In Shakespear, and in the silent movies, and all that jazz, they always use rapiers, meaning those long skinny swords with a bell on the handle.
Historically swords were larger and shorter.
Were these swords ever actually used outside of stage-fights and fencing clubs? Did men actually walk around with these and challenge each other to duels?
And if so, then explain:
Armor: Why does no one ever wear armor? A simple breastplate would easily make a mediocre sword fighter almost invincible, the skinny swords couldn’t possibly penetrate even light armor (Right?) And yet no one ever wears that?
Or, why does no one ever have a thicker sword? Just one swipe of a heavy sword would break one of the skinny Zorro-like swords, woudln’t it?
I am not an expert on the subject, but in my opinion I think the weight of the smaller sword might be a factor. It would be difficult to carry a larger, heavy sword in some cases and the smaller one might be easier to maneuver.
Thicker, heavier swords were for soldiers and ruffians. A Gentleman carried a light rapier. Since he would only be fighting another Gentleman, usually over a matter of honor, no more was necessary.
People tend to look at you funny when you go out in public armored cap-a-pie. And duelling had a well developed code that would not have allowed one party to wear armor if the other didn’t.
One of the reasons behind the development of the cup hilt was that it was sort of a small shield to protect the hand and arm. Have you heard the term “swashbuckler”? This refers to the noise made when something smashes against the buckler - hence “swashbuckler”.
Sure, you could go around covered in plate, but then people tend to guess what you are up to, and it is then harder to convince them to engage you in combat. And armor is rather difficult to conceal.
Well, no - it is rarely as simple as that.
Modern fencing is centered around the lunge and the point, not the slash. And duels and urban combat rarely involved much by way of armor. Thus the notion that “all I have to do is whip out my heavier sword and smash your flimsy toy to flinders and then split you to the chine” does not take adequately into account that I am not inclined to stand around with a blank expression on my face whilst you are hammering away trying to break my sword. What is more likely is that you swing your heavier sword, I then disengage and then thrust in over your sword as it passes, and hey presto! you have a new buttonhole without a corresponding button.
A general rule of thumb is that if there appears to be a simple way to defeat someone, it is probably not the first time it has occurred to anyone, and/or is not as simple as it appears.
I am not a sword expert.
I’ve read about this on Myarmoury.com and perhaps some other sites:
You can NOT just say that historically swords were larger and shorter. You can pretty much think that historically, the only things swords around the world have in common are that they have a sharp piece of metal attached to a grip. Swords were made for different uses. For example, japanese katanas are commonly held to be the kind of slashing swords, but they wouldn’t work as well as an estoc against plate armor. That’s not to say that katanas were worse than estocs, but that the Japanese didn’t have to worry about plate armor.
Now, rapiers were commonly used in the 16th and 17th century in Europe primarily as a weapon for citizens and for duels, and not as a weapon for large scale battles. The rapier was absolutely deadly against unarmored opponents with its quick thrusts, and even if an opponent had a breastplate a skilled swordsman could aim for the limbs and areas not protected by the breastplate. The light-weight rapier is capable of very quick thrusts, and puncture wounds are…quite bad.
I’ve first read this from an essay analysing what would happen in a fight between a samurai and a renaissance swordsman armed with a rapier, but it’s apparently not easy to break a skilled opponent’s rapier with a heavier sword.
A large heavy sword is slow and clumsy. A long skinny sword is fast and accurate. Wouldn’t you prefer to be the first one to hit the other guy with your sword, given that the first guy that gets hit might not get a chance to return the favor.
It’s surprising how short some military swords are. The Roman was little more than a dagger. If you’re going to fight on foot with a sword you want something easy to manoeuvre, not something that will drag you after it if you miss a swipe while your enemy stabs you. Broadswords and unbalanced swords like scimitars and cutlasses are more intended for mounted slashing use and (in the pirates’ case) for cutting ropes.
Technically, a rapier is different from a sword because it does not have an edge. A fencing foil is a rapier, not sword. It is a purely spiking weapon that was convenient for young men in violent cities and could no doubt still open a nasty cut slashed across a mugger’s face.
