Portuguese rapier blades

[Radboud]

Originally Posted by urbanspaceman

Am I right in realising that two styles of rapier existed contemporaneously?
The long, heavy, battlefield sword with cutting edges; and the not-so-long, narrow blades with no cutting edges for civilian wear.

I think our modern mindset likes to group everything into its own neat pockets, while the reality is that several types of swords co-existed simultaneously depending on the owners' location, fighting style, purpose, preference and wealth. Some of these swords we can easily group into a 'rapier' pocket, others into the 'smallsword' pocket. But many are just too grey.

So-call 'civilian rapiers' and smallswords were carried on the battlefield, while we also see soldiers in period art armed with complex hilted rapier style swords.

Maybe grouping swords by the fighting style rather than appearance would be easier. For example, rapier styles use both cuts (delivered from the wrist) and thrusts with a grip where you loop one or two fingers over the crossguard. Smallswords are thrust only with a grip that 'pinches' the quillon block. In contrast, broadswords and backswords are held in a hammer or handshake grip and used with sweeping, whole-body cuts.

Matt Easton has recently published a video with his criticism of the 'Military Rapier' term that raises some good points.