Spanish Toledo steel, once known around the world as the best for blades of any kind. Certainly the sort of which think a German officer would want his blade drawn. I think but am not sure that what you are seeing in the superscripts is a kind of abbreviation for the past perfect tense -- just as in some ENglish letters from the period you see signatures like "Yr Obdt Servt" and the truncations are suberscripted to indcate the abbrteviation. Only these are in 19th century Spanish.

A