Polska szabla husarska - special for Radu

[cylord21]

Beautiful sabre by all means and good information posted on it.

[Radu Transylvanicus]

Excelent...excelent ... excelent !!! Well, Santa Claus came in very early this year, I am completely moved and blown away by the results of your post. You made it impossible for me to redeem myself. There are so many things I want to say but instead I will resume to short point and shoot questions and opinions.
1. Your English is way above average, stop excusing yourself, you make it sound like youre the governor of my Californian state, Conan the Barbarian. Have no doubts, you use therms and sentences well past the average citizen, my friend, youre good to go
2. If theres one art of yours that is above the narattive and lingvistics is your skill in photography: excelent images, I am also an advanced photographer myself and I give your images outstanding qualifications in: composition, lightning, sharpness and crop.
3. For the one word you dont know: Pol.: ''wasy " [/I] translates Eng."quillions"
4. Yes, our dear Bathory was a pure born and raised Transylvanian but he wouldve not been much without Poland. P.S. What do you say about his coat of arms, the ,,wolf claws,, is that a ,,spooky Transylvanian,, or what ? He kept that forever I think, unchanged, even in Poland...
It is 3 am when I am reading and writting this so its very late undoubtly I will return tomorow morning to annoy you further, now that I know you have the answers to a few of my questions.
P.S. It sure feels great to see that we have the eastearn Europe pretty well represented here in the Forum: Poland by Wolviex, Romania/Hungary by Radu Transylvanicus, Bulgaria by TVV, Greece by Yannis, Ottoman Turkey by Eftihis & Erlikhan ... we need a Serb, a Czech and a Russian as passionate and we got a dream squad ...

[wolviex]

You're welcome Radu.
Thank you for cheering me up about my English, but since my average English caused misunderstanding with Frederico few months ago, when our Forum Mate get a little angry on me , I'm trying to secure myself (greetings for Frederico, by the way )

I like this photographs too, and to be honest and immodest, I'm proud of them - just becouse they were awful, and I spend many hours on photoshop to make them acceptable. Bad light is not visible when the horrible background was clean up and changed, plus gaussian blur made them pretty and a nice blurry - that's my selfish opinion

I didn't know you're using the same spelling on Batory's name as we in Poland (with letter "y" at the end), so I used, just in case, letter "i".
Our King was using his "spooky" coat of arms in Poland too, but unfortunately I didn't hear any stories about him drinking blood of Polish virgins - maybe he was just a shy guy

And yes - quillons , thank you
Best regards

[wolviex]

One more thing is troubling me. I wrote in private message to Radu few days ago "The thumb ring is not in every sabre, it wasn't exact rule", and it's not exact and might be mistakable after reading this post. Thumb ring should be in hussar sabre becouse it determined the way of fighting with this sabre. But there are sabres, which looked like hussar sabre and are named "hussar sabre" - and there is no thumbring. The one of them is a sabre from my Museum (see picture below), made also by Ormians around 1700 year. So it seems to me sometimes thumbring could be an improvement which was or wasn't fited up depends on individually order of the user.

[Radu Transylvanicus]

