Sword fighting is something that is commonly depicted on TV or movies, where two knights clash swords together, stopping each others blow with the edge of their blade. Afterwords, they are still sharp enough to behead or cut someones hand off. Is this at all accurate? Wouldn't they have dulled?

by Rebel_Porcupine

I do a lot of bushcraft and own a number of knives. Simply having a knife slip from a piece of wood onto a rock will greatly damage it; it will either roll the edge (dulling it) or in extreme cases chip it. The thought of slamming two of my knives together with the force of a sword fight makes me cringe - the amount of damage it would cause would be unrepairable.

My questions are as follows. In real history, is this kind of swordfighting remotely realistic, or were shields normally used to block? If this kind of Hollywood swordfighting did happen, wouldn't the swords have been damaged to the point where they were useless, or at least extremely dull?

Thanks in advance for any insight.

atreyal

Here is a post asked a while ago by /u/experuhment

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/39no2r/is_swordfighting_in_movies_realistic/

Which in short the answer is not realistic. Talhoffer has authored a few books on different techniques used in combat and some people have actually made videos using the techniques if you want to see some. Usually they result in a much quicker fight that is not very dramatic for movie effects and a fully armored opponent has a much bigger advantage over an unarmored one then most people think. Worth seeing as some of the depictions in his books look really unconventional.