A French AN XIII Cuirassier Pallasch.
Mar 3, 2022 18:51:20 GMT
Post by Uhlan on Mar 3, 2022 18:51:20 GMT
Thomas Cole:: The Age of Empire.
Introduction.
I bought this sword some time ago as part of a package deal with some others, like the Tamzin Turkish Officer sabre for instance.
See:: sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/thread/66477/turkish-tamzin-period-regulation-officer
So I had to deal with a sudden influx of much metal and with new sabres coming in on a regular basis too, I just cleaned the dirt from the lot, oiled them and shoved them in the racks for later.
Later can be a rather longish time when there's always something new on the doorstep. Anyway, later is now.(!)
This post will mainly be about what I found up close with my nose to the steel.
This also may be a long one....
AN XIII development.
I here will quote the excellent summary by Mr. Henri Yallop of the Royal Armoury in full.
:: During the last years of the 18th century, French cuirassiers and dragoons often carried different swords to one another. From 1784 cuirassiers had carried straight swords with a decorative brass hilt. The long, double-fullered blade was narrow yet thick and despite its slim hatchet point it was used as a thrusting weapon. Initially the design upon the hilt had been a fleur-de-lys, but the royalist connotations of the fleur-de-lys motif was far from suitable for a weapon of the fledgling republic and was later converted to show a rod of fasces surmounted with a Phrygian cap - the cap of liberty. Whether with royalist or revolutionary emblems, this sword type with its swirling florid designs is known as the 'fleuron' hilt.
Whilst this sword was carried by dragoons, they also used swords of a different form. From 1781 a dragoon sword was used, with an asymmetrical double-fullered cut-and-thrust blade, known as a 'Montmorency' blade after the regiment of the dragoons that introduced it, and the general form was copied for the flat-bladed 1790 chasseur sabre. All three swords were carried by dragoons in the Revolutionary and Consular period.
In Year IV of the Revolutionary calendar (1795-1796) shortages in copper meant that the 'fleuron' hilt was briefly made in iron rather than brass, and blade production was simplified to a single fuller. These Year IV versions of the 'fleuron' swords were issued to both dragoons and cuirassiers. The only difference was that dragoons, who could be deployed dismounted, used a lighter leather scabbard rather than the steel one of the cuirassiers.
With France at war with almost all her neighbours, the thin metal of the 1784/86/IV 'fleuron' guard was found to be too thin and susceptible to breakage, hence a new hilt form was sought.
A new sword was approved for the expanded arm of cuirassiers in Year IX of the revolutionary calendar (1800), whereas dragoons retained the 'fleuron' sword. Inspiration for the four-bar hilt of the Year IX was taken from the 1784 sword of the disbanded royal bodyguard.
Although the hilt design was a success, the flat unfullered blade was found to be too heavy, and in Year XI (1802-03) it was replaced with a double-fullered version, identical to the 1784 blade. Still only in use with cuirassiers, the combination of sword and scabbard now proved to be problematic. Whereas the light steel scabbard had been suitable for the heavy and flat blade, it did not provide adequate protection to the double-fullered version of the Year XI because the light scabbard did not have wooden liners.. A fall when mounted could see the scabbard compress around the double-fullered blade, making withdrawal impossible. In order to remedy this defect an extremely heavy second pattern scabbard was introduced. In addition, the area of the sword's hilt where the bars of the guard meet the 'pommel' had been found to be an area of weakness for the Year IX and Year XI, and consequently was reinforced in the sword's final Napoleonic designation of the Year XIII. This final designation was issued to both cuirassiers and dragoons, with the dragoons again retaining the leather scabbard better suited to dismounted duties.
Use and Effect
The Year XI/XIII (so called as they are the same pattern of sword, with only the smallest difference) was designed and employed as a thrusting sword. The cuirassiers were the quintessential shock cavalry of the period and were expected to charge in close order. Together with dragoons, they provided the line cavalry, whose main purpose was formed charge on the battlefield. In such formed heavy cavalry shock actions it was generally held that the thrust was the preferred method of attack.
In the hands of the dragoons, the Year XI/XIII had become well respected by the British, who encountered it in the Peninsular. At Bienvenida, in April 1812, Captain Bragge of the 3rd Dragoons remarked upon the lethality of the French swords stating that '12 English Dragoons were killed on the spot and others dangerously wounded by thrusts.'
