The recent thread on swords piqued my interest, so I took a look at some fencing pages and a few sword pages. I got the distinct impression that (obvious remark immanent) fencing is a highly stylized form of swordfighting.
I also got the impression that it is just about the only extant western style of swordfighting. Although I found sites devoted to fencing, I didn’t see any, aside from some eastern martial arts pages (for clear reasons limited in their treatment of the matter),and a few glancing references to Phillipine martial arts, regarding other sword techniques. It seems that there are a large number of swords that have no current martial technique associated with them.
So…
My questions are:
a- Are my generalizations above correct?
b- Are the fighting techniques used in fencing generally applicable to other swords? (I suspect the answer is no.)
c- Are non-fencing techniques generally sword specific?
d- What are, or were, the techniques associated with other types of swords (as examples, say, the European longsword and the Malaysian kris)? Are they still taught?
e- What basic skills are needed for all swordfighting; and how universal are they?
Basically, it struck me as odd that so many people are interested in creative anachronism and medieval Europe, but that there seems to be very little information on the techniques of the time. Did it boil down to “hack at each other until someone dies”?
By the way, if I wanted to learn the basics of (non-fencing) swordfighting, where would I go?
IANAE (I am not an expert), but actually, there’s plenty of information on European style swordfighting. You just have to know where to look. Here’s a couple of sites to get you started:
Thank you, I appreciate the links. Having given them a look (with a more detailed analysis to follow), it seems that they pertain mostly to classical fencing and duelling. Since I’m also wondering about the methods, be they martial art or not, of using non-duelling (i.e. heavier, shorter, longer, two-handed, etc.) swords, I’ll expand a bit.
It seems like some breeds have very specific, and obsolete, uses. (The zweihander comes to mind.) But for the more common swords, like say, the longsword, or the yataghan, I am curious if there were ever systematic methods of using them. The HACA site seems as though it might help with this, so I’ll check it straightaway. Anyway, maybe there isn’t any for most of them, but I would be somewhat surprized if it were true for all.
Tuckerfan, you mentioned HACA. Now Maeglin will be in here in full cry to denounce them. I’m not sure what the reason, but he has a strongly negative opinion on that particular group as a source of information.
(JFTR: For those that don’t know, Maeglin is one of our resident fencing experts)
Yes, their were a range of schools of use for the heavier swords. Classes for dueling using sabres and a range of double edged swords were quite common up until the 19th century, when duelling ceased being fashionable. If you want information of using something like kris I suggest you do a search on the MA Silat, which covers use of kris style weapons extensively. Traditional kung fu styles teach various styles of use for butterfly swords etc, while most karate commonly includes weapon techniques for a variety of oriental swords.
Techniques used in modern fencing are all but useless for most swords. Fencing today tends to rely almost exclusively on pointed weapons with no edge and the style reflects this. The vast majority of swords rely as heavily on the edge to do damage as the do on the point. The techniques used for other weapons varies with the weapon. Many of the shorter swords/longer daggers such as kris tend to rely on quick in and out movements designed to wound an oponent without placing oneself in danger, whereas fencing tends to rely on a commitment to lunges and then recovering from that point. It’s a little hard to summarise the techniques used for swordfighting without studying them at least a little beforehand. BAsically techniques vary a lot with the style.
The basic skills required for swordfighting are those necessary for any other martial art. Reasonable fitness and strength, good hand:eye coordination, speed and flexibility and an ability and willingness to practice a lot.
This is pretty much what I thought, but I thank you for the confirmation. I did a search on Silat, which I had never before heard of, and came accross several interesting articles. Thanks for the suggestion.
Got any info on what the schools were? I guessed that there must have been, but I haven’t run into any descriptions or modern practitioners. Perhaps I’m just not looking in the proper places. I’ll try doing some more sword-specific searches, although this isn’t too effective.
Hopefully Maeglin will clarify his feelings on HACA. They seem like a fairly sensible organisation, judging from their webpage.
For the vast majority of the largely-untrained peasant combatants, it was actually “hack at other people until you die.” At least, that was what was expected of them.
