Hutton Sabre anyone?

In COLD STEEL, Alfred Hutton describes his system of fencing using this style sword as a practice sword. Along with discussing the thrust, he gives 8 cuts and their targets. Cut 1 and Cut 2 are downward/diagonal cuts to the head, Cut 3 and Cut 4 are upward/diagonal cuts to the right knee, Cut 5 a horizontal cut to the belly, Cut 6 a horizontal cut that targets below the ribs, Cut 7 is a downward cut to the center of the head and, Cut 8 is an upward/vertical cut that targets what Hutton calls the "fork". Hutton states that Cut 8 "is a cruel blow, and should never be used in school play".

While Hutton's system as described in COLD STEEL is "geared" towards practice in the sala, I believe that he intended it to also be a practice for more serious usage as a weapon in combat or on the dueling field.

A copy of Hutton's book COLD STEEL can be found on the ARMA website in pdf format. It is at the very bottom of the page.

www.thearma.org/manuals.htm

Hutton's so-called "sabre system" doesn't seem to be very useful.
In fact his so-called cuts are just variations of a very simple warming-up routine that is practised in every salle.
His parries aren't sabre-parries, he just decribes foil-parries.
IMHO, Hutton didn't know the slightest thing of sabre fencing, he invented something from a basic warming up and some foil parries. It's not sabre-fencing. Gladly enough his booklet was forgotten for decades, which was fine.
If there wasn't the internet, no one would remember his strange and bizarre system, because it was and is completely worthless. Nobody ever used it AFAIK.

The so-called Hutton-sabre is based on an illustration in his booklet. This sabre is a classic heavy sabre (though Hutton called it a light sabre, which -again- was wrong). The heavy sabre was the standard military and duelling sword in 19th century Europe and US. Today these sabres as practise weapons aren't easy to get. I only know of Austrian manufacturers who make these sabres for Austrian academic fencing and CAS who make this Hutton sabre.
I will get the Hutton sabre, soon. When I will have tested that sabre, I'll tell you about the results.

Let's solve the mystery :-)
This is a semantic problem. "Light" vs "Heavy" sabre isn't a question of weight. In the fencing terms I'm used to, a 'light sabre' is a sporting saber, typical this sabre has a straight and narrow blade.
The 'heavy sabre' has a curved and broader (wider?) blade. So the typical military sabre is a "heavy saber" while the typical sports saber (like these early Italian sabers) are light sabers.
Even if an early sports sabre may have been heavier than a particular military sabre, the straight and narrow sports sabre would still be a light sabre.

edit: to make it even more complicated - there is also a way of distinguishing between light and heavy sabre that is based on the protection the fencers are wearing. No (or few) protection => heavy sabre, a lot of protection => light sabre.

Not to be confused with Jedi's Light Saber ;D

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regards,

Rob
Stromlo Swords

I also own the Sutton book. (And I, too, have considered buying this sword.)

Hutton may not be describing saber fencing as it is currently practiced, but it is nonetheless saber fencing and definitely not foil. Pages 33 thru 49 show diagrams of the parries. The 5 lines of modern saber--all in pronation--are there:

• quarte (4) p33
  
• tierce (3) p35
  
• second (2) p40
  
• prime (1) p43
  
• quinte (4) p46
  

Plus there are other parries: sixte(6), septime(7), octave(8) (which are in suppination), and high octave, high quarte, high tierce and high second which I've not seen before. What am I missing?

Also, I'm confused about your clarification that a straight saber is light and a curved saber is heavy, and then you describe the Sutton saber as heavy.



It looks straight (or virtually). Or is this slight curvature sufficient to make it heavy? Thanks.

Nomenclature - All sabres are swords, but not all swords are sabres.

When we are talking about 19th and 20th century European sabres, it might be useful to better define some of the terms used to describe them, such as; levee, picquet, trooper, officer, light, heavy, cavalry, infantry, gymnasia, etc. But first we need to agree on what a sabre is.

In the dictionary a sabre (US = saber) is a “single edged sword, generally having a curved blade”. However as you will soon see that doesn’t quite cover it.

First off, we are usually talking about cavalry and sabres, and that tends to be differentiated into light cavalry and heavy cavalry. This differentiation is reflected somewhat in the actual size of the men and horses but more so in how they were used. Heavy cavalry, and here we include French Cuirassiers, Dragoons and Carabiniers, were used in large scale attacks formed in line and sweeping across a battlefield to (hopefully) reform and repeat the manoeuvre.