At Waterloo, when the British finally faced Napoleon's cuirassiers in battle, the advantage that the Year IX/XIII afforded its user was commented on by Lieutenant Waymouth of the 2nd Life Guards who spoke of 'the great disadvantage arising from our swords, which were full six inches shorter than those of the cuirassiers'.
Although not intended for cutting, the nature of the cavalry combat often meant that the theory was not always carried on into practice. Captain Wallace of the 1st King's Dragoons Guards reports of his regiments combat with cuirassiers at Waterloo resulting in 'many of our men having severe sabre wounds, particularly about the face'. Although its narrow, straight double-fullered blade would have made the Year XI/XIII an inefficient cutting weapon, the sword had enough mass that the edge could still be applied with deadly effect. Following the counter charge of French cuirassiers on the Union Brigade Corporal Couter of the 28th Line Regiment stated: 'I found myself close to an English Dragoon officer who had been killed in the melee. A sabre blow had split open his head and the brain had burst out of the skull'.
Year XI/XIII swords were not only used by the French but also by their enemies. Significant numbers were captured by the Prussian army during the War of Freedom who subsequently reissued the swords to their own cavalry. Just as the French continued to issue swords modelled on the Year XI/XIII for over a hundred years, many other European militaries copied this iconic sword for their own forces over the next century.
Statistics
Blade length 97 cm (38 1/4 in)
Country of manufacture France
Date entered service 1802
Overall length 1.14 m (44 3/4 in)
Weight scabbard 1.53 kg (3 lb 3 oz)
Weight sword 1.34 kg (2 lb 15 oz)
Author
Henry Yallop ::
My AN XIII.
Blade ::
It is of unknown make (I come back to that later) tested and proved by AP with Fasces stamp + the AP stamp +, as an extra, a Phrygian cap stamp.
There are remains of the counter polish,some clear vice marks and edge filing.
Furthermore it was in good condition, with hardly any pitting, the reason being it had been varnished a long time ago.
I found remains of the old varnish here and there while polishing it up.
Fasces or Lector stamps date from the Revolutionary period.
The AP stamp stands for ,,Atelier de Precision, an institute under the supervision and run by the Artillery Committee, which in turn operated under the supervision of the Department of War.
I still find references on the internet that AP would stand for ,,Ateliers de Paris'', but nothing is further from the truth. les Ateliers de Paris had nothing to do with war effort, nor with the Department of War that regulated and supervised all business related to war.
Les Ateliers de Paris was and I think still is, a commercial organisation that organises yearly trade fairs in Paris highlighting the wonders of French commerce.
The blade is ever so slightly torqued and to my surprise also has a slight bend on the spine, like a great force to the spine made it bend like a sabre a bit.
Hard to notice (if you are not alerted to it you'll never see it), but during the polish this became evident. Must say though that the blade fits well into the scabbard. No problems there.
This makes me believe I have a battle damaged blade here, a so called ,,battle pickup''.
There is enough evidence to suggest the blade did service for a long time, as remnants of repeated and sometimes, over enthousiastic , filing is abundant.
The stamps on the hilt.
The scabbard.
,,Here there be demons'' as the old map makers used to say when confronted with the unknown.
As you can see the mouth piece is held in place with two screws.
At first I thought I still had the genuine article because of this picture of a display in the French Musée d'Empire :
One can clearly see the two screw scabbard (at left) and this send me in a wrong direction at first.
It looks like the Musee d'Empire does know a lot about Empire but is lacking in the Napoleonic gear department.
Removal of the mouth piece showed the wall thickness. Here it is 1.5 mm instead of the 2.5 mm it should have been. Another tell something was off.
As an aside, the scabbard has a full wood core, not just two wooden slats. Not only the sides but the spine and more important the cutting edge are fully protected. Which is a nice extra.
Anyway. Further examination of the scabbard showed filing had been done on the outside (public in Katana parlance) of the first ring mount.
In good light one can the remnants of numbers and letters.
As french scabbards are only stamped on the inside (personal side in Katana parlance) this was yet another tell.
The scabbard drag also slightly differs from the French standard.
So, whether I liked it or not, this points to it probably being Dutch.
I can see no other explanation.
This, combined with the evidence pointing in the direction of this sword being a battle pickup, makes me conclude this French AN XIII may have seen service in the Dutch units fighting the French, or it was as a (Waterloo?) battle pickup transported to Holland and incorporated in the Dutch Army for a while.
