RE: [HOE] Two weapons fighting

["Darrin Bright" <darrin@neobright.net>]

> I seem to remember from somewhere that the european swords are
> actuallynot
> all that sharp, and are mainly long bits of metal you hit people
> with, the
> cutting was a by-product.  as a consqeuence of this, I think they were
> quite brittle - so sai may work even better on that kind of untempered
> weapon.

That depends on what you mean by "european sword". If you mean a straight
double-edged longsword designed to defeat chainmail or plate armor, then
yes, sharpness really wasn't a concern. The primary purpose of that type of
sword was to batter the snot out of your opponent rather than to cut through
him, hopefully opening up a weakness where you could drive the point home
and kill him with a nice piercing wound. Since the edge would spend a lot of
time getting battered against metal plates or chainmail, there wasn't much
point to sharpening it, sharpening would make the edge brittle and lead to
nicks and flaws that could weaken the rest of the blade. The finest swords
in Europe of this type came out of Toledo, where the spanish swordmakers
picked up how to forge stronger steel from the Moores.

If you mean a cavalry sabre, however, then yes, one edge would be rather
sharp because these swords were designed to cut down and through unarmored
footsoldiers. The blade is curved because when it comes into contact with
another object, the full weight behind the blade is compressed to one single
point rather than along the whole edge. Since only one edge is sharp, you
can thicken up the back edge of the blade quite a bit. Its also widely known
how to make good steel, so I'd expect a cavalry sabre to be fairly hard to
break.

If you mean a rapier, however, this is a completely different kind of
weapon. The rapier blade was triangular, and not particularly sharp at all.
You could slash with it in a pinch, but it was designed to pierce internal
organs with the point. The blade had to be as flexible as possible, but it
was still quite thin. Hit it hard enough at a good perpendicular angle and
it would be easy to break.

> I also remember this wonderfull scene from a tv show, where this
> roman legionaire was theatening this party, and the defender of the party
> - some kind of ex-special-forces leionaire type, broke the guys
> sword that
> he had rested the point on the table, using his hand - chop!  not
> sure how
> realistic it is, but aparently it wasnt totally cinematic - that would
> have been possible!  cant temember the name of the show/tv movie now
> though...

A roman shortsword or gladius could probably be broken that way, if it was
made out of iron. Iron is much more brittle than steel. There are lots of
examples of martial artists breaking bricks, ice, and concrete blocks this
way.