This is my take on the subject:
In the 9th century or even earliear, the Magyars (ancestors of today’s Hungarians) eventually inspired by the Alans (a nomadic nations of the Sarmatian group) develop a solid model of a back curved sword with a front curved pistol hilt and cross-guard quillions. This type, with few differences, mainly in decoration is present in Caucasus (Turkoman nations) and the eastern steppes of Ukraine (Mongol-Tartaric nations) known as ,,Tcherkesso-Tartar scimitar,, and it directly influenced the later “ormianka” and “karabella” sabers, cousins of the Ottoman “kilij”. In the 13th century the Mongols were constantly raiding via steppes of Ukraine all Poland, Hungary and neighboring countries carrying ,,Tartar scimitars,, .
In very late 14th early 15th century Poland allies with Lithuania and subdues the vast Ukraine, who was also home of the Crimean ,,Golden Horde,, of Tartars and tremendous interaction in weaponry started.
Hungary, has troubles with the increasingly powerful and almighty Ottoman Empire and after the failure of the lame crusade of Nicopolis (1396) is observant via Transylvanian king John Hunyadi (Janos Hunyadi in Hungarian, Ioan de Hunedoara in Romanian) that his armament and organizing is obsolete and improper with the times and after his death in 1456 in the defending Belgrade, his son Mathias Corvinus, at first inheriting just Transylvania, then elected king of all Hungary continues and develops his father’s ideas developing a military Renaissance. The only reason for mentioning them here is not the apotheosis of my heritage but the simple fact that they are the creators of the Hussars regiments. The reformed ,,militia portalis,, of John Hunyadi evolves in the famous ,,Black Army,, of Mathias Corvinus incorporating for the first time the ,,Hussars,, light cavalry regiments, at the beginning Serbo-Croatians , then from all parts of the kingdom. They quickly started become equipped with curved sabers with blades of Turko-Tartaric fashion but mounted differently and styled differently replacing completely the medieval straight swords in a complete different manner faster than western Europe who preferred going to the way of rapiers and ,,schiavonna,, (ironically another eastern European weapon) based broad swords.
In 1576, prince of Transylvania (again no apotheosis of this land intended but this fact is confirmed by Wolviex) Stephen Bathory is elected king of Poland, a fearless combatant, he brought the ,, epee a la hongroise ,, (transl. from French: Hungarian type saber) to the rank of a symbol and it was all what the Polish ,,szlachta,, (nobility) was carrying in terms of swords; he is also cited as being the initiator (correct me if I am wrong, Wolviex !) of the legendary ,,Winged Hussars,, of Poland. It was very common to fashion sabers after the one of the king apprehendedly named after him like: ,,batorowka,, after Stephen Bathory (having classic boot like hilt), ,,zygmuntowka,, after king Sigismund (Zygmunt in Polish) or ,,janowka,, after Jan Sobieski for example (on a less serious note, I called the main saber of this thread “wolviexowka”., hehehe). A notable innovation, like Wolviex was saying was the knuckle guard, likely inspired from the more decorative ,,chain knuckle guard,, in late 16th early 17th century Poland initiates the solid metal knuckle bow (kablak glowny) and the thumb-ring (paluch) who revolutionised the art of fencing and the edged weaponry forever ! That is the beginning of the ,,epee a la Hussarde,, or Hussar style saber who was adopted quickly by all most powerful armies of Europe from Prussian, French and British and glorified by the Napoleonian wars and in the mid 18th century it ceased to be ,, Hungaro-Polish,, hence its mainstream adoption. Its key elements remained little changed until late 19th century when firearms put an absolute end to the cavalry charges and real fighting sabers were bygone declining into only parade and ceremonial pieces.
For those interested I’ll bring more to the table from types and nomenclature (Wolviex I beg your help on this one) and images to go along ...

[wolviex]

Thank you Radu for supplement to short history of sabres, now we know in synopsis how sabre appeared in Europe and in Poland. You're generally right but I would like to add some notes to fill it up.

Batory wasn't initiator of hussars in Poland in literal sense, because this formation existed in Poland since 1501 year, and it looked very similiar to the formations of Mathias Corvinus, so to Serbian light horsmen (please correct me if I'm wrong). They were even called in Poland: Racowie (in Polish - this was Hungarian name for Serbians), which praise the way of fighting with lance and shield - also very characteristic for early 16th century and later formations of hussars. What was the Batory's merit, that's significance reorganization of Polish hussars, which began to transform into a heavy cavalry. Since then, officers (rotmistrz - captain of horse) should be wearing Hungarian costume, with armour (cuirass) on the top, lance, sword, carbine at a saddle and of course feathers for splendour and fear the enemy -all of this was only arrangment. Till then every horseman with lance and shield was serving as hussar, sometimes with ridiculous armament making a fight impossible . The feathers (later wings - which use is another long story full of legends) were in use all the time after the example of Turkish deli (correct me if I'm wrong again). But it was after death of king Batory, around 1600, when real, Polish style hussars appearing, with characteristic armament developed in Poland.

And to fill up the name of the sabres: beside batorowka, zygmuntowka, janowka and wolviexowka ( o boy! I like it!) there were also Augustowka sabres (August II the elector of Saxony).

Feel free to bring tables you mentioned, if any help needed, you don't need to beg, I'm ready!

Best regards

[fernando]

bump