An odd bit about intent.

I've already mentioned that full intent is a arguably impossible. The safety measures we put in place have an effect on how we fight and we simply don't want to hurt/seriously wound our opponent. You can fight with a lot of intent, but to me, full intent involves a certain desire to hurt your opponent. (This is backed up by Swetnam).

But thinking about this in another fashion. There are second and third intentions, made necessary because the first blow is probably going to miss unless you're lucky. The speed of longsword and the ability to use both hands and quickly cancel momentum makes it much easier for that first blow to be with intent.

Rapier has a lot of holding back-Capo does it by staying with the weight over the back leg and only going in once the response is known. If my recollection of Thibault is to be trusted- you make a commitment to an action halfway through a step, so there's (thanks Mr Silver) quite a lot of dancing. Swetnam talks a lot about feints.

And this is where the language goes a bit awry. The specific moves have an intent, but that is to exploit/discover/create a weakness in the guard rather than to attack. They're deliberately non-committed because you are ready to change action and direction at the first sign of things going wrong.

These things have a kind of intent, but it's as part of the whole fight... anyway, I've stopped making sense to myself, there's an outline in my head of a ...something... based on the focus that feints are far more necessary in rapier than they are with longsword.