I practice Historical European Martial Arts as a hobby, with my club having a strong focus on 14th/15th century German longsword in the Liechtenauer tradition. During one class, my instructor talked about the 16th century fencing master Joachim Meyer and how his teachings on the longsword were unique in that they almost completely lacked any thrusting techniques. He then went on to say that this reflected the social mandates of the period, that (and I'm paraphrasing heavily here as I don't remember his exact words):
In a lot of German towns at that time, the law was that if you got into a duel or a fight, you would first have to make strikes with the flat of the sword to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. If your opponent didn't stop at this point, you would then be permitted to make cuts with the edge to first blood. If your opponent still didn't stop at this point, you would then be able to make thrusts and kill them, provided you were willing to face the legal consequences of murder. [My instructor emphasized that] to thrust was to murder, and that Joachim Meyer said that "Germans don't use thrusts."
Additionally, this Wiktenauer page on Joachim Meyer says:
Meÿer sought to update—even reinvent—[longsword teachings] in various ways to fit the martial climate of the late sixteenth century, including adapting many techniques to accommodate the increased momentum of a greatsword and modifying others to use beats with the flat and winding slices in place of thrusts to comply with street-fighting laws in German cities (and the rules of the Fechtschule).
However, I'm having some difficulty finding other historical sources to confirm these statements. So I was hoping that the people at /r/askhistorians might be able to shed some more light on this subject.
Joachim Meyer's own books illustrate many thrusting techniques. Check out the guy in the back of this one. Or just about everyone other than the highlighted guy in this one.
But there is a difference between teaching when your opponent can be killed with a thrust, and advocating for the use of that same technique in the sorts of encounters your students were likely to find themselves in. Longswords were versatile weapons in the 1500s and could be used in both civil disputes and open battle, after all. So it quite plausible that an instructor could teach thrusts while yet admonishing students to avoid using them outside of open warfare. Thrusts were indeed considered particularly deadly, and an intentional thrust in a civil dispute may have been taken into consideration by judges when considering a charge of murder. I am not knowledgeable in 16th Century German law on this particular point, but 16th and 17th Century law all over Europe was attempting to cope with the culture of duelling and deciding how to distinguish between self-defence and murder when deaths occurred in private duels.
Oblig. ref: The Duel in European History: Honour and the Reign of Aristocracy, V. G. Kiernan, Oxford Press, 1988. Also Joachim Meyer published his own books, and the illustrations are not only terrific, but all over the internet, so that's about as primary as you can get.
To start off, my source for this is B. Ann Tlusty's "The Martial Ethic in Early Modern Germany" accompanied by HEMA-specific study both of Meyer and other sources.
Tlusty depicts a civic life in 1500s Germany that involves significant potential for conflict: burghers are expected to take turns as town guards, or to send members of their households to do so, and outside of that all members of the town are expected to actively keep the peace when a dispute arises. As such, men of the town are often armed, so conflicts involving weapons, including swords, were not uncommon.
These fights were based upon culturally understood rules of fair play. Much as today it might be considered reasonable to be involved in a frat row brawl, but drawing a knife (or pulling a gun) in that circumstance would be unacceptable, so in this context we see that (among other things) attacks from behind, attacks after the opponent has been knocked down, and, yes, attacks with the point are all considered "overkill" (for lack of a better word). To quote Tlusty: "Stabbing was an action associated with unexpected attacks ... not honorable swordplay."
That said, in a street fight, escalation was certainly possible. That escalation, though, followed cultural expectations, as we can see by the penalties for those who violated those expectations: justifying one's own actions (even to the point of killing) by demonstrating that one's opponent had resorted to more drastic measures first was the best way to avoid fines, or worse punishments.
So (and here's where I switch into HEMA mode), in a broad sense, the idea that a fight might start with attacks with the flat, followed by attacks with the edge, and lastly by attacks with the point is reasonable. However, consider that the longsword (I assume this is the weapon you are training primarily) would be very unlikely to be the weapon utilized in any civil disputes: by Meyer's time it was used primarily in a sporting context (the fechtschule - think boxing club with blunt swords), with occasional military applications. The primary weapon for carrying around town (where such conflicts would occur) would be some form of rapier or other single handed sword. So, conventions of striking with the flat in Meyer's longsword are unlikely to be directly related to the same concept of fair play and escalation that would govern a street fight.
The lack of thrusting (to the kill) in Meyer's longsword material is better explained by the context of utilizing the weapon in (essentially) a training context with little to no protective gear. He clearly does utilize attacks with the point with other weapons, including his rappier material, which would be more applicable to the inter-German conflicts described above. Given that his weapons are presented in a way that can be construed to be a single, cohesive system, it is reasonable to assume that in a combat application (rather than a fechtschule application) Meyer would advocate thrusting with the longsword.
It's a little early, but the longsword section of Talhoffer's 1467 text is full of thrusts. I'm looking at the Mark Rector translation right now.
Particularly interesting is plate 73, which shows a thrust to the face as a counter while fighting in the lists. I'm just an amateur with a relevant book here, but it seems odd that something can change from a sporting technique to murder over a few decades.
I've heard it as "Germans don't use thrusts on other Germans"--implying some kind of social-legal understanding about fair play between them. But by that point the longsword was already fading away and no longer had the same role in lethal judicial duels.