The, now partly removed, scabbard stamps point in that direction.
The numbers.
WOA: 2355 gram.
WS:1435 gram.
WSB: 920 gram.
BL: 99 cm.
SL : 115.5 cm.
BW: 37 mm.
BT: 10.5 : 7 : 5.5 : 5 : 3 MM.
POB: 13.5 cm from the guard.
About AP.
During my research I downloaded a crap load of Passion Militare (PM) bookmarks.
In my quest I delved down to 2016. Hours and hours of speed reading. Long lists of bookmarks.
During one of these capers I found an interesting and important tidbit of an Ordonnance about AP.
I have memorized the gest of it. Why? Because I bookmarked all kinds of stuff and this one I let slip.
Dang! And I am not going to go sifting again through 1500 pages to find it.
Once was enough, thank you very much.
This Ordonnance is the foundation stone of what AP was about. It originated at the Departement de Guerre and came down to AP via the Artillery Committee:
:: 50% of the output of domestic (Klingenthal, Versailles and smaller regional forges) and foreign ( Solingen, Barisoni et al, in short all forges capable of sufficient output situated on formerly (now French) foreign soil), will be send unmarked to AP, to be tested there and mounted. ::
So, if you have an AP AN XIII, you will never know where the blade came from.
It can be Klingenthal or Solingen or Barisoni or be the effort of a smaller French regional forge.
The Ordonnance goes further with the other significant side of the work done at AP and describes the salvage operation. Klingenthal was also massively involved in salvage by the way and as such is mentioned here also.
The gest of this, as far as I can remember, is that AP had major salvage operations running at ground (battlefield) level. All this junk, whether it be sabres, swords, cuirasses, in short, everything worth the effort, was transported to AP and Klingenthal, sorted out, refurbished, repaired, mounted or whatever needed to be done to make said piece of gear serviceable again and send back to into the fray.
Salvage operation after the Battle of Waterloo.
Plate L from :: An Historical Account of the Campaign in the Netherlands by William Mudford (1817).
And the above (the 50% part) brings me to the Solingen Rose (SR).
Some say the SR does not exist or has nothing to do with Solingen because it is not mentioned ,,in the books''.
I beg to differ and even will go as far as to say this is quite stupid. This stance highlights the difference between Academic (It's not in the books so it does not exist) world where everything is aimed at being ,,safe'' and the world of science where, if something is not ,,in the books'' this is all the more reason to do some serious research.
The entire French dealer and collection world (including the rest of Europe I may add) knows about the SR and prices paid for blades marked as such are lower than French made ones of the same ilk. This discount can be quite considerable and substantional.
Go tell them the SR does not exist or is just a fancy of Klingenthal or whatever.
They will probably start dialling the local funny farm before you have finished the sentence.
The SR mark comes in some variations. The most common is this one here on a French Hussar sabre from the Directoire period:
The earliest example I could find (there may be even earlier examples) dates from the Revolutionary period.
Here is a variant SR together with an early Klingenthal spine etch on a (RP) Light Cavalry sabre.
Most if not all of the SR's can be seen on Officers gear. Gear ordered from Solingen as many French Officers looking for a cheaper but fancy sabre were want to do.
But and this is the reason I got curious, there are double marked blades too.
Here are some examples.
And here is an example of a SR variant on a sabre mounted by Boutet no less:
This may explain the phenomenon:
A. Officers ordered a SR market blade from Solingen and had it mounted and tested (again?) by Klingenthal.
B. Some of the double market blades were battlefield pickups and got pumped through the Klingenthal salvage department and mounted again in a surplus Officers hilt and signed again. There are examples of this.
Jack88's GDB sword may be one such for instance. See :: sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/thread/66574/garde-de-bataille-french-dragoons
Conclusion.
Glad this one came my way.
The Dutch connection and a probable battlefield background gives it an extra.
That said I must confess that looking at it now that I have polished my M1816 Cuirassier and various M1854's, which will be reviewed at a later date, it is obvious that this blade is the product of 18thC ways of production.
This must have changed considerably after the Napoleonic period, as the M1816 testifies to a much higher standard, culminating in the M1854 blades that are the pinnacle of excellence of craftsmanship where this type of blade is concerned.