Within the re-enactment groups, there appeared (when I was tangentially involved) to be a romantic notion that everyone on the field of battle was well-trained to meet the foe. While those who required a hefty investment (heavy cavalry, accurate archers, and the like) were well-trained, the vast majority of an army - the foot soldiers - were folks who basically would gamble their lives for (very) little money. Toss them some armor scavenged from a previous battle, hand them a barely-acceptable sword, and send them out to meet the other poor schmucks your enemy had assembled much the same way.
Battle scenes as we see in the movie Excalibur, for example, with masses of fully-armored knights battling other masses of fully-armored knights, were non-existant. There simply weren’t that many knights (nor was there that much money to build all those suits of massive armor). Actual battles had unwritten rules, like “if your peasants kill off all of my peasants, I’ll surrender.” Heavy armor was mostly a show of wealth - half-a-dozen men could topple a fully-armored knight from a horse and kill him easily down in the muck.
Visit a museum like the Walters Gallery in Baltimore. The highly-decorative armor of the princes and kings displayed there would obviously be detrimental in actual combat. The rich folks never expected to be touched at all, even though they might have been on the field.
Of course, some people were well-trained in the weapons of their particular time and place. Just so happened they were mostly nobility, and learned the necessary skills because they didn’t have to tend fields and/or herds of animals all day long.
On a somewhat similar note, a few of my friends and I used to beat the heck out of each other with practice swords of various sizes and shapes, even though we weren’t involved with any of the re-creation groups. I need to get back into shape, and consider that sort of exercise to be fun. But all of my buddies have moved too far away (30-minutes plus) for anything practical (like twice-a-week beatings). Anyone up for one-on-one (mostly painless) hack-n-slash in the Northern Viriginia area?
It’s quite possible to do acrobatics (of a general type, nothing too fancy) in well designed plate armor, and wasn’t as immobile as is generally assumed. From this site:
While armor eventually reached a “ostentatious display” level achieved with, say, Maximillian Plate, there are plenty of recovered suits that show lots of use, including likely fatal damage. It was used.
In some cases, there were huge masses of fully armored men going at each other with murder in their hearts. For example, see again the battle of Agincourt.
Well, OK, the masses of armored men were mostly on the French side.
Actually, the victory there mostly belongs to the mud, not the archers.
As you would expect, it is impossible for me to resist adding a few remarks.
Perhaps you could clarify exactly what you mean by this.
Fencing is the art and science of defense. I would call virtually all swordsmanship, both eastern and western, fencing. Two people trading blows in the park is fencing, as is the entire activity itself.
This is in fact quite untrue. Researchers are currently studying the techniques of nonstandard dueling weapons, including such military staples as the falchion and the poleaxe. Ancient masters developed a considerable technical repertoire with these weapons, but when their military utility declined, so did their practice. Civilian weapons that never had any real military applicability endured.
That would depend on how narrowly you define “technique.” I hate to equivocate, but I will have to say both yes and no.
General combat techniques can easily be cross-applied to different weapons. Lateral and circular movement is largely the same in Italian rapier and in French smallsword. Techniques of dissembling your distance and gaining distance on your opponent are similar in both rapier and longsword. Epee and rapier timing are in fact similar, as contrary to the views of most modern practitioners, the epee is descended from the rapier.
Furthermore, specific techniques sometimes work between weapons. The tierza and quarta guards are largely the same for Italian rapier and Italian sabre. You can throw a molinello, a classic sabre technique, into your foil repertoire to excellent effect if you have good timing. A good fencer will be able to pick up a weapon he knows only a little about and still be able to use it, if clumsily, because he knows how to control his body and knows how to control his opponent’s time.
However, talented a sabreur as you might be, you are still going to have your head handed to you if you try to fence rapier with a senior student at my school. The subtleties and nuances of individual weapons are fundamentally non-transferable, especially given the tremendous variety within historical weapon categories. No two people in my school use rapiers with the same weight and dimensions, hence we all fight very differently.
My answer is thus yes and no.
Damn right they are. I study German and Italian longsword, and have taken lessons with Maestro Paul MacDonald from Scotland and Maestro Andrea Lupo Sinclair from Italy. The Association for Historical Fencing, of which I am the secretary, hosts regular longsword seminars throughout the country.
If you are more interested in learning about the technique without practicing the weapon, check out Mark Rector’s fine translation of Hans Tallhoffer, a fifteenth century Swabian longsword and close combat manual. It is an excellent book. Mark Rector, by the way, is the founder of the Chicago Swordplay Guild.
