Rule Four Plates Time!

Once again, it's been a while so let's get in on this. 

There are twelve plates for this rule. I'm going to end up grouping some of them together, because they're a pretty clear progression through the whole action. It's a bit different than how I've done this previously, but I think it'll make sense once they're all lined up.

Interestingly, along with the first picture, Fabris brings up one of the problems that we can very easily run into when examining plates in manuals. Specifically, that they are snapshots in time, and not necessarily moments to be held. "In the illustrations, it may seem that our fencer, after performing a transverse step, is waiting for a tempo; but this was done only to show the position of the foot, body, arm and sword. In real life, all of this should be done quickly and without pause." This is an important thing to keep in mind with most plates, but perhaps especially when we're looking at Book Two, where the entire point is that we should be in constant motion.

So as we begin, plate 130 shows us on the right. Our left foot had landed almost in measure, so we've stepped off-line out to the right, and we're leaning over our right foot as we go. Note that at this point, our sword is still supposed to remain just underneath our opponent's sword. Fabris says that this will make it more difficult for our opponent to find and so they'll hesitate. That may be true, but there's another point to it that we'll see in a little bit.

Anyway! We flip to the left side for plates 131 and 132. I find 131 particularly interesting because if you look closely, our left foot is already off the ground and moving. It's slight, but it's there - the shadow underneath the foot gives it away. Here, as our opponent hasn't moved, we're picking up our left foot to pass forward "along the line of [our] opponent's sword" while at the same time closing out the line to the inside by beginning to turn our hand into quarta. At this point, if our opponent continues to do nothing, we move right into plate

132, where we have finished the pass forward and have wounded them. Fabris notes that by now, the only options our opponent has available are to parry and retreat, but that's simply too little, too late.

Before we take a quick look at the other possibilities that Fabris mentions could have branched out from the ones that are illustrated here, I want to point out a couple things from plate 132. Notice just how squared off we are in there - start with the hips and look both up and down. There's some profiling in the shoulders, and the positioning of the left arm supports that, but that really just seems to be the final moment of structuring your shoulders for a good quarta and a little more reach. Looking at the hips and legs, we are overall in a very squared off position. The hips are almost completely square to our opponent, with only just enough right hip leading to maintain body structure on the attack. The feet are not remotely in line with each other, either.

How could that have gone differently, though?

If back during plate 130, our opponent could have followed our body with the point of his sword. If they did, we lean off over the other foot which has the additional impact of allowing our sword to more easily close out our opponent's sword, which should now be pointing in the wrong direction. We rapidly follow that with another step, and that's pretty much that.

Around the point in the process where we see plate 131 our opponent could try to cavazione, in which case we can "bring [our] right foot on the line with the left and wound [our] opponent in third" which works in part due to the additional breadth and the geometry caused by the body lean off to the side.

The next set of three plates shows us what happens if we had initially moved to the other line. In this case, we're leaning off over our left foot because we initially landed on our right. From there, the process proceeds in essentially the same sequence as the previous one, just on the outside rather than the inside. (As a note, "our fencer" in the plates goes from the left, to the right, to the left here. I really wish that he had called that out in a more obvious way.)

As a note, Fabris once again relies on terza to be his outside guard. It's certainly faster than turning into seconda, but if possible we won't be touching our opponent's sword anyway. He notes that if we're not worried about blade pressure that we can just push through regardless. However, if our opponent moves to parry our sword we can - and say it with me - turn our hand into seconda and wound them underneath their blade. If instead they

cavazione, we'll just turn into quarta and continue straight in with our left foot. If they cavazione later in the process, around the plate 135 stage, we'll also turn into quarta but catch them before they even finish the cavazione and wound them anyway.

Fabris wraps up this sequence of plates by noting that once we are in a place where we're capable of wounding our opponent, the only option they have available to them is to try and break measure, whereas the fencer who is moving forward has a number of options available to them. This is a pretty common theme in Book Two - the idea that once you get sufficiently close to your opponent, and have maintained control over the engagement the entire way, there's a point where there's nothing that they can do about it except to try and retreat. If they do try to retreat, you just keep progressing toward them, effectively replaying the last step of the progression again and again. It certainly has a different look and feel to more typical engagements, where the "there's nothing you can do here" portion of the fight happens later in the play and doesn't last for as long.

Next we have plate 136. Here we see what happens if we initially step off the line with our left foot, and our opponent follows our body's lean with the point of their sword. Remember that our blade was in line directly underneath theirs, so to close out their blade to the inside, all we need to do is slightly raise ours. Here it was brought straight up such that the guard rests on our opponent's blade, which has the convenient side effect of completely closing them out with minimal movement on our part, and by placing our guard directly onto their blade, which is really the ideal way to have blade contact if you have to have it. If our opponent draws back and attempts a parry, we will perform the unsurprising action of turning to seconda around their parry. We lean back to the left to ensure that we can cleanly pass the point of their blade, and strike them as we go.

Plate 137 is also a single plate and not a sequence. Here we see what happens when our opponent tries to turn into seconda and strike us underneath our blade.

