myslím, že sem se to hodí, čerstvá odpověď na Quoře, jedna z nejlepších, co jsem za poslední dobu četla, ne-li nejlepší
How would an Olympic fencer fare in a duel against someone with rapiers in the 1600s assuming the other person was well trained?
The contest would be over in seconds.
My coach is a two-times Olympic medallist. His touch, timing and skills (even long after he won his medals) are extraordinary.
A duelist in the 1600s would be unlikely to survive more than a couple of duels. Duelling was inherently dangerous, and even training — before the invention of masks[1] — was frequently fatal. They might have some basic blade control but their footwork would be limited and their tactical knowledge at the level of someone who has had a bit of instruction right before the fight.
We actually have a much more recent example of this in real life.
Olympic fencer Aldo Nadi[2] fought a number of duels. Richard Cohen describes one of them, quoting extensively from Nadi himself, in By The Sword.[3]
If you’ve never fenced—or never fenced someone significantly better than you—it’s hard to understand what it’s like to fence someone who is several levels above you.
I once time-kept at a competition for two fencers. One was a competent local fencer, the other was a UK top-40 fencer: nowhere near an Olympian, but still someone with skill. The fight, to five hits, lasted five seconds. The referee called “en garde, are you ready, play”, fencer A stepped forward, lunged and hit. Fencer B had not even started to move. This happened five times in a row. Fight over.
I stopped fencing for four years when I moved to a different country, so when I started again I needed to do a lot of practice to get back somewhere near where I used to be. I experienced the same things as when I was a low-grade club fencer, but this time I understood what was going on. Before I realised what was happening, international fencers in the club had imperceptibly adjusted their distance. Then they lunged and hit. I had no time to react—no parry, no ability to get out of the way.
Irrespective of the weapon, this is what would happen between a 1600s rapier duellist and an Olympic fencer.
The duellist would be thinking about how to gain some tactical advantage, perhaps how to get in range so that they could launch the attack they had practised, but also ready to parry or step back if the other person steps forward…
The Olympic fencer steps in slowly without even appearing to move, because it's very hard to spot the change in parallax and almost everyone is looking for the telltale ‘bob’ as the head goes up and down with the advance. Except there is no bob. The Olympic fencer’s feet move and their entire body moves forward, but nothing else moves. Then they lunge and hit. The fight is now over.
There is no parry, no counter-attack or step back, because the 1600s duellist has not realised the other fencer is moving.
Again, if you’ve never fenced, or never fenced at a competitive level, you might think that fencing is about ‘touching’. That’s a mistranslation from French ‘touche’, perhaps influenced by the soft touches that were necessary before modern weapons. Modern fencing equipment requires a certain amount of pressure before the tip is depressed* and the light on the scoring box comes on. That pressure would — for a sharp weapon — be enough to produce a fatal penetration of the chest. Much of the time fencers hit far harder than that. I’ve broken ribs a couple of times when someone attacked me with a stiff blade (one of them was Fencer A, mentioned above).
We ought to clarify a couple of things here.
First, the rapier was designed around 1540. it was typically 104 cm long, which is 14 cm longer than an epee, and weighed typically 1kg, which heavier than an epee at 770g, but not enormously.[4]
It might have one or two edges, but it was primarily optimised for thrust. The cutting weapon of the day was the sabre. Rapiers had only limited cutting power and their length made them less effective at close quarters. Unlike a sabre, a rapier is not a good weapon for a quick counter cut.
Duelling was a matter of honour: exact agreements were made beforehand about the weapons, the course of the duel, what was permitted, and so on. It was not a brawl.
What’s more important to understand is that the duel was not a form of licensed murder, although around 10,000 Europeans did lose their lives duelling in the 17th century. The point of duelling was to determine who was ‘right’. This seems an odd concept today, but even as late as the 1870s nations actually went to war to prove they were ‘right’ and to defend their ‘honour’.[5] In most cases, duels were fought as a result of tempers boiling over with little or no thought for the consequences.[6]
As such, a duellist was not expecting a fight to the death. Vincentio Saviolo, in his 1595 Practise[7] takes time to specifically warn would be duellists that their lives were at risk when they fought—something otherwise discovered all too late.
