Rapier

This is the latest book I'm reading:

I've learned a few things:

• The reason men's coats button left over right is so it leaves the sword hand free if you need to unbutton your coat during a sword fight - as I have occasionally had to do.
• Women are escorted on the gentleman's right arm due to the sword being on the left hip and an encumbrance.
• Rapiers proliferated in Elizabethan times due to their much lower cost of production. This fuelled a high increase in violence (a lesson for the NRA - violence decreased considerably when the wearing of swords in public was banned).
• Because of it's lower cost, the rapier was originally the weapon of choice of the lower orders and its use was frowned upon by the nobility, who were used to hacking each other to death with the broadsword, where size, strength and endurance won the day, rather than skill and tactics.
• The Elizabethan fencing master was considered on a social level with a juggler, actor or vagabond, but this changed once the nobility adopted the rapier out of necessity.
• The Germans turned fencing into a sport and the custom of shaking the right hand came from there, using the sword hand to signify disarmament and peace.

A certain personage is mentioned in the book - the splendidly named Palfry Alpar, who was former Arms Master at the Royal Hungarian Military Academy. His name sounds like a quaint village in the heart of  the Cotswolds, a bit like Meryl Streep, although that is in Somerset...