This has already been covered: the skills that are valuable for any other martial art.
There is a huge amount of (mis)information out there, but scarcely any quality instruction. Perpetrators of misinformation include HACA and the Society for Creative Misinterpretation. There are only a handful of fencing masters worldwide that learned as part of a true living tradition. Masters such as my teachers, Maestro Sean Hayes, Maestro Italo Manusardi, Maister Terry Brown, etc., come from an ancient history of fencing instruction and can trace their pedigree for two hundred years. You can learn more about their histories at the International Masters at Arms Federation. My teachers are M. Ramon Martinez and M. Jeannette Acosta-Martinez.
Eastern martial arts expatriates and reenactment enthusiasts do not have the same opportunities to learn at the feet of real masters. One cannot simply pick up a few texts, look at the pictures, and expect to be able to fence competently. Forgive me for generalizing, but few individuals interested in reenactment have the discipline or willingness to endure the long, ego-eroding process that true mastery of western, just like eastern, martial arts demands. Those with such discipline tend to leave the reenactment community in pursuit of more elusive prizes.
There is a tremendous amount of web info out there. For starters, try my school’s site: The Martinez Academy of Arms. There is an excellent table of links. And definitely check out the site for the huge event we are organizing for this weekend, the Third Annual Western Martial Arts Workshop.
HACA
This is a subject both long and relatively painful. I shall try to be brief.
The Historical Armed Combat Association was instrumental in bringing about the current renascence of the western martial arts. It had the resources, organization, and sheer will to expose western swordplay to the popular imagination. HACA people were involved in the highly-watched Discovery documentary, Deadly Duels. Sure, it was awful, but a lot of people watched it. Based loosely on the franchise system, HACA schools are opening up all over the country, and there are even some sister groups forming in Europe.
It is essential to give the organization its due. However, the rest of the historical fencing community believes that HACA has perpetrated more harm to the movement than good.
HACA was orignally founded by one Hank Reinhardt. The man is a crook. He was the owner of Museum Replicas, Ltd. You know, the catalogue that has dorky, maladjusted 14 year old boys creaming in their pants over the Highlander Sword. HACA was created when Reinhardt sensed that there was a burgeoining market for his product. So he created HACA: if you put all the nuts in one basket, they are easier to market to.
He enlisted the aid of John Clements, perhaps the most shameless man in the western martial arts community. An expatriate of eastern martial arts, John Clements decided to read a few manuals and set up shop teaching. Given his paucity of real linguistic skill, JC had no choice but to look at the pictures and ignore the text. He is a piss-poor fencer, and his students lack understanding of even the most basic techniques. I will be fencing several of them this coming weekend.
He also perpetrates some of the worst misinformation available on western martial arts. His so-called “test cutting displays” show that not only does he not understand how to employ a test cut, but he doesn’t even know how to use the edge of the blade properly. I believe there are test-cutting videos on his website that demonstrate foolhardy and extremely dangerous techniques. I use the word technique loosely.
However, he is a genius at self-promotion, and he was able to secure media attention to HACA very early and very thoroughly. His ridiculous book, full of lies, half-truths, amd misinterpretations, is in the History section of almost any Barnes & Noble. Yet the message board on his website attracts hundreds or even thousands of ignorant, armchair would-be swordsmen. All of whom are instructed to buy weapons from Museum Replicas, Ltd.
Museum Replicas has always made a shoddy product. They are not bad to hang on the wall, but downright dangerous to use in any training capacity. Just when we thought Reinhardt’s organization couldn’t be even any more of a scam, he turned around and sold the operation to Windlass Steel, an industrial mill based in India.
The weapons got even worse.
So what is the bottom line? Lots of people are running around using unsafe weapons, taught by people with no instructor credentials whatsoever, and, to add insult to injury, perpetrating ignominious stereotypes about western martial artists because of Clements’ monopoly on the media.
Does the rest of the western martial arts community dislike them because of their pretenses and their lack of skill? Yes. Do they give us all a bad rep? Damn right. And are we jealous as all hell that they are monopolizing public access to our art? You better believe it.
I didn’t mean to imply that there were never fighting styles associated with those swords, just that there didn’t appear to be any current practitioners. It was only a generalization, and I accept your correction, but I think it may still be true for some swords (although I don’t know for sure). Are there modern schools for using a cutlass, or a gladius, as further examples?
