SWORD for comment and I D please

[celtan]

Thanks Kisak,

Very interesting! It's usually the other way around, countries which aren't legally at war actually attacking each other. Like the US attacks on German U-booten in WWII, the English attacks on Spanish ships before the Napoleonic Wars, the US attacks on Spanish merchantmen before the Spanish American War, the Chinese and Russian attacks on UN Troops in Korea, the Russian attacks on Allied troops after WWI and WWII. The Mexican/American border conflicts etc...

But a declared war without hostilities? That's truly ingenious: Wars fought with only loud raspberries!

I wish they were all like that.

Kudos to the Swedes!

: )

Originally Posted by kisak

That is indeed the type of blade I was talking about. A remounted trophy blade could be possible I guess, a whole lot of Swedish swords were lost to Russia after Poltava for example. The Anglo-Swedish war seems like an unlikely candidate though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Swedish_War_(1810%E2%80%931812)

Stuart's blade isn't a perfect match for any Swedish model, but as officers were often free to buy their own swords, it could simply be a less common variant. Regarding the profile taper there are some 18th century swords for heavy cavalry with a rather moderate taper, but these would be quite a bit larger than Stuart's sword.

As for your sword, the hilt is of a type which was in use in Sweden for quite a long time, so the dating will be quite vague I'm afraid. The relatively straight knucklebow and finely grooved, non-spherical pommel would indicate that it's from the latter part of the period in which these saw use though, perhaps something like 1760-1820?

This would also mean that we can identify it as an infantry officer's sword, originally this hilt was used by all kinds of officers, but somewhere pretty soon after the death of Karl XII it fell out of use with cavalry officers, leaving this type for the infantry (cavalry officers had two hilt types to choose from back then, infantry officers didn't have any choice).