page_title: Sword
section_title: Military sidearm
hierarchical_section_title: Sword / History / Late modern history / Military sidearm
caption_attribution_description: Jack Churchill (far right) leads a training exercise, sword in hand, from a Eureka boat in Inveraray.
context_page_description: A sword is a bladed melee weapon intended for cutting or thrusting that is longer than a knife or dagger, consisting of a long blade attached to a hilt. The precise definition of the term varies with the historical epoch or the geographic region under consideration. The blade can be straight or curved. Thrusting swords have a pointed tip on the blade, and tend to be straighter; slashing swords have a sharpened cutting edge on one or both sides of the blade, and are more likely to be curved. Many swords are designed for both thrusting and slashing.
  Historically, the sword developed in the Bronze Age, evolving from the dagger; the earliest specimens date to about 1600 BC. The later Iron Age sword remained fairly short and without a crossguard. The spatha, as it developed in the Late Roman army, became the predecessor of the European sword of the Middle Ages, at first adopted as the Migration Period sword, and only in the High Middle Ages, developed into the classical arming sword with crossguard. The word sword continues the Old English, sweord.
  The use of a sword is known as swordsmanship or, in a modern context, as fencing.
context_section_description: Towards the end of its useful life, the sword served more as a weapon of self-defence than for use on the battlefield, and the military importance of swords steadily decreased during the Modern Age. Even as a personal sidearm, the sword began to lose its preeminence in the early 19th century, reflecting the development of reliable handguns.
  However, swords were still normally carried in combat by cavalrymen and by officers of other branches throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, both in colonial and European warfare. For example, during the Aceh War the Acehnese Klewangs, a sword similar to the machete, proved very effective in close quarters combat with Dutch troops, leading the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army to adopt a heavy cutlass, also called klewang (very similar in appearance to the US Navy Model 1917 Cutlass) to counter it. Mobile troops armed with carbines and klewangs succeeded in suppressing Aceh resistance where traditional infantry with rifle and bayonet had failed. From that time on until the 1950s the Royal Dutch East Indies Army, Royal Dutch Army, Royal Dutch Navy and Dutch police used these cutlasses called Klewang.
  Swords continued in general peacetime use by cavalry of most armies during the years prior to World War I. The British Army formally adopted a completely new design of cavalry sword in 1908, almost the last change in British Army weapons before the outbreak of the war. At the outbreak of World War I infantry officers in all combatant armies then involved (French, German, British, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Belgian and Serbian) still carried swords as part of their field equipment. On mobilization in August 1914 all serving British Army officers were required to have their swords sharpened as the only peacetime use of the weapon had been for saluting on parade. The high visibility and limited practical use of the sword however led to it being abandoned within weeks, although most cavalry continued to carry sabres throughout the war. While retained as a symbol of rank and status by at least senior officers of infantry, artillery and other branches the sword was usually left with non-essential bagage when units reached the front line. It was not until the late 1920s and early 1930s that this historic weapon was finally discarded for all but ceremonial purposes by most remaining horse mounted regiments of Europe and the Americas.
  In China troops used the long anti-cavalry Miao dao well into the Second Sino-Japanese War. The last units of British heavy cavalry switched to using armoured vehicles as late as 1938. Swords and other dedicated melee weapons were used occasionally by many countries during World War II, but typically as a secondary weapon as they were outclassed by coexisting firearms. A notable exception was the Imperial Japanese Army where, for cultural reasons, all officers and warrant officers carried the Type 94 shin-gunto ("new miltary sword") into battle from 1934 until 1945.
caption: British Major Jack Churchill (far right) leads Commandos during a training exercise, sword in hand, in World War II.
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