List boundaries and historic prize fights, or what happens when you mean to write one thing and find a related research rabbithole instead.

Now that we've gone through all the rules for the single rapier in book two, I wanted to kick some thoughts around them in general. I had intended this entry to be something along the lines of "what principles do they illustrate and have in common and what can we learn from them all and how are they useful to us in what we do."

I meant to do that. I really, really did.

But see, I started by kicking around the thought of "look, how useful is it for me to just do the implacable walk of death towards someone if they can back up into infinite space because we don't have static rapier list boundaries." Because we don't, right? One of the discussions about major tournaments that comes up regularly enough that I can set my watch by it is what to do if someone backs into the ropes. Responses usually vary between "call a hold to make sure nobody goes outside of them and continue, repeating as needed" and "call a hold and recenter them before continuing." Neither of these offer a particularly realistic take on how personal combat happened in period, where that level of retreating could be seen as cowardly.

That's where this all started.

Anyone who has taken a class with Tom Leoni has heard about how renaissance Italian dueling custom held that if a duelist backed up out of the circle or other bounds, they forfeited the match. The closest I've found to a clear citation in writing on this is in Saviolo's "Of Honor and Honorable Quarrels." (Jared Kirby edited and presented an edition under the title "A Gentleman's Guide to Duelling" which I think is still readily available.) In the section entitled "In How Many Cases A Man May Overcome In The Lists" Saviolo writes, "Last of all is the running out of the lists. Of this sort of losing the field everyone is so much the more shameful by how much the more I have placed and set him down in his lowest place or room. To be slain in the field is less shameful, though it is far more dangerous and hurtful."

Additionally, Silver (I know, I know) wrote about an incident involving Saviolo, his friend (possibly employee or co-teacher?) Jeronimo, and Silver himself in "Paradoxes of Defense." As Silver described it: "Then came Vincentio and Jeronimo, they taught Rapier-fight at the Court, at London, and in the countrey, by the space of seaven or eight yeares or thereabouts. These two Italian Fencers, especially Vincentio, said that Englishment were strong men, but had no cunning, and they would go backe too much in their fight, which was great disgrace unto them. Upon these words of disgrace against Englishmen, my brother Toby Silver and my selfe, made challenge against them both, to play with them at the single Rapier, Rapier and Dagger, the single Dagger, the single Sword, the Sword and Target, the Sword and Buckler, & two hand Sword, the Staffe, battel Axe, and Morris Pike, to be played at the Bell Savage upon the Scaffold, where he that went in his fight faster backe than he ought, of Englishmen or Italian, should be in danger to breake his necke off the Scaffold."

It was fairly common for the London Masters of Defense to conduct prize fights on raised stages (what Silver terms a scaffold), usually set up in the yard of an inn or playhouse so that an audience could gather and watch. Covering the neighborhood in flyers, which George and Toby Silver did as well, was also a pretty common thing to do based on this story as well as how prize fights would be announced as well. 

Anyway! All of this fun rabbithole diving is what causes me to keep thinking, "we should come up with a compromise there somehow" and I keep wondering how I'd go about building a list with sturdy railings so that when a fencer hits the edge of the lists no hold is called and everything just goes on. I don't know how practical it is to do that for the many lists that a major tournament has - the usual solution of list poles and rope is just a whole lot more space efficient for storage, as well as being adjustable when setting up. But maybe doing something for a single list for cool prize fights done in a period style or a display or something like that?

I'd love to be able to do something like that on a raised platform, and definitely that should have railings. A more immersive event would be awesome for this, or at least a thematically cool site for it. I guess what I'm saying is that I need to see about setting up a raised stage or at least a fenced in list for the town square at Beltaines and then posting flyers some weeks beforehand about a prize fight or something. See? Super period!

Then I went down the related dive of remembering that the London Masters were a business. (One article about them refers to them accurately as a "corporation.") This means that when you played your prize for promotion from scholar to free scholar, free scholar to provost or provost to master, you had to do things like notify members of the appropriate rank within a certain radius that the contest was happening so they could come and fight. If you failed to inform someone, you had to pay a penalty. If someone traveled more than twenty miles to get there, you paid half their traveling expenses. When you got your signed and sealed letter of rank, you had to pay duties and such for that as well. It's pretty bonkers.

