Book Two, Rule Five for the Single Sword

Back to Book Two, because that's what I was in the mood to cover when I sat down to write things! Fabris says that the fifth rule is "more subtle than the others" so this could be a trip. (He also says that if we can safely get to the place where we utilize the rule, we'll be able to strike our opponent without ever being in danger ourselves, but that's not a new claim in Book Two. The description of the rule is only about two pages long (though it has nine plates following) so let's get to it.

So while our opponent is in "whatever guard" they like, we move towards them with the usual small steps. While we're doing that and approaching measure - because we're all starting outside of measure, right? -  we'll slowly move our sword into position such that the moment we hit measure, we're set up the way we want. 

Fabris reiterates that as he says in previous rules, we want to set up to the weaker side of our opponent's blade. Nothing new there! This time though, he wants us to get close enough so that our point is near but not past our opponent's hilt. We should have the point of our sword to one side or the other of our opponent's guard as is appropriate to whichever side is weaker, but our sword point should be pointing slightly downward, which is different. According to Fabris, this is for two reasons. First, this should let us perform a quick cavazione if we need to. Second, our opponent will need to lower their hilt to control the point of our sword, which will more or less be a free tempo for us since we'll be so close to them.

Okay. When we get to actually fence and work with other humans again, I'd like to work on this as a concept just to see how it plays out. I can see what he means, but I really want to feel it in my hand to make sure that I get it. My fencing practice dummy just isn't animated enough as-is to get this to work.

Moving on from there, Fabris says that if our opponent is in third or fourth we should be sure to keep our blade in a straight line from point to wrist (which yes, the sword should by definition be straight from the point to your wrist but the wrist should also be straight, maintaining the line through the forearm) and our arm should be well extended so that we can defend against attacks. (Also, extending your arm into a fourth will make it a lot easier to get your blade pointed slightly downward.) 

If our opponent is in first or second, Fabris says that we should "still direct your point toward his sword hand, but this time underneath his hilt." The way I'm reading this really conflicts with the previous statements about keeping our swords pointed downward, which is something that we're going to revisit in the plates. He reiterates that our hand should not make any angle at all, so keep your wrist straight and firm.

Should our opponent strike directly at us from this position, Fabris says that we can defend and strike in a single tempo, over and to the outside of their sword. Again, this is something I need to play with because as I'm seeing it, you'd be running along your opponent's sword with your debole, but to the outside in fourth, which isn't common at all. Fabris does suggest bringing our feet to the outside to keep us safer, so there's that? But what's getting me in combination with closing the line to the outside in fourth is that we'd need to re-angulate our sword such that our point is above their sword as we go. I just wonder if our sword pointing down is less efficient than horizontal? (Fabris does somewhat address this concern of mine later on.)

If our opponent doesn't do anything, Fabris' advice is both general and extremely in keeping with all his prior techniques. We just redirect our point away from their hand and towards an opening, we cover ourselves with our hilt, move the body to support these things, and strike them. It's pretty broad as advice goes, but honestly by this point in the manual it's reasonable to assume that you've really incorporated all of those as basic concepts.

If our opponent turns their guard to third or fourth, we should just cover to the inside and keep moving forward. If those guards are particularly low, we should have our point above their guard and defend with our hilt. (There are a couple plates illustrating this, the second of which has some real similarities to one from the previous rule.) 

Fabris closes with a collection of general pieces of advice for this rule:

• Be in fourth. No matter what, be in fourth. Keep pointing towards our opponent's hilt.
• The closer we can get to them the better.
• Feints can be a problem. Always parry towards the side where our sword and body are. Don't keep our sword on one side and our body on the other.
• Parrying should be done in fourth, either to the inside or outside. But if their sword is underneath us and to the outside, turn to third as we move.

