Swords: Difference between revisions
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[[File:ist2_4517576-design-elements-swords_4483.jpg|frame|One thing they all can do: kill (and look [[Badass]]).]]
{{quote|"''[[I Like Swords]].''"
|'''Fighter''', ''[[8-Bit Theater]]''}}
Before the times of gunpowder and rifles, swords were an important weapon for professional soldiers such as knights, men-at-arms, mercenaries and state armies. The crafting of these weapons were of vital importance to any nation-state that wanted to maintain a standing army. While the concept of a sword is pretty ubiquitous, several different types of this common weapon were crafted with much of the difference based on regions. While swords have largely been replaced in modern armies by firearms and other weapons, the allure of the blade is still alive today. Just see [[Katanas Are Just Better]].
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* A Turkish ''yatagan'' is a curved sword with an edged concave side, rather than the convex side of the usual ''kilij'' scimitar. It was meant for thrusting and chopping blows. Sir Richard Burton — the 19th century adventurer, not the 20th century actor — declared it the best designed sword ever in his important work "The Book of the Sword".
* Before the Western Europe adopted the sabres and cutlasses, the East have been happily using them for a long time to hack at each other. Around 16th-17th Century, the constant fighting with the Turks and various steppe peoples led to the straight swords being replaced by local incarnations of the "scimitar" of the Middle-Eastern designs (though in an interesting twist, the Hungarians, being originally a nomadic steppe people, arrived in Europe wielding sabres to adopt the Western sword around the 10th-11th Century). Since then, the ''szabla''/''sablya''/''szablya'' was a standard side weapon in these parts of the world, even achieving the status of a national symbol in some places.
* A ''shashqa'' is a sword of Caucasian origin, later adopted by Cossacks, and even later, by late Russian
** That's because for most of its history it evolved not as a ''sword'', but as an utility knife — that eventually ''became'' a sword. Indeed, the word "shashka" itself is a corruption of Adyghe "sash-kho", "long knife". So it kept a knife's characteristic curved hilt and lack of handguard.
** In an interesting note, shashka is used and worn remarkably like a [[Katanas Are Just Better|katana]] — with its edge upwards, and its design is similarly best suited to quick decisive blows, not elaborate saber fencing, and the same blade could probably be used equally effective in both mountings. [https://web.archive.org/web/20180706040430/http://wartools.ru/klinkovoe-oruzhie/primenenie-shashki-shashka-v-rossii-mify-i-zabluzhdeniya Here] near the end you can see pictures from the manual, showing how to draw a shashka: to the side, upward or downward, depending on the circumstances.
* Middle-eastern swords have influenced the development of the last swords to see common military use in Europe, the relatively heavy, curved, single-edged 'saber' and 'cutlass,' which appeared in the 17th Century as successors to the rapier. The Talwar directly inspired the creation of the 1796 British Light Cavalry Sabre (especially the way the blade grew wider at the point), which in turn influenced an American version.
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