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A Dussack is a short practice or training saber that originated around the 16th-17th century. The Dussacks had a short, thick, single-edged blade measuring between 65 and 95 cm. long and gently curved at the tip. Because they were for training, there were wooden ones, although there were also steel ones, of which there are few original examples. Perhaps this is why it does not get the recognition it deserves, even though it was a very important weapon in the ancient fencing guilds.
It was actually a complex-hilted steel saber that became more common in the first quarter of the 16th century and was used until the mid-1600s, after which it became more and more the proper saber. What is known for certain is that in the first quarter of the 16th century, soldiers were already using short sabers with complex hilts on the battlefields and that these were called Dussack.
In 1539 Sweden was already importing them and in 1589 the Norwegian king Christian IV began importing at least 8,000 Dussacks from Switzerland, ordering all his peasants to arm themselves by purchasing them from the king at their own cost. This large number combined with the fact that only 350,000 people lived in Norway at the time, would mean that approximately 1 in 10 Norwegian men would be armed with a Dussack, particularly peasants.
The development of the Dussack was mainly due to the fierce conflicts between the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Turkish Empires, particularly the Battle of Mohács in 1526 and the Siege of Vienna in 1529. It is about this time period that we see a change from the Messer to the Dussack.
The Dussack became very important in the fencing guilds. Due to the success of the supremely trained Turkish sipahi cavalry and their janissary infantry forces, the nobles and commanders of the Habsburg army simply came to desire a weapon that could match the Turkish Kilij. All this made the Dussack evolve along with other forms of swords with complex and somewhat oval hilts.