Perhaps I am wrong, but most modern schools appear to be focused on duelling. Are there schools for non-duelling weapons?
I respectfully submit that I was referring here to the sport of fencing, and not using the general definition: “The action or art of using the sword scientifically as a weapon of offence or defence; the practice of this art with a blunted sword, foil, or stick.” -from the OED online. You are quite right about it applying to all swordsmanship. In my ignorance, I assumed that the term “fencing” was specific to the sport. This, I think, also helps explain my question about the techniques associated with fencing; again, I meant the sport.
In the end, it seems I have been looking in the wrong places. I didn’t pay much attention to the fencing societies because I thought they would pertain primarily to the sport.
There are some lunatics in Italy who try to “approximate” gladius technique as employed in the arena, but since there are neither texts nor adequate literary attestations, they are essentially pissing in the wind.
As far as schools for non-dueling weapons, sure. There are many manuals on the use of the cavalry sabre, whose technique is entirely different than the dueling sabre. I don’t know anyone offhand who teaches this technique, though.
Given what you’ve said about the HACA, Maeglin, I’ll certainly take everything they say with a grain of salt. On a related note, however, I am curious as to what sword manufacturers make ‘legitimate’ (i.e. ‘trustworthy’) products. I’m given to understand that many besides Museum Replicas produce cheap, substandard products. If I wanted to buy a sword (but not a sport fencing foil, sabre, or epee) that was qualified for use in actual combat, what reputable dealers are there? I realise that this is rather a broad question, and I don’t expect anything comprehensive. I’ve come accross several manufacturers/distributors that seem reliable, but I invite your opinion.
I should mention that therionarms site seems to deal mostly in antiques. They also have a large list of links on their resouce page. Since I know next to nothing about non-european swords I am particularly curious about the kris cutlery site. This is (obviously) just a sample of the sites I found, so any additional sites are welcome.
I realise that this is a large request, and I hope that I am not making too much of a nuisance of myself.
I don’t know anything about the kris cutlery site, but I can give you a list of my favorite manufacturers.
For my money, I swear by Dennis Graves, the owner of No Quarter Arms. He has no website, and quite frankly hardly needs to advertise. For my money, he makes the best rapiers in the world. Expect to spend at least $500 on a weapon that will last you a lifetime of hard use. I would trust my life with mine.
Tom Fiocchi makes exquisite smallswords. I wouldn’t buy one from anyone else.
For custom heavier weapons, Maestro Paul MacDonald is the man to contact. He knows how to make a spada da lato that sings.
For longswords, affordable, high quality pieces can be found at Del Tin Armi Antiche.
I only ordered one thing from MR, and that was a really, really good pair of fencing gauntlets. Hard leather cuffs, with deerskin gloves. The seams gave out a couple of times in hard use, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t repair. Finally the deerskin wore through on a couple of the fingers (after 9 years of usage!) So I looked to order from them again. Gee what a surpise that they had replaced those excellent gauntlets with some cheesy shit I had seen at renn faires. The gautlets with thick leather on the gloves, floppy leather on the gauntlet, or a very narrow gauntlet.
Even worse was the seams that were located on the middle of the sides of the fingers in thick, stacked seams. Arrrrrrgh!! whoever designed those things must have never held a sword. ANd they were everywhere!
I ended up getting a new pair from Christian Fletcher, soft cuffs, but a good grip.
Glad to finally hear someone give the business to John Clements. Mr. “Point, Point and nothing but the Point” himself. I had to wring the arrognace out of my copy of his book. Gee John, why did they sharpen the edges of rapiers if they never used them?
Since you’ve offered, however, I’ll ask you this: Have you visited the Sword Forum magazine webpage, and if you have, do you think that the articles on this page under the heading “general primer” are to be trusted? I don’t mean to single you out, so I also ask any people who happen to wander by to comment as well.
As far as I can tell, the site is pretty accurate. (Although they also have a favorable view of John Clements’ book Medieval Swordsmanship: Illustrated Methods and Techniques?)
Originally posted by DaveW:
I presume you’re referring to conscripts here? Perhaps I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that professional soldiers (here we’re excluding most nobles) were to a greater or lesser degree, trained. Which is not to say that they were highly skilled, but they at least had some practice. By the way, weren’t most of the English troops at Agincourt conscripts?
