From: morgan@sitka.triumf.ca (Morgan Burke)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.fencing
Subject: Duelling vs. "Swordfighting" (was: french grips)
Date: 16 Dec 1992 01:20:57 GMT
Organization: TRIUMF, Vancouver BC
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: sitka.triumf.ca

WARNING:  This post contains a lengthly religious discussion of modern
versus medieval sword fighting techniques, and is a continuation of the
discussion of french vs. pistol grips.  If the topic bores you, skip it.

If you are mildly interested, my main point is that weapons are
optimized for a specific purpose and period.  Comparisons of
weapons from different contexts are meaningless and contrived.
Given that modern fencing weapons are closely related to actual
duelling swords, the latter would have benefited from modern
developments such as pistol grips.  Heavy cutting weapons from the
medieval period, as has been unnecessarily pointed out, would not.

If you are genuinely interested, read on:

FOILS VS. BROADSWORDS

First, all you people who are ridiculing foils as battlefield weapons,
take your gripes somewhere else.  You won't get a debate from me (and
I'm a foil fencer!).  Foils are practice weapons and could not possibly
be used to kill someone except under the most contrived of circumstances.
Some of you interpret this statement as an admission of the superiority
of battlefield weapons to duelling weapons.  If you are one of these
people, you are really missing the point.

The fact that I have had to make this point repeatedly shows that some
of you are not very clear on the role of foils in warfare.  Let me try
and draw a parallel to show the absurdity of this line of reasoning.
Imagine someone stating that katanas generally outperform shinais on the
battlefield.  The very fact that someone would find this surprising, or
even remotely interesting, shows that they have trouble distinguishing
between deadly weapons and practise weapons.  (The shinai-katana comparison
is actually fairer than the foil-broadsword comparison;  at least they are
contemporaries and are used with similar techniques.)

This thread is not about foils, it's about pistol grips, and whether they
would provide any benefit to "real" fencers (as opposed to "sport" fencers).
In my postings, I have repeatedly referred to the epee as an example of a
real weapon that would have benefited from pistol grips.

EPEES VS. BROADSWORDS

Some have tried to make concessions to reality by promoting an epee
versus broadsword fiction, but this is scarcely less absurd.  Epees and
broadswords are separated in history by 150-400 years, and were devised
to solve completely different problems.

A broadsword is optimized to deal with the realities of 16th century
field warfare, namely multiple opponents using heavy armour and shields.
When armour became obsolete, so did the broadsword (actually, it evolved
into lighter and faster weapons).  An epee, on the other hand, is optimized
to deal with a completely different reality, namely a single unarmoured
opponent.

Let me draw another parallel to illustrate the false comparison of
widely separated technologies:  A gun enthusiast informs you that black
powder muskets are superior to .22 calibre machine pistols.  His rationale
is that machine pistols have never been used on the battlefield, are
inferior for penetrating armour due to their small calibre, and are only
really intended for back-alley honour duels between drug dealers.  Most
people would think those are dumb criteria for evaluating guns, but
that's exactly how our broadsword enthusiasts evaluate their swords.

Dakin:
>I think Morgan's argument just took a nosedive here.  He argues that
>duelling weapons are "real" weapons, but that they cannot stand up to
>a weapon of war, such as a broadsword.  In doing so, he invalidates his
>whole excuse for a pistol grip... [deletions]
>Secondly, modern fencing weapons are not useful weapons.  You said 
>yourself that a broadsword  or rapier would defeat it.

I said no such thing.

I did say that duelling weapons were not intended to stand up to
battlefield weapons, and never had to.  The reverse is also true.
Such comparisons are therefore contrived and meaningless.  Weapons
belong in a context;  broadswords on a battlefield, epees in a personal
duel.  Outside those contexts, each weapon is absurd.

You have placed an epee into a broadsword context and concluded that
it is inferior.  No kidding!  An epee is not designed for blocking
powerful cuts, penetrating armour, or keeping ground.  Place the
broadsword into the epee context, and you will come to the reverse
(but equally silly) conclusion.  The broadsword is too clumsy and slow
to parry or take the epee, the broadsword fighter's intentions would be
completely transparent to the epee fencer, and the epee fencer is free
to simply retreat instead of parry the broadsword attacks.

Mark Allen Kampe:
>If you wanted to kill somebody, you would not choose a foil [sic] (or even
>an epee).  If you did, you would probably find you could be beaten by
>any combat sword forged since the bronze age.

Such notions are absolute fiction.  Death was the result of most duels
(with the exception of 19th century Germanic duelling, in which the
successful duellist would slash the opponent's cheeks).  Any sword
design that would enhance the duellist's prospects would be quickly
embraced.  If a 5-pound broadsword was genuinely more efficient at
killing one's enemies, it would have been used.

Heavy weapon techniques were not developed for killing people;  they were
developed for smashing through heavy armour and shields.  The usual result
of an effective heavy weapon attack was broken bones, internal hemmoraging,
stunning, or loss of balance.  Partly for these reasons, weapons like axes
and maces were among the most common of infantry weapons.  The killing blow
(often a sword/knife/spear thrust through a chink in the armour) was normally
a followup attack.  The fact that heavy weapons vanished at the same time
armour did shows that they were inferior weapons for single, unarmoured
combat.

DUELLING VS. "SWORD FIGHTING"

Mark Allen Kampe:
>When did dueling swords come into existance?  After guns had rendered 
>swords obsolete!  The weapons and the techniques for using them are 
>artificial and would be ineffective in real sword combat against an
>opponent whose goal was to kill you (rather than fence with you).

On the contrary, the weapons and techniques are pure.  It is the
presence of armour, shields, and other forms of "cheating" that debased
sword fighting into a clumsy parody of the real thing.  It was only
after the yoke of armour had been thrown off that sword fighting really
developed and flowered.  Pure sword fighting involves two combatants,
two swords, and nothing else.

Given that the whole point of a duel was to kill your opponent in an
honourable and unfettered way, I think you are misjudging the deadliness
of duelling techniques and weapons.

By the way, guns rendered armour, not swords, obsolete.  Swords
continued to serve a military role for centuries after guns came to
dominate warfare.  They only disappeared after hand-to-hand warfare
declined in frequency (c. 1850-1900).

Anyway, responses along the lines of "duels are not the same as battles"
are irrelevant.  I do not wish to debate about swords on the battlefield,
despite the attempts of a few SCA-types to redirect this conversation to
a discussion of 16th-century claymore technique.  If you would rather hack
people up with glorified axes and call it sword fighting, I won't stop you.
I prefer fencing  ;-)

This debate was supposed to be about whether pistol grips would enhance
the performance of a real duellist, and not simply the competition fencer.
I have yet to hear somebody address this point directly.

..................................... Morgan Burke
                                      morgan@sitka.triumf.ca