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!

Book Two, Rule Five, the Plates

Okay, we've looked at the initial text for Rule Five, so let's get into the plates. There are nine of them, and of that number there are three pairs of beginning and ending plates. The remaining three are a beginning with two potential endings. Now that we know what to expect, let's get to it!

Here we begin with our fencer standing on the right. We're in fourth on the outside, and our point is aimed at the hilt of our opponent. Since our sword is slightly below our opponent's, if they try to pick us up in second, it will only take a small cavazione to remain free. As a bonus, it will be pretty simple to perform the cavazione such that we end up with our sword crossing over the top of our opponent's, leaving us in a very strong position. Fabris' words are that "the opponent may believe he can find the debole, but he will find the forte instead," due to the fact that as we perform our cavazione we are constantly advancing, bringing our forte into play earlier than expected. If our opponent does not move, we can simply continue to our ideal measure and wound them as-is.

If our opponent takes the opening they see above our sword, we see the outcome of this in the next plate here. (Yes, the perspective has flipped and our fencer is now on the left.) You can see the slightly dropped hilt of the opponent, as they are trying to keep their own line covered as they attack. We perform a tight cavazione and wound them in fourth, as our forte will be pushing against their blade in the tempo of their attack. Note the passing step being used here; all of the forward movement in Book Two are "natural steps," or one foot in front of the other, until there's a possible lunge to drive the point home. Should our opponent be pressing an attack without moving forward, all we need to do is lift our point above their blade and continue forward. Our forte will make contact with their sword, and we continue in to wound them. If they try to retreat so as to gain time and space to parry, we can go back to an old favorite to avoid the parry and wound them in second underneath their blade.

The next sequence has us standing in fourth on the inside of our opponent's blade. Note how squared off we are - Fabris says that our chest is "wholly exposed" which sure isn't an understatement. He does clarify that the purpose of that is to invite our opponent to attack on that inside line or at least move to find our blade as a precursor to an attack at this giant opening. If on the other hand our opponent doesn't move, Fabris notes that we should just move in with our forte on their debole and strike them. Okay, straightforward enough.

The followup plate has a few interesting layers to it. The accompanying text is really straightforward. As we approach in fourth on the inside, our opponent turns their blade into fourth to cover himself, find our sword, and strike us. The solution that Fabris gives us is to perform a small cavazione after running our sword along theirs, and using the angle that being in fourth gives us to allow us to strike them in turn.

What I find interesting here is that while Fabris notes that this works because we are "in motion," our cavazione happens because our sword is "stationary." The distinction between us as the fencer moving relative to our opponent while our sword as our sword is stationary relative to ourselves is, well, neat. Certainly it makes sense when it's all laid out like that, but I think that most of the time, we don't separate the weapon from ourselves in terms of what's moving and what's still. Doing that lets us describe how we are constantly closing measure but noting that we're keeping the weapon relatively stationary can open up a number of options that we can look at.

In addition, Fabris doesn't call it out, but I think that there's some off-line movement happening with the passing step in plate 145. We're pushing our opponent's blade out somewhat, but I think clearing a little bit farther off in that direction would probably help with getting past the point of their sword. Now that I'm writing those words out here though, I'm second-guessing that. Maybe we can just pick up our opponent as they're rolling into fourth and the point of their sword is still outside of our presence, before they angulate it back into our chest? I think that's possible. Both reads strike me as plausible anyway, and I think working it through slowly would help me settle on one side or the other.

Moving on to the next set! As expected, we begin in fourth. Our opponent is in second and we're in the outside, pointing at his hilt. (We're on the right side in all three plates in this sequence, for a change.) As in the previous exchange, we're leaving out chest fairly wide open as an invitation. Of note is the fact that our chest isn't squared off towards our opponent as part of this invitation, unlike the previous play where we were showing a mostly flat chest as part of the invitation. Playing around with the stances on my own, it seems that this is mostly because of how the orientation of the shoulders impacts the arm and wrist in terms of where we can point our sword. If we want to point our blade towards the inside, then squaring off is fine; it doesn't inhibit our arm angling itself in that direction. On the other hand, if we're in fourth but trying to point to the outside, squaring off means that we're really going to notice our shoulder being impinged and relatively immobile. Additionally, to get the angle for the sword to point outside, we'd need to angulate our wrist to a point that's pretty uncomfortable and also remove any good arm structure we'd otherwise have. It's like our shoulder position makes a big difference with Fabris! (This is not a surprise.)

The first outcome from this beginning is what happens if our opponent does nothing at all when we enter measure; in this case, we bring our point over our opponent's hilt while staying in fourth. Fabris reminds us of this guard's "natural strength" to the outside which will keep us safe. (Remember, the blade is stronger in the direction toward which it points, and our fourth will naturally want to point to the outside.) We'll continue in with a passing step to keep a steady forward movement, but we can extend it a bit because it's the final movement we need. We need to make sure that our right shoulder and hip are turned forward as we extend into the strike, otherwise the broken body structure could let our opponent push through and probably lead to a double-hit. As a final note, Fabris points out that if our opponent performs a cavazione to the inside to wound us from seