You're right, but this wouldn't prevent people from attempting it, and as you pointed out, nothing is preventing a wealthy corrupt individual from hiring dozens of mediocre swordsmen to defend his honor to the death if necessary. Most people will back down if they know the other person is willing to die to ensure victory simply because at that point they don't even have to win, just have to ensure that YOU lose.
On that note, you can't hire lowly but decent swordsmen to go after a proper gentleman, a knight or a noble. If it's obvious that the challenger is of lower social standing or a man of no honor he cannot challenge the other. That's actually why honor was more important than life. With your honor intact you can challenge a peer. Without honor you can be insulted freely and you can't do anything about it, you can say what you want and you'll be called a liar and that your word doesn't count and you can't challenge them for saying that you're a liar. That offered some level of protection against misuse. As for powerful people, well, by definition they have more ability - more power - to do what they want. It means that they have more means to deal with any enemies or rivals and more ways to reward friends, clients and allies. The book on dueling etiquette goes to great lengths to explain the relative power of different titles and social classes as well as factors that influence the relative standing such as whether you are a free agent or answerable to a liege lord - for even nobles, counts and even kings might answer to someone above them. While this would not make a count the equivalent of a mere burgher it would make him quite close to a free and wealthy member of one societal order below him in case where he himself was answerable to someone above him. But really, it would not be that easy to find good swordsmen for hire of higher standing and if you could they would already cost quite a lot more than commoners. And of course, it's not a study of how things should have been or so, it's just how things were, how things worked and how to deal with how they were. In this sense I quite like how there's very little in the way of "oh dear" and instead just pointing out that "as a burgher you really, really should not go about insulting the mother of the local duke".
I mean, the class system by itself lends plenty of reign for abuse, simply by limiting the field of challenge. But I'm sure there were plenty of Sons of that felt no compunction against hiring a few bully boys to push around those who weren't their peers rather than bringing into question their own honor for abuse of their station.
Hundreds of years, an entire continent - that fits a lot of individual stories. Some lords were puritan and strived to be good Christians and some were horrible. There is a reason why no wealthy man would ever travel alone. If you had servants and people working for you, you'd have them accompany you armed when you had to go out of the house or travel. Often you'd also bring in family members with their respective staff and some friends. And it was often tricky to draw a line between friendship and employment for you would obviously enlist your most trusted friends first into your retinue. Life in general wasn't very safe. Renaissance is especially highlighted by the necessity for every gentleman to carry a rapier with him at all times whereas the previous eras would often have various limitations on weaponry while in city or so with people outside the city typically carrying their weapons with them or having them close by. And yes, that means that by Renaissance there were a lot of swords around.
Spoiler: Potentially NSFW (mild blood) "SPANISH TERCIO AFTER THE BATTLE by JORDI BRU. From the Battle of Grolle reenactment. Photo by Jorge Moreno Taniñe."
At war of the wings (SCA thing). And for rapier combat they do use the dueling rapiers and fencing type protection.
Eric whom I know from the states and who has started frequenting SCA events really praised the SCA rapier fencers for their skill. Dueling rapier is what many people in these days call the Italian style especially long and slender profiled rapiers. Londoners and Spanish preferred them slightly shorter. Many types existed, less mass in the blade makes it hit less hard in the cuts but at the same time it moves faster which helps with cutting. The bigger difference is blade presence in binds. At the time there were no sword shops with "military" or "dueling swords" for sale. You either ordered one with features you preferred - and could afford - or you bought one of what the smiths had prepared and felt were good or would sell well. Kinda like there's no difference between a military .338 bolt action rifle and a civilian .338 bolt action rifle.
Dr Toby Capwell's XV century armor It is correctly polished to mirror sheen and unlike many modern armors that we see in various circumstances it is highly authentic. Here's a nice video about making armor. Watch it, the guy shows how he takes flat plates of steel and hammers them into shape It's all about the curves!
Some of the best armor had flangets on the gorget that locked the helmet in place, allowing it to rotate like a turret while also holding it in place and allowing impacts to transfer directly to the rest of the armor. This helped enormously to resist neck injury and concussions while also allowing turning of the helmet unlike some of the stiff 'fixed' helmets that tried the same.
Yeah, it was always a trade-off, field of vision/vs head protection, personally I never understood why the high collar gorget was never a staple adoption. Made it virtually impossible to get at the neck or head except from the front where you had the best FoV and ability to defend yourself. There's a reason why John Ringo's high sci-fi armor didn't have a 'head' part, only the arms and legs were seperated from the main body of the armor. Combine the total protection (at the time) of medieval plate armor with sophisticated audio/visual capability, 360 FoV and no blind spots. (I refer to his stuff frequently, man has a knack for realistic science fiction)
Spoiler: Some developments of helmets Everything started with the coif introduced in around X century. With the rings Europeans learned to combine riveted rings with solid ones and the thickness of the weave would alter between areas based on the threat level. Later Europeans adopted the wedge rivet. Aventail was a next development, a mixture of helmet and coif, really, the coif becoming entirely replaced by mid-XIV century. Aventail was often combined with a standard, which is a ring made throat protection that stands on it's own. Bascinets started to introduce a full protection for the head, emerging in the famous 'center of research' Padua in 1281, a city which is very well known for the many things developed and mastered there through the centuries. Bascinet then developed to the great bascinet in and around year 1400. Towards 1450 the angular forms become almost entirely replaced by rounded ones. It is at this time that gorgets become introduced, many helmets still had aventails and they were heavy, one of the advantages of gorget was to move some of that weight off of the head and to shoulders. As one can see from the above great bascinet designs they can be rather immobile, gorget allows more freedom of movement. Especially these great bascinets that combined the plates that would later become the separate gorget were really strong but as the users themselves soon opted for a separate gorget instead of an integrated one, it is apparent that the increased protection at cost of turning the head was not desirable. Below is a bascinet worn with an early separate gorget. Then there's a major fork in the development of armor. Italians replaced the bascinet with sallet. Below a light sallet. Especially the Germans fell in love with the sallet and it became hugely popular in there, below it is combined with a bevor. Whereas in England and France the armet became the preferred replacement for bascinet. The armet then developed on to close helmet. Comparison of close helmet (left) and armet, depicting how the close helmet opens up around a single pivot point. The close helmet also has an integrated bevor. Bevor of Maximilian I And a burgonet, just because they're epic. Unlike in Vikings the show, they only appear in XVI century and are strictly a cavalry helmet.