What’s more, in most countries, if he killed someone duelling it would be considered murder just as if he killed him in any other way.[8] This is the key plot point in Romeo and Juliet, first performed in 1597 and so a highly contemporary play of the time. You can read a 1617 manual of fencing by Joseph Swetnam, The School of Defence[9] which reviews (then) current fencing practice in detail, as well as describing how a duel might escalate from a quarrel.
Rapier fencing was a new discipline. All kinds of things were being promoted by fencing masters which, with experience and the application of physics, we know don’t actually work. Rapiers are the ancestors of foils and epees, and the style of fencing we use today is the descendent of rapier fencing. By the time Thibault wrote Adadémie de l’espée[10] in 1628 it had advanced further. Thibault shows, in line with Swetnam’s earlier comments, how a fencer armed only with a rapier has an advantage over a fencer attempting to use an offhand weapon, such as a dagger, in addition to the sword.
A huge amount of the mechanics of fencing is pure physics. It’s the application of the principle of moments, of levers and of angles. In 1600, very little of this had been discovered. Science, in the modern sense, did not exist until Francis Bacon’s method in 1611. It took a generation for it to catch on. This isn’t to say that modern fencers are physicists (although some are), but that science has been applied not just to metallurgy, but also to how fencing should take place.
The slightly heavier and somewhat longer weapon doesn’t change that.
If you’re interested in duelling, I’ve written a novel called The Impostor. It’s set in 1862, so somewhat after this period, but it should be an entertaining read if you like (or are interested in) swordplay, swashbuckling and general bamboozlement. Available on Amazon.
You might also like to read The duel: a history of duelling, by Robert Baldrick, which you can borrow on Internet Archive for free or order on Amazon.
A couple of shoutouts to some of the comments (sorry I can’t include everyone)
Most duellits were the historical equivalent of the guy at a bar who starts fights with the expectation that his friends will prevent a fight from actually happening. The unspoken role of the duelists’ seconds was to prevent the duel from happening in the first place. The duel is called, the seconds are named, and then those seconds and every mutual acquaintance the two aggrieved parties have scramble to find some solution that will satisfy both parties and not kill anyone. Most duels that actually had fatalities represented a failure of this process. — Grammeroni
When I was in the army, one of my fellow team sergeants was an alternate on the US 1980 US Olympic Epee team. He joined the army after he the team didn’t go to USSR Olympics. Well one day he needed a practice dummy, and he asked me to stand in. After sticking me a bunch of times, I some how bet him I could touch him if he had a pencil and I had the sword. He got out a flack vest, and told me to put it on. At the buzzer, I had a pencil sticking in the chest of the flack vest. I didn’t see him move. — Fred Gibbs
When I was living in Germany, we had a new SCA [Society for Creative Anachronisms] member who was a trained fencer. I don’t even think they were highly ranked; they just said that they’d trained for several years and done some competitions. He was, of course, interested in our light combat. In his first tournament he ended up fighting our current grand champion. It was almost comical. Our “grand champion” yelled “touch!” before most of us even knew it had started. What followed was a big, incredulous smile and a “how in the hell did you do that?” conversation. — Michael Moyers
And, finally, a brief excerpt from the obituary of James Williams, British Olympic sabreur:
…[Richard] Cohen also recalled an incident at the 1992 Budapest World Cup event where James beat the American No. 1 Peter Westbrook, bronze medallist at the 1984 Olympics. On the subway returning to their hotel, they found themselves in a carriage with three skinheads who started to ‘eyeball’ James. “Two stops from the hotel, the skinheads got out and one pulled James out with him just as the train doors closed.
At the next station, Richard and coach Mike Matthews dashed round to the other side and caught a train back to where James had been train-napped. They were greeted by a strange sight: two of the skinheads were sprawled on benches, rubbing their heads and other injured parts; the third had disappeared. Of James there was no sign; it transpired that he had dealt with all three attackers in short order and was sauntering back to the hotel on foot.”
