[Guy Bayes]

Sorry that was suppose to read "Interestingly enough though, dueling in the west at least"

IMO in the west, Saber was mostly Calvary or nautical traditions. It certainly was not the dominant form of western dueling in the 17th to 19th century from what I know. I am no expert though

Footwork is pretty tricky on ships maybe, and thrusts are more dependent on lunges which requires decent footing?

[Glen A Cleeton]

[Dan Howard]

One argument that makes a lot of sense is that, in a battle, the goal is to disable your opponent and move on to the next. A neat little hole might eventually prove fatal but in the meant time he is often able to continue fighting. A sword cut is more likely to immediately disable an opponent but is less likely to ultimately prove fatal. The latter is more preferable to a soldier; he doesn't care whether his opponent is dead or not so long as he can't fight any more.

[Raman A]

[Guy Bayes]

None of the current rulesets realistically simulate fighting with swords, no rule set really works well, they al rely on human judges for one thing, and none of them have a realistic way of handling the results of a hit a series of hits and the degree of dehibiation caused

As a result, either all hits are equal or only certain areas of the body count, and generally either only the first hit matters or multiple hits cancel out

Since none of them have a good mechanism for really handling priority and right of way, offense and defensive equilibrium get grown seriously out of whack and things get kind of farcical IMO

You could work around some of that with a lot better sensors and a computer models that score in real time , then you could at least have an opinion that "he may have cut me first but then I killed him after so I go home and he goes in a box" . That would be a world better then the current state of affairs but still not perfect since the physical fight is going to get out of sync with the computer results pretty quickly in a long engagement

This is all only tangentially related to dueling and affairs of honor where people did get killed and if there was a disagreement about right of way or something you could just keep going till someone was actually incapacitated. The dueling rule sets where probably influenced by a desire to not actually kill people though, at one point in time duels were a leading cause of death amount the younger male members of the upper class.

As far as swords now being weapons of war, depends on the timeframe, no one told the Romans that

[Christopher Treichel]

[Robert B. Marks]

Perhaps I might be able to take a shot at clearing this up a bit...

Ultimately, types of swords and swordplay are purpose based. That purpose will determine whether it can be considered "real combat" or not.

So, if you go back to around the early 14th century and the time of i.33, you'll see swords being used as a knightly weapon of last resort on the battlefield, and in the judicial duel. So, if you struck a blow against somebody at this point in time, it was meant to maim or kill. So, this would be real combat.

Move forward a hundred or so years, and you're at the height of longsword combat. Most of this is being used for the judicial duel or dueling of some sort, with bouts being to the death. So, the techniques that are being practiced are designed to maim or kill. Again, real combat.

Move forward to the 19th century, and you'll see two types of dueling emerging. One is deadly serious (I think it was in a book about the War of 1812 that I read that one of the problems the American army struggled with was its officer corps nearly depopulating itself either fighting duels of honour or by resigning over points of honour), and the other was for sport. A duel to the death is, well, to the death. The techniques there are designed to maim or kill. A sporting duel, however, was to first blood, or to the first hit. Maiming or killing was the exact opposite of what was required. So, rather than striking a blow to cause a serious injury, the intention became to touch your opponent's jacket and score a point.

It's from this sport fencing that modern fencing was born. There is no intent to cause bodily harm, so you could say that it isn't "real combat."

Now, that said, speaking as somebody who is a founding member of a longsword group, NOBODY is doing "real combat" today who isn't in law enforcement or the military (or perhaps a gang war). We may be practicing the techniques that were once used in duels to the death, and doing it very carefully (as they are designed to seriously injure people), but anybody who is actually thinking "I want to chop my sparring partner's hand off" has no business holding a sword in the first place.

And, THAT said, when it comes to the Western Martial Arts/Historical European Martial Arts, it is about as close as you can get to "real combat" with swords - the techniques practiced are the ones meant to kill or maim, hence the need for gambesons, specially designed blunt swords, fencing masks, etc. And, further, you can cause serious harm to somebody if you do sport fencing with a a sharpened sword - nobody comes away from being run through unhurt.

I hope that clarified things a bit...

[Christopher Treichel]

I would have to disagree with that statement on the start of sport fencing... it goes back much farther... and duels that were to the touch also were frequently fatal.

There is plently of evidence of fencing at festivals with wooden or leather swords going back much farther than the 18th or 19th century...

Also the foil very similar to today's sport fencing foil was used as a training tool back to that time as well and fencing competitions with blunt weapons were held not in relation to dueling. Evidence for this is in many fencing treaties from the 17th and 18th century where the master discusses his choice of weapons to include why or why not to study with dueling weapons (floret vs epee) (rapier vs degen) and why fencing is great exercise.

That still leaves the problem of fencing without intent... which is why in sport fencing and HEMA you frequently see ridiculous attacks without defense.

