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1 82
K Ø B E N H A V N S K E S V Æ R D F E G E R E
ster o f the guild would offer his costly ma
sterpiece to the K ing and receive a payment
from the P rivy Purse. Other small swords
with silver hilts are to-day in private collec
tions, e.g. Plates
10
and n made by Poul
Nielsen Truge and Matthias Johansen Hoy.
They bear witness to the high standard o f
Copenhagen sword-cutler’s work in the
18
th
century.
c h a p te r
5
THE MILITARY SUPPLIES OF THE GUILD
In his posthumous work on Danish military
swords, the late director o f the Tojhusmu-
seum, Captain Otto Smith, lays down the
results o f his comparative studies in the State
Archives and the stock o f military weapons
kept in his museum. His statements concer
ning the main types are still fundamental, and
only a few items from further studies in the
accounts o f the Armoury are added here.
The
18
th century opened with a twenty
years’ period o fwar, interrupted between
170 1
and
1709
, but this pause seems also to have
been one o f eager activity to secure military
supplies. N ew regiments were raised and or
ders for new weapons incessantly issued. As
the sword-cutler o f the Royal Armoury was
fully occupied with repair work, contracts
were often made with the Copenhagen sword-
cutlers who undertook the manufacture o f
side-arms in common. In
1708
they made
a mutual agreement to the effect that no
single sword-cutler should undertake any pri
vate order for deliveries to the army but must
pass it on to the alderman o f the guild who,
in his turn, would share the work among the
masters. In
1 7 18
this agreement was broken
by two o f the younger masters, Jacob Kopper
and Anders Lihme, who made a separate con
tract with the chief o f a regiment to provide
him with
700
broadswords.
Already in the reign o f Christian V (
1670
-
1699
), Copenhagen sword-cutlers would oc
casionally do some work fo r the armoury. In
17 0 1
one o f the masters, Mathias Wackerland,
perhaps the alderman o f that year, made pat
terns for two soldier’s swords, probably in
connexion with an order fo r
12600
new
swords bought in that year from a gunsmith,
Christen Hagen (cf. Plate
4,1
and
4
,
2
). Be
sides ordinary soldier’s swords, the broad
sword is mentioned as a new type o f side-arm
o f the period. Considerable quantities were
ordered o f this weapon; the delivery o f
2100
pieces by Hein Kopper in
1 7 1 0
(Plates
4
,
4
;
5
,
1
;
5
,
2
) may be the result o f a cooperation
between several masters o f the guild. A par
ticularly fine broad-sword is seen on Plate
2
;
the specimen in question is kept in the Rosen
borg collection and is perhaps one out o f
twelve broadswords for which Hein Kopper
was paid by the King in
1 7 1 2
. Repair work
also was done by the masters in common, e.g.
in
1 7 1 3
when Johannes Plockross, as alder
man, received a number o f old regimental
swords to be repaired and sent to the regi
ments in Holstein.
After the peace in
1720
the repair o f old
weapons and the supply o f new ones was
continued on an undiminished scale. A sol
dier’s sword, not unlike the well-known types
o f dress-swords o f the century (Plate
3
) and a
new broadsword with brass hilt (Plate
5
,
3
)
probably date from the
172 0
’s, as is the case
with a broadsword, the basket-hilt o f which
bears a faint likeness to a muzzle shell (Plate
5,4).
Otto Smith failed to realize that a large
number o f the new weapons were mounted
with blades from the stock o f arms conquered
in the war together with the Swedish for
tresses in Pomerania, but although this is
established, it is not yet known whether any
o f the extant military swords have Swedish
blades. Possibly none o f the conquered swords