Book Two - Plates for the First Rule for the Sword Alone

I have two arms again! I can type! This is amazing and I'm excited, so let's dive in.

We've covered the broad theory of how Fabris wants us to proceed with resolution, and gone through the flowchart for his first rule of the sword alone. Before he wraps the first rule up though, he goes through some plates which illustrate a couple key moments in the rule that he described, as well as a couple edge-case scenarios which could come up during our attempt to apply the rule as written. This post is going to be a pretty straightforward look through these, which will wrap the initial walkthrough of the first rule. (We're still going to have a post that will consist of me going on about applications, weird SCAisms, and other things about this rule and the concept of Proceeding With Resolution in general, and whatnot. Truly the platonic ideal of the title of this whole blog.)

Here's the first plate that Fabris brings up, and it's a really straightforward image. "This illustration shows how to gain the first advantage as you proceed against the opponent
without waiting for a tempo." He does note that if your opponent gives you a tempo, you should absolutely take it. (Why not, right?) He also points out that the advantaged fencer here is on the left; having your sword on top of your opponent's is in his words "always better than being below it."

There is a really excellent point that he brings up in the accompanying text, though: "If the opponent’s sword is in an angled third guard or in fourth guard, you should still start in the
manner pictured. Only, instead of running the length of his blade with your point, you should proceed with your edge in a straight line from your point to his body, wounding him through that opening created by the angle of his sword (inside or outside depending on the guard)." Simply put, if your opponent's blade is pointing directly at you - as Fabris assumes to some degree in the broad applications of the rule - then you can easily run your blade along the length of theirs. On the other hand, if their blade is angled either vertically (an angled third) or horizontally (an angled fourth) then you really can't run it along the length of the blade in the same way. In that case, you should use the principle of a straight line defeating an angle, which he covers all the way back in Chapter 14.

We're going to look at the next two illustrations together, mostly because they're both described as conclusions which derive from the initial advantage shown in Plate 109 above. Plate 110 is extremely straightforward and shows what happens if we just run our blade straight along that of our opponent, and all they end up doing is panicking and trying to pull their body back and parry at the last moment. (It happens more often than you might think.) Fabris notes that the illustration as shown is what happens if we find their blade on the inside. If it happens on the outside, it would look very similar save that we'd be in Third and their blade would be pushed down rather than up.

Plate 111 is more interesting! In this case, we're on the inside line and we've passed with our left foot as our opponent tries to push our blade aside. As we pass forward with our right foot, we yield to the attempted parry by turning into an angled Second; their blade drops off to the side, we continue forward and strike them. If we were on the outside line when our opponent pushes into our blade, we'll turn our hand into Second as we drop our point below their hand (while keeping our hand at the same height that it started at) and continue passing forward to strike them.

Fabris takes this opportunity to go into some additions and clarifications to the core rule. Specifically:

• If your opponent tries to parry and break measure the moment your blades cross, cavazione and keep going from the beginning. If he tries to parry that early in the action and doesn't break measure, cavazione and continue.
• If he tries to parry again from there then turn your hand into Second like he just described and wound him.
• When you're initially stepping in if your opponent performs a cavazione and attacks you (the first time this possibility has come up!) stay in Third or Fourth (depending on if you're on the outside or inside, respectively) and strike him through the cavazione.
• If your opponent performs a cavazione and breaks measure, then contracavazione and continue. (We've been over this.) On the other hand, if he performs a ricavazione then you should be able to "defend with little motion." 
• If he tries to parry during the first cavazione, you should be able to push through in Third or Fourth, as appropriate.

We're going to look at Plates 112 and 113 together as well, because they bookend a single situation - specifically "how to gain the advantage against someone set in a low guard with the high (and most vulnerable) parts of his body held back."

I'm going to go into more detail about this and similar situations in the blog post following this one because let's be honest, we see some similar - though importantly, not identical - situations in the SCA with regularity. For now, we're going to focus on the situation as Fabris presents and describes it. Plate 112 illustrates the concept of "pointing your sword towards the danger" though note that our sword is still above our opponent's. As we pass forward, our goal will still be to run our blade along the length of theirs, which we'll accomplish by angling our sword as we close such that our hilt will end up where our point begins, and our blade will parallel our opponent's, as we can see in the following plate. Through this whole process, our point will remain above their blade. If our opponent tries to perform a cavazione - which in this case would be moving their sword above ours to change the line - Fabris states that we should stop lowering our hilt and simply move straight in to wound them, because their reach will be so short owing to their body position. In fact, in Plate 113 Fabris notes that due to the blade and body positions it's entirely likely that we'll simply end up interrupting our opponent's attempt to cavazione simply because our hilt will be right there, and we can proceed to wounding them immediately.

Three more plates! We're almost done!

At a quick glance, Plate 114 looks similar to Plate 109. However, the key difference is that our opponent is beginning in Second rather than Third. Fabris describes running along the opponent's blade as usual, but we can discern from the text that we should be on the inside of our opponent's guard. As we run along their blade, we progressively turn our hand into Fourth, and end up with our point somewhat lower than our guard, as we see in Plate 115, the conclusion to this action.

It's interesting, because Third is typically a guard used to cover the outside line. However, in this action it works owing to a couple of different things. First, Fabris specifies that we don't actually make contact with our opponent's blade with our blade, but with the hilt when we reach that point. Secondly, we smoothly turn into a guard of Fourth, which will neatly cover our inside line when it's necessary that we have the cover.

In Plate 115, Fabris notes how it is the conclusion of the play begun in Plate 114, but adds that the reason this (and the other actions in this section) work is because of our continuous forward motion. If we hesitate and miss the tempo our opponent creates with a cavazione, we will not arrive in time and our opponent could manage a counter to our action.

Lastly, we have Plate 116, and it is one of my favorites. It's a wound in First and to the outside, against a Second. It begins just as the first rule describes, with our sword extended and our opponent's sword on the inside. As we approach, our opponent performs a cavazione to the outside, and Fabris specifies "over" our sword. As we pass forward with our right foot, we turn our hand from Third to First, cutting our opponent off from completing their cavazione.

Fabris notes that "this happens because the opponent allows our fencer to proceed too far forward before starting the cavazione. Had he performed it immediately, our fencer would have had to resort to a contracavazione and an attack in fourth." Certainly he's not wrong here, but I do think that a similar take on this plate can happen even with a cavazione underneath if the timing is a little bit off. Also, the variation on Plate 111 with our fencer in Second and wounding our opponent underneath their blade can turn into something that looks a lot more like Plate 116 without too much effort, and can afford us with more safety in an SCA-related context, where people frown upon passing our blade all the way through our opponent's body up to the hilt.

That brings a close to Fabris' first rule for the sword alone! Like I mentioned above, the followup post to this will be a discussion of the application of this, musings on using it in the SCA or similar contexts, extrapolations, takeaways, and other related bits and bobs.