On the subject of swords...

This ranty and lengthy post was motivated by dozens of novels (NUF or otherwise), films, tv series (documentaries or not) and games that seems to have no idea on what to call swords of European origin...but mostly because I'm a pedantic bastard.

To be fair, people of the time period simply refer to them as just 'sword' in their language regardless of what kind of sword it is with the exception of some sword type in some situations i.e. comparing two types of sword design. The obsession of putting each variation of the object in specific category is mainly due to our modern sensibilities and at the time people simply didn't obsess about categorization as we do now. That simple pedantry combined with the inbreeding of wrong information for an extended amount of time, compounded by historically illiterate cretins (exhibit a of such despicable creatures, though if you look at a lot of textbooks and even 'academic' papers on the subject you'll still sadly find a lot of them) that likes to parrot out that wrong information has lead to the sad situation that we have today.

The premiere example of this is the term "broadsword" which is used by a lot to refer to medieval one-handed swords or sometimes for medieval two-handed swords. It is a term that was, in the context of history, actually used by people of that period in history to refer to a lot of swords with the exception of the medieval and renaissance period,. No sources (I've looked, couple of sources I can point out for high quality scans of are Bibliotheque Nationale de France, The Morgan Library, Bodleian Library, The British Library) such as chronicles, treatises, manuals, manuscript, documents (armouries and blacksmith's catalog, orders, inventories and wills) used the term. While there are texts that describe swords as broad (a broad sword as opposed to a broadsword), the earliest that the term broadsword has been documented to have been used to refer to a specific type of sword was in the 18th century referring to Scottish basket-hilt swords (also called Highland broadswords, Claymore, Basket-hilted claymore) most likely to differentiate them from another popular sword design at the time which is the smallsword and why that is should hopefully be obvious, the term was also used refer to sabres, hangers and backswords all of which have wider blades than the smallsword and all of them being derived from the same system of fencing as the broadsword (Roworth's Art of Defense on Foot is a good example) with slight variations to accommodate varying hilt furniture (variation of guard positions if the sword has a simple knuckle guard, a half-basket or a full basket hilt) and blade designs (scottish broadswords are double-edged while backswords and sabres are single edged though sabres have curved blades) which makes it understandable to refer to them with that broad term.

Medieval one-handed swords were simply called 'swords' by the people of that time regardless of the blade width, though practitioners of historical fencing, arms and armour collectors and academics of that particular field field that know better accept the term 'arming sword' and 'sidesword' (is the precursor for the rapier, basically arming swords with complex hilt) for the late medieval/early renaissance one-handed swords nowadays to scratch that obsessive categorization itch.

Spoiler: A broadsword (1798 Pattern Scottish Infantry Officer Broadsword of the Wellington Army)

Spoiler: A sword that is broad but is not a broadsword (dated 1400 displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Now on to longswords. If I remember correctly, longswords were what D&D calls arming swords or one-handed swords that are long. Can't really blame Gygax and Arneson who seems to have used Victorian era sources for research, some 18th century fencing masters such as Donald McBane if I recall correctly used the term to describe a long one-handed cut and thrust sword that is not a rapier.

Widely used terms today that refer to longswords are bastard sword/hand-and-a-half sword, though there are what we would call a proper bastard sword which was probably the transitional design that appeared arguably at the very late 12th century (I'm at the 13th century side of the argument for good reasons) and were simply arming swords with enough space in the handle for the left hand the term longsword/bastard sword/hand-and-a-half sword usually means the same type of sword. Longswords in their heyday are weapons designed to be used with two hands, though one can wield them with one hand it's just that doing so would make it more cumbersome (a proper bastard sword would be a good compromise). German fencing manuals refer to it as langschwert/langes schwert which is simply a translation of longsword, English sources also used the term war sword and knightly sword with its appropriate translations for other languages of the period (épée bâtarde is simply the French for bastard sword that was believed to have originated in the 15th century for example).

Spoiler: Scans from the work of Fiore dei Liberi, a late 14th century Italian sword master

A possible reason why it's called a hand-and-a-half sword is that while predominantly used with both hands, it is preferred by a lot of masters to use it in one when you're within grappling distance...and yes that fourth image on top is a kick to the balls, Fiore has no compunctions about underhanded stuff.

I've had conversations where I mentioned the two handed swords and had people say to me "Don't you mean greatsword" or "It's a Zweihänder", and I told them that they are the same which earned me a funny look. The term claymore/two handed sword/greatsword was used in English, Zweihänder/Bindenhänder for German, Spadone/Spada due Mani for Italian, Montante for Portuguese and Spanish and so on. All are variations for the word two-handed sword, sword of two hands, big sword and BFS which makes any of the mentioned ones valid when talking about great swords.

These swords are also known to have a time-travelling attribute to them because of its tendency to show up in movies set in the historical time period of the 12th century or earlier despite the fact that these things weren't really a thing until the 15th century, if you want to know how ridiculous that would be in the setting of Braveheart (Mel Gibson's sword is of 16th century design...so was his kilt), Robin Hood (the Kevin Costner one), Ironclad, and Kingdom of Heaven (Liam Neeson was teaching stuff from Filippo Vadi's treatise written during the 15th century) then imagine Napoleon Bonaparte and his army equipped with M1 Garands and Thompson sub-machineguns or a guy running around the trenches of the western front in 1916 armed with a perfected version of the experimental LSAT Light Machinegun that fires caseless ammunition. In short, any longswords and greatswords in a supposed historical piece of work set earlier than the 13th century has a bad case of anachronism.


...see how ridiculous this is?

Spoiler: An example of a 16th century greatsword

Final stuff I'll probably talk about is that rapiers are not smallswords. Lots of people tend to confuse an epee (simulator for smallswords) as rapiers, smallswords in general are hilted spikes mostly constructed with a triangular cross-section and are devoid of any cutting edge. Rapiers are cut and thrust weapons that lean heavily on the thrust, if you don't believe rapiers can cut I suggest looking into Girard Thibault's work where he details a technique in which you take a big step off-line against the opponent after setting their blade aside and continuing it as a wind up for a powerful cut aimed at the back of the target's neck and he's not just the only one who teaches cuts in his system. Rapiers aren't light in comparison to most swords as well and is a continuation of the confusion between smallswords and rapiers. Rapiers weigh the same on average as falchions and arming swords (around 1.3 kilos) though some rapiers can weigh as much as a longsword, they were popular civilian sidearms but they were also brought to war with the expectation that they'll have to face poleaxes, halberds and greatswords and hold up against such things (Spanish Tercios were known to have carried them as sidearm, they are basically the Glock of their time) while smallswords were carried by people in the battlefield that were not expected to do a lot of fighting, specially in melee but needed something just in case.

For comparison, I pulled out two examples found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here's some statistics:

Spoiler: Smallsword

Overall length is 96.8 cm
Blade length is 80cm
Weight is 13 oz

Spoiler: Rapier

Overall length is 125.7 cm
Blade length is 109.2 cm
Weight is 2 lb 10 oz

In hindsight, any discussion about misconceptions about aspects of the Medieval period seems to start with "Well, it started with the people of the Victorian era"

...welp, I guess I'll end my first blog post here.