Interested to know if people still had swordfights in the 1750's? In the New World? In Europe? If so what was the nature of them? What sorts of swords? Mainly rapiers?
Appreciate it.
Short answer: Yes.
Slightly longer answer : Swords were used in duels and in warfare in Europe and North America until World War I.
Answer more appropriate to this sub: Oh boy, this is going to take a bit. So to set a bit of useful context on the development of swords and swordfighting in general, and to oversimplify a very nuanced topic a bit, suffice it to say that by the mid-18th century in Europe and North America, the primary swords that people tended to carry and use were the saber, something like this.
http://www.sellingantiques.co.uk/300586/rare-18th-century-hungarian-cavalry-sabre/
And the small-sword, something like this.
It is important to note that the major differences between who was using which type of sword TENDED towards more military swords being sabers and more civilian dueling weapons being small-swords, BUT this is by no means a universal truth.
For example, Donald McBane, published in 1723, writes in his The Expert Sword-man's Companion: Or The True Art of Self-defence, about the use of what we would term a small sword. BUT he shows it's use in a manner that would later become more well known among users of the saber.
Sir William Hope, published in 1707, writes in his "New Method" that the hanging guard is the superior one for the use of the sword for staying alive, at least for an Englishman.
As far as the "Nature of them"? That is a difficult question to answer. What is the nature of any fight for anyone for any reason? The sword, at least at that time, was considered a sidearm, appropriate to carry. Legal in some places, illegal in others. It was used in war, in duels, and in other crimes. For offense and defense. In Europe and North America.
Now as for what would have differentiated a swordfight of that era, from say the rapier duels of a century before? Or from a modern fencing match?
The main thing is that by the mid 18th century swords were not being designed or used around the idea of having to defeat other, naturally superior, melee weapons on the battlefield. Complicated handguards or heavy gauntlets don't do a bit of good against a gun, BUT we are still earlier than some of the more complex saber hilts that would arise out of the European military uses of that weapon.
So this is a period of, on average, very little hand protection in swords AND very little armor. Because the sword has really become a secondary or tertiary weapon on the battlefield, and dueling had started to become the purview of the pistol.
IF you used a sword in 1750, you were likely either out of ammo, or in a duel or other criminal behavior. Now dueling is it's own separate thing that would require an entirely separate answer for, so I will focus mainly on self-defense, and military uses.
In self-defense, you would mainly use the point of your weapon to keep your opponent, or opponents back from you and then try to wound them or get away as quickly as you can.
Military uses of the sword tended towards melees, which are quick, violent and ugly, and since you likely have a rifle, possibly a bayonet, and maybe even a pistol, if your sword is out something has likely gone VERY wrong. That said, we DO have several accounts of swords playing a decisive or difference making role in combat from this period and even later. And of course cavalry from this period and later often used sabers in the charge after firing a volley as reloading on horseback could be cumbersome.
This all supposes of course, that you are on land. Naval combat was a different story. The limited ammo, tight quarters, and close nature of ship-to-ship combat of this period meant that swords were actually more likely to be used and shorter.
I could go on with this for some time, but I feel like I ramble about this too much as it is. I hope I answered your question, and feel free to ask any follow ups you may have.
Here is also some links to sources:
https://www.amazon.com/Expert-Sword-Mans-Companion-SELF-DEFENCE-Transactions/dp/1542618320
https://books.google.com/books?id=RF_OHAAACAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&hl=en
For a slightly different perspective:
https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Carlo_Giuseppe_Colombani
Carlo is effectively the last of the Dardi school of fencing, so what he was publishing was very, VERY OLD school at the time he was publishing it, but it was still around.
This is a much more common manual of the period:
It's in German though, and I am not CURRENTLY aware of any translations.
Yes.
Swords were used in both military and civilian defense applications in the 1750s.
While fencing strictly as a sport was in its earliest conception in the 1750s, really the 1760s, fencing and the use of various types of swords for combat was common world wide in the 1750s.
In Europe and the European colonies:
Civilian use: Schools for teaching fencing and defense had existed for centuries by the 1750s. By the 1750s the concept of the "Code Duello" had been widely accepted since the Renaissance and it was expected that gentlemen would be able and willing to defend their honor to the death. So personal duels of honor were quite common in the 1750s. The Eighteenth century was the golden age for teaching and writing about smallsword or courtsword dueling to gentlemen and aspiring gentlemen and of gentlemen killing each other with swords in duels over matters of honor. These are the types of swords that most directly influence the types of military dress swords officers in militaries across the world carry carry now and most directly influence the three types of sport fencing taught and practiced across the world. Rapiers had fallen out of style by then due to their length and inability to easily cross and uncross. The shorter smallsword was better at controlling angle of attack and Dueling reached a fever pitch in the early 19th century and subsided afterwords. While men might still carry swords for personal defense as before, they were less likely to use them that way.
