the late Renaissance as a personal dueling tool. Most popular in the 1700s,
they are sometimes confused with rapiers. They consisted almost exclu-
sively of a sharp pointed metal rod with a much smaller guard than the
rapier and finger-rings. The blade was typically a hollow triangular or
lozenge shape much thicker at the hilt and tapering to a hardened needle-
like point. Most had no edge at all, and were merely rigid, pointed, metal
rods. They were popular with the upper classes especially as decorative
fashion accessories, worn like jewelry. However, in a skilled hand the small-
sword was an effective and deadly instrument. Until the early 1800s, it con-
tinued to be used even against older rapiers and even some cutting swords.
The small-sword rather than the rapier led to the épée and foil of
modern sport fencing. The small-sword was a more poised, somewhat for-
malized, dueling weapon. It became the gentleman’s weapon of choice in
duels of honor during an age when the sword as a weapon of war was well
past its prime and an exclusively thrusting style of swordsmanship had be-
come a combat form in its own right. In the middle of the nineteenth cen-
tury, this combat system was transformed into the genteel “sport of fence,”
and the small-sword was adapted into the light, flexible, modern sport ver-
sions. The classical small-sword, though often disregarded as a weapon of
martial study, is a deceptively violent and effective little tool, exceptionally
quick, accurate, and easy to underestimate. It was intended primarily for
codified dueling and not for facing other weapons in freestyle brawling (al-
though such combats did occur).
Modern sport fencing has far more in common with this humble
weapon than it does with rapiers or any earlier Renaissance swords. Mod-
ern fencing “weapons” were never real swords. Modern fencing tools are
much lighter, softer, and faster than these historical weapons. The contrived
rules of play create a specialized sport that observes its own rules and con-
straints and has very little to do with any elements of Renaissance swords-
manship. Real rapiers, being heavier, stiffer, and sturdier than today’s
sporting weapons, cannot be used in the same manner as the implements
of modern sport fencing—and vice versa.
Despite the emphasis on the rapier from the mid-sixteenth through the
late seventeenth centuries, the early Renaissance weapons should not be
viewed exclusively as primitive “proto-rapiers” around which developed a
less sophisticated or less effective fighting art. Renaissance cut-and-thrust
methods were complete systems in their own right. The systems of personal
combat described by early Renaissance Masters of Defence and the swords
they favored were practical, fully developed, highly effective, and successful.
Renaissance fighting men were required to face the cold reality of vi-
olent death, and their lives very often depended upon the sudden and im-
mediate use of personal skill at arms. From literary, artistic, and archaeo-
Swordsmanship, European Renaissance 585