Perhaps the heart of my business, which covers rapiers, backswords, broadswords, smallswords of the fighting era right through to 19th and 20th-century, principally Austrian, British, French and German. Good reference books include: Robson's book on British military swords (2nd edition); museum catalogues (in particular, for the 17th & 18th-centuries, the Wallace Collection's two-volume set); the series (a set of some 30 volumes, out of print) on French mlitary swords by Christian Aries; and, covering Scotland, The swords and the sorrows, the 1996 Culloden exhibition.

This classic Light Cavalry sabre of the British army in the Napoleonic period has a plain fighting blade (in superb condition), as opposed to the more usual engraved or blued and gilt blade, giving it a rarity value of about one in ten. The owner's initials (DJ) appear on the reverse langet and on the back of the scabbard at the throat.

These weapons were ordered on 28 November 1799, after the coup of Brumaire when Napoleon came to power as First Consul. On his coronation in 1804, a new pattern came into service, with a fully rounded knucklebow and, in most cases, a slightly longer blade. This should not be confused with the later Imperial model (see below).

This sword, with a double fullered 75cm blade, would have been carried by the army and Bavarian police prior to the uniform changes of 1936, when the new Third Reich police design was introduced, also having a straight blade, but with the Police Reichsadler incorporated into the grip. This early model was based on a Bavarian cuirassier sword.

This is the off-duty sabre of the Prussian cavalry officers, carried on parade occasions and quite possibly in the field in the early days of WW1. The official fighting sword was the model 1852 with a half-basket guard, with an EPNS finish. The magnificent bronze hilt would originally have had a gilt finish.

This is a copy of the typical French Revolutonary-era sword used by politicians (see David's 1794 designs for the politicians' costumes). The Ecole de Mars sword was similar, differing only in having an iron guard extending on either side of the blade and defending the knuckles.

This is an export blade from Belluno, north of Venice. The guard is possibly of local Sudanese make. Most of these swords were brought back as souvenirs from the 1896-97 Campaign in Egypt. The crescent moon mark is a pun on the town name! Later Solingen swordsmiths pirated this mark, in the same way that they cribbed Spanish and Passau marks.

This is the classic 'Christmas tree' hilt carried principally by British dragoon units in the middle years of the 18th century. Cumberland's Dragoons would have carried these when harrying Highlanders fleeing from the Battle of Culloden. The Highlanders were cut down mercilessly.

There is a single letter in Gothic script on the metal covering the stem of the knot, probably an 'L', which would be for one of the minor Saxon dukedoms of this period. This extremely rare sword knot is, unfortunately, in rather poor shape commensurate with its age, but its original quality is still apparent.

The 2nd, or Scots, troop of HGG was originally raised in 1678, disbanded in 1680, revived in 1684, and finally absorbed into the 2nd Life Guards in 1788. The sword is illustrated in one of the Morier paintings at Buckingham Palace on a soldier of this regiment. The swords may well have been carried by the regiment at Dettingen and Fontenoy.

This rare knot was carried by Honved officers in the last years of the Austrian empire in the reign of Kaiser Karl, who succeeded Franz Joseph on his death in 1916 (hence the 'K' for Karl). The Honved was a Hungarian army of reserve elements which served alongside the Imperial and Royal army in wartime.