The Italians turned away from a cutting style of swordplay way back in the days when two-handed (or hand-and-a-half) longswords were the common civilian and military weapon. The new style they adopted focussed on keeping steel between you and your opponents and the pointy bit always aimed at them. They soon realised that a lighter weapon was quicker and more maneuveurable than a longsword yet retained the ability to keep the point on-line, as we say. Over about a century, swords became thinner and lighter and the techniques they used changed to match and take advantage of the new weaponry. Gone were the large movements involved in swinging a 40+ inch blade with both hands in favour of a technique which relies on much quicker thrusts, geomoetry and blade angulation.

(But don’t think I’m going to get drawn into the stupid, stupid debate about cutting versus thrusting weapons.)

Here are the videos. They run 25 minutes in total.

Again, I’d like to acknowledge that I’m a beginner and make no claim to the accuracy or utility of what follows. I’d love anyone who understands Agrippa to correct me.

First, let’s define some terms. Agrippa defines a number of stances (static guard positions) and actions (movements for attack or defence) in his own quite peculiar way. They form a short-hand to understand how he wants you to move in a given circumstance. I’ll be using the hand positions first, second, third and fourth as discussed in my previous post on Agrippa.

Stances and Actions

Camillo Agrippa - Stance A

Stance A:  Hold your weapon in first position in a narrow stance, that is with your feet close together but your right foot a little forward of your left. In first position, your sword hand rests above your shoulder pointing forward with your palm facing to the outside. Keep your other hand or off-hand weapons (main gauche or buckler) well up in front of your chest.

It seems that Agrippa intends this guard as a way of drawing out a response from one’s opponent. The advantages he lists for the guard include the ability to advance and retreat rapidly while maintaining one’s point in the face of the opponent. It fulfills the old maxim of always keeping steel between you and your enemy thereby restricting his or her possible lines of attack.

He also suggests that by adopting Stance A after his manner, you will be “a half- or quarter-step further from your adversary” while still maintaining an ability to strike him or her. I’m not so sure about that. Experimentation will determine the issue.

The only real piece of tactical advice he gives regarding Stance A he applies equally to all stances and actions. He says to you should avoid parrying the other guy’s attacks but should instead slip back or dodge so that the other guy strikes nothing but air. If appropriately armed (main gauche, dagger or mailed glove), beat away your opponent’s point with you left hand.

The most common response against someone standing in Stance A that Agrippa expects is for the adversary to cut into the blade to beat it out of the way or otherwise control it. While this may be true of beginners, I’m not sure an experienced fencer would fall for such a trick.

Plays from Stance A

In his text, Agrippa outlines three basic plays from Stance A. The second play is found in two, mirror-image formats. All of these plays seems pretty good but they all require cracker-jack timing and so I don’t recommend them for beginners.

• Play One: Your opponent cuts at you. Regardless of the actual nature of the cut thrown against you, step back with your right foot. In this way your void the attack which passes straight by. Immediately the cut as passed, step forward again and thrust at your opponent before he or she can respond.
• Play Two: This play comes in two forms. Your opponent thrusts directly at you. How you act depends on which side the attacks tends to. If the attack is aimed at your right side, step out far to the left to execute Action K (counter-thrust in 2nd). If the attack is aimed at your left side, step far to the right and execute Action G (counter-thrust in 4th).
• Play Three: Regardless of the nature of the attack your opponent makes at you, sweep it away to your inside line (eg: to the right if you are right-handed). At the same time, step forward into your opponent’s space and place your sword hand into 2nd position. With your left hand, grab your opponent’s sword arm in order to immobilise it. Then you are free to stab him or her as you please.

Update: See further installments at:

• Camillo Agrippa, Part The First: provides an overview of Agrippa fencing
• Camillo Agrippa, Part the Second: examines Stance C
• Camillo Agrippa, Part the Third: examines Stances B and D

Again, I’d like to acknowledge that I’m a beginner and make no claim to the accuracy or utility of what follows. I’d love anyone who understands Agrippa to correct me.