Point is though, raised stage with railings for cool period prize fights in a really cool town setting.

This is what happens when I start to look into something and then just keep going and going. Next time we'll talk about things like technique and underlying principles and such. This time it was cool history stuff and that's just fine.

Book Two, Rule Six, The Plates!

 Okay, let's dive right in. Last time we looked at the text describing rule six for the sword alone. This time we're going to look at the example plates. Like I mentioned previously, there are six plates total - two sequences of three plates each - so I'm stringing some together with the magic of MS Paint and here we go!

Here we can see how an approach would look if we entered on the inside. Looking from plate 151 to 152, we can see how our arm will pull back to our body and our torso rotate so the left side is presented as we step forward, causing our blade to remain stationary in space. Interestingly, in our first plate we already begin with our left shoulder about even with our right. Fabris states that it allows us to fortify our sword and keep ourselves safe to the inside and only a little open on the outside. (This has come up a couple times previously, and I really want to play around with this in the future. I don't think it's a universal concept but rather something which is true in specific circumstances, such as when you're constantly advancing towards your opponent. I don't think practicing on the fencing dummy will really let me figure this out, but that's also worth a shot.)

Stepping into plate 152, we've completed a pass with our left foot. Our arm is about as far back as it could reasonably get, and our left side is fully forward. From here, all that's really going to happen is that we'll pass forward ahead with our right foot and then wound our opponent, which we see in plate 153.

Fabris really doesn't add much from here; he notes that our opponent really won't be able to turn themselves into fourth to cover themselves to the inside because with the angle our arm is at as well as the measure we're in mean that we're going to be in a much more mechanically strong position. At that measure, they certainly won't be able to perform a cavazione successfully, either. Fabris notes that if they tried it back in plate 151, we could contracavazione as we proceeded forward and things would still work out the same. 

What's worth noting is that Fabris calls out the "union of body and sword and the motion of the feet" being what keeps us safe, and we can especially see that in the conclusion of this play. The step we take is longer than the smaller steps we've taken previously, but not unduly so. Our arm doesn't straighten, but it returns more or less to the angle we see in the beginning of the play. What does happen is our right shoulder turning forward with the right hip shifting forward on the passing step. This maintains the unity of forces through our body and is going to be much harder to resist than the extending of an arm would be, as well as covering a surprising amount of distance and keeping our body safe as we clear our opponent's blade.

The second play occurs with our opponent on the outside. Interestingly, we're in fourth against their third. We choose this guard for two reasons according to Fabris: it's stronger to the outside (because, remember, it points to the outside) and it keeps us safe in the opening that the angle of the guard creates. Notice that we're fairly squared off with respect to our opponent, preparing for the next step, seen in plate 155.

Frankly, Fabris doesn't have much to say about this middle step; the situation is much the same as earlier, as well as at the same point if we were on the inside. Our body positioning, measure, progress forward, and left hand all ensure our safety to the inside and our blade keeps us safe to the outside.  

Finally, we see the wound in fourth. At that distance, with those body mechanics, there's really no reason to take the time to shift to second. There's still a rolling along the spine to shift the right shoulder forward, along with the hip, and the body is lowered as well. Fabris reminds us to push in with our body and not to extend our arm, which would open us up to a girata or possibly a parry. We need to drive forward and not lean ourselves to one side or the other, which would create an opening and cost us our union of forces.

Fabris spends a little bit of ink describing that he didn't go into how to use this technique on first, second, or fourth guards, or generally go into approaching withdrawn guards, because he feels that if you master these techniques, you'll understand how to properly apply them to these other circumstances. Once again, he's trying to describe theory and demonstrate the application of it in some ways and leaves it to the reader's understanding to work out how to apply them in a more general sense.

As an aside, it occurred to me while I was standing in my hallway working through the steps from rule six that there's another reason to set up in fourth even if we're opposing on the outside. If we are in fourth, and if our opponent attempts to cavazione as we approach, we can move ourselves into third and more readily interrupt our opponent's cavazione while keeping them to the outside. From our perspective, our opponent's sword would be moving clockwise while we move our hand counterclockwise into them, and keep them safely to our outside, which is what our body is set up to deal with in that case. If we were in second we would need to contracavazione, which we lack the time to do, or turn our hand into fourth but be unable to cover ourselves with our hand before we would be struck. I'm going to have to play around with this in other situations and see how it bears itself out.