Here we began by stepping off-line with our left foot, leaning over it, and pushing forward with our right. We've placed our blade next to that of our opponent's which completely shuts them out to the outside. As we do that, our opponent turns into seconda and lowers their body as they attempt to strike us underneath our blade. The reason this doesn't work is because the movement of our blade is both incomplete and minimal - we're not committing to a large movement. Additionally we are already in motion forward, all we need to so is to lower our blade and stay in terza. While we pass with our left foot, our body and arm lower as well. Comparing this plate to previous plates with a wound (132, 135, and 136) we can see that our arm is somewhat withdrawn. This is to keep our guard strongly on our opponent's blade to force it downward, with the pictured result.

Plates 138 and 139 are part of the same sequence, so we're grouping them up. This is an interesting setup that isn't explicitly described earlier, but if you take a lot of implied instructions it lines up pretty well! In plate 138, we're in quarta underneath their blade, and you can see our left shoulder is running ahead of our right; we've already stepped off-line with our left foot and followed that with our right, and have moved our body over to the left. From here, if our opponent follows us, we'll wound them to the inside in

quarta, just like we'd expect. If they don't follow us, Fabris says that we'll wound them to the outside - but over their sword while we're still in quarta, which is what plate 139 illustrates.

As an aside, this serves as a good reminder of what Fabris means by "over" our opponent's sword. Here, as in plate 137, our guard is on top of our opponent's sword and is forcing it down and away. While yes, our blade ends up under our opponent's guard and arm as well, it is our guard which has the control in the situation; contrast that with plates 132 and 134.

Plate 139 is an excellent illustration of the sword being stronger in the direction toward which it points - which in the case of a quarta is towards the outside. Quarta closes the inside line, but the guard is stronger towards the outside. Similarly, seconda closes the outside line, but is stronger towards the inside. Angles, wrists, and physics are pretty great. Usually I'd want to turn into seconda to really close out that line, but we're already too close to have the time for that, and with our guard right on their blade, it's really not all that necessary.

Finally, we're down to plates 140 and 141. Here we have a visual depiction of what Fabris says to do if we're using this rule and our opponent assumes a very low guard. Fabris says that this doesn't require any "sudden movement" downwards of the hand, body, or feet - you're just moving yourself into position as you approach into measure. 

Note how here we can see a depiction of Fabris' warning from the first section of this rule, how as we lower our guard, we need to be sure to leave the

point of our sword above the guard of our opponent's. If we don't, you can now easily see how that would change the relationship between our forte and our opponent's debole, making it much easier for them to cavazione, take control of our blade, and wound us.  

Plate 141 is the result of the setup in 140 if our opponent doesn't do anything; we've turned into quarta. The only options for our opponent that could extend this play involve breaking measure, and raising their sword to parry. If they do this though, they'll likely bring their points off line anyway, and we can just use our body positioning to remain safe and wound them underneath their blade in seconda.

Whew. That was a lot of material to cover. We have two more rules for the sword alone, but for my next post, I think I'm going to take a break and go through the material we've covered so far and look for similarities, differences, common concepts, and how it all works. I think that looking at each rule as an individual flowchart is perfectly valid and honestly good - you can absolutely approach your opponent and decide as you're approaching which rule to apply - but digging a little deeper might show us something useful, or at least be an interesting exercise.

Book Two, Rule Four for the Single Sword

Yeah, I know, I said I'd have this up a bit ago. These days though, time is a lie! So here we are.

Fabris opens up by saying that this rule is "also founded on an undetermined placement of the sword as you proceed against the opponent." Where rule three focused on proceeding to the outside when you could, this rule focuses more on the inside line, which Fabris points out "requires greater skill." 

To begin, our advance occurs with our chest square on to our opponent's point. This is essentially an invitation, as Fabris says that we really want to convey the impression that we're going to deliberately run onto their sword. This is explicitly to get them to keep their sword directed at our center line.

As we step into measure though, we step off to the side with the foot we enter with. If we're stepping in with the right foot, we step off to the right. If we're stepping in with the left, we step off with the left. When we do this, we'll lean our body off in the same direction, removing it from the line of our opponent's sword "while the opponent's openings will now be open to [us]."

We're keeping our sword near to our opponent's, so we can defend ourselves easily if they attack us as we enter measure. If they don't do anything, we keep going on the side we've already stepped toward to close them out of line completely, and wound them as we take a second step.

If instead our opponent follows our body with the point of their sword while we're taking that first step off line - and this is a pretty neat action - we move forward with the other foot (which Fabris notes "by then should be in the air") and bend our body over it so we move off line to the other side. Then we just go forward and wound them.

Fabris says that these processes are meant for when our opponent keeps their sword point in line with our upper body, more or less. If their point ends up "directed against [our] knee, or even lower" we just move forward straight against it and close out their blade downward with our blade on top, such that they can't lift their sword. When we do this, we need to be very sure that our hilt is what lowers the most, and that our point does not fall underneath their blade at all. If that were to happen, our opponent could wound us with an easy cavazione, since we'd need to perform a contracavazione at close measure. If our point is correctly situated relative to our opponent's blade though, we can wound them while they try to perform that cavazione.

Finally, Fabris notes that if our opponent is to the outside, we shouldn't need to adjust our hand. If they're on the inside though, we'll need to turn our hand slightly into quarta, but be careful not to lower our hilt and create an angle that we could be wounded through.

That's... that's it. It's really short. It's deceitfully straightforward. It also has twelve plates following it up, and I spent a good amount of time flipping back and forth between this section and the plates, trying to make sure that I was visualizing things correctly, which is what most of the next post is going to be. Also, lots and lots of plates.