I think it was Zablocki who reported the "standart stance" for fencing with karabela-type sabers was the "seconde", for those who arent familiar with that: This means you hold the weapon with a very slightly bent ellbow with the hilt on the height of your eyes and the tip pointing in an angle of about 45° downwards and a little forward towards the opponent. I used to use this stance in a different saber-school and can say that it really tires your arm in the beginning but you get used to it. The main benefit of that stance is according to F.C.Christmann (German fencing master of Napoleonic dragoons and author of a fencing manual published in 1838) in beeing able to apply a lot of force into a cut by using the leverage of your wrist only ("moulinet-like-cuts").
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The Ultimate Karabela Guide Part 2
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Now that we had a brief but solid overview of the characteristics of Karabela-type sabers under the umbrella of Mr.Z´s classification, its time to link it with visual context.
The human mind works best with putting things into its neural drawers. The expert on a certain topic is differentiated from the beginner by building bridges between different straight paths and allowing the variable "OR" coming into one's considerations. Therefore I will not get tired by repeating a mantra which was also mentioned in Part 1 of this Guide: There is no black and white.
Example:
"Polish karabela-type sabers had a pommel bent by a maximum of 90° degrees AND NE (Near-eastern) ones had a more open pommel."
The next step is bringing in our new friend "OR". Conclusion:
"Karabela-type sabers with a pommel bent by max. 90° are of polish origin OR can be of NE origin depending on different other aspects which can be found on a specific weapon."
The other aspects can be specific ethnic decoration, makers' marks, blade architecture, and many others.
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A (very brief) look on the Class II history
As I continued to write I have seen a big informational gap when it comes to the time period in which Class II has been used, what it looked like in specific times, what the main purpose was (decoration/parade sword or for battle) and what materials were used.
I will address this problem here briefly to give a glimpse at my way to put things into some order.
Poland:
Today's Poland has a little in common when compared to its historical geography and ethnic mix. When talking about Poland in the sense for our study about Class II sabers, I mostly mean the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (PLC) which existed from 1569 until 1795. This time period marks also the peak of use for this kind of weapon in history and all places it was actually used. PLC was home not only to the Polish and Lithuanian people, but also Armenians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Huns, Germans, Czech, Jews (I´m of course aware of the fact that Jewish culture is defined by its religion but nevertheless it's a very distinguishable culture) and many more. This comes into play since the troops of the PLC were composed of those different ethnic groups also. One PLC nobleman could have had a Class IIa saber with certain decoration on it which resembled his, f.e., extreme Catholic belief and without a feather, because he may not have used backhand cuts. Another PLC nobleman with his IIa saber could have been more on a political trip and therefore ordering a swordmaker to put his king's image in gold on the blade and wanting a very long feather since backhand cuts were his favourite way of fencing. Just keep that in mind that every antique weapon belonged to a real person as you, with different tastes and things that were important to them. It was a very personal item and made to assist in surviving an often very rough environment.
The earliest Class II-like sabers are said to be from the late 16th century and are supposed to come from the near east. One theory is claiming those swords evolved from an early Byzantine short curved sword with a stylized birds-head grip. This can be true or may be false, it doesn't matter for our purposes.
What does matter is what is hanging in different museum or private collections and can be therefore taken into consideration. Simply hard facts.
We see that the time period in which Karabelas started to get more and more decorative and for parade purposes is the mid-18th century. Those weapons had more complicated hilt designs (often accompanying a weaker construction and therefore vulnerable and risky to use in actual battle). We can assume that simple looking versions with attributes of a durable weapon are from the time period before, mostly between roughly 1650-1750. I will get into later and parade versions a different part.
Stanislaw Meyer helps us a lot.
[Figure 1]
There is an english version of that but I sadly don't have it. Wschód means "East" and Zachód means "West". Polska means of course Polish. The West was naturally everything westwards of Poland on continental Europe and "East" is meant to be the area from Hungary to modern day Turkey. Keep in mind that the "East" and the "West" were influenced by other cultures too, so you will find f.e. Persian influences on Ottoman culture bringing it further to Hungary and later Poland. Just for short: The Class I saber (I don't like calling it the "Winged Hussars Saber" (really don't like it for historical reasons, but you should know which type I mean) is such a marriage of East and West. The Polish knights used swords like everyone else in Europe at that time (f.e. Longswords) but after a time they adopted sabers which came from the East with different ethnicities like the Huns and Tatars to name just two. What the Poles did was to produce sabers with hilt-designs coming from the West, like a thumb-ring. This is just an example. It went further by the West replacing f.e. rapiers by sabers to their regular troops later than Poland and Hungary as we see in the 18th century.
But what is this kind of knowledge good for? Its good for knowing differences of weapon-purpose and therefore materials which limit this use. You simply will not find an original example of a battle Class II saber decorated with gems and its grip made of ivory. Battle weapons were made of strong materials in a very durable construction (f.e. see the hilt-design chapter in Part 1).
Class II sabers (all over Eastern Europe and the near-east) were used for battle, mainly from the beginning of the 17th century up to the mid 18th century. And that's it! Everything before will be some kind of (maybe even similar looking) predecessor and everything afterwards will very likely be a parade version or a memorial saber. There are exceptions but this is something for a different chapter.
What materials can we expect then on early Class II sabers? Simple and durable ones! Good steel was of course a high class technology back then. The grip shells were made of bone and wood. The guards were made of forged steel with sometimes mixed in silver (I don't know the reason for that silver though). The rivets were made of brass or steel and could be peened with iron or steel nails.
What techniques of decoration were used for battle Class II sabers? Mainly chiseling on the guard and the blase. Etching has not been used. There are examples with gilded decoration on the blade but this does not exceed very few square centimeters.
With that knowledge we can now take a first try on our first example!
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