Use
Small swords were used both by the military (were they served more as a sign of a certain rank rather than a real weapon for close combat) and as a dueling weapon. The very height of the small sword's widespread popularity was (as mentioned above) between the middle of the 17th and the late 18th century, when it was considerd fashionable by aristocrates ("no gentleman was dressed without his sword" - contemporary idiom of the middle of the 18th century), but it was still used as a dueling weapon until the middle of the 20th century. For instance, Gaston Deferre and René Ribière used larger and heavier versions of the epee, which both had small sword-blades instead of the flexible epee-blades (which are used in sport fencing until today) in their duel on April 21st in 1967 at in Neuilly, Paris, in France. The use of the small sword for infantry is covered in the US manual of 1861 titled "The Militiaman's Manual". It can be obtained here: .
In modern times, the sword is often used as part of court uniform and dress. A german version of the small sword called "Trauerdegen" ("sword of sadness") is still in use by the Reitendiener de:Reitendiener of the city of Hamburg in Germany.
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“... it is use, and use alone, which leads one of us, tolerably trained to recognize any criterion of grace or any sense of the fitness of things, to tolerate ... the styles of dress to which we are more or less conforming every day of our lives. Fifty years hence they will seem to us as uncultivated as the nose-rings of the Hottentot seem today.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)