First, let’s define some terms. Agrippa defines a number of stances (static guard positions) and actions (movements for attack or defence) in his own quite peculiar way. They form a short-hand to understand how he wants you to move in a given circumstance. I’ll be using the hand positions first, second, third and fourth as discussed in my previous post on Agrippa.

Stances and Actions

Stance B: Hold your weapon in second position in a narrow stance, that is with you feet close together but you right foot slightly forward of your left. Keep your off hand or secondary weapon (dagger or buckler) in front of you covering your chest. In second position, your hand is held at the same horizontal level as your shoulder with the blade covering your outside line.

Agrippa’s basic tactical advice for this stance is to step backward with your left foot in the face of an attack into Stance D then counterthrust with opposition. To attack from Stance B, you simply step forward (presumably on the circle rather than straight ahead) with your right foot and drive your point home.

Stance D: Hold  you weapon in fourth position in a wide stance, that is with your feet about shoulder width apart and your right foot forward. The trick with this stance is to turn your body so that you present your right side to your opponent. Your sword is held on the inside of your right knee and is protecting your inside line. Because of your side-on orientation, your left hand is best held out of the way or above your head.

Agrippa warns explicitly against using this stance against a skilled opponent but elsewhere claims that there is no tactical difference between this and Stance C in that both hold an opponent at wide distance from you.

Action H: Hold yourself in Stance B and take either a step forward with your right foot or a step backwards with your left foot. In either case, you are performing Action H, a thrust with your hand in second position. This action is best used to counter a riversa (cut from the attacker’s left) or a thrust from Stance D (see immediately below). Use this action, Agrippa says, against an opponent standing in a wide third position stance (ie: Stance C).

Action I: This action is much more opaque. On the face of it, it seems like a standard Italian or classical lunge in fourth but since you already begin the action in a wide stance, stretching forward or stepping into a wider position appears counterproductive. It appears to be the final part of a larger action which involves contracting or narrowing one’s stance to void an attack before counter-thrusting. Use this action, says Agrippa, against an opponent standing in a narrow third position (ie: Stance F).

Actions H and I are, in effect, the counters for each other. Agrippa does not devote a great deal of space in the text to these two stances and two actions yet they seem to form a core technique in this tradition. Everywhere he discusses one, he discusses the other. According to Agrippa, one feints from stance B then cavares under the opponent’s weapon to thrust home using Action I. The mirror image is to feint in D, cavare under and counterthrust using Action H. If we leave out the footwork, this represents a shift of the hand from second to fourth position or the reverse. This is a core technique in modern fence.

Parries or counters from Stance B and Stance D involve the same basic mechanic: you change your guard into Stance C (moving either forwards or backwards as circumstances dictate) in order to capture (stingere, trouver, gain, etc) or cross the opponent’s blade and from that point you launch yourself forward using either Action H or I to drive home your attack.

Agrippa does not seem to have any attacks starting from Stance B or D. Perhaps this is why Capo Ferro says that they are not guard positions but stages in particular attacking or defending actions. Stances B and D are the starting (or ending) points of Actions H and I. Like Actions G (and P) and K discussed last time, they seem to be defensive in nature and more in the line of a manner to counter-thrust once an attack has been parried, voided or otherwise set aside. Against a cut, whether from the left of the right, these Actions can be used as a single-time defence which in one move blocks the opponent’s cut and counter-thrusts against the opponent. The key to these techniques is the feint. You need to force the opponent to move and break his or her guard so that you can use these techniques in response.

Plays from Stance B and Stance D

There does not seem to be a set of plays specifically for Stance B or D or Action H or Action I. This is completely dissimilar to the fixed plays for Stance C. What Agrippa provides instead is a bunch of tactical advice. You can easily develop your own plays from this.

Wide versus Narrow

• If your opponent stands in a wide stance (feet wide apart), adopt Stance B. When your opponent attacks, step back with your left foot into a wide stance such as Stance C or Stance D before counter-attacking.
• If your opponent stands in a narrow stance (feet close together), adopt Stance D. When you opponent attacks, step back with your right foot into Stance B (or Stance F?) before counter-attacking.

