Three Prussian M1811 Light Cavalry sabres.

Royal Prussian Battle Flag.


Introduction.

This post is about my humble effort to analyze the three M1811 sabres I have. To run them through the forest of facts and factoids you'll find on the sites down in the Notes section.
Not to write the umteenth know it all article. That is not my place and I leave that to the people who spend most of their lives in the M1811 jungle and REALLY know what they are talking about.
If you are interested in acquiring an M1811 or just want to know about this icon, it seems imperative to me that you research as much as possible all the good stuff these sites have to offer. Google Translate can be a great help here.






Background.

About the M1808.
In order to clear up some of the background of the M1811 I have to quote from the article by Mr. Christian Wagner M.A. in the German RWM Depeche magazine No. 01, page 50, entitled ,, Preussen wählt Bewährtes - den Kavalleriesäbel M1808.''
We all know about the history of the British P1796 LC so I will not waste more of your time with that.
What is new to me is the rather astonishing number of P1796 LC sabres exported to Prussia: more than 16.000!
The first batch of 6ooo sabres went to the Kingdom of Hanover of course. Old George wanted some for his home territory.
On top of these 16.000 sabres came the Prussian copied and build P1796 LC's. At the time such an effort was unheard of but demanded by Army circles. On both sides I might add.
The first to have the new sabre were the Dragoons and Hussars and somewhat later the Ulanen.
Some of the imported P1796 LC's were issued to the Mounted Artillery, the Train, the Mounted Chasseurs and the Landwehr Cavalry.
Today the imported P1796 and the Prussian build copies are often called the Prussian M1808, though Gert Maier* does not concur according to Herr Wagner, who says that Maiers theses is based on just 1 example. Maiers notion that the 16.000 P1796 LC's imported from Britain were called the Prussian M1811 is out of the question so says the author.
So it seems to be quite safe to call the imported and copied P1796 LC's the Prussian M1808, but I for one would have liked to see this in a Prussian Army regulation of the period.
I have copied some of the images from the article to show that the Prussian build M1808 was an exact copy of the P1796 LC. Even the scabbard is the same. S&K build the M1808's.



Courtesy of RWM Magazine.


With the introduction of the M1811 came the thick and stronger hilt parts and the heavier ring mounts and the flap under the drag.
It is sometimes said that the M1811 missed the Jelman so typical of the P1976 LC. This is not true.
As issued the M1811 had the Jelman, but due to its long life in the service with repeated sharpening and then dulling again, most of the M1811 have lost this feature. Some though still have the full Jelman though or remnants of it.
My sabre No.1 still has some of the Jelman as the width of the blade goes from 36 mm under the guard to 37 mm at the spot where the Jelman once was situated. The other two do not have even this slight widening of the blade. (See the numbers).
I have been worried about the P1796 LC scabbards two of my M1811's came with. I do not any longer after reading the article by Herr Wagner. Though an intact M1808 sabre may be almost impossible to find, the shear numbers that once were in use, 16.000 imports + the many thousands of Prussian made sabres, guarantee that there must have been heaps of spare M1808 blades, hilt parts and scabbards in depots.
As the P1796 LC scabbards of two of my M1811's show many signs of very long use and repeated cleaning to the point where the scabbard walls of sabre 2. are nearly paper thin in some places, I am quite confident that the scabbards were from an M1808 sabre. Even the unmarked blade of sabre No.2 could have been a spare from an M1808 sabre as Prussian blade stamps are not regulated at that date.
And this all sums up part of the fun in collecting or at least studying M1811 sabres.
With its long service life of over a hundred years, the huge numbers of spare parts and complete sabres in depot, you'll never know what you get. Even the deciphering of the jumble of old and newer stamps on the hilts and blades and looking up the regiments and where they were located can be an adventure in itself.






Work.

Lots of polishing out of rust and gunk on the blades and the scabbards as the general state of the sabres was not very good. Dirt and rust under the langets was all removed and there was a lot of that. Then again I must not complain as I bought the sabres with the P1796 LC scabbards for relative peanuts. It is interesting that one of these came from Spain and the other one popped up a few weeks later on a French site. The hand of fate did its work so I had to buy them both. Normal people would have taken the kids to Disneyland.







During the polishing I found a few pictures of M1811's with the ricasso counter polish intact. Never knew they had one.
I liked that and did it on 2 of my sabres too. Just for the heck of it, as this isn't very time consuming to do and because it shows a glimmer of what the sabres looked like long ago.
One of the sabres had the rust blue finish somewhat intact and I left it like that. All of them got new washers and I made 3 copies of the original M1811 sword knot with the aid of the original drawings, because all this polishing got a bit boring and I needed something fun and different to do.






