Book Two, Rule Three for the Single Rapier, the Plates

Ugh, more than a month for a break? Not cool! Anyway, no changing that so let's just work our way forward by looking at the plates that Fabris included for Rule Three of the sword alone.

Diving right in, we have plate 124! We're the fencer on the right, standing over our left foot, having just stepped into measure and found our opponent's sword on the outside. Up until now, our initial entry has been performed with the right foot leading, and I'm happy to see an example of it happening with the left. (I know at least two southpaws who are reading this right now and giving me dirty looks. What can I say, I'm just being true to the source material here.) This can happen pretty readily when you're approaching with a natural step whichever rule you're applying, so seeing it finally show up in a plate is great. While our fencer is passing their left foot forward, take note of their body mechanics, specifically their feet and hips. Their feet are aligned as you'd expect from a "regular" fencing guard, with their right foot pointed forward and their left foot pointed to the side, even though they're passing the left foot forward. This allows for the hip orientation that you see, which leaves the right side hip oriented towards their opponent. This is really important for us because it preserves our measure as well as the body mechanics we need to meaningfully oppose our opponent's blade, should it come to that. (Try it, though. Pass forward with your left foot but reorient it so that it's pointing more forward. Your hips will very likely relax some, your right hip will drop, and you'll lose range. If you have a partner, have them try to push your extended hand around, and it'll be a lot harder to resist the pressure. Body mechanics are really important, people.)

Ahem, right. Anyway, Fabris tells us that we're to proceed into measure without a guard and find our opponent's sword as we place our foot in the "danger zone." (Yes, I know.) We're to keep our opponent's sword covered without touching it and just proceed to and through our opponent. If they give us a tempo, we take it. Otherwise we just keep proceeding along forward, "with good union of sword, feet and body."

The next plates are laid out in no particular order, and Fabris really just kind of free-forms his way through some what-if problems. Taking a look at the next one, we see "what if when we move to find their blade, our opponent performs a cavazione into a high fourth with a girata?" In this case, Fabris wants us to simply turn our hand into fourth as well, pushing through our opponent's blade and wounding them in the throat. He points out the inherent structural weakness of the girata in terms of being able to oppose our blade - that plus having the advantage of having found them means that we can displace their blade fairly easily. Also, note the position of our arm - we're pushing his blade off to the side fairly strongly, which both ensures our safety as well as moving our blade farther to the inside so as to be able to successfully wound our opponent as they have rotated their body out.


Here we have a similar response, with our opponent turning their hand into fourth and attempting to drop their tip and strike us underneath our guard. The solution that Fabris gives us shouldn't really be a surprise at this point - drop our body and turn our hand into second, wounding our opponent underneath their guard while we shut them out entirely.

The next two plates flow together, one after the other, so let's do that. We approached without forming a guard until we hit measure, and we end up in a fairly high angled third. (Fabris doesn't specify if we're on the inside or outside though; from squinting at the plates, it looks like we're on the inside and frankly, the actions he suggest imply this as well. I know, the rule has us approaching from the outside, but here we are.) From here, we've covered our line, and we're in a pretty safe position. If our opponent doesn't do anything, we can just extend into fourth and proceed through to striking them like we all want to be able to. If they cavazione, contracavazione and strike them in fourth anyway. (I'd suggest extending your arm as you go though, so as to be able to perform a sufficiently small contracavazione.) On the other hand, if they cavazione and you're sufficiently close to them - say it with me now - turn your hand into second, lower your body, and pass underneath their sword to wound them.


Here's the last plate we have for this rule! It's a little complicated and the stance makes it look worse than it is, but honestly? It isn't anything that we haven't seen before, and the stance is just a passing step caught in a snapshot. We're approaching to the outside in third, and this time our opponent tries one of our usual techniques - they turn their hand into second and try to wound us underneath our sword as they push forward with their right leg. To counter this, we lower our point and body both, bringing our sword down on top of theirs as they are moving their blade and coming forward.

If in this case, our opponent tries to push back against our blade by turning back into third, we can simply turn into second to shut him out completely and push forward. If they try to cavazione back to the outside in second, we will - and stop me if you've heard this one - turn our hand into second, lowe our body, and strike underneath our opponent's sword.

Fabris closes by taking the time to point out that these actions will succeed not solely because we're in third and obliging our opponent to move to defend themselves, but also because we have the advantage of already being in motion, which is a clutch point that much of Book Two rests on.

That's the Third Rule! The Fourth Rule is a really long one, so I'll get crunching on that as soon as I can. I may take a break to touch on anything that's come up in the first three, or any other things that occur to me just to clear my head, and then dive into it.

I was also planning on preparing a look at all of this for a Laurel's Challenge event near the end of April, but well... that's not happening now. An online substitution may well end up happening instead, and while I'm not sure what format my material might take then, it'll be interesting to put together.