Well, peasant levies, most often, but by modern terms, “conscript” works just as well. Yes, professional soldiers were expected to know one end of a pike from the other, and mercenary companies became quite common in Europe, as you could quickly hire as many soldiers as your wallet could handle, without interupting your peasants from doing what’s important: Killing themselves to make you wealthy. You’d also get a semi-trained force right now, instead of a semi-trained force a month from now. Most mercenary companies were pretty fluid affairs, with a small corps of skilled soldiers acting as officers, NCOs, and Drill-masters. They might also include military speciallists, such as Artilliers (Siege Engineers), gunners, and cross-bowmen. The rest of the company was typically filled-out with landless peasants, rogues, and other cast-off people. Most of these were of limited use except for filling the ranks, and as a result, mercenary companies varied greatly in quality, from semi-bandits to highly respected elite formations. Desertion was rampant, and it was quite common for a victorious company to enlist soldiers from their recently defeated foes. Pay was a some-time thing, and most mercenaries longed for a good sack. If you were in on the sack of a city, you could find yourself very wealthy, very quickly.
If you were too tight (or too poor) to buy mercenaries, then you’d have to rely on levies, and use your corps of professional soldiers (retainers and hired men) to train the peasants. It takes years, and the right attitude, to make a really professional soldier, so the best that most nobles could muster would be partially-trained, lightly-drilled masses of men, stiffened with a core of professionals. These make-shift units often performed quite credibly, giving an indication of just how tough the typical peasant could be, despite crushing work, malnutrition, and general neglect. They were still meat on the platter, however, for the typical knight or elite mercenary.
The english formations at Agincourt more closely resemble militia, rather than conscripts, as most of the archers were free yeomen, most of the knights were land-holders, and the rest were townsmen and peasants, with a handfull of professional men-at-arms thrown in. It was, for it’s time, a remarkably disciplined force, as opposed to the French opposition, which would easily have carried the day if they’d exhibited even the slightest bit of self-restraint. The French forces at Agincourt contained an unusually high percentage of well-trained and -equipped foot soldiers, many of whom may have been full-time soldiers, possibly retainers to the various nobles.
Christian Fletcher does good work. I need a new pair of rapier gauntlets myself, and will likely go to him. Perhaps for a gorget, too. Did he have them in stock or did you have to wait awhile?
I am glad to hear that there are people who actually disagree with him on their own grounds. I come from something of an indoctrinated clique, you see.
Many students of JC have even argued that the edges of a rapier were never sharp. The fact that they have never gone to the effort to handle the real thing yet speak authoritatively all the same is very telling.
There are fine reviews of Clements’ work all over the net. I believe Christophe Amberger, an excellent student of the German arts of defense, wrote a particularly learned and scathing one.
Bah, the pleasure is all mine.
I do not like the sword forum on general principle, but I will skim the articles in a few moments and post my remarks. The fact that they do think favorably of JC’s book is revealing.
As for Silat, well, I honestly don’t know. I know that people do practice Bakbakan, a Filipino style of swordsmanship. Every year they have a full-contact tournament, which I plan to enter next year fighting in the western style. A friend and fellow student at my school won this year, defeating all of the Filipino martial artists with western technique.
They’re all right, I suppose. I have studied more technique than I have weapon construction, so I am not in a good position to judge. The very fact that they are addressed to people interested in diamond or tungsten swords may be revealing. These articles are not written for experts, and since they are not likely to be read by experts, the authors can get away with a certain amount of sloppiness.
However, my eye wandered and I opened the article about parrying, and discovered, to my dismay, the following:
The above is so hideously wrong that, to my mind, invalidates most of the content of the site by association.
They’re all right, I suppose. I have studied more technique than I have weapon construction, so I am not in a good position to judge. The very fact that they are addressed to people interested in diamond or tungsten swords may be revealing. These articles are not written for experts, and since they are not likely to be read by experts, the authors can get away with a certain amount of sloppiness.
However, my eye wandered and I opened the article about parrying, and discovered, to my dismay, the following:
The above is so hideously wrong that, to my mind, it invalidates most of the content of the site by association.
I shall try to be brief.
HACA was created when Reinhardt sensed that there was a burgeoining market for his product. So he created HACA: if you put all the nuts in one basket, they are easier to market to.