Quote Originally Posted by Incanur View Post
The smallsword has Donald McBane in its favor, which really counts for a quite a bit. McBane claimed that smallsword wielder with coat wrapped around their arm and wet napkin under their hat has odds over the opponent with broadsword and target. He also asserted that thrusts kill while you can take forty cuts and still fight.
Well, that depends on the sword which cuts you. I certainly wouldn't want to second-guess McBane, who is justifiably famous and without a doubt both a pragmatic man of action and an expert fencer - but by his day, the quality of swords had declined sharply (pun intended), these were not very often hand made works of craftsmanship of the Medieval era, but more often (particularly in the English army) mass-produced, crude blades made for the cannon fodder. A well made, sharp sword, or for that matter, a kurkri knife, can deliver cuts you won't easily recover from, whereas a smallsword (particularly the stronger type of smallsword known as a Colishmarde or Konigsmark) can be pretty effective without being particularly well made or even sharp.

McBane beat various men with broadswords himself, so he can't be easily dismissed. On the other hand, many in the period - including McBane at times - fought without the intent to kill for social and cultural reasons. (Killing people tends to really piss off their relations and/or the government.)
This was definitely the case in earlier eras as well: people don't realize that even in informal duels such as McBane so often indulged in, it was common to still fight according to some rather vague rules of 'fair play' and / or, with moderate force to prevent actually killing one's opponent unless they had already escalated the fight past all moderation, for exactly the reasons you note.

Additionally, heavy garments would have protected against lighter cuts, especially to the body.

However, on the whole I think McBane was an extremely skilled swordsman but I suspect other masters (George Silver, Zach Wylde, etc) correctly attribute odds to the cutting sword over the smallsword.
In Silver's day he was really talking about rapiers and sideswords, smallswords came later.

G