That's it! That's all of the sword alone for book two! We'll be going into the sword and dagger portion of book two soon enough, but maybe I'll do another Marozzo and Fiore dagger defense comparison first. Who knows! It'll be a surprise.

Book Two, Rule Six!

 We're doing it! We're going to wrap up the first part of book two. (Then maybe we'll look at something else before we dive into the second part - proceeding with resolution with the rapier and dagger.) Let's get to it.

Fabris opens by stating that all the techniques we've seen so far can work, but the more sophisticated the technique is, the more likely it is to succeed. Naturally, the technique that he's about to show us is the most sophisticated one of them all.

We start off just as usual, approaching with natural steps. As we reach misura larga, we should bring our sword with our sword point against their debole but in a way so that we're in a stronger position. So far, this is all pretty much what we've come to expect from the outset. 

As we proceed forward from misura larga we will be stepping forward while we retract our arm, leaving our sword essentially stationary in space. Fabris wants us to be taking very small steps while we do this, so as to ensure that we'll always be able to deal with whatever movement our opponent might make. To allow ourselves to move as far forward as you can without moving our sword, our hand will end up coming very close to our body. To allow ourselves to move even further forward, we also end up effectively creating a void with our right side and allow our left side to pass forward. Ideally we won't wound our opponent until we have passed the point of their sword, and we shouldn't wound them by moving our arm. Instead, we'll keep our arm in its withdrawn position and carry it through our opponent with our body. (When we get to the plates, we'll see that we can still use the turning of our body back to our right shoulder forward, as well as a slightly longer step at the end to really drive our sword forward instead of relying on our arm.)

Fabris gives us one specific instance in this portion of the text, noting that if we are on the inside line and our opponent brings their sword high we should do the same but only just enough to maintain our crossing. If they move to pass underneath our sword, we can find them in third and we should keep the left side of our body forward. (Again, we'll see a variation of this in the plates which will make it more clear.) He goes on to note that we do this to keep our body safe if they perform a cavazione from our finding them in third (because our body is already past their point) and because it increases our sword's strength and ability to create an angle if we desire.

Fabris summarizes this rule by saying, "In this rule, you should follow this motto: keep your sword where you had it when you first found the opponent’s blade - keep it there until you wound. And do not wound unless your body has passed the opponent’s point, or wound just in the instant you pass it." He goes on to emphasize that if our opponent makes some movement in the tempo while we move forward, if our body can't pass their point we're better off not trying to wound them but to pick them up on the other side and then continue forward more safely.

Interestingly, Fabris also goes into some details about how this will or won't function with the sword and dagger. (Why? I have no idea.) He says that if our opponent's sword is properly joined to their dagger, we really can't find their sword without putting ours right into their dagger. We should refer back to the technique which has us place our sword by our opponent's hilt while keeping it free, and do that. As we perform the rest of rule six, our dagger will necessarily move itself so far forward that it will keep us safe just by being there.

Finally, I wanted to leave you all with this quote, because it's just so perfect: 

"Some individuals, more out of arrogance than out of knowledge, state that there are certain unstoppable attacks to which there is no possible counter. To them, I reply out of experience that every blow has its counter, and that no blow exists that admits no counter. To put it another way, any attack is unstoppable if it is performed in its correct tempo and measure; just as it is true that an attack that is borne out of thewrong tempo and measure not only has a counter, but is also easily parried.

So, under these premises, it is both true that any attack has its defense and that all attacks are unstoppable. Whoever believes otherwise greatly deceives himself, as do those who think that the same technique can be invariably used against any kind of opponent. Personally, I think that a good fencer can indeed face any opponent, but that he should operate differently depending on the opportunity presented to him."

Good, yeah?

So this rule, despite being the most sophisticated, is pretty short. Our next entry will be about the plates, of which there are six, being two sequences of beginning, middle, and end on the inside and outside. And then we'll be done with the first part of Book Two!