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the adjacent counties. The company was empowered to purchase 

 lauds, to erect mills, and to employ a great number of German arti- 



n-pitti" during the 18th crutuiy. In 1783 the sword-sellers of London. 

 111C( ,, i the very bad quality of English blades, petitioned 



tin- lords of tin- treasury for permission to import German iwwdl frit? 

 ..f duty and this circumstance, by attracting public attention foi ciMy 

 t.. the 'low r-tat.' of this braiK-h of British cutlery, led to very impor- 

 tant improvements. Mr. (Jill, of Birmingham, memorialised the lords 

 of the treasury, stating that he could make sword-blades equal to 

 those of Germany, and requesting a fair comparison. Circumstances 

 delayed the public trial which he desired ; but in 1780, the East Indi i 

 .iiv requiring 10,000 horsemen's swords, divided their orders 

 indiscriminately among English and German manufacturers. Oing 

 t.. the exertions of Mr. Gill, by whom some of these swords were 

 made, a comparative trial was appointed, and every sword sent in was 

 submitted to a machine recommended by Matthew Boulton, of Soho, 

 in which the metal was tried by forcing the sword into a curve, so as 

 to reduce its length from 86 inches to 294 inches. The result was that 

 2650 of Mr. Gill's swords bore the test, and only 4 were rejected, 

 of the German swords 1400 were received and 23 rejected. 

 The extremely low state of the British sword manufacture at that 

 time U sufficiently testified by the fact that of the blades sent by other 

 English cutlers, 2700 were received and 1084 rejected. In addition to 

 the above-mentioned test, Mr. (Jill tried his swords by striking them 

 flatways upon a slab of cast-iron, and edgeways upon a cylinder of 

 "ht-iron, which they often cut through. They were so tough, 

 although formed of cast-steel, that, after cutting a gun-barrel asunder, 

 Gill would frequently wind the blade round it like a riband, after 

 which it would recover its original straightness, excepting at the point. 

 So completely did he establish the fame of his swords, that even Gcr- 

 man officers applied to him for them. 



The process of manufacturing swords at Birmingham is as follows : 



The material of which the blade is wrought should be cast-steel 



of the very best quality, and wrought with the greatest care. The 

 bars are heated in the fire, and drawn out upon an anvil by two 

 workmen with hammers, giving alternate strokes. When the blade 

 is required to be concave upon the sides, or to have a reeded back, 

 or some similar ornament, it is hammered between steel bo- 

 fini'ju. The blade is then hardened by heating it in the fire until 

 it becomes worm-red, and dipping it, point downwards, in a tub of 

 cold water. It is tempered by drawing it through the fire several 

 times until the surface exhibits a bluish oxidation, which takes place 

 at a temperature of about 550 Fahr. The sword is then tet to the 

 required shape by placing it on a sort of fork upon the anvil, and 

 wrenching it by means of tongs in the direction required to cor- 

 rect any degree of warping which it may have contracted during the 

 hardening. The grinding is performed upon a stone with either a flat 

 or fluted surface, according to the kind of blade ; and as the uniformity 

 of the temper is impaired by this process, it is subsequently restored 

 by a slight heating, after which the blade is glazed with emery, and, 

 if the instrument be a fine one, with crocu* martit, after the manner of 

 a razor-blade. The sword is then ready for the hilt or handle. Among 

 the tests to which sword-blades are subjected, is that of bending them 

 into a curve by pressing the side of the blade against six or eight pegs 

 driven into a board, in such a manner that, when in contact with all 

 \!, the middle of the blade may be bent six or seven inches from 

 a straight line drawn between the point and the hilt. A further test 

 is applied by bending them from a vertical pillar rising from a 

 board. The temper is also proved by striking the blade smartly upon 

 a table on both sides, and by severe strokes with the back and edge 

 upon a block. Mr. Inglis, in his ' Spain in 1830,' describes the trials 

 to which sword-blades are subjected at the celebrated manufactory of 

 Toledo. Each sword is thrust against a plate in the wall, and so bent 

 into an arc forming at least three parts of a circle ; and then struck 

 edgeways upon a leaden table with all the force which can be given by 

 a powerful man holding it with both hands. 



The British cavalry, within a recent period, have been supplied with 

 hwords superior in quality to those before in use, slightly different in 

 shape, and lighter in weight. 



Many plans have been tried for imitating the peculiar waved appear- 

 ance of Damascus blades, which is commonly called itiiit,<ifl-<ii;i. The 

 Oriental processes have never been satisfatorily described, although 

 several methods have been devised in Europe for imitating the Eastern 

 . MM. Clouet and Hachette have pointed out three methods of 

 attaining the desired object. The first, which is still pursued by some 

 French cutlers, consists in scooping out with a graving tool the faces of 

 of stuff composed of thin plates of steel of different kinds; and 

 by a subsequent operation filling up the hollows, and bringing them 

 to a level with the external faces, upon which they form a figured 

 appearance. The second is called the method of Ionian, and is more 

 lly employed. It consists in forming a bundle of strips of steel, 

 which are welded together into a bar, and twisted several times about 

 it* axis. It is repeatedly forged and twisted alternately ; after which 

 it is slit longitudinally, and the two halves are welded with their 

 outer sides together. The surfaces of such a bar have a curious 



waved or watered appearance, owing to the inter-twisting of the several 

 rods of which it is composed. The third, or unuir method, consists 

 in preparing a bar in the way last described, then cutting it into short 

 pieces, and forming them into a faggot; taking care in welding them 

 together to preserve the sections of each piece at the surface of the 

 blade. The experiments published some years since at Milan, by Pro- 

 fessor Crivolli, show that sword-blades of excellent quality may In- 

 produced by a combination of iron and steel. A bar of malleable steel, 

 about an inch and a half in breadth and one-eighth of an inch in thick- 

 ness, is bound round with iron-wire, at intei vals of one-third of an inch. 