For roughly the same reason that very few people other than on-duty police officers wear bullet-proof vests, and virtually no one carries an assault rifle slung across their back. In the sixteenth century, someone carrying out a planned attack might wear a cuirass and helmet, and carry a stout businesslike sword; but for everyday preparedness a foil or rapier was the equivalent of a handgun, a compromise based on ease of carry. And as stated upthread, a duel was something else altogether; there would have been little point in upscaling a mutally agreed upon contest.
There’s cost as well. By the time we’re mostly thinking of, there were primitive guns and in any case a longbow was even more powerful and full sardine can armour was very much ‘dress’ and for tournaments. When it was really in use it was for aristocratic cavalry able to carry it and even more, able to afford it and ended up putting itself out of business because instead of a sword you knocked a knight off his horse and he couldn’t get up. Usually it had chain mail under it as well and that is heavy in its own right. An armoured Knight is the equivalent of a tank and cost about as much. Normal infantry wore toughened leather that was good enough for a glancing blow to slide off. Some wore a metal breastplate but it couldn’t be thick or the weight slowed them down too much. It was safer to be agile and less protected than slow.
As I’ve always understood it, those skinny swords were designed to be quite flexible; they bend instead of breaking, deflecting the blow in the process.
It’s essentially the same reason why someone today might carry a pistol in a holster or tucked into their belt, but won’t walk around wearing a ceramic chestplate with an AK-47. Only people in the military who were expecting to be in a fight would wear actual armor and hold the heavier, military quality weapons. Aside from being highly uncomfortable, it’s not very socially acceptable to walk around in polite society armed to the teeth and itching for a fight. The swords you see in Shakespeare and swashbuckling movies (though generally inaccurate) were used for self-defense, formalized duels, and a way of flaunting one’s wealth and station.
Over time they evolved to better suit this role, and as firearms replaced swords on the battlefield they still remained a symbol of status and a backup self-defense weapon until modern times.
Actually some historic rapiers did have an edge, depending on time period and nationality of origin – rapiers evolved in various different parts of Europe from a light, “civilian” or “dress” version of the one-handed sword, and in turn later were specialized into dueling swords and from there into epées, “dress swords” and foils.
By the mid-1500s to early 1700s, a rapier or something very much like it is the standard gentleman’s sidearm on land. Thus the stagings of works by Shakespeare and his contemporaries would feature rapier fighting (‘cause I strongly suspect the Globe did NOT stock any authentic-looking 13th-Century-Denmark props, nor would they know them if they saw them), and similarly later writings referring to the 16th thru 18th centuries, e.g. Dumas’ Musketeers, would also feature it. Now, one thing that ***does ***happen is that the type of “swashbucker” swordplay you see in movies is mostly not even close to period-accurate either for combat or for dueling. From wrong tactics to wrong moves to wrong way to hold the rapier to, heck, wrong kind of rapier… yeah, what surprise, right?
One point that no one else seems to have addressed: A breastplate is pretty far cry from invincibility. If you take a deep slash or two, you’re going to lose blood. A lot of it. Good luck continuing to fight while trying to also stanch a couple of arterial bleeds.
Yep: visible breastplate? Go for the upper arm or the thighs. Big muscles, the arm or leg are useless if you cut enough of them and as a bonus you chop through a main artery. Breastplates were used by musketeers, those Spanish legionaries who could afford them… but you wouldn’t walk around town with it on, and its purpose was like that of a modern day police vest, to stop bullets directed to “the bulk of my enemies” rather than the sword and dagger of someone you were in close combat with.
Seventeen posts and no one has brought up the issue of naval combat? Wearing full plate armour and wielding a heavy sword on a ship could be nearly suicidal. On a constantly rocking and bobbing surface the last thing you want is your balance to be thrown off by a heavy metal object, or your agility to be constrained by several kilograms of armour. Not to mention that if you are pushed or swept overboard, you would sink like a stone.
Nope, you can’t even say that. The Aztecs and other pre-Columbian mesoamerican people made their swords of wood and obsidian. Plenty sharp, but not metal.
True, but that was due to the fighting style of fighting in a shield wall requiring a stabbing weapon, rather than a 1-on-1 combat where a longer, slashing or cleaving, blade would be more appropriate.