Have alerted a moderator. In the mean time the (censored)an Arms links are dead. Sorry about that.

The SFI article: www.swordforum.com/vb4/showthread.php?74241-Unknown-M-1796-M-1811-Blucher-quot-style-sabre

The Ebay sabre: www.ebay.com/itm/Antique-American-Civil-War-Cavalry-Sword-Confederate-/183836474264?oid=223515551275

F@ganArms Horseman sabre:

F@ganArms Mexican sabre:

Dutch Army Museum. Dutch Cavalry sabres: www.sabels.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=65&Itemid=26

Deutsche Blankwaffen Forum. The Blucher sabre explained: www.deutsches-blankwaffenforum.de/board.php?id=171&s=18ead7a4f5e3df052d71ec7ca3b232e4
Run this link through Google Translate to get an English language version.

Edelweiss's Google Drive. It contains some pictures of other mystery sabre models too:

drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IGfSi703NQDHAnz7NtQkhx54NhEHPM0l

Paste the above url in the address bar of your browser and it will work.
Somehow the forum software does not accept it as a link.