What is the best sword in history?
That's easy.
The best, most technologically advanced swords the world has ever seen were German, Spanish, and North Italian swords made between 1350 and 1550.
My reasoning is simple. European metalurgy hit its zenith around this time. This was the Renaissance, and Europe was at long last beginning to form the first modern nations with populations that were finally recovering from the devestating plagues and pandemics of the late Roman and Medieval periods. During this time, European bladesmiths were creating the worlds first all-steel swords. All other swords elsewhere and before were amalgamated or composite swords made of varying amounts of steel layered with or encasing soft iron. Medieval Japanese swords are such, which is why they are made and shaped the way they are. These new European swords were the first which were steel throughout.
They were able to take advantage of marvelous advances in the mass production and methodology of steel production which occurred in North Italy and Germany, and spread elsewhere through Europe. Not only were these swords all-steel, but they were a new type of steel, called “spring steel”. These swords were capable of being bent far beyond their their resting shape and then snapping back to that shape after the tension was removed. A sword such as a katana would snap if bent in the manner I speak of. These swords were much more resilient and could maintain their cutting or stabbing edge under much more abuse.
During this time, the most remarkable examples of European swords were made. Swords such as the impressive 7 ft zweihander of Germany, could not be made with lesser steel, as they would have been far to fragile to withstand the stress of use. No sword making center outside of Europe could have manufactured the zweihander and its peers.
Technologically, these are indisputably, the finest swords ever made. They simply have no near peers and are utterly unmatched.
I need a sword that can Split shields, Hew limbs & break armour. Axe-like pretty much.
It also needs to be sturdy, some versatility & the capacity to match or beat other swords of equal dimensions.
Brute strength to beat out skill. A blade that when pitted against swords of equal or longer is outweighed but not imbalanced.
The Iberian Falcata is my preference. This sword could split shields, take armoured limbs & had still the ability to impale man through his chest or take his face with a quick tip slash.
Many will argue saying its a heavy, ill-balanced & poor choice of the sword for anything less than sword & board tactics. But get this, The Falcata weighed between 1.8–3 pounds. Or between under 1 kilogram & 1.8 kilograms. Which makes it equal to any other sword of its size like smallswords it's just the balance is set for a different purpose. Not overly hefty for such its design but it's very unique in that for its size this blade can bite through shields or beat aside other swords. Now there is confusion between the Falcata & its cousin the Kopis.
This isn't a Kopis.
Linear spine, larger guard, the spine is sharper and false-edged giving for thrusts. The leaf is more proportionate to the belly & it's much better balanced for either thrust or cut.
This is the kopis.
Steeper pitch, smaller guard & the spine is definitely single edged not false-edged. The leaf is thicker making its balance almost directly opposite the handle.
There are swords that have certain advantages over others based on their shape or construction. However, the idea of there being an “ultimate sword” that is better than all other swords is false. Some swords are better for certain situations than others. I’ll give you some examples.
The katana is perhaps the most egregious example of this. Pop culture is rife with examples of the katana being the ultimate sword. Some people believe that the way it is forged makes it special, and better than other types of swords. The katana is certainly a good sword, but it has its drawbacks just like any other weapon.
First, the crossguard on the katana is smaller than on other swords, such as the European longsword. The lack of hand protection is a drawback, especially considering the fact that a favorite tactic of swordsman was to strike at the hand of their opponent to disarm them. Another weakness is that it was brittle compared to other blades because of the high carbon content in the steel.
Let’s look at another example shall we?
This is a gladius, which was a short sword employed by the Roman Republic, and later the Roman Empire. The gladius was excellent at thrusting and cutting, but had it’s disadvantages as well. It’s main drawback was it’s lack of reach. With a blade length of around 24 inches, it was best paired with a shield to compensate for it’s length.
Curved swords, such as the falchion, saber, scimitar, etc, were optimized for cutting, owing to the curvature of the blade. Curved blades were used by cavalry, making it possible for them to deal wicked cuts to their enemies as they rode by. However, it had a few drawbacks.
The first was that you needed a lot of space to properly wield a curved sword. Cutting requires more space to do properly than thrusting, making it harder to use in confined spaces. Curved blades were also not very effective at defeating armor.
With a straight sword, you can maneuver it into the gaps of a suit of plate armor, or stab through chain mail if the tip is narrow enough. You can’t do that with a curved sword. A curved blade is also less versatile than a straight sword. With a straight sword, you can cut with both sides of the blade, thrust, and even flip the sword around and bash someone with the crossguard and pommel.