Double-Time Defence

• If you are standing in either Stance B or in Stance D and your opponents thrusts at you, change into Stance C to defeat his attack di cruce (at the cross) before counter-attacking.

Update: See further installments at:

• Camillo Agrippa, Part The First: provides an overview of Agrippa fencing
• Camillo Agrippa, Part the Second: examines Stance C
• Camillo Agrippa, Part the Fourth: examines Stance A

Before getting stuck in, I’ve got to acknowledge again that I’m a beginner and make no claim to the accuracy or utility of what follows. I’d love anyone who understands Agrippa to correct me.

First, let’s define some terms. Agrippa defines a number of stances (static guard positions) and actions (movements for attack or defence) in his own quite peculiar way. They form a short-hand to understand how he wants you to move in a given circumstance. I’ll be using the hand positions first, second, third and fourth as discussed in my previous post on Agrippa .

Stances and Actions

Stance C: Hold you weapon in third position in a wide stance. That is, stand with your feet about shoulder width apart with your right foot forward and your left foot slightly to the side of a straight line from you opponent, through your right foot and out behind you. The sword is held to the outside of your right knee.

Stance F: This is the same as Stance C except that you are in a narrow stance, meaning that your feet are close together. You can get the Stance F from Stance C by either stepping forward (drawing you left foot up next to your right) or by stepping backwards (drawing your right foot back next to your left). Both movements have their uses.

Action G (and P): The only difference between Action G and Action P is that G aims a thrust at the head and P aims a thrust at the belly. The actions are performed in the same manner and both actions aim to get you out of the way while you counter thrust at an opponent who is in the process of attacking you. There are two keys to this action.

1. Take a large step to your right to immediately void your body – to get yourself off the line of your opponent’s attack. Agrippa says to do this with your right foot. The same effect is achieved by moving your left foot to the right in a maneuver which came to be known later as a punta riversa or volte.
2. At the same time as your move (or even beforehand), change you sword hand into fourth position in order to simultaneously block the opponent’s sword and use it to guide your point straight back into your opponent’s body. This technique is called a thrust with opposition or contra-punta.

Action K: This is the mirror image of Action G in that it performs the same function while you step to the left. The keys to the action are:

1. Agrippa says to take a large step to the left with your right foot. This sounds warning bells for me because it leaves you with your legs crossed and in an unstable position. I think that making this step with your left foot achieves the same end and maintains your stability.
2. At the same time (or even beforehand), change your sword hand into second position in order block the opponent’s sword and thrust at him or her as in Action G above.

Attacks and Defences from Stance C

Next, let’s have a look at what Agrippa says you can do from Stance C. In terms of defence, Agrippa really only has one general strategy. He suggests that, as an opponent launches an attack at you, you should step back from Stance C into Stance F. At best, this is enough to counter the attack. At worst, it gives you additional time to deal with it using an off-hand weapons such as a main gauche or by blocking the attack with your sword “di cruce” (from the cross). Once you’ve dealt with the attack, counter attack. This is standard double-time response stuff. Nothing special here.

He also talks about some single time responses to an attack such as turning your hand into second or fourth position as appropriate and thrusting home or blocking the opponent’s attack at the cross and responding with a cut. Other than some flourishes, this seems to be the extent of the defenses from Stance C.

The only attack of any substance that Agrippa discusses comes in two variations. It involves provoking your opponent to attack you then murdering him or her while they are “disordered,” to use his term. Here’s how it goes.

1. Step forward from Stance C into Stance F. If your opponent does nothing, your sword point goes through his or her head. That’s fine in itself but what you’re looking for is the inevitable defensive move. Most people do not stand idly by while someone stabs them in the eye. Those who do, deserve it.
2. Use Action G (or P) or K to counterattack as appropriate. If the opponent’s blade is to your left, use Action G (or P). If the opponent’s blade is on your right, use Action K. I don’t like having to make a decision at this point in proceedings. My brain is not quick enough for that any more. I guess there is scope to angle step 1 in some way to provoke a particular response rather than any ol’ response from your opponent. I’ll have to experiment more with this at training.