This is one of those things that is just... really simple, at least on the surface. "Be in fourth, point at their hand, push through them in fourth when they hit you, it'll work out." There's obviously a lot of mastery that's required to be able to manage this in the correct tempo and measure, let alone smoothly and well. I want to reiterate again just how really hard is can be to just walk unceasingly towards your opponent while you try to shut them out and strike them - and our swords aren't sharp. That said, it's also really intimidating to have your opponent doing this to you so it's probably worth the practice!

Next time, plates! Which will clarify some things, make me question some other things, but generally make this at least appear even more straightforward a rule.

Marozzo's First Presa and Fiore

 Knife time! Let's dive in, and take a look at some Marozzo and Fiore!

First, we should consider a couple differences what the manuals are being written for. Marozzo's knife defenses appear to be straight-up civilian self defense. Fiore is generally more battlefield oriented, but the fact that he has dagger defenses which start from a seated position, which I think are much closer to the realm of "you're getting jumped" rather than "you're sitting down on the battlefield."

With the caveat that I'm not a teacher of practical self-defense, I think that this is reflected in the structure and details of the various plays. Marozzo presents a number of very specific sets of actions from a general "overhand" or "underhand" attack with a knife. Each of these plays is self-contained and fairly straightforward. These are things that could be fairly readily drilled and practiced in each discrete play, so they'd be easier to gain a baseline proficiency in - but they aren't designed out of the gate to teach how to flow from one to another, or how to deal with possible responses from your attacker.

Fiore is working from the perspective of a martial system for a trained soldier, and that's reflected in the complexity of the plays; the original attack, the remedy, the counter, the counter-counter, and so on. Heck, you could shift from one flowchart into another and into another in the correct situation. There's a lot more there to work with, but it's also more complicated at the outset.

So that's my initial take. Am I right? Beats me, let's start and maybe by the end of all of this I'll have more of a clue!

Marozzo's First Presa is a really straightforward takedown. Against an overhand attack, we block the descending arm with our left hand. We grab their arm and move it backward while we step in and place our right leg behind their right leg and put our right arm across their neck. (The illustration looks like we're grabbing their neck or shoulder, which I think gives more control than just getting your arm across them, but in a pinch that would work too.) We "twist [our] left hand toward [their] right side" and "turn our arms downwards towards the ground." The goal according to Marozzo is to send them head-first into the ground.

Okay, so. One of the first things we notice is something that we definitely have in common with Fiore, and for that matter with all the knife classes I've ever taken. Specifically, we're moving into our opponent. There's no hanging back or playing distance games or anything like that - someone is pulling a knife and trying to icepick you with it, you block it and get in real close so you can get your hands on them and do bad things.

But are the mechanics of this play seen in Fiore? Yes! Specifically, we're looking at the seventh play of the first remedy master, which is the same kind of left handed block against a descending attack. In the illustration of the first remedy master, we can see the left hand and foot are both aligned forward here, which will let us step through with our right foot as Marozzo describes in his manual.

Moving onward to the seventh play, which Fiore describes as "having no counter," we can see a very similar sort of position that Marozzo has us stand in, before our opponent ends up on the ground, though there are some differences. Marozzo has our hand gripping our opponent, and we can still see a pretty decent amount of space between the two combatants. With Fiore, there looks to be much less space - the battle hug is in full evidence, with our attacker's neck in the crook of our elbow, rather than at the length of our arm. Marozzo's instruction to "turn our arms downward" doesn't quite work because of this, but instead we can see how Fiore wants our body to align itself, especially our hips. Look at the hip alignment in Marozzo's illustration as compared to Fiore's. 

It occurs to me now though, that if you follow Marozzo's instruction to pull your arms downward, twisting your hips can flow naturally from that. I wish he called that out, though. I might be adding my own interpretation to what he wants us to do, but all the instruction I've gotten in movements like this would absolutely call for using my hips and full body to take my partner down like this, not just my arms.

So, okay! It looks like a play that's similar enough that I'd be willing to call it the same thing is showing up in both Fiore and Marozzo, which is a neat place to start. Refreshingly straightforward, too! There are twenty or so more plays in Marozzo that we're going to work through, and by the end we should be able to see if there are any which don't map out to Fiore, which of Fiore's don't appear in Marozzo, and see if we can start to draw any other conclusions as we go!

