THE EGYPTIAN CAMPAIGN OF 1801-1802 was an important factor in the adoption by British cavalry officers of the mameluke style sword. Some officers brought home fine examples of eastern scimitar swords and British sword-makers were soon busy “anglicising” them for the fashion conscious British cavalry officer. Added to this was the availability of superbly crafted mameluke swords in India, where officers would sometimes have the hilt made locally with imported British or Indian blades attached. Ironically, they would have found that Indian or Persian watered blades were far more superior in both design and quality to the British imports.
The Duke of Wellington was a great advocate for mameluke style swords (from his service in India) and carried one throughout the Napoleonic Wars and later, as Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, influenced the introduction of the 1831 Pattern General and Staff Officer’s Mameluke Sword. After the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), there was an explosion in styles of mameluke swords for British Army officers, with individual hussar and later, lancer regiments, producing their own specific and ornate regimental designs, both for dress and battle.
Napoleonic mameluke swords tend to have plain and wide, hatchet-type blades and were designed to be used in combat, rather than worn for dress, as was the case later in the century. They also have plainer hilts (invariably of either ivory of bone) and blades, sometimes utilised from captured examples (the French Army was particularly fond of the mameluke style) or sourced from the Middle East, where the quality of blade making was highly prized in Europe, following a number of campaigns in that region.
Into the 1820’s and onwards through the Victorian era, the mameluke sword tended to be worn solely as a full dress or levee sword. It became more elaborate with fine ivory and gilt brass chiselling to the hilt and extravagant scabbards of velvet with chased gilt brass mounts. Blades are invariably etched with regimental devices, including crossed lancers’ motifs and regimental badges that are repeated to the hilt ecussons. Because of their high cost, officers would not, in most cases, have used these mamelukes in the field. Rather, they would have probably carried their standard heavy and light cavalry pattern swords.
© Harvey Withers Military Publishing, 2024