Rapier vs. Chain/Plate?

[Dain]

Actually the Rapier's history is pretty bloody, but I don't think there is a single case involving armor (honestly displayed armor anyhow...they used to strip off shirts because some dishonest duelers wore light armor under their clothes giving them an unfair advantage...hard to hide armor when you're down to bare skin. I believe they also use to wash blades off with alchohol in some of the more good natured duels as well since a scratch could go septic and kill you back in those days). An excellent book on the history of dueling, swordplay, musketeers, etc,.....is "By The Sword". I forget the author's name off the top of my head, but he's some massively famous and talented Sabreur from way back. The book is very entertaining, and written well (ie. he keeps it interesting and it doesn't put you to sleep). It talks about lots of fencers from lots of countries (including the orient even). There were quite a few deadly women fencers out there as well, some so deadly they openly dressed as women instead of disguising themselves as men...and were bad asses enough to make anyone rue the day that they mentioned anything about it. There are amusing stories too...one fantastic fencer looked fairly androgenous so one wasn't really sure what the sex was, and cross - dressing for a while to evade enemies confused the issue further...it became a massive mystery that even hit the press and became massive topic of discussion. People were so obsessed with the topic that after the fencer's death, they held a secret autopsy to determine the mystery of the fencer's sex for once and for all. Most amusing.

[Dain]

Just got home and looked at the book.

"By The Sword"
by Richard Cohen
ISBN 0-375-50417-6

History/Sports category

To see and/or purchase some functional historical replica's there are many countless websites, but one such site I've been fairly happy with is:
www.museumreplicas.com

ok, just looked and they've re-vamped their web site...little hard to navigate and find pictures now. Take Historical Swords and Daggers link and go from there. I don't care for the new web page format. They used to have descriptions with small pictures you could click on to get better pictures...now you have to just go by the name and click on it to get the picture. Kind of painful. The one I bought is #1-862 Steel Swept-Hilt Rapier (but I bought the Brass version that I can't find there anywhere now. It's still in their catalog though, so it must be there somewhere).

They have a pretty good Rapier section. I actually bought one and was very pleased with it (Swept-Hilt Rapier & Main Gauche. I bought the Brass hilt version. The steel version would have been more realistic for durability, but since I'm not likely to actually need to USE it, I went for the "pretty" version). Nice blade, bone handle. Was historically used in late 16th century through early 17th century (that's late 1500's through early 1600's for those that don't speak "century" talk). The weight suprised me (very light), as did the Main Gauche's design (having never seen one before, and having only the two dimensional picture to picture it with prior to buying it, I assumed the whole hilt (including the curved tangs or prongs or whatever those jobbies coming off the hilt on either side of the blade are actually called) was all in the same plane, but when it actually arrived I saw to my surprise that they actually are at about a 45 degree angle up from the blade. In other words, if you were to stretch a string between the two prongs, the string would not touch the blade, and would be about an inch or so above the blade, making it a whole lot easier to use them to catch and trap the opponent's blade because they actually stick out like tongs).

Their delivery time was very quick (week or so I think), and the quality was great. I had no problems with them whatsoever. If anyone else knows of web sites that they've personally had good experiences with, I'd be interested in hearing about them so I can do some more shopping.

[Tash]

I once heard the Rapier in 15th century Italy compared to the Tommy gun in 1930s Chicago.  Sounds like it's sort of an accurate analogy.

I think I need that book.

[Dain]

Not a bad comparison. Although officially outlawed, dueling was almost always pardoned, and over 1400 some odd duels a year was the norm in the height of the day. When the Rapier made it to the orient, the devastation was so massive they actually ENFORCED the outlawing of Rapiers because everyone was dying like water.

Really good book. It also covered some history on sword manufacturing and a ton of other things I'm sure I'm forgetting about.