Before I finish, I just want to say that I am not an expert on this subject, and would appreciate some constructive criticism in the comments below. Thanks for reading this and have a great day :-).
Not sure if it would qualify as the “most powerful sword ever” — at the end of the day, any sword is only about as powerful as the person wielding it. But I have always liked the story of the British writer Terry Pratchett. When he was knighted, he asked if he would be allowed to create his own sword for the occasion. Permission was granted.
So Pratchett took metal from a meteorite, melted it and mixed it with steel. And from this, he forged his own sword. A sword that was, literally, out-of-this world. And it’s always been one of the most badass things I’ve ever heard, for some reason. A sword that, were it not for a mysterious space rock falling from the sky long ago, could not have physically existed on this earth.
In the words of the late great author himself:
"At the end of last year I made my own sword. I dug out the iron ore from a field about 10 miles away - I was helped by interested friends. We lugged 80 kilos of iron ore, used clay from the garden and straw to make a kiln, and lit the kiln with wildfire by making it with a bow. Colin Smythe, my long-term friend and agent, donated some pieces of meteoric iron… thunderbolt iron has a special place in magic and we put that in the smelt, and I remember when we sawed the iron apart it looked like silver. Everything about it I touched, handled and so forth ... And everything was as it should have been, it seemed to me.”
There are a great many powerful swords, belonging to powerful men. Rare katanas from 12th century Japan, the swords of Kings, Emperors and mighty rulers. But none intrigue me as much as Terry Pratchett’s meteorite sword of “thunderbolt iron”.
Two should be considered as ultimate in the sense they were far ahead of their time, and gave their owners almost superhuman powers.
The first is the Ulfberht Sword, made near Kassel, Germany from about 800AD to 1000AD. Vikings got a hold of these and used them in their raids on Ireland and other lands. The sword was 1,000 years ahead of its time, with 3x the carbon content and only minute amounts of impurities, or slag. It could just about cut through other swords of the time like magic. No one knows how they were made, as this level of purity needs around 3,000 degrees F, around 3 times what was available at the time. The Ulfberhts were very rare, and highly prized.
The other one is The Irish Sword, so-called by the Irish fighting in their war of Independence from 1919–1923. At the time it was also considered magical. Although not technically a sword, it was called that, so with a bit of poetic license it could be considered as a spiritual follower of swords of the past. It was actually made in America, and had been developed (too late) for WW1 as a “trench broom.” The Irish Sword was the Thompson Submachine Gun. Irish-Americans smuggled about 150 of them into Ireland, where they were magical, with 50 or 100 round drums firing .45 caliber bullets, at a time most soldiers used long and clumsy bolt action rifles. Although most records show them coming in around 1921, the father of a friend confirmed he and others had smuggled a few dozen early prototypes into Ireland in 1920. The few that took part in the Irish War of Independence had a “force multiplyer” effect. They were also (unfortunately) used later by the Provisional Irish Republican Army, a splinter force that fought against the real IRA, and became confused in most people’s minds with the actual IRA, which ended in 1923.
When you shoot one, it feels like magic in your hands, and becomes much more so when three or more shooters are standing side by side. They are described in a historical novel called The Irish Sword.
Both of these swords can be seen in the Irish National Museum in Dublin, Ireland.
Swords were in continual evolution through history, up until, I guess around WW1. So clearly people believed that they could make a better one for a particular purpose than had gone before.
I’m rather attracted to a basket hilted rapier, but if pushed I think I would buy a medieval style bastard sword and have a bollock dagger as a backup, just so that I could use the words bastard and bollock freely and no one could complain. And they’d be modern reproductions made by a serious sword smith because materials science has never been better than it is today, even though that would be expensive, I don’t want the poor quality “wall hangers” that are all too easy to come by.
There can never be any “best sword ever” because different swords were specialised for different purposes. Swords that are amazing cutters may be rubbish at thrusting and useless against armour, while another sword may be an incredible thruster but incapable of cutting at all.
Swords are tools and, just as you don’t use a hammer to tighten a screw, you don’t use a rapier to behead someone.
There are many great types of sword and people may have different preferences based on their interests but there cannot be a single, universally recognised “best sword ever” that comes out best in all contexts. It just can’t happen.
The Macuahuitl.
The Macuahuitl is a sword used by the Aztecs and Mayan tribes and was the standard close combat weapon. Its sides are embedded with prismatic blades traditionally made from obsidian. The obsidian blade is capable of producing an edge sharper than high-quality steel razor blades.