Plays Beginning in Stance C

Agrippa’s plays (or set-piece drills for training purposes) are pretty similar. I need to study these much more closely and test them out on the field to ensure I understand them correctly. On the face of them, however, they seem sound and I can see how they work.

Play One: The student stands in Stance C; the partner in Stance A (hand in first poisiton, narrow stance). The partner thrusts at the student who uses Action G both block/cross the partner’s weapon and thrust home. This is a single time defence.

Play Two: The student stands in Stance C; the partner in Stance B (hand in second position, narrow stance). The partner thrusts from Stance B. The student sweeps across the body from Stance C, capturing the partner’s blade and ending with a thrust against the partner in Stance H (hand in second position, wide stance).

Play Three: The student stands in Stance C; the partner in Stance B (hand in second position, narrow stance). The partner steps forward to thrust at the student (hand in second position, wide stance). The student slips back (withdraws into Stance B) and, once the partner’s blade has passed, attacks with a thrust in Stance H (hand in second position, wide stance).

Play Four: The student stands in Stance C; the partner in Stance D (hand in fourth position, wide stance). The partner changes his stance to attack in A (hand in first position). The student changes stance from C to D to block the attack and lunges at the partner (Action I).

Update: See further instalments at:

• Camillo Agrippa, Part The First: provides an overview of Agrippa fencing
• Camillo Agrippa, Part the Third: examines Stances B and D
• Camillo Agrippa, Part the Fourth: examines Stance A

Inigo Montoya

You are using Bonetti’s Defense against me, ah?

Man in Black

I thought it fitting considering the rocky terrain.

Inigo Montoya

Naturally, you must suspect me to attack with Capo Ferro?

Man in Black

Naturally… but I find that Thibault cancels out Capo Ferro. Don’t you?

Inigo Montoya

Unless the enemy has studied his Agrippa… which I have.

And with this quote from The Princess Bride begins my look at the work of Camillo Agrippa, a Renaissance architect, engineer and mathematician who lifted fencing out of the Middle Ages and started it on the path to becoming the art we know today. Anyone with even a partial exposure to the sport of fencing who reads Agrippa’s Treatise on the Science of Arms (1553) will recognise the terms he coined to describe his new method.

In it’s simplest form, Agrippa’s fencing does nothing but continue the trend of modernisation as 16th century Italy continued to drag itself out of the medieval mindset. No longer were nobles being trained for the battlefield but for duels of honour in the streets of the burgeoning Italian cities. The battlefield was managed by an ever-increasing body of professional soldiers and the outcome was increasingly determined by vblocks of pike and musket than by individual feats of arms. Nobles were more and more defined by social and intellectual abilities than by martial skill.

At the other end of the scale, Agrippa’s work can be seen as a merge of swordplay with the rediscovered science of geometry. He is (arguably) the first to enphasis the thrust as the quickest way of inflicting a wound because the blade travels a shorter distance than in a cut. He uses geometry, explained in excruciating detail, to prove the efficacy of the concepts over-reach (uberlauffen in the german tradition) and counter-thrusting. In fact, his treatise ends with a Platonic dialogue on the proper method of constructing geometric figures, such as squaring the circle. Exactly how this dialogue applies to swordplay is not immediately obvious.

So, to start with the most obvious of the differences between the older styles of fencing and that of Agrippa, let’s look at his stances or guards.

Gone are the vast number of guardia from the Dardi or Bolognese tradition. In their place are four guards based on the positions of the hand and attitude of the blade. While he talks about some variations on these guards, especially his third position (named by Capo Ferro as the king of guard positions). I cannot describe them any more succinctly than does Agrippa himself.

Because this is the first that can be made after clearing the sword from the scabbard, it is called first. Lowering the hand a little so that the arm is at the same height as the shoulder is the second. By slightly lowering the sword-hand and moving it to the outside and closer to the knee, you will make the third. Finally, moving the sword-hand inside the knee makes the fourth. These are the primary guards because maany others can be made from them depending on the situation.