 The iron and steel are then incorporated by welding, and repeated 

 additions of iron-wire are incorporated in the same way. The com- 

 pound bar thus formed is then stretched and divided into shorter 

 lengths, which are subsequently wrought into the required form, 

 ground, and tempered. By filing semicircular grooves into both Miles 

 of the blade, and again subjecting it to the hammer, a beautiful 

 damasked appearance is produced ; and the figures or waterings are 

 rendered visible by washing the blades with a menstruum of aquafortis 

 and vinegar, so as to corrode the surface slightly. The process is said 

 to have been practised successfully in Austria and Prussia. 



Another way of explaining the variegated appearance of ])at 

 blades is that of M. Brdant. He supposes that the oriental damask is 

 not a mixture of steel and iron, but simply cast-steel charged with a 

 superabundance of carbon ; so that, by slow cooling, two distinct com- 

 binations are formed, the first being simply steel, and the second a 

 mixture of steel with the excess of carbon, forming a carburetted steel 

 or cast-iron. These two compounds form a kind of crystallised surface, 

 which, by washing with acidulated water, assumes a damasked appear- 

 ance; the parts consisting of pure steel becoming black, while the 

 carburretted steel remains white. 



Besides the numerous contrivances for producing the variegated 

 appearance of Damascus blades, ingenious processes are resorted to for 

 ornamenting sword-blades by etching and embossing, and by inlaying 

 them with gold and silver wire, an art to which the name of d 

 rcnimj is sometimes applied. In the article DAMASCKXK WORK, this 

 process is noticed. 



SWORDS. Greek Stcords. The earliest and fullest information on 

 tho subject of the Greek swords is in the poems of Homer. With 

 him the |i<pos, &op, and tpaayavov are synonymous terms : the /icfxatpa 

 is a large knife suspended near the {i'<J>oj (' II.,' iii. 271) for the purpose 

 of cutting anything ; the /<f>oj is called ne\dvSeTov, a term not very 

 satisfactorily explained, and apyvp6ri\ov, or studded with silver, an 

 epithet relating probably to the handle (KWIDJ), which is said to be of 

 silver : the scabbard, <co\eos, in later writers called 6^mj (' Od.,' viii. 

 404), is covered with ivory. 



At a later period corns, vases, and other ancient monuments, exhibit 

 the form of the Greek sword, which was a short cut-and-thrust Made, 

 diminishing gradually from hilt to point. 



Varieties in the form of the blade and handle are occasionally to be 

 met with on vases. (Millin., ' Vases Antiques,' pi. 2t! and 50.) The (WJKij, 

 or scabbard, sometimes terminates in a knob, the /uvKqi probably of 

 Herodotus (iii. 64). We have only scanty and incidental notices of the 

 sword in Greek writers after the time of Homer. C. Nepos (' Iphi- 

 crates,' c. i.) records that that general introduced a longer sword among 

 the Athenian infantry. Xenophon (' De Re Eques.,' xii.) prefers the 

 ndxa'pa to the {fipos for cavalry, because their position on horseback he 

 considers more favourable for the cutting than thrusting: in this 

 passage ftdxaipa is used synonymously with iron-is, which leads 

 suppose it to have been made at that time only for cutting. In Intel- 

 writers the terms /utx<"P a an d Ifa 5 aTe U8e d indiscriminately. (Polyb., 

 iii. 114.) 



The Greek sword was worn on the left side, suspended by a belt 

 generally from the shoulder, as in the figure of Meleager on the e..ins 

 of jEtolia, but occasionally by a girdle round the waist. On a va.-e in 

 Millingen (pi. 23) it is slung more forward, so that the hilt is in the 

 middle of the breast. The material of the Greek blade was generally 

 bronze ; in later times, iron. 



Roman Sword*. The Roman sword was called " ensis," "gladius," 

 and"mucro" (though " mucro " originally meant the point of the 

 sword only; its edge, "acies;" its handle, "capulus;" its scabbard, 

 "vagina"). Polybius gives an accurate description of the Koman 

 sword used in his day, which had the Iberian short straight cnt-and- 

 thrust blade of finely tempered steel : this had been substituted for 

 the old Roman sword at the time of the war with Hannibal (lib. vi. ; 

 also ' Fragm.,' xiv., where he speaks of the admirable temper of the 

 Celtiberian blades). The form of the sword continued from his time 

 till that of the later emperors, apparently unchanged. Montfuucn 

 (' Antiquitcs,' vii.) states that the blades of those on the column of 

 Marcus Aurelius and the arch of Severus are more pointed than on the 

 column of Trajan, and that they became shorter in the time of Con- 

 stantino the Great and Theodosius. Stewechius (' Comment.' in 

 Vegetium, p. 64, VesaL, 1670) speaks of a larger kind of sword, 

 " spatha," under the later emperors. There seems to be no distinction 

 in size or shape between the swords of the infantry and cavalry on 

 Trajan's column and other similar monuments. The sword used by 

 the gladiators was somewhat curved. The Koman sword was worn on 

 the right side. Montfaucon notices three exceptions to this general 

 practice on tho arch of Septimius Severus; and the spathsc already 



