Five Ball Hilt spadroons

[Chris Evans]

Hi Jim,

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

Nicely done on the Castle reference Chris, thank you!

And thanks to you too for your kind words and initiating this thread.

It seems you are extremely well versed in fencing, are you a fencer yourself? I noticed your reference to Angelo in addition to the Castle work.

Not really, though I did learn a bit of the military sabre-sword, as used by infantry, in my teen years, but that was using wands and doing only the basic moves over and over plus some extremely simple pre-arranged exchanges with a partner. No safety gear of any kind and rough or free play was forbidden. Boring and simple stuff at best. However, ever since then I have had a life long armchair fascination with swordplay.

BTW. A bit more information on Spadroons from E.D.Morton:

"...... It was slightly adapted, by the British Army, for use as the standard infantry officer's sword, but proving grossly inefficient in the Peninsular War (1808-14), became the subject of many complaints."

I also had a very hasty look in Norman's and whilst he devotes some space to this weapon, I could not find an answer to the perplexing numbers of balls on the knuckle guards and their curatorial significance.

Cheers
Chris