But by then we are already far into the 19thC.
There is one other thing I like to mention in regard of AP and Klingenthal salvage operations.
There was a war economy going on. An all out effort to keep the war machine running. Going through my notes and writing this article I remembered that I once had evidence of the impact these efforts had on French business operators and manufacturers.
In my antiquarian book and manuscript collecting days I, not long ago, stumbled upon a dealer at the local weekly antiquarian book market, who had a table full of papers. Upon examination it turned out to be a large part of a French family archive dating from about begin 18thC to about 1850.
As this is a period of great social movement, I was interested and bought the lot. Next week another lot from the same archive and so on.
Stuff like this, loads of it:
I will not mention the name of the family as they are still living in the same area, but it suffices to say that what I bought were the remnants of the archives of a family G, based in a small village in the foothills of the Southern Pyrenees. Mr. G manufactured and sold cloth, collected rents from small farmers on his properties and fought out many disputes in courts all over the place. His business tentacles went all over Southern and Mid France ( I had a great big chart on the wall displaying his spider web in coloured string) , his nitwit son in law was a Colonel at the Navy gun foundries at Lyon, etc, etc,
Very interesting. It took me months to sort it all out. I love handwritten old papers and vellum, the dusty smell of them and the wax seals and everything.
What I want to say, to show the impact a war economy had (and has) is, that one day Mr. G. got visitors.
Officials from Paris. Paris, for someone living in the South at the time, was as far away as the moon. Far, far away and not really part of everyday reality.
A good impression of why one cannot speak of ,,France'' as a unit, a nation, a state, at that time you'll have when you read Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's : Histoire de France des régions. Tax collectors from Paris risked their lives once they left the ,,civilised'' surrounds of the capital and visitors coming from same were not always welcome too.
It was a lose collection of many small, kind of tribal cultures, speaking strange dialects and determined by their landscapes, which, in the context of France are very diverse and where often the ,,Glorious Revolution'' and other goings on in Paris didn't matter one bit. Very interesting.
Anyway.
It goes to show the huge impact the war effort had on ordinary life. Even as far out of the way in time and space as his business was, he was ordered to start the manufacture of military cloth and uniform buttons forthwith, or else.
Just like that he lost his civilian oriented considerable market share and a triving business. Of course he got compensated to a degree, but still it was a hard nut to crack. I can tell you the family rejoiced when all this Napoleonic crap was over and done with.
Cheers.
Notes.
zbook.org/read/55d529_french-cuirassier-swords-an-ix-an-xi.html
www.passionmilitaria.com/t154030-sabre-de-cuirassier-modele-an-xiii
sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/thread/46057/biggest-brute-cuirassier-pallash-unaltered
sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/thread/59634/notes-french-cuirassiers-dragoons-swords
collections.royalarmouries.org/battle-of-waterloo/arms-and-armour/type/rac-narrative-493.html
oldswords.com/articles/French%20Cuirassier%20swords%20AN%20IX%20-%20AN%20XI.pdf
sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/thread/59561/french-cuirassier-xiii-finally
www.swordforum.com/vb4/showthread.php?117708-French-Heavy-Cavalry-Sword-pre-1822-Help
documents.pub/download/french-cuirassier-swords-an-ix-an-xi-cuirassier-swords-an-ix-an-french
archive.org/details/mmoiresurlafabr00frangoog
books.google.fr/books?id=PrZKv550C1YC
www.austerlitz.org/fr/journal-militaire-1790-1815/
basedescollections.musee-armee.fr/ark:/66008/12786I
www.swords-collection.com/2012/02/french-xi-cuirassier-heavy-cavalry.html
webmuseo.com/ws/musee-phalsbourg/app/collection/record/5029
www.antique-swords.com/french-an-xiii-cuirassier-sabres.html
www.comptoirantiquedebourgogne.com/2020/05/21/sabre-des-cuirassiers-an-ix-et-xi/
sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/thread/54918/dutch-belgian-pallasch
sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/thread/57188/prussian-kurassier-pallasch-1817-1880
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fasces
www.napoleon-series.org/military-information/organization-strategy-tactics/
www.interencheres.com/meubles-objets-art/mobilier-tableaux-objets-dart-300447/lot-30283506.html
sbg-sword-forum.forums.net/thread/44782/broadsword-pallasch-cuirassier-sword-influence
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Wars_casualties