It was capable of inflicting serious lacerations from the rows of obsidian blades embedded in its sides. This obsidian blade can be morphed into a different circular design that looked like scales. The Macuahuitl is described to be similar to a European broadsword.
It was noted by the Spanish that the macuahuitl was so cleverly constructed that the blades could be neither pulled out nor broken.
According to accounts by conquistador Bernal Diaz del Castillo, the Macualhuitl was sharp enough to decapitate a man and even a horse.
“The Indian gave the horse of his antagonist such a blow in the breast that he opened it to the entrails, and it fell dead on the spot. And the same day I saw another Indian give another horse a blow in the neck, that stretched it dead at his feet.”
The first thing to remember is that a sword is a sidearm. It is drawn only when the melee has gotten in a chaotic brawl or fighting is done indoors. Its function is the same as that of a pistol - it is a sidearm too. Soldiers don’t run at the battlefield armed with a pistol or revolver only - they have main arms such as assault rifles for that. Likewise before the era of gunpowder, the main arms were spears, pikes, halberds, poleaxes or missile weapons - not swords.
Second, there is no such thing as an universal sword. Swords are designed on different situations, with different kind of enemies and purposes on mind. Some swords are good against only one or few types of enemy, while others are overall mediocrities but will work just in any situation.
Third, a sword can be fine in many ways. In which way?
- Aesthetics? My bet goes to Tachi.
- Versatility? The longsword, no doubts.
- Swiftness? Here the rapier gets my bet.
- Workmanship? Katana, without doubts - it shows you really can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
- Functionality? The British 1796 pattern light cavalry sword. When science meets tradition and functionality.
- Sheer awesomeness? Flamberge!
- Design? Dao. Chinese engineering at its finest.
- Fame? Joyeuse, the coronation sword of Kings of France - reputedly wielded by Charlemagne himself in battle, and last used in coronation of Charles X in 1825. While the hilt is from the later era, the bade itself is a a medieval blade of Oakeshott type XII. The sword has been documented to have existed in the 10th century, and first used as coronation sword by Philippe II August 1179. The pommel is from 10th century, and the blade appears to be from 10 th century, Martin Conway argued the blade might date to the early 9th century, opening the possibility that it was indeed the sword of Charlemagne. The sword today resides in Louvre, Paris.
What is the best sword ever made?
“Best” is compleatly subjective, wide open to personal opinion and interpretation. In other words, there ain't no such animal.
Many people consider the katana as the pinnacle of the swordmakers art, but I disagree. For my money, the finest sword ever designed was the Gladius.
It's compact enough to be carried daily with little effort, long enough to compleatly penetrate a torso, light enough to not fatigue the swordsman during a long engagement, and burly enough to do some serious hacking. In short, it does everything a sword is expected to do, without any mysticism or fancy trappings. The Romans were nothing if not pragmatic.
I’m sure you know that “best” is quite objective and not so easy to answer.
But I’ll attempt to do so anyway.
Navy CPO Cutlass
Besides being shiny as fuck, it is essentially everything you’s want in a sword if you’re arming a whole crew.
The cutlass in general has been used by pirates and sailors for quite a while due to being short enough to use in the tight spaces of a ship, but also simple enough that it doesn't require much training to use. At least when compared to other sword types
I’m going to take a different kind of stance on this. I want to firstly layout what I would view as a fair definition of ultimate. That would be any sword that had reached a plateau in it’s development. To the point where it is maximized for it’s intended purpose and it would be hard to conceive of a way to reasonably improve upon it’s design for what it is meant to do.
While at any place in time a single sword might hold this title. And where over time there may be multiple ultimate swords. One such sword immediately comes to mind as a good example of what ultimate looks like. A weapon of duelists refereed to as a small sword.
Now you might notice that this has a rather odd looking blade. That’s because the blade is a trifoil. It had three lobes or ribs which are not sharp and run the length of the blade. Why would one want a blade that doesn’t cut? Because this beast is all about being a Stabby McStabertson.
The trifoil shape makes it incredibly rigid for how thin it is. The shape serves to reinforce the strength of that “ultimately” pointy tip. The balance of the blade is very close to the guard. Which means that a slight twitch of the wrist causes the tip to trace a rather large arch at a phenomenal speed. With how thin it is, it’s hard to even see the blade in motion or gauge the tips true distance away from you.