Notes:
*500g for foil, 750g for epee. Thank you Sam Signorelli.
Afterword
Thank you for the many positive comments this answer has garnered.
There are a few comments, though, which rely on the same three misconceptions, which I will address here.
Not knowing what ‘Olympic’ is.
The Olympic Games take place once every four years, and only the top ranked fencers in the world are allowed to compete.
The local college team is not an ‘Olympic’ team. Most college fencers don’t even have a national ranking, let alone an international ranking. The gap between them and an Olympic fencer is unimaginable.
The difference in weight and length is not signficant for the approach I’ve outlined. Most fencers have tried heavier and longer weapons.
Not knowing what 1600s duelling was like.
There’s a lot of romanticised notions of history, largely drawn from films, role-playing games and pub-banter after an evening of re-enactment.
I’ve used contemporary source material in the answer and linked to it, to be sure I’m not spouting my own romanticised version of history.
Most young men fighting duels in the 1600s were doing so because they got into an argument while drinking and wouldn’t back down. They were not hardened killers, and most of them did not properly assess the risks. This is why the fencing masters (see ‘His Practice’ in the links) spent whole chapters warning young men about this.
Training in the 1600s was largely limited to drills, practice with a dummy, and some slowed-down, elementary lessons with the master. This only changed with the introduction of masks in the late 18th century. The reason is that fencing at speed, even with baited blades, is frequently fatal without a mask. Most fatalities in fencing in the 19th and 20th centuries were when masks failed. The standards have been steadily raised, and there haven’t been any mask-related deaths since the 2000s.
Duels were fought to extremely strict rules. Your second’s duty was to shoot you with a pistol if you broke the rules. It wasn’t a brawl or a bar fight.
No matter how many films you’ve seen, no matter how many stories you’ve read, no matter how many video games you’ve played, none of those are history. They are fantasy, spun from the imagination.
I love fantasy and all these other things, and I have no issus with a novel such as Scaramouche (set about 180 years later) which takes great liberties, but we need to not confuse the two.
Assuming that the Olympian is at a psychological disadvantage because he has never killed anyone.
In reality, an Olympic fencer is just as likely to have killed someone as a person preparing to duel with rapiers in the 1600s. Many Olympians are soldiers—it’s one of the cheapest ways to stay in what is otherwise an expensive and all-consuming sport. Most duellists were first timers. Implicitly, half of all people who duelled to the death died each time a duel was fought.
Olympic athletes have enormous amounts of bravura. You don’t get to win at that level simply by being more skilled—you have to be willing to go to the utmost limits.
All of these points were made in the answer, but the same three misconceptions seem to come back in the comments once every couple of days. Perhaps they only read the first paragraph.
From this point on, any comments resting on these misconcpetions will simply be referred to the end of the answer. I will be culling them every couple of days.
Footnotes
[1]
https://www.leonpaul.com/blog/the-development-of-fencing-masks/[2] Aldo Nadi - Wikipedia
[3] By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers, and Olympic Champions; 10th anniversary edition (Modern Library Paperbacks): Cohen, Richard: 9780812969665: Amazon.com: Books
[4] Rapier - Wikipedia
[5] The Duel In Sixteenth-Century Italy
[6] ‘That damn’d thing called honour’: duelling in Ireland, 1570–1860. By James Kelly. Pp ix, 320. Cork: Cork University Press. 1995. IR£35. | Irish Historical Studies | Cambridge Core
[7] Vincentio Saviolo His Practise
[8]
http://www.jstor.org/stable/764775[9]
https://web.archive.org/web/20110717125340/http://tysonwright.com/sword/SwetnamSchooleOfDefence.pdf[10] Académie de l'espée, ou se demonstrent par reiglés mathématiques sur le fondement d'un cercle mystérieux la theorie et pratique des vraix et iusqu'à présent incognus secrets du maniement des armes a pied et a cheval THYSIA 2422 | Digital Collections