You might want to discriminate between battlefield application, where almost always the sword is secondary weapon, like a pistol for todays soldiers, or the duel. In Historical European Martial Arts, the context in the fencing treatises is most of the time a duel between equally armed opponents. But you’re right,…

You have three ways to wound with a sword: thrust, slice and cut. Definetly no bludgeoning apart from a mordschlag. When you fight an armored opponent, you will mainly use half-swording techniques where you try to manouver the point in weak spots like visor, back of the knees, etc...