The derp of the sword (snark)

Smallsword, mid-18th century

Online discussion groups tend sometimes to be weird echo chambers where people repeat each other as authorities, add to and encourage one another's suppositions and at last come up with ideas existing only in the hothouse environment of online fora.

Case in point--While looking online for something else, I found some talk going on in sword and fencing discussion boards that concluded that the smallsword must have been ineffective, lacking in "stopping power."

Let us grant that it is true that the smallsword was a deficient weapon. Then let us apply a little logic and see where that takes us. (Nyuck, nyuck.)

We must conclude that the typical socket bayonet was likewise ineffective, since it had a smallsword blade profile: hollow ground, triangular cross section.

Top to bottom: Socket bayonet, another socket bayonet, rod bayonet, knife bayonet

The numerous triangular, cruciform and square section poniards, stilettos and bodkins coming down to us as relics of bygone eras were poorly conceived weapons, obviously.






WWI trench knives made that way were likewise wrongheaded work.




U.S. Trench Knife M1917

We may likewise conclude that the inferiority of this blade type escaped the attention of military planners for a long time. Survivals of generally smallsword-like forms of bayonet may be seen even into the 20th century--pointed rods lightened by flutes, able only to make wounds like those from a smallsword. The Chinese SKS bayonet is an example familiar to many today.






The trouble is, I suppose, that back when people actually fought with and died by bladed weapons, they did not have the Internet to tell them that they were doing it wrong.

. . .

That is enough send-up, I suppose. In the era in which swords were in common use, it was often claimed and argued that a point thrust, as from a smallsword, was more decisive and deadly than a cutting attack with a saber. I find the Internet verdict that the smallsword was ineffective to be flawed because it is based on the wrong question. "Stopping power," the key criterion in the derpful evaluation, is an idea, and a term, from the world of firearms. Imposing it on a discussion of swords is misleading. There were many instances of saber cuts not being delivered with full effectiveness, due to the opponent's efforts to avoid that very outcome. The question was not how hard you could hit him with your saber if you got the chance to hit him as hard as you could, but whether you could hit him at all. He was parrying, he was moving, he was trying to kill you. Hitting flat with a saber or only nicking the opponent, or making a cut too rushed and feeble to be decisive, not unlikely outcomes in those circumstances, rather moots the question of what would happen if you took a full deliberate swing at a stationary man. Moreover, heavy clothing, as well as equipment worn on his body, would often protect a soldier from the worst effects of a saber stroke. The saber was a tremendous weapon, but direct comparison of its destructiveness to the smallsword's thrust is quite deceiving, simply because its full effectiveness was not always possible to achieve.

The idea of optimizing a sword for thrusting is found in the bronze age. If such a weapon is a mistake, people have been making it for a long time.