Rapiers

[Rod-Thornton]

Shane. Agreed. In the service of the prince speaks plainly about a military soldier and in melee situations. Silver, though, from what I have perused through, seems to also have as much political disdain in cursing the rapier (and the Italians who were successful in his country teaching it), as a functional disdain, so I be looking for more opinions than just Silver's (thinking he wrote with a bit of bias there). (Jeff, it seems it was actually Swetnam, not Silver who said "trust to thy heels" -which, if he had said it, would have appeared inconsistent with his general disregard for the weapon, if he thought it inferior to the cutting sword.

Statistically, for those in other study groups who have sparred rapier to longsword, what have been the success ratios, and on (or countering against) which cuts? I.e., 7 out of 10, etc. and what was the other guy trying to throw(i.e., oberhaus, unterhaus, thrusts, etc).

[Allen Johnson]

coming up with statistics like that is really hard because you cant measure or take into account a persons ability and luck. We could take some time this Saturday and take down some numbers doing something like this but I really dont think it will prove anything. The longsword might win 9 out of 10 times but what the numbers dont show is that the Rapier guy just got dumped by his girlfriend and isnt exactly on the top of his game. Two people doing the same cuts and same techniques are going to be doing them at different speeds and the results could just be that one was faster than the other. In essence this is really what swordsmanship is. Thats why there are no 'super moves" or un blockable techniques. We can make educated guesses based off certain criteria as to an outcome. I think this is exactly what Silver was doing when he talks about "advantages" in different weapons. Like I mentioned earlier, the longsword guy has to respect the speed of the thrust of the rapier, and the rapier guy has to respect the power of the cut of the longsword. But knowing this, one person might bait the other into using their strong point in order to counter more quickly. Of course the other guy might be planning to do this as well and thus the physical chess match begins. Even though you are using different weapons, the mindset is still the same as two paired longswords- hit the other guy without being hit yourself.