I will mention one instance at Lucknow that came under my own notice of the force of a sword-cut from a curved sword of rigid steel. There were three brothers of the name of Ready in the Ninety-Third called David, James, and John. They were all powerful, tall men, in the prime of life, and all three had served through the Crimea. David was a sergeant, and his two brothers were privates. When falling in for the assault on the Begum's palace, John Ready took off his Crimean medal and gave it to his brother David, telling him that he felt a presentiment that he would be killed in that attack, and that David had better keep his medal, and send it home to their mother. David tried to reason him out of his fears, but to no purpose. John Ready replied that he had no fear, and his mother might know that he had died doing his duty. Well, the assault took place, and in the inner courts of the palace there was one division held by a regiment of dismounted cavalry, armed with swords as keen as razors, and circular shields, and the party of the Ninety-Third who got into that court were far out-numbered on this occasion, as in fact we were everywhere else. On entering James Ready was attacked by a sowâr armed with sword and shield. Ready's feather bonnet was knocked off, and the sowâr got one cut at him, right over his head, which severed his skull clean in two, the sword cutting right through his neck and half-way down through the breast-bone. John Ready sprang to the assistance of his brother, but too late; and although his bayonet reached the side of his opponent and was driven home with a fatal thrust, in doing so he came within the swoop of the same terrible sword, wielded by the powerful arm of a tall man, and he also was cut right through the left shoulder diagonally across the chest, and his head and right arm were clean severed from the body. The sowâr delivered his stroke of the sword at the same moment that he received the bayonet of John Ready through his heart, and both men fell dead together. David Ready, the sergeant, seized the tulwâr that had killed both his brothers, and used it with terrible effect, cutting off heads of men as if they had been mere heads of cabbage. When the fight was over I examined that sword. It was of ordinary weight, well-balanced, curved about a quarter-circle, as sharp as the sharpest razor, and the blade as rigid as cast-iron. Now, my experience is that none of our very best English swords could have cut like this one. A sword of that quality would cut through a man's skull or thigh-bone without the least quiver, as easily as an ordinary Birmingham blade would cut through a willow.
I may also mention the case of a young officer named Banks, of the Seventh Hussars, who was terribly cut up in charging through a band of Ghâzis. One leg was clean lopped off above the knee, the right arm cut off, the left thigh and left arm both cut through the bone, each wound produced by a single cut from a sharp, curved tulwâr. I don't know if the young fellow got over it;[64] but he was reported to be still alive, and even cheerful when we marched from Lucknow.
In this matter of sword-blades, I have no wish to dogmatise or to pose as an authority; I merely state my observations and opinion, in the hopes that they may lead to experiments being made. But on one point I am positive. The sharpening of our cavalry swords, if still the same as in 1857, receives far too little attention.
FOOTNOTES:
[62] In which case they would have been simply ridden over.
[63] These remarks of Mr. Mitchell's are quite true as regards curved swords; but he forgets that the point is the most effective attack against Eastern swordsmen.
[64] He did not.