These can be more clearly scene in another image (whose provenance I cannot determine but is all over Google). These positions are immediately familiar to any modern sport fencer. In the larger image above, first, second, third and fourth positions are labelled (rather disingenuously) A, B, C and D.

In simplifying the guardia, Agrippa follows a trend which we think is peculiar to our own times. While it is referred to by academics of the Renaissance as the “democratisation of knowledge” which began with the development of the printing press, we know it better as the “commodification of skill.” Both terms refer to the concept of bringing skill and knowledge to the masses in that it changes the apprentice/master paradigm of knowing and doing and replaces it with one that allows for more self-development or private study. The value of the master with long years of experience is reduced as the emphasis on science and universal laws is increased. This move is completed in our own times. Today, once a person is judged ‘competent’ at a skill or body of knowledge, he or she is considered indentically proficient as and interchangeable with any other person who has been judged ‘compentent’ at that field of endeavour. In this respect, Agrippa is thoroughly modern.

In future posts, I’ll take a more detailed look at each positions, it’s uses for attack and defence, and how combat flows from it and around it. I’m very interested in understanding Agrippa much better than a simple reading of the text can provide. As I work through issues presented by the text, I intend posting my questiosn and discoveries here for public consumption, comment, praise and ridicule.

Update: See further installments at:

• Camillo Agrippa, Part the Second: examines Stance C
• Camillo Agrippa, Part the Third: examines Stances B and D
• Camillo Agrippa, Part the Fourth: examines Stance A

This wooden or hardened leather weapon was used in two basic ways in the 14th and 15th centuries. First, it was used in the fencing schools as a way of introducing students who have learned the two-handed longsword to single-handed swords. Second, it was used by the town watch, particularly in eastern europe, for crowd control. It delicately balances the advantages of the sword and billy-club for close-in fighting to create a formidable tool for inflicting owwies.

Since the weapons are in short supply in the 21st century, we’ve decided to make our own based on the engravings in our main historical text, Joachim Meier‘s Art of Combat. Here’s how.

First, take a pattern from a reputable source. In this case we used the weapon as shown in the engravings in Meyer’s text. Here’s an example. Once we were happy with our diagrams we made a tracing blank out on 3mm MDF. The template can be used repeatedly to ensure that the school uses dusacks of an identical pattern.

Notice the enclosed hilt of the weapon in the engraving. We theorise that the main purpose of this feature is to prevent you dropping it or someone taking it from you in a close-in fight but it also leads to a bunch of interesting techniques involving flicking the tip of the weapon for extra speed and hitting power.

Second, choose the wood to use. We chose Tasmanian Oak for its durability and this project made five dusacks from a single plank (185mm x 19mm x 2400mm) for a materials cost of under $AU 50. Ensure that the plank has no visible knots and maintains a straight grain all along its length. Otherwise, the dusacks may split and break at these points.

Third, draw out the pattern on the plank fitting as many of them in the plank as you can. The trick here is to make sure that the wood grain runs along the length of the dusack rather than tending to run across it or at an angle.

Fourth, cut them out and shape them. Find a friend with an electric jigsaw. Don’t do this by hand unless you are a real sucker for punishment. The holes for the handles were cut out using a one inch splayed bit to create a hole at each end of the handle then the jigsaw was used to cut between them.

Shaping is primarily about taking the sharp edges off the weapon and rounding the hilt so that it can slide easily and comfortable around your hand. We also added a large bevel to the long edge of the blade since this appears in several engravings in the works of various authors and in the main commercially available dusack. The main tool used to shape the weapons was an angle grinder with a variety of snading disks ranging from 16 grit to 80 grit and the shaping of the hand holds was done the old-fashioned way with a rasp and a file.

The task that takes the most time is the final sanding by hand using 80 grit, 100 grit and 120 grint sandpaper. This is just plain hard work but the resulting finish is actually quite lovely – a very nice wood grain finish.