While this weapon can do humiliating and possibly debilitating tip cuts. It’s more about ending a fight as quickly and cleanly as possible. With singular precise punctures. It takes a lot of practice, a fast eye, and better than cat like reflexes to defend against such an agile weapon.
The swords of duelists eventuated in this design out of a desire to make duels more civilized. Someone going up against one of these had among their concerns, leaving the world a pretty corpse if it came to dying on the field. Not maimed and mangled from slashes and hacks, but one ore two clean lethal wounds that didn’t even bleed a whole lot externally. A dignified death.
They put so much effort into making the way that the civilized man dies a well mannered affair that one can’t help but respect the elegant death such a weapon delivers.
Now again that’s not to say that just because I consider this to be an ultimate sword. That it’s the only such blade I would assign that title. In their own place, time, and context there are plenty of other blades also worthy of holding such esteem. This is just one good example of what I would consider ultimate.
May I present the Patton Saber?
Model 1913 Cavalry Saber - Wikipedia
I got into sword fighting a while ago. I like longswords which we train most of the time but have to admit something drew me towards sabers. Having to use only one hand and being faster I feel that I can do more things with it than others. Maybe it's just that they don't train it often even though its more often than me, so far.
Recently I found out that one of my ancestors (13th degree cousin of my dad's mom) studied fencing, took part in competitions and even designed a saber. That's the 1913 US cavalry saber devlopped by Patton who was the main fencing instructor for the US military and later became a General who became famous in WW2 defeating us Germans. Of course I had to get me one.
What a pleasant suprise! The sword was very well engineered. Parts like tang scales guard etc. were all interlocking, easy to disassemble and made of metal. Only the scales were made from Bakelit but framed in a way that they couldn't break. The tang is full and not just a thin rod going through the handle. Overall the construction is more complicated but also more robust than the other sabers of the period which I have seen. However I have to say it is quite a bit heavier than most other sabers but nothing too bad for me. The added length means more reach which is rarely a bad thing. The blade shape is excellent for thrusting and that's something I tend to do. It is sharpened on both sides which lends itself to back cuts to the head which are often surprising to the one receiving them. Also the sharpend back edge should allow an easier recovery after a stab.
What I like the most was the generous space on the handle. Most sabers are painfully cramped for me and often I have to bend the guards upwards a bit so they don't cut into my hand. Not so with the Patton saber. It turns out he was exactly as tall as me and big hands seem to run in the family.
Clare Boothe Luce Meets General Patton
While I haven't seen any other saber so well engineered and fitting me I'd like to see one exactly like it but made out of modern steel to be able to withstand even more punishment.
Patton also wrote two sword fighting manuals which are being reprinted. Even with some sword knowledge one can find a few new things in there or at least get an impression of sword fighting pilosophies of that time in general and Patton in particular. Some of it seems to have translated into his later battle strategies as well.
Edit:
What is better than some pictures for comparison? I took a quick snap of a few of my blades. Two of them are having their fittings in an oil bath but thats a good opportunity to compare the tangs.
Top to bottom:
- Feder (dimensions of a German longsword)
- Two handed Italian longsword.
- Patton saber with an I-beam like full tang and a blade as long as a long sword and still light enough to be used with one hand thus having actually more reach than a long sword. The hand guard (first picture in this answer) is very protective especially when compared to the other swords here.
- Oldprussian Inf hanger (after 1744)
- Pre WW1 Uhlan (Lance cavalry) saber. Can you see that minimal hand protection?
- WW1 cavalry saber. Look at the small tang which is identical to the Uhlan sword.
The Roman gladius and Mongol saber built some impressive empires. What works best one on one with room to move and little distraction may not be best in a tight formation during the heat of battle, on a rolling deck, or charging horse. Sabers and cutlasses lasted the longest along side firearms in military armories.
IIRC that title would be for the rapiers forged in Toledo, Spain; they were put to test 4 times:
- First, they were pushed into an U shape,
- Second, they were stuck into something hard (like a log or something) and twisted
- The third test was to force the blade into an S shape
- And lastly, if they survived that, the sword was used to hit a helmet, and checked for any kind of damage in the entirety of the weapon
Close competition could be from weapons made from steels from Solingen or Damascus
Impossible to say, besides that our metalurgy and manufacturing processes are able to create much better swords of a type than in ancient times. We can make better swords in the sense of the metal and how it’s assembled.
As for type though, impossible. Different swords do different things, and no sword does all (or even most) better than the rest.
