Okay, so if you look at one of the plates from Thibauld (Book 2 Tabula 11), which one may find in Armaria version (pic 14) or in Anglo's *Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe* (plate 83 and especially plate 84), then we are treated to a rather cocky picture of smiling Thibauld defeating a longswordsman with his magic-circle rapier.
So anyway, Mr Anglo does a nice job of describing the faultiness of the idea behind this confrontation.
I would only add that my main specific disagreement with Thibauld is the disingenuous nature of the portrayed confontation as shown in the upper-left part of the tabula, where Mr Rapier wards in a sort of Long-Point, while Mr Longsword wards in Ox, and thus Mr Rapier outreaches Mr Longsword with a sort of Ueberlaufen.
What? Any half-way smart longswordsman could easily ward in his own Long-Point, so I find Thibault's assertion here ludicrous. Of course the one can outreach the other when the wards have a differing reach. How pointless is that? When both fighters take similar wards of similar reach, then it is a different game.
I find this sort of portrayal ridiculous, and made all the worse as such seems the sort of thing which also unfortunately seems to lend credence to the misthinking of some modern foyning fencers, whether sporting, classical, theatrical or whatever, regarding the brute inferiority of older swordsmanship.
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