Sabre

A sabre, or saber, is a backsword with a curved, single edged blade built for cutting and slashing rather than thrusting, associated above all with the light cavalry of the early modern and Napoleonic periods; early forms had a slight curve, short down turned quillons, a grip set opposite the blade's curve and a sharpened top third along the reverse edge. A proto sabre appeared in southern Siberia around the sixth century AD, developed into the true cavalry sabre by the eighth century, and had become the standard sidearm across the Eurasian steppes by the ninth century, reaching Europe through the Magyars and other Turkic peoples. The sabre and its name entered Western Europe in the seventeenth century through the influence of the Hungarian szabla, and Hungarian hussars helped spread its use across European armies, where it remained the dominant cavalry weapon through the Napoleonic Wars and the nineteenth century before becoming largely ceremonial in the twentieth.