Finally, oiling the weapon achieve two aims: makes it look good and, more importantly, keeps the wood supple and prevents cracking. The way to do this is dilute pale boiled linseed oil (available at any hardware store) with mineral turpentine in a 50/50 ratio. Coat the dusack liberally with this stuff and allow it to sit for 30 minutes of so. After this time has elapsed, remove any excess oil with a lint-free cloth and sit the dusack aside to dry for one or two days. Repeat this procedure as often as you want to achieve a good finish. Everything I’ve read suggests somewhere between three and five coats of oil is sufficient.

Now your weapon is ready to use.

Project Costs

This is a list of products consumed entirely during the fabrication process to make five dusacks.

• Tasmanian Oak (2400mm x 185mm x 19mm): $44.00
• Sanding Disks: $4.50
• Sandpaper: $27.00

This comes to a total of $75.50 or approximately $15.10 each. Other tools you’ll need and products you’ll only use a little of include:

• Jigsaw and appropriate blades for cutting the dusack blanks from the timber
• Angle grinder, sander or router to shape the blanks into dusacks
• Pale Boiled Linseed Oil ($10.00 per 1lt bottle)
• Mineral Turpentine ($6.00 per 1lt bottle)

The big surprise weilding their weapons was just how much those light and whippy things are controlled by such small movements. For example, you hold the hilt of the weapon between  your thumb and the second joint of your index finger. Move your thumb forward half a centimetre to drop the tip of the weapon, back half a centimetre to raise the tip of the weapon. Lateral movement is just as light. As a result, all movement, attacks, parries, etc are blindingly fast and I was became a pin-cushion for the amusement of all. With that sort of speed, it’s no wonder that proper footwork and technique becomes the key differentiator before the good and the great proponents of the art. I was getting the hang of it after half an hour or so and was starting to feel comfortable with adapting the technique I’ve learned to the unfamiliar weapons.

Swapping their weapons for ours wasn’t actually much better. It was a different kind of bout but ultimately their speed was our greatest difficulty. I think that we made things difficult for them by stepping off-line. Modern fence is very straight line – up and down a narrow track or piste. Historical fencing is more about moving around your opponent and playing with blade angulation to achieve a favourable tactical position from which to strike. The heavier weapons (I’m still amazed at how light a modern fence sword is) slowed  them down but their concentration on keeping the weapon’s point on-line made scoring against them hard. Our cuts and off-hand weapons confused them for a while.

The source of the differences between modern fence and historical rapier became obvious to me for the first time. The weight (or lack thereof) of the weapon is a major contributor. The modern fence sword is so light that economy of movement is vital. Any event slightly wayward stroke becomes impossible to recover from in time to beat or even match the opponent’s attack and, conversely, the openings in the opponent’s guard that one must find and penetrate are so incredibly slight that only the speed allowed by the light weapon can be effective. Rapier techniques such as cavere (or cavazioni) is the equivalent of much modern technique and is only possible with the heavier historical weapons. With a rapier such fine movements of the thumb produce no discernable change to the angle of the blade — inertia sees to that. However, rotating the wrist from second position to fourth position makes for a very fast method of gaining the opponent’s blade and changing the nature of the attack. Both sports rely on keeping the point between you and your opponents and modern fence can easily be seen as the successor of the Italian “point on-line” idea which appeared in their longsword tradition sometime around the fifteenth century.

Training with the ACA has been pretty good lately and a lot of technique is starting to click into place (at last!). One of the causes for this is the introduction of some training documents into the group. While we’ve had a basic text for our longsword trainging for a little over a year and another for single-handed weapons, they’ve not been particularly useful outside of the group training night. They were about imparting knowledge and not so much about training. Don’t get me wrong: they are both good cources of information, just a little too high-level to meet my needs right this minute. The new doco puts these texts into practice.

The first of the new texts lists a series of eight drills which take the techniques described in the previous doco and connect them into sequences and patterns of movement designed to promote muscle memory and automatic responses to threats from an opponent. The drills have two features which really interest me.