(Images courtesy Wiktenaur, and if you don't already have this site bookmarked, go check them out!)

Followup from the last post, then knives.

 So I guess it's every three months for a blog post these days? Oof. It might be better than nothing but I'm gonna try to be better about that.

Anyway! So on the docket list, we have:

• The remaining Book Two rules for the sword alone.
• Thoughts on the rules we've already looked at; similarities, differences, etc.
• Flashcard thoughts
• Something new! (Spoiler: knives.)

I'm not going to get to all of these today because well, everything, but I'll get to some of it!

The flashcards idea worked out pretty well. It's forcing me to learn individual guard positions on their own, rather than as part of a specific sequence. It also is cracking my brain open and making it have to get better at quickly picking up small bits of choreography, which is certainly going to be useful for exercises like play building. (Also it'll be useful to keep that muscle exercised for picking up more kung fu forms.) 

The thought process of "why would I move from here to here" is also something that's pretty great. I think that so far I've been able to come up with mostly-reasonable answers for every change. Some of them have been stretches, and some of my initial responses have been along the lines of "I can see this, and it mostly makes sense, but this would probably be a better response to what I'm imagining" but it's an interesting exercise to try and figure out situations where it would make the most sense to roll through the positions that the flash cards give me. Overall, excellent idea so far. It has especially been good lately when it's just really hard to try and figure out what I want to practice when I grab my sword. It's important to practice with intent, and not just do something like "pick up sword, do some lunges." (I mean, doing lunges for practice is good! Just do it deliberately and with mindfulness and not just on autopilot.) Even if I just shrug and default to grabbing the flash cards, the format of the practice itself forces me to have to engage my brain if it's going to work at all, which is honestly really great these days.

Despite having Things To Do already, as is my way, I'm going to add to the stack. Gotta have a good variety of things to choose from when I have the time to write in here, yeah? So here we go - knives. I want to go through the knife plays of Fiore and Marozzo and compare them to each other for any similarities and differences. It should be fun on a number of levels!

Looking at Fiore, we can see that he wrote Flower of Battle at the beginning of the 1400s. The type of dagger we see is a rondel, which is essentially an icepick. I've seen some versions of them which have a kind of edge, but they're really made for punching through the small gaps in armor. To that point, the techniques we see in Fiore's manual are intended for use on people whether or not they're wearing armor - though frankly, if it works on someone in armor then as a general rule it'll work just fine on someone out of armor.

Moving to Marozzo, his Opera Nova was written in 1536 or so. The dagger we see illustrated looks to be a more "generic" kind of bladed and double-edged dagger with a crossguard. All the plates illustrate an unarmored civilian use of arms as well. Granted, in Fiore's time we'd see duels with plate and harness and in Marozzo's time that wasn't really the common thing to do (at least according to my understanding) but there could be a little more to it as well. The stepping patterns that Fiore describes are particularly suited to a battlefield with uncertain footing and a need to change facing, and we don't see that same type of thing described in Marozzo. Barring the dagger defenses, which include unarmed defenses against a knife attack, it seems that Marozzo is really looking at civilian dueling and defense. Of course, the fact that he has an extensive treatise on duels and dueling in his book also points towards that.

The manuals differ in a couple more ways, too. Fiore's is a sparser writing style, rather than the extensive and step-by-step descriptions that Marozzo offers. The structures of each them are also really distinct. Fiore has his (as far as I know, unique to him) master -> remedy master -> scholar -> counter 'choose your own adventure' system for laying out the various attacks and defenses. Marozzo has a more common setup with individual plays that he works through. Given these differences, I suspect the easiest way to begin comparing sequences between the two of them is to begin with a play from Marozzo and seeing if Fiore offers a similar opening situation, and seeing if Marozzo's solutions are available in Fiore's selection of possible responses.

I'm really excited about this!