The Realm of the Dark Blade

Today, I ran across a rather unique and interesting blade. Here, have a look:

Medieval Sword Breaker

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An interesting piece of work is it not? Kinda looks like a hybrid cross between an old fashioned wood saw and a dagger. But it’s a rather cool piece nonetheless, though it is a rather specialized weapon.

There was a period in medieval history, where European deuelers/sword fighters fought with two weapons. In The strong hand they wielded a long heavier weapon, usually a rapier or similar sword, which was used primarily for attack. The second weapon, called a Main Gauche, was a smaller, lighter, and therefore much quicker weapon, whose speed advantage was used to parry attacks made by the opponents main weapon.

Now at some point during this period, some bright enterprising spark realized that the best defense was to eliminate your opponents offense. Pretty smart thinking if you ask me. Anyway since they already had a tool that was conveniently always in a position to trap the opponents blade, they thought, why not take advantage of that, and parry an incoming blow from your opponents sword with not just a dagger, but a sword breaking tool… Brilliant!

And thus the sword breaker was born. Now the sword breaker is not just a Main Gauche with a number of large slots worked into the spine of the blade. These were constructed of much thicker, heavier steel. They needed the added strength because of their rather unique design characteristics:

As you can see, a lot of material has been taken out of the spine for the purpose of making large slots, which is where the sword breaking is supposed to take place. The idea being that when a strike came in from your opponents blade, you would let it slide into one of these slots. Then, a quick flick of the wrist/jerk of the arm, and SNAP! Your foes blade cries mama and buckles under the pressure of the dueling equivalent of an armbar… Except you break the arm… Evil, I tell you… EVIL… But brilliant!

Now in reality it probably wasn’t so easy, and it probably took a lot of skill to pull something like that off, but the idea is certainly a cool one… But back to the blade. Now In a regular blade these big slots would introduce a lot of weakness into the blade, making it easier to break. But seeing as the idea was for this to be a breaker, and not a breakee, these blades are made thicker and stronger, and were just overall put together of tougher stuff, simply not to be messed with…

I’d really hate to be the guy that had his sword broken during a duel with one of the underhanded hyenas that would carry something like this around… Hmmm… You also gotta wonder how horrific a stabbing weapon this would be. Kinda looks like the kind of thing a Klingon might use…

Medieval Sword Breaker – [All Thinks Medieval]

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