[Philip Dyer]

[Gottfried P. Doerler]

hm. i think this longsword guy meant something different.
i think he wanted to say, with a longsword you were are able to deal with every situation you encounter, be it war or peacetime, you could fight battles with it or duell for the honour of a lady. (maybe like a modern aussault rifle, designed to have the most gain in all possible situations in contrast to more specific weapons like smg or sniper rilfe)
whereas a rapier smallsword etc. is only usefull in a certain situation under defined circumstances and a set of rules preventing "real combat". (maybe "real combat" just means doing the utmost to kill you oponent)

in case i see this right, i disagree.
in times rapiers and smallswords were carried, people didn`t only fight duells with them (with peers of their social class), but also defended themselves against robbers or had bar brawls.
wallenstein e.g. in his youth was imprisoned in altdorf for drunk follies with his rapier.
imho these later blades must have been effectiv combat tools also outside their role in classic view as duell weapons, cause only a limited numer of wealthy people carried them, and they had to defend themselves against the envy of ruthless caracters in dark narrow alleys or in woods with marauding mercenaries.

on the other hand, slightly out of context, i think, longswords may be really be superior to rapiers in modern hema circumstances. whoever had a sparring with rapier against a longsword will agree. parrying blows is a pain (physically and mentally, seeing this brute thing making dents to the rings of my elegant hilt makes my heart sting), he nearly has the reach of the rapier and is only slightly slower.

[Guy Bayes]

Another piece of this is the nature of the battle that the sword was expected to be effective in

For battles that had a lot of melee, and a lot of armor, durability of a sword seemed to be pretty important, weapons seemed to trend larger and larger

Once firearms dominated, armor went away, swords use started to become more special case "when guns fail" scenarios, cavalry charges, officers, naval boarding actions, durability seemed less important, swords got smaller and faster

Gross oversimplification I know, but the point is the weapon only makes sense in the context

[Robert W Tucker]

sport fencing is not sword play any ken do or foil student will tell you that the guy who got off to the side and grabs the opponent's weapon or hits them and then stabs them is cheating if you bash your shield into another opponent in SCA its cheating these are things that can happen in combat to deny them is to deny these arts themselves what they are and what they do how human body mechanics work.

[Tom King]

[Philip Dyer]

[Tom King]

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

What is "real combat"? Is it battle? Duelling? Tournaments? Self-defence? All of these have varying levels of risk and different conventions throughout centuries. My point of view is that real combat is defined by the intent of causing permanent harm (up to death) to the opponent. Alternatively, it could be defined by the risk of permanent harm taken by the fighters, which is not necessarily the same: one is intentional, the other is accidental. The level of social conventions that constrain the encounter does not define how real the fight is, for me. If for whatever reason the fighters have to jump on one foot and use a spoon, as long as they are fighting for their lives the combat is definitely real.

In that sense, I can't think of any (sharp) sword form that has not been designed and used for real combat. As a tool, the function of any sword is to inflict grievous injury, all sword forms are capable of it, and all sword forms have been used to do it.

Discussing which modern sport is more real than others is quite pointless in my opinion; as long as you're not risking limb and life (which you shouldn't) you're doing a sport and it is a distorted representation of the "real combat" it seeks to emulate. Sports have rules, and indeed the rules of sport fencing and kendo originated from the need to maintain some measure of tactical appropriateness (within the views of each system, of course) when the harmful intent is gone. But all rules can be gamed, and no sport is immune to that. The intent of the practitioner is the determining factor; you can practice any sport with a martial mindset, as a form of artificial training exercise, as it has been originally designed. You'll never reach top level in the sport doing that, but you'll learn plenty of useful things.

Now, if your definition of "real combat" is battle, then it's true that medieval swords are probably more designed for real combat than XVIIth century thrusting rapiers and later smallswords. That's entirely because hand-to-hand combat with swords was far less common on the later battlefields. On the other hand, sabers up to the XIXth century were certainly designed for battle, and I can't really see how these would be less "real" than longswords. One-handed swords in general were in use long before and long after the longswords, so you could argue that the longsword is more specific to a given context than a generic one-handed double-edged blade.

Where that whole argument about battlefield etc. gets ironic is that the majority of people studying longsword now are using texts that are predominantly about duelling, and practice unarmoured which is not something you'd do on a battlefield either

Regards,

[Scott Hrouda]

The OP's question

[Robert B. Marks]

[Guy Bayes]

" In real life, if you hit somebody in the head with the business end of a sword, the fight is done. "

Probably less true then you would think. Pumped up on adrenaline, unless you are doing major brain trauma, you still need to avoid potential return blows, often time speople don't figure out they are dead for a surprisingly long period

my teacher once paraphrased from one the rapier texts something along the lines of "stick your rapier through his eye and then disengage carefully avoiding his return stroke"

[Robert B. Marks]