This practice applied in European colonies as well. I cannot find the source at the moment, but if my memory serves, John Adams as an ambassador to either France or England, in the 1770s and 1780s, had to buy a courtsword to wear to appear before the Kings of France and England on certain occasions. While a sword would be forbidden in other cases, the point is that not having a sword, in certain situations, was tantamount to being improperly dressed.
Outside of the gentlemanly classes of Europe, more lawless, less advanced, peripheral areas in the European sphere saw people carrying swords as well. Gaelic Highland Scots would regularly go around carrying all kinds of weapons, including their baskethilt swords. The Cossacks of Wild Fields (a huge area of what is now Ukraine but at the time was a barely populated battleground between the Turkish and Russian Empires and Tatar hosts) and the Cossacks in Siberia were regularly armed with all manner of weapons to defend themselves. The men of the Caucasus Mountains in southeastern Europe such as the Georgians, Circassians, and other Caucasian men had an ancient history of being warriors and carrying weapons such as swords into war. There is actually a rather famous photo from the early days of World War 1 of Caucasian men showing up in some city, possibly Tbilisi, covered in chain mail, rifle cartridges, outdated guns, and swords saying they had heard the Czar was at war and they had come to fight for him.
Military use:
Officers - Commissioned officers of every European country and non-commissioned officers of most European countries carried swords as both a sign of rank and a last ditch defense weapon. They were usually small swords or sabres or cutlasses, depending on the regiment and service, but some carried more irregular swords that reflected the ethnic makeup of their regiment, such as baskethilted swords if they were serving in a Highland regiment.
Cavalry- Cavalrymen would carry sabres and other swords into battle for the purpose of cutting down their enemies into the 20th century and in the 1750s a cavalryman's sword was still his most heavily relied upon weapon. I've handed a few swords used by Hungarian hussars from World War 1 and they are amazing weapons. The tradition of martial sabre fencing for the purpose of cutting down your enemies on the battlefield was alive and well in Hungary until the communists stamped it out. The cossacks who savaged Napoleon's lines of communication during the invasion of 1812 were using swords and lances as much as firearms.
Part of the long term retention of swords in the cavalry, in comparison to other services, was that the cavalry has always served four main purposes, 1.Reconnaissance 2. Harassing the enemy, 3. Shock attack, or using a fast, kinetic charge to break the enemy line, and 4. Pursuit of a broken enemy. Swords and spears, or lances, are perfect tools for jobs 3 and 4 and as such they remained in service far longer. People were not being euphemistic when they described cavalry "cutting down" retreating enemy.
Infantry - Infantrymen also still used the sword in battle into the 1750s. Famously the Jacobite revolt of 1745 by Scottish Highlanders heavily relied on their infamous "Highland Charge" where they would fire their firearms and then quickly close with British militia and regulars using their swords, dirks, poleaxes, and other hand held weapons and cut through the bayonet welding enemy. This failed at Culloden due to facing better trained British soldiers, poor terrain, and poor leadership. But Highland regiments would carry their signature baskethilts into battle until World War 1. The image of an officer with his sword drawn leading men into battle was not merely a romantic image. The sword he carried would be used by him in battle, again, until World War 1.
Artillery - Officers in artillery batteries would also carry swords both to denote their rank and as a a last ditch weapon to defend themselves if attacked, just like their fellow officers in the infantry.
Naval - On the sea, swords, especially the cutlass, would be used in naval combat as ships still regularly closed together and the crews would fight literally hand to hand against each other to take each other's ships. There is a US Navy instruction book from the late 19th century teaching sailors how to use the cutlass in combat that you can find online.
Outside of Europe and the European Sphere of Influence:
Swords were even more highly used in combat outside of Europe than they were in Europe, where they were still an integral part of daily and military life.
Firearms had been largely adopted across Asia, even if they were not always of the same quality as European arms, especially in terms of artillery. And in India. China, Korea, Persia, and the Middle East, swords continued to be used in much the same fashion as in Europe. They were military weapons designed to cut down enemies at close quarters and as personal defense weapons in lawless areas.
And since firearms had not become as central to warfare, due to being less powerful, hand weapons such as swords retained a higher place of prominence.
Japan: While firearms had become the most important weapon in Japan by the 1750s, the sword still held, and holds, an important part in the culture and society of Japan. I am not sure how to go deeper into the subject without saying a lot of things that are common knowledge. But the practice of kendo, the art of fighting with swords, remains popular and it took the radical changes of Meiji era to stop the samurai class from wearing swords in public.
In the parts of the world where firearms had not been as widely adapted, such as parts of Indonesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the parts of the Americas that had not had as much contact with Europeans, hand weapons remained even more important.
And while swords, per se, were not necessarily as common in these regions, they and other hand weapons were equally important at the time.