Zweihanders/greatswords are big beastly swords but impossible to carry outside of the battlefield. Arming swords are much more convienient but only large enough to be sidearms on the field. Longswords are inbetween. Rapiers are long and great for thrusting, but not so good for cuts. Katanas are decent at cutting, but one sided, not great at thrusting and are traditionally made of worse materials than western blades of the time (overrated too). Falchions are kindof simialar in role and have similar problems. Sabres are great for cavalry, and terrible for infantry. Most classical swords were sidearms or useless outside of formations.
Do yourself a favor and get a spear. Way simpler and usually more effective.
I’d nominate the Ko-Kitsune (Little Fox) blade made for the Emperor Ichijō circa 987 A.D. by Sanjo Munechika, reputedly assisted by Inari, god of smiths and metal workers, attended by an entire troop of fox spirits.
Not a question you can answer lightly.
First of all, just to get it out of the way, today’s blacksmiths/bladesmiths can make a better blade, with modern materials than any genius bladesmith would be able to make like 100 years ago, so, there is that.
As for the olden times, I’m following the three rules on “what to look for in a sword”; a tang that can hold the thing together, steel that it’s decent, and good tempering.
Most of us, I assume, have heard about Masamune (famous blade construction, great blades overall) Muramasa (it’s like his archenemy, although they didn’t live at the same time, still weird coincidences happened for the Tokugawa dynasty, other topic… ) from the west we have the famous ULFBERH+T swords (letters and symbols might not be on correct order, but that’s part of it’s beauty) blades possibly, nay, probably made out of wootz, trade from the Volga trade route, swords with quality that Europe won’t see for centuries to come, and of course, we have India, Persia and the middle east, where wootz steel really took off with marvelous examples.
Honestly, I think, the finest sword… is with us no more. Swords were made to be used on a battlefield, took damage, and were eventually replaced. The best sword ever made is probably in many places at the same time, in the form of rust. What exist among us are mostly swords that were never used. And although a person not hurt, less, is a good thing, a sword not used does not help to make one type more able than the other.
The swords we have available to us today are swords, in their majority, that never took part in any actual battles, because if they would, chances are, they are already damaged, repaired, and look less than optimal.
And, if you think about how many countries there are, how many nations existed, how many blacksmiths existed, and we only know a few hundred names from Japan, a few dozens from each western country, and nothing pretty much from India Persia Middle east (I might be wrong on that, some famous names probably exist but I have never come across them), take a good look on the next antique sword you’ll see on your next google search; there is a chance you are looking at that finest sword, no matter how rusty it is or how much or little it costs. Iron rusts (stainless doesn’t work, of course) so, the best sword ever made -that still exists- is in some museum. Or some company like Albion or old Wilkinson, or a custom blacksmith is making it right now, we don’t know and we’ll never now.
Bear with me a bit.
Do you mean to limit discussion to historical examples, only, and exclude prehistoric swords? There are lots of each.
Do you mean to make a general wholesale evaluation, of all known swords, as used over the (perhaps) the last 10,000 years? This may seem silly, but each sword type was developed, in part, to contend with the perceived “superior” swords (and other weapons) - on specific battlefields, by specific cultures, by different kinds of combat (calvary vs infantry, etc.), different materials of construction (steel, wrought iron, case hardened wrought iron, tin bronze, arsenic bronze, work-hardened copper, flint, flint-edged wooden, wooden and - believe it or not - even swordfish beaks).
The good news (for this blog) is that someone else has done the heavy lifting for you, and written the arquival work you seem to be seeking, imaginatively titled:
The Book of the Sword, Sir Richard Francis Burton, pub 1884. (With a pub date like that, you know this is a great find, indeed !)
You can get your hands on a copy by using your public library card (online, if you wish) here: Interlibrary loan. The copy for you should be available at your local library branch within 2 weeks of so - there are plenty of recent editions.
The book is fabulous, but you very likely will decide that the story of Sir Richard (not the actor guy) is even more amazing. He was one of the British explorers who discovered the source of the Nile River. He is believed to have been the first non-Muslim to undertake a 'Hajj' or pilgrimage to Mecca. He made the (at the time) scandalous translation into English / publication of the Kama Sutra. (It was illegal to publish it in England and the United States until 1962.) He also published the Perfumed Garden' (1886), and a complete edition of the 'Arabian Nights' (1885 - 1888). He was one of those rare humans - a Polyglot - said to personally be multilingual in at least 26 languages – or 40, if distinct dialects are counted.
