Talk:Rapier

Edited last April 10 2003, Ken Mondschein, editor@corporatemofo.com -The previous version was a little small, and a little off in its facts and implications. I made a page on European dueling swords a little more thoroughly (though I lost the references section, I'll have to recreate it).

-In this process we lost a minor reference to the estoc, which properly belongs as an inspiration for the rapier.

the librarian

The European dueling swords page is commendable, but gives little detail as how to recognize a rapier from quite a long way away. Maby the swords should be given their own articles, as the mode of operation and construction varied quite considerably through time, and instead have a European dueling page covering th social and historical aspects of this use of the weapons? --Anders Törlind

-Thank you. I would dearly love to get photographs or perhaps diagrams showing cross-sections, etc., though once you starting discussing variations you can go for a huge distance. The early rapier is just a thinner broadsword; then it starts getting longer and develops its own specialized contruction techniques and becomes the standard rapier, at least a meter long. And then it shrinks again as it transitions to the smallsword. And of course all along there were numerous schools of fencing with similar or widely variant ideas; many of these schools are known only by name.
-I do think the previous Rapier entry had grown redundant.
--Also, the evolution of the dueling swords, which forms a separate path from the evolution of military weapons and is a technical rather than a social field, deserves its own article. the librarian

-I rewrote this page to be actually factual and ended up reconstituting it as European dueling sword. Someone enamored of their own prose and unable to distinguish fact from fancy restored it, and I see that 213.114.131.107 just modified it to be internally inconsistent. Since I'm not going to get involved in a childish editing war, I will merely list a few glaring problems:

1. A rapier is a ... two-edged The earliest rapiers ('cut and thrust' rapiers) were two edged, but edges were deprecated and mostly abandoned in later rapiers.
2. The rapier developed at the very end of the 16th century...The rapier became popular in Europe in the 16th century the recently added internal contradiction. The rapier arose in 1500 and became obsolete around 1680.
3. In parallel to the rapier, other weapons were developed for use in war in response to the increasing protection offered by fully articulated plate armour. This has nothing to do with the topic. Also, the estoc is widely cited as an inspiration for the rapier.
4. the rapier, in various modified forms, gained usefulness on the battlefield this is news to me. However, it is often cited that the popularity of rapier-style basket hilts mounted on other types of swords has falsely given the imppression that rapiers were present on the battlefield.
5. The rapier is capable of both slashing and thrusting attacks only the early rapier is much use for slashing. This is mostly true because the balance and center of percussion of the rapier--way out towards the point--and the tiny sweet spot of the rapier made it ineffectual for slashing.
6. The rapier's slimmer cousin, the foil, is the sword most often associated with the duels of honour No, the foil is a nineteenth century invention, when duels were obsolete or conducted with firearms. So the "duels of honor" which were depicted were conducted with rapiers or smallswords.
7. depicted in literature and movies however it is certainly true that teh foil was more familiar to modern audiences, ligter and easier to wield, and more beautiful in its motion, so it was often used anachronistically in movies.

-the librarian

Come now, Librarian! No need to get overly defensive: If an article contains errors, by all means go ahead and correct them! Removing information, however, has long been a no-no on the wikipedia, and as I still saw a use for an article about a rapier (being a rather famous sword type in and of itself) I simply reinstated the article, hoping that you would perhaps correct it. Oh, well. --Anders Törlind

As far as I'm aware, librarian's comments above are correct. I made the changes and moved some text around. I'm afraid I had to delete some phrases that were just totally not true (as far as I know), but I tried to put the respective information in some other sentence. English is not my first language, and neither am I an expert in rapiers (I've trained the use of one for about a year, that's all), so I'd be happy to have typos and mistakes corrected. -- Janka