Fitness: As a fencer, you can never have enough stamina and the drills have the side effect of increasing one’s endurance. It’s well known that body motor skills diminish the higher one’s heart rate. For example, at around 115 beats per minute (bpm), one begins to lose fine motor skils. At around 145bpm, complex motor skills become problematic and it just goes downhill from here. Since I’m dead keen on the rapier, which relies for success on controlling how the point of the weapon moves, the fitter I am, the lower my heart rate during a bout and thus i can maintain better control of the weapon. Presumably, this will result in winning more bouts but that is a theory as yet untested.

Style: Let no one tell you that fencing is solely about effectiveness as a fighter or as a competitor. Grace and style are major components of the sport (or, for the purists, martial art). The truth is that there’s very little chance of me being challenged to a duel to the death, let alone a duel using seventeenth century weapons. Training, to me, is more about recovering or re-learning our lost martial heritage and sportsmanship than it is about preparing to defend my life, hearth and family (until the impending zombie apocalypse occurs, of course). The drills promote style and grace by training your body to move in a particular manner and they focus your attention on performing the moves perfectly and precisely.

As an aside, I first became interested in the precision of my technique after seeing a demonstration of iaido, a Japanese martial art which concentrates solely on drawing the sword, performing brief offensive and defensive moves and returning the sword to the scabbard. The art shows just how beautiful a technique can be.

The second text is a defined set of responses to particular threats while standing in a particular guard position and is (somewhat grandiosely) called The 24 Master Techniqies. This is basically the syllabus for the school. In essence, what it does is say “Ok, you’re standing in middle guard back (our equivalent of the German pflug) and someone attacks to your high outside line (throws a blow at your upper right for the right-hander). How do you defend against it?” By removing the thought process from the rock-paper-scissors like thinking evident in many historical treatises (eg: zwerchau breaks vom tag), it becomes much easier for us moderns who training maybe once a week to become proficient at what we do. It turns historical fencing from something concerned only with static knowledge of the medieval sources into something much more dynamic and functionally driven. These techniques are also built into the drills so that they become automatic and very natural responses.

The best way I’ve found to preform the drills is to do them a few times until you know the moves then do them again with your eyes closed. This makes you (well, me) concentrate on how my body feels and moves during the drill. You can feel how each muscle group changes and interact with other muscle groups during the drill. I’ve found that the precision of movement I can achieve using this technique greatly increases my confidence in my abilities as a fencer – and makes me look good. This concept of muscle memory is dead interesting.

Size comparisons are unavoidable

Swordplay 2009 was an inaugural event hosted by the Australian College of Arms. The ACA wanted to see if there was any interest in a small inter-school tournament for historical fencing groups in the Brisbane area and ended up drawing participants from all over the country and as far away as Hobart and Perth. Apparently, the gathering even garnered the interest of swordplay groups in New Zealand.

Events on offer included:

• a grand tournament using the (still under development) ACA tournament rules which test skill-at-arms with rapier and a companion weapon,
• a demonstration of the fifteenth century Belgian guild tourney rules,
• a general melee using padded and rubberised weapons and armour organised by KnightFight,

as well as seminars on various topics ranging from:

• an introduction to sixteenth century Italian rapier fencing and
• the bio-mechanics of swordplay.

Chris Slee (ACA) v Ben (Prima Spada)

For me, the highlight of Swordplay 2009 was bouting with guys from the other schools. It’s only natural that you get used to the techniques of your own school and the responses and reactions of the people you train with. Bouting with someone from another school is a whole ‘nother thing. They react to your feints and strikes in ways your training has not anticipated and their strikes on you come from directions you’ve not previously considered. I think these friendly bouts, when conducted at a slowpace, are an invaluable training tool and when we bout at something close to full speed they can become true competitions of skill. There’s a couple of guys from the SCA and from Prima Spada that I seriously look forward to meeting again in the arena.

