The Sabre Society, 1974

British and Austrian soldiers on parade during the early days of Napoleonic re-enactment. Formed in 1971, the Sabre Society was the world's first Napoleonic re-enactment society, with around 200 members by 1975. It was superceded numbers-wise within a few years by the Napoleonic Association, founded  in 1976 by a small group of friends including Howard Giles, Philipp Elliott-Wright and Ian Castle.  In 1983, the remaining units of the Sabre Society were renamed the Association Britannique de la Garde Imperiale (still re-enacting today).

These re-enactors don't look bad at a distance but standards of authenticity have yet to be properly addressed. Uniforms vary in style (rarely being correct), the crossbelts are plastic rather than leather, few muskets fire and hardly any are of the correct flintlock variety. It's probably fair to comment that standards of authenticity were generally better on the French side, although much remained to be done before they approached modern standards of re-enactment. However, what the society members lacked in authenticity they certainly made up for in enthusiasm, leading in time to today's thriving international Napoleonic re-enactment scene. Over 30 years after its founding, The Napoleonic Association is still the largest UK grouping of re-enactment units specialising in this era, a success mirrored by numerous groups all over Europe.

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Supdated 28 February 2004