Elheru Aran wrote:
No.
Rapiers are strictly civilian blades, and they were adopted largely after armour went effectively extinct on the battlefield.
They appeared around 1500, when people were still fielding fully armored horsemen by the thousands in battle at that point and well after it! Armor did not go extinct for a long time afterward, and around when that happened the small sword appeared as a much lighter weapon in turn. You might think of the Rapier as light, but its still much thicker and stronger then what came later, at least until the 19th century when steel that wasn't rubbish appeared and all the old design limits go out the window.
They have the cross-section they do in order to be long thrusting blades, poking their way through the fairly thick fabrics people wore back in the day. Duelling weapons par excellence. People didn't wear armour to duel, the era of rapiers being well after the judicial duel or harnisfechten bouts went out of fashion. Occasionally there were a few tricks like chain-mail being worn underneath one's shirt or a mail gauntlet being used to grab blades, but for the most part, the rapier era was well after armour was out.
The main point of the rapier was self defense in an era of epic instability and change, and people did in fact walk around in armor back around 1500, which is besides the need to defend yourself against Italian bandits that are just the local mercenary army between jobs. Dueling was only one of its purposes, and as we see once people began making pure dueling swords they tended to be much lighter, because the nature of a duel let you ignore some practical limitations of a general purpose weapon.
Now there are military blades that resemble rapiers, often having very similar fittings, but the distinction is a matter of balance-- they're geared much more towards a cut-and-thrust action rather than being a purely thrusting blade. Again, in this period, armour was very much on the decline, being the prerogative of either the very wealthy or the very well equipped military units such as cuiraissers. Your average foot infantry wasn't going to have armour, and it wasn't necessary to bear a sword capable of defeating same.
Lol. No. In 1500 everyone had armor, and not a small amount of it. It took the Spanish musket to devalue armor, and that really only forced things by about 1650 due to improvements in the ROF, and backed by major improvements in artillery mobility, and even then it was primarily an anti cavalry weapon. At which point BTW the front ranks of pikemen still typically had extensive plate armor, just not so much the rear ranks, though we have good reason to think that was functionally always to case in some armies.
The key thing is that for defeating armour... you didn't want to use a sword. If you did, you used one designed for the purpose, yes... but you didn't use a toothpick. You used something more like a proper *pick*-- a long, robust bar of steel with edges, a guard and a handle. Or, hell, you used a poll-weapon, which was a premium choice for most armoured fighters on foot anyway.
Yeah, and they typically carried swords or long knives as backup weapons. Going in to battle with only a pole weapon was a horrible idea, all the more so since it was the shorter pole weapons which died out first, since they could not counter lancers and lost their other advantages in the face of gunfire, halberds are basically what the musket replaced, while the archers were replaced by smaller firearms earlier. In fact for a lot of the 16th century the dedicated swordsman was on the rise, though with varying weapons, because if you could get them into a tercio style formation they could hack it to pieces after you disrupted it with artillery and muskets. Which BTW, is exactly why the Romans triumphed over the Greeks around 1,800 years earlier and put an end to pike formations for so long after. Disrupt with catapults ect...then charge to close quarters before the enemy adjusts.
And once gunpowder and muskets became more common, pretty much nobody wore armour. There were a few rare exceptions like Haselrigg's Horse in the English Civil War, but that's about it.
Gunpowder was common in 1420, muskets appeared around 1520 but the pike and shot formation was not obsolete until about 1700 when the socket bayonet was invented. Armor was reduced over time sure, but heavy plates did not go away for footmen until the pike also did because it could still stop pistol fire, and using an armor piercing weapon from horseback was not really possible in that era. Certainly it was not with any real battlefield effect. It also made it much harder for enemy swordsmen to actually hack the formation apart, since again, they must target a weak spot or unarmored limb rather then just stab to the torso, and the Spanish and many others trained dedicated swordsmen to do this, literally ducking under the pikes if need be.
Your idea that armor was extinct before even the 30 years war is just false.
), when Anakin got close enough to physically grab his arms and made Dooku unable to move while he chopped. Not many 80 year old men are likely to overpower a twentysomething at his physical prime. We've seen this before in the prequels, with Qui Gon getting winded in his duel with Maul, and eventually being stabbed because of it. It seems age catches up with us all, even if you're a force user.