somehow abandoned or discarded and fighting men switched over to the new sword en masse. A considerable variety of large cutting and thrusting blades in fact persisted in wide use throughout the rapier's popular run of roughly 200-years. It is a matter of history that swords and fencing in Europe each altered in response to changing martial and social factors. It is important to remember that in the Renaissance, as in the Middle Ages, there was continual experimentation going on in the development of effective sword designs and hence, continual exploration in ways of using them. The social and cultural changes in the early 1500s that produced the rapier and its affiliated schools of fence, as well as those in the late 1600s which brought about the smallsword,dangerous and difficult to combat when in close. Doing away with them in civilian swordplay reduced the lethality of formal duels and made the ritual safer for gentlemen fencers to better avoid the more potentially lethal outcomes that such weapons tended to promote. The smallsword's ascendancy in civilian duels lasted some 200 years. It succeeded the rapier, but did not replace it entirely and cannot be viewed as either superior or inferior to it. Instead, it was adapted to the particular niche of its age. But, in keeping with views toward advancement in science and technology, it is understandable that fencers from its time would eventually come to see it as an evolution over swords that had been long out of common use. See: 27. Prior to the