Tournament Play

In terms of the ACA tournament, the event was great fun even though I was knocked out (not literally) in the first round. There were a few injuries but these were confined to later rounds when the participants were becoming tired. Fatigue and swordplay are two concepts which just plain don’t mix. However, I think there’s something at the core of the experience and within the rules that, with a little tweaking, can provide the foundation of an annual event that all participants can safely be very proud of. I’m sure Scott is being bombarded with comments and suggestions for improvement.

The Belgian Guild Rules tourney put on by Leith Golding of Collegium in Armis was basically a fast and furious version of piggy-in-the-middle using wooden wasters and German longsword techniques. The wooden swords are a little light and under a padded fencing jacket it’s a little hard to register whether you’ve been hit or not. Next time, I’m told, it will be run using proper federschwert. This will make a world of difference to the event.

Richard Callinan (SCA)

Richard Callinan ran a workshop describing the basic offensive and defensive maneuvers of the Italian, specifically Bolognese and Dardi traditions. For me, this workshop made the readings I’ve done into the tradition a lot clearer. The problem with reading the original texts (apart from translation difficulties) is that they all assume that you are familiar with the system or at least with fencing in general. Richard reduced the number of guards to the minimum common across all treatises describing this style of fencing and showed the actions or attacks common to all of them which start and end in these guard positions. A lot of stuff we did in the workshop, we do in our own ACA curriculum but there was plenty of new stuff and extensions on top of what we do. I’m plan on incorporating some of these techniques into my own style.

The seminar on the biomechanics of swordplay was dead interesting and I’d like to know more about the subject. Stu MacDonald of Core Life Concepts talked about how energy moves through the body using the mechanism of contraction and relaxation of muscle groups. He then demonstrated how these muscle groups chain together to create typical swordplay motions such as swinging one’s arm to strike with the blade edge or lunging forward to thrust the blade point into a target. He also provided a bunch of simple exercises (which reminds me that it’s been a few weeks since I went to yoga) to better utilise these muscle chains and improve strength and reaction time.

Scott McDonald (ACA)

From my point of view, there’s plenty here to commend in Swordplay 2009 and I truly hope that others felt the same. I’d really like to see it become an annual event and, with appropriate tweaking, I’m sure it will.

Lastly, I’d like to ask for a big round of applause for the ACA‘s own Scott McDonald for going to the effort of bring us all together for this wonderful weekend.

SCA - Fencing Fest - 2009 - Prize Fight

This is a very different SCA to the one I knew and refused to have anything to do with twenty years ago. These guys are interested in metal weapons rather than foam and are actually interested in history – unlike the previous lot. I managed (not too surprisingly, it seems) get get entangled into a couple of discussions on such wide ranging topic as properly use of the buckler from the I.33 manuscript (AD 1295) to Achille Marozzo (AD 1536) and opinions on the merits and otherwise of the German longsword school as taught by Joachim Meyer and others. All were scholarly and reasoned debates.

We watched their competition and the grading of a student to the next grade. There are some obvious differences in style between our groups. The first is the ACA preference for heavier and less whippy blades – which has inspired me to research again the length, weight and other dimensions of example swords surviving in museums and other collections. The second is that the SCA allow draw cuts. These occur when the blade is placed against an opponent’s appendage and drawn across it in an effort to slice through the said appendage. The ACA doesn’t practice this technique because for the most part normal clothes defeat it. We believe you need to either cut hard against a limb with the sword edge or stick the point of your weapon into the opponent to injure them.

SCA - Fencing Fest - 2009 - Slideshow

I had a few bouts against them. Of note, one was against one of their top-rated sword players and I was completely p0wned by him. I also bouted with a couple of others who were rated roughly the equivalent of me. These were more 50/50 affairs where we both gave as good as we got. All the SCA members I bouted with had extra-ordinarily good point control but I know I could have powered right through their light, whippy blades with solid cuts but we were playing by their rules and this type of thuggery isn’t allowed. All bouts were enormous fun and I can’t wait to see these guys in action again at Swordplay 2009 at the end of August.

I’ve got some photos but none of them feature me. And before you ask: no, I do not play dress ups. The photos feature SCA members who’s names I have no idea of and the ACA’s very own Scott McDonald in his home-made leather armour.