About the Jelman.

There are many images online that show M1811 blades with the Jelman intact. Two of the sabres do not show it anymore and the third only has some rudiments left. I thought it an interesting experiment to see what has been slowly ground off during their long service life.
The Jelman is supposed to start about 2" before the end of the fuller and goes in a straight line up to the tip. Of course the tip has been affected too, but we have to make do with what we got here. The results are interesting I think.
Whether to call this a Jelman is open to question, but the term seems to be accepted.

Sabre 1.(From the top down)



Sabre 2.



Sabre 3.



Here's why so much metal is missing:



This is the edge on sabre 3. The grind marks run in the fuller here and there!



The sabres, their stamps and the numbers.

Sabre 1.
Unmarked blade.
L.O: 94,5cm BL:81,5cm BLW: 36/37mm BLT: 8/6/3,8mm W:1142 gr POB: 17cm ScW: 955 gr.

Stamps: Many erased stamps on reverse of guard. Obverse: A.M.XVI.5.94. 360M A339.
Underside of guard: Inspection stamp + 2E 148.

Scabbard: On mouth and spine: 360M.
Underside of drag: AM 360.
Inside of sc: Partially erased AM.
Inspection stamp on backstrap.

Sabre 2.
L.O: 96cm BL: 83,5CM BLW: 38/37mm BLT: 11/6,5/3,5mm W:1317 gr POB: 15cm ScW: 680 gr.

Guard: I.M.XIV.1.95. Insp. stamp on underside and on back strap.

Blade: Spine: Crown-W-83 Tax stamp. Alex Coppel under the langet.

There is evidence of very old stamps on the guard's reverse and the underside like with Sabre 1.


Sabre 3.
L.O: 93,8cm BL: 82,5CM BLW: 37,3/36mm BLT: 9/6/4mm W 940 gr POB: 15,5cm ScW: 1123 gr.

Guard: I.M.XVII.2.46. Insp. stamp on underside of guard.

Blade: Spine: S&K 445.(Depot number)

Scabbard: Front: 41.M.F.1.35.2.
On first ring mount: 4.L.D.2. 23.238P.
On drag flap: PG and S&K.
On drag top: Crown 89 12.





The difference between the guards.

Be it that there were many forges involved in the manufacture of the later M1811's, only S&K made the first generation, some differences cannot be attributed to that factor alone. It is said that the hilt on the first generation was too massive and was later replaced with a slimmed down version. The hilt of sabre 2. is massive and larger than the hilts on sabre 1. and 3. Could it be an much older hilt of the first generation?





Conclusion.

There is something about the M1811 that affects me deeply. What this is I do not know, but every time I see one for sale I have this strong urge to buy it, even more so than with any other sabre.
There are even moments that I think that would I have known when starting out on this collecting expedition, I would have only collected the M1811. Crazy!
Anyway. Though there are many volumes written about this sabre and the research isn't quite finished yet, I hope you can make some sense of what is written here and that the subject is interesting enough for you to delve deeper into the matter on your own accord. For me the stamps are a huge part of the attraction, as they contain much of the events in the long years these sabres were in use. And the stamps turn up in unexpected places too, as about an hour ago while I polishing the wax on a scabbard I noticed remains of an inspection stamp on the drag that eluded my attention before.


Cheers.




Notes.

*Gerd Maier is the author of what many call ,,the German sabre bible'' and is seen, in German and international collecting circles, as the ,,go to'' expert.
The fact that there is this disagreement between Herr Maier and Herr Wagner is a good thing in my book.

Deutsche Blankwaffen Forum. Everything M1811:: www.deutsches-blankwaffenforum.de/board.php?id=173&s=2c45f872bdbcb2ced762e64b9869e5b5

Armchair General and HistoryNet:: forums.armchairgeneral.com/?p=2215199

Prussia - Howling Pixel:: howlingpixel.com/i-en/Prussia

Royal Prussia:: ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Royal_Prussia.html

Prussian Army : Napoleonic Wars : History : Organization : Preußische Armee::
www.napolun.com/mirror/napoleonistyka.atspace.com/Prussian_army.htm

Battle of Paris (1814) - Wikipedia:: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Paris_(1814)

Pattern 1796 light cavalry sabre - Wikipedia::
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_1796_light_cavalry_sabre

Die Zietenhusaren - Rathenow - Geschichte und Geschichten - Blüchersäbel::
www.zietenhusar.wg.am/bluchersabel/

Evolution of Swords - Swordsmiths in England - Pooley Sword::
pooleysword.com/en/Evolution_of_Swords_-_Swordsmiths_in_England