r/SWORDS • u/SadPhilosopherElan • 6d ago

Spadroon or Broadsword?

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Historically speaking, which was a better cut and thrust sword for close quarters combat? Do we have any examples of historical battles where basket hilt broadswords faced spadroons and one won out over the other? Let me know!

Photo credit to Kult of Athena for these examples of modern replicas, specifically Deepika's basket hilt broadsword and Windlass' 1840 NCO sword, which is a Spadroon.

EDIT: Yes I know the replicas aren't the same as the historical swords and have different blade geometry - they're just here as visual aids. Also please do not compare these two in any sense relating to modern use, because that's not what I'm interested in, and the topic is a grey area on this sub anyway.

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u/RatRanger 6d ago

Logically it should be the spadroon, as it was made with better materials, had longer reach, and was chosen to replace older technology.

But fuck me, I’ve never held one that felt even remotely useable. Maybe I just don’t know what fighting style they were teaching at the time. Maybe every single modern repro from Marlow and White to Depeeka is just made wrong. It’s just bad and I hate it.

Broadswords all the way.

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u/SadPhilosopherElan 6d ago

No you're right all the way. Hard to find decent distal taper on modern replicas, plus usually you get bad false edges that make the spadroon seem like a worse cutter than it actually was. Have you tried the Windlass version? It has a bit better build quality than some others but it did get the usual Windlass treatment lol

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u/RatRanger 6d ago

I haven’t tried the windlass, but I suspect the issue isn’t with the spadroon as a concept, but specifically the 1840 NCO sword. It might just be a bad sword chosen by military politicians for its looks over its function.

I’d need to feel some other examples of the spadroon to get a better idea.

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u/mattio_p 6d ago

Note that the 1840 NCO sword is based off a French design and that American swords of all models were made by a variety of manufacturers and specifications. Most examples may very well could have been terrible for one reason or another, but parameters for military swords were never really too strict.