The light cavalry, including Hussars, Chasseurs à Cheval, Lancers, and Mamelukes, tended to reconnaissance, skirmishing, and fast flanking actions.

Heavy cavalry sabres were heavy, straight (or almost straight) and optimized for thrusting in large formation battles. Light cavalry sabres were curved and optimized for slashing and moving in more open combat.

Another distinction was between officer and trooper sabres. The 19th century saw the development of standardization of military equipment and swords were no exception. However, these standards were more likely to be actually seen in the sabre issued to the rank and file trooper. The officer purchased his own equipment and observance of any standards was frequently superficial. Officers often preferred lighter more slender blades, especially when not on the battlefield. It was not uncommon for an officer to have at least 2 swords: battle and dress. Here is where the levee/picquet versions appear. This is the show or dress sword, worn with full dress uniform when combat is unlikely. Versus the service or battle sword which would be worn in the field. Both swords were sharp, for the levee/picquet sabre would likely be the one used if one ever faced a duel. Here are some examples - www.victorianwars.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=205

Occasionally you will see mention of an infantry sabre and some argue that a sabre should by definition be considered a cavalry weapon. But it must not be forgotten that even infantry officers rode horses and would want a sabre. Infantry sabres tended to be straighter and of a lighter construction to facilitate both mounted and foot combat. Sabres carried by artillery officers and mounted infantry tended to be similar, especially considering the prevalence of horse artillery on battlefields. For example in the 1840’s the British Royal Artillery moved from using an infantry pattern sword to the 1822 light cavalry sword.

Fencing with sabres as pure sport is a very late 19th century development. Prior to that anything that could be called sport might be better described as practice for battle or personal combat (for sabre duels did happen). This is where “gymnasia” swords appeared. These were swords designed for this, with altered cross sections, rebated edges and/or blunted tips.

The first sport sabres are represented by the Pecraro and Radaellian sabres currently available. I would argue that the Hutton is better described as a type of gymnasia sabre.

A peculiar form of fencing/duelling was Mensur, using schlagers. The schlager sword in its later forms is a particular type of sabre, as it was optimized for cutting. More here = fencing-future.com/cntnt/eng/fehtovanie9/eng_history/menzurnoe_.html

And when it comes to 21st century and the future sabres, I will leave it to someone else to explain why lightsabres come in different colours.

The blurring of the distinction between light and heavy cavalry and their swords was very real. The general role of cavalry after the Crimean war became increasingly that of light cavalry, especially as Britain became embroiled in colonial wars that were smaller and inceasingly irregular. As well the use of mounted infantry also known as mounted rifles increased. This was part of the push to one universal pattern trooper sabre. However there were bumps in the road.

The 1853 pattern looked like this:

and had a blade length of 35 1/2 inches and weighed about 2 lbs. 7 oz.
It was soon followed by the 1864 pattern which provided a better guard:

and had a blade length of just over 35 inches but could weigh as much as 3 lbs.
The next Universal Pattern sabre wasn't so universal. It was the 1882

and came in two versions; 1882 (long) for heavy cavalry and and 1882 (short) for light cavalry. Although the hilts were the same there was a 2 inch difference in length and 3 oz. difference in weight.

Of course all of these comments refer to Trooper swords and not to what officers carried, that is much more complicated.

I love how this is going.

An informative and interesting thread indeed. I had come across another fairly universal link page just yesterday that may be of interest.

www.zipcon.net/~silas/links.htm

I am sure I may be repeating there or elsewhere with the following regading the Grand Asssault links I have encountered.

www.ahfi.org/articles/grandassault.php

ejmas.com/jmanly/jmanlyframe.htm (somewhere in there)

Another on infantry officers and then on the 1796 drills

www.lazyjacks.org.uk/sword.htm

www.xvld.org/1796-light-cavalry-sabre-sword-drill.html

I really do need to sort though more links again, some I haven't looked at in years but that first came to mind yesterday when I was browsing for other stuff.

Cheers

Hotspur; mostly just lurking about threads like this

The pictures are from Charles Martyn's "The British Cavalry Sword from 1600"

I see that people are sharing their sources for different facets of sabreplay. After putting some persepctive on terminology, this is where I hoped this would go.

Now maybe we can get some discussion/critiques on those various sources, especially from those who are actually working at sabreplay. So I invite people not only to share their sources but comment on what that source has contributed to their activities.

Cheers,