Questions about bringing a rapier to war.

[Stacy Clifford]

I'm not saying guys like Meyer or von Wallhausen would have been fooled by such a sales pitch or didn't know what they were really holding, just that they had to make money and impress rich clientele and sometimes terminology gets fudged a little bit so that everybody can pretend they are richer or more fashionable than they really are. Just like now I'm sure there was a good mix of honest, practical people who called a spade a spade too, so I could be right or wrong about any individual master in this regard. I'm only saying that any time money, employment and advertising is involved (and I have little doubt that writing a manual was a form of advertising), you have to consider salesmanship as an uncertainty factor in your interpretations. More important to us is that they knew how to use them and left little doubt about it.