Talk:Myrtenaster/@comment-96.8.204.173-20150719053619/@comment-6582316-20150720074257

First I adressed the point about armor, ie rapiers were used at a time when heavy armor was not common on the battlefield. The militaries that used it were seafaring, and most sailors dislike wearing very much armor due to the whole drowning thing that can happen, and it came at a time when armor in general was falling out of style as military tactics shifted dramatically, by the time rapiers were widespread pikes were not used often.

Further more if you read my comment I also addressed the idea that rapiers are flimsy. they are not, rather they are flexible. Rapiers are made of steel and even the weakest steel is nothing to sniff at, and rapiers were often made with the best steel available tempered to a rock hard tip and a springy body, this means that some rapiers of very high qhality can bend to a halfcircle and spring back to there shape afterward with little to no bending of the blade itself.

Next pikes, halbreds, and  zweihanders would never be used against a rapier because they are formation weapons not skirmish weapons. Pikes and halbreds are specifically used to counter cavelry, or mixed in with swordsmen to form a formiddable front line against a charging foe or in a measured advance. the zweihander or greatsword was an extremely specialized weapon meant to break pike formations. it is not at all suited for open combat and anyone who was using a greatsword facing up against a rapier weilder of equal skill would die, quickly, due to the reality of those weapons. The fact is that pikes and greatswords are designed for a 'crush' of people, tight formations with little room to move but forward, and rapiers are desinged for a looser melee, the result of long lines of men slowly marching toward on another as they fired muskets repeatedly, or fending off boarding parties, or taking a beach head. Besides saying the rapier guard is bad because a zweihander could break it is silly, pretty much any guard hit by one of those things gets wrecked, broadsword, bastard sword, you name it, the basket hilt is designed to keep people from chopping your fingers off not stop five pounds of steel moving really fast. Just don't try and take a blow to the hilt, problem solved.

Moving on to length, you accuse the rapier of being useless in battle because it is in the middle of weapon lengths but again this comes from failing to take the realities of the battlefied of the time into account. In a crush, yes, the rapier is not useful, but without a formation the pike isn't very useful, and without pikes to smash out of the way the greatsword is pointless. It really comes down to the situation. For example, during the British occupation of India four men armed with scimitars killed fourteen British soldiers armed with high caliber rifles. This was not because Scimitars are better than guns, it was because even though the soldiers had a clear shot at the attackers the panicing crowd prevented the soldiers from dispersing, and the rifles were so powerful they could shoot through one man and kill the man behind him, so they could not shoot for fear of killing their comrades. Just so on a medieval battlefield pikes are very useful, and on a rennasance battlefiels pike formations are blasted apart with cannon fire while rapier weilding muskateers skirmish near the front.

You also mention grabbing the rapier, which was an actual technique and is adressed in the manuals. Generally you had to be pretty bad to end up with your blade grabbed as hypothetically you should be lunging to stab the guy lunging for your blade, and 9 times out of 10 the idiot impales himself, otherwise you just move the sword out of the way and slash at whatever part of his body he left exposed, because as I said there is usually a full 2 inches of sharp tip which is more than enough to gut someone who isn't careful.

Finally I would like to point out that alll the critisims you leveled at the rapier are problems with swords in general. They aren't especially good against armor, they break easily (more easily then rapier actually because the steel is harder and therefore more brittle), they are too short to go up against polearms and too long when an opponent is very close, they lose to guns, and someone with a gauntlet can grab them since steel can't cut through chainmail. Yet swords were used for hundreds of years by all sorts of people in all sorts of ways, and the reason why is simple: people knew this and took it into account. Instead of letting someone grab your sword you cut them, you avoid letting heavy things like maces and great swords hit your guard, you dont't charge head long into a pike formation, and you cut or stab at the chinks in your opponents armor. It works, it worked for centuries.

You still die to guns though, hence we use them most of the time now.