And on, and on.
For the Victorian period, his unabashed interest is sex, and sexual practices, especially eastern erotica, led him into some significant scandals - which very likely is why he has been so willingly forgotten. See: Richard Francis Burton - Scandals.
“Burton's writings are unusually open and frank about his interest in sex and sexuality. His travel writing is often full of details about the sexual lives of the inhabitants of areas he travelled through. Burton's interest in sexuality led him to make measurements of the lengths of the penises of male inhabitants of various regions, which he includes in his travel books. He also describes sexual techniques common in the regions he visited, often hinting that he had participated, hence breaking both sexual and racial taboos of his day. Many people at the time considered the Kama Shastra Society and the books it published scandalous.”
A fascinating man, and brilliant human being - and arguably, the world expert (in one volume) on SWORDS.
Cheers !
I’d vote for the knight’s favorite blade, during the central years of the Middle Ages.
Novelist Joseph Malik spells it out: the “Type XIIIa great sword”, in The Why of Weapons: The Great Sword of War
It’s the perfect (non-spear) weapon for all those years when armor was heavy chainmail but hadn’t developed into full plate yet. When it was possible to drop a fully-protected man with one swing, but you really wanted the best tool to do it.
Picture thirty to forty inches of blade, meaning it can be swung one- or two-handed. A carefully designed edge — not trying to “cut through” armor, because you simply can’t, but just sharp enough to catch on it no matter how your target tries to make your blow glance off it. And all carefully balanced to deliver a quick, solid whack that left dislocated bones and defeated enemies inside that “impenetrable” armor.
As Malik says: “BAM. “You’re done.” BAM. “You, too.” BAM. “I can do this all day.”
When we think of a serious military sword, for the ages when armor did its best to block it but couldn’t quite yet, this is the weapon that did the job.
(After the knight had used up his lance, of course.)
I agree. It’s the most incredibly long, costly and intricate way of forging a blade. You need 25 tons of ore and charcoal to make one katana and, in some long stages of this process, you have to keep watch every minute around the clock, and there are a few secrets the Japanese master swordsmiths never reveal but to their very few apprentices. The end product is a stunningly beautiful and deadly work of art.
In the West, we have other legendary swords like King Arthur’s Excalibur, or Siegfried’s dragonslayer Gram, and others not of supernatural provenance, like Charlemagne’s Joyeuse, or El Cid’s Tizona. Both swords survived after being kept by their successive owners for hundreds of years and can be admired today. The former is exhibited at the Louvre Museum, the Spanish sword at the Burgos Museum, in the Spanish city by the same name. Both swords have been scientifically dated, the former to the 12 /13th centuries, the latter to the11th century, so says Wikipedia.
Behold Joyeuse, the joyful one. Wielding this sword Charlemagne carved an empire in 8th century Europe, that stretched from the Atlantic to the Baltic and south to the Mediterranean. As for El Cid, he is an historic figure, a national hero in the Kingdom of Spain, known to all and sundry. Always victorious, either against Muslim kings, or any of his lord’s many rivals. Even dead he helped to win a decise battle against a vast Muslim army. His body was tied to a horse, held upright, sword in hand, leading the charging knights. The enemy army fled in terror and was cut to pieces. Since he died a powerful man himself, lord of vast provinces, and his daughters married princes or dukes, you might attribute some of his (and Charlemagne’s ) exploits and grandeur to a sword, and I find that just incredible.
And what an ample range and affordable prices you do find at mssrs Knivesdeal!
This question is impossible to answer as is. It's like asking “What is the best tool of all time?”.
Because that is what a sword is: a tool. A combination offensive-defensive tool designed for combat use, but a tool nonetheless. Any weapon is.
And in the same way you'll select a hammer, screwdriver or weedwhacker based on the job at hand, so you must rate your swords in terms of usefulness in specific situations.
You're not going to use eg a claymore in a close quarters duel. And you're only going to use a bronze age rapier against a bronze age foe, unless you have no alternative. A heavy cavalry sabre is great for mounted charges, but on the cumbersome side when boarding an enemy ship.
There are many great swords, but it's impossible to point at one and say “that's the best” without knowing the specifics of how it'll be used and the preferences of the wielder.
I suppose the same can be said about any weapon, from stone axes to state of the art guns. And indeed about any kind of tool; you're not getting the weeds whacked with a screwdriver.
https://www.quora.com/
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