Keep checking my ranking. I am currently world's 3497th best ranked longsword fencer out of 4503 ranked fencers. Last of January and again in spring I will be taking part in tournaments to add rapier and dagger to my account and to try and get a couple more wins. So far that seems difficult, youngest one is going through terrible two's and that is really having a huge impact on my ability to train - and to sleep! Here's my new mask paint, which is what I am betting on enabling me to simply win all the fights with impunity and not without some laughter. The diamond is not called a diamond where I live but 'salmiakki' or salmiak in English, the pattern is the icon of our province so it befits as my symbol when I represent where I live. And I am hoping that on my 40th or 50th birthday my relatives will see me worthy of receiving the traditional mora knife with 'hela' belt. Example of how it is worn (random pic from google):
And this happened today... I think I was more surprised than he was! I thrust at him and hit him on the hilt and woosh, the sword just catapulted from his hand! Tried to grab my sword and get close but I quickly withdrew and jolted it back and imagine if it had been sharpened to razor sharpness! Ouch!
Better to lose a few fingers than die, though. Odds are in that era it wouldn't have actually been 'razor' sharp. Sharp enough to cut with, sure, but rapier was never meant to kill with the edge, even when slashing it was more frequently the tip than the blade that performed the actual cuts and since the edge was frequently used for parrying if your steel wasn't of prime quality being too sharp could lend to chips and cracks and potentially snapping of the blade. Better to keep your edge a bit more on the obtuse side and cut with the pointy bits ^.^
You're thinking more of the smallsword and epee there. Rapiers - the every gentleman's and many a soldier's weapon from 16th and 17th century that goes from 38" up to 47" had a few forms but most of them were two edged and sharpened to razor all the way up to the needle tip. While some of the 47" extreme cases might not the typical rapier of ~38-44" and roughly 2.5lb etc. not only cuts quite well but it even can easily cut up to an inch into solid block of wood (45deg angle) when you miss your intended cut target. It is true that some of the swords could break too, the tip itself might break if it hit solid ground like cobblestone pavement - the whole sword wouldn't be broken of course but the tip part could easily be damaged for the needle like tips. And the narrower the tip is the harder it is to actually grab it. Even my blunt sparring sword which has features the sparring safe wide profile all the way up and is completed with spatulated tip - even this one is difficult to hold on to if I quickly and forcefully pull it back - now if it had a pointed tip and sharp edges - ouch. In many HEMA rapier tournaments trying to grab the blade near the tip is simply regarded as a wound to your hand, taking heed of the fact that the sparring sword does not behave in this as well as a real one would. In Europe many swords of the era had a diamond or some other profile which meant that the blade angle would not typically make the blade super thin - the Japanese swords influence a lot of opinions regarding swords and it is true that katanas for the most part weren't made of spring steel but a harder but more brittle steel which was attempted to be offset by having an iron heart or one of dozens of different patterns of merging steel and iron sheets to limit the blade fracturing to the edge and sometimes also provide a second 'spine' of stiff steel on top of soft iron in between that acts as a barrier stopping any cracks from moving further. That said there were a lot of smiths across a lot of countries in Europe over ~200 years making rapiers alone nevermind all the other swords, steel types and with potentially same smiths using different steel sources for different swords and all, some sticking with obsolete methods like 13th century methods still being used in places in 19th century and even 20th century while others moving forward at a faster pace. But in general few people who knew what they were doing would like to sharpen a blade edge too thinly. It will cut quite well enough even without being paper thin an inch from the edge and rapiers - not all - would be used to deliver fatal cuts. Now, it of course depends where you hit - you're not going to cut through someone's upper arm entirely severing the whole arm and cuts to torso are less likely to be very lethal and same for outer thighs. Really, you should try a sharp rapier. It's a beautiful weapon. And that's no 1000$ sword there, that's a 260$ Windlass Musketeer Rapier, cutting both half tatami and full tatami with ease.
One more thing, I have friends at the club who are like "oh man, a sword's gotta cut well" and all but when we got a second rapier and fenced rapier versus rapier - everyone loved it. It's a fierce weapon and it's lethalness is hard to appreciate before you actually try it. And what's more they all - despite being accustomed to full speed sparring with longswords and whatnot - came back saying "man this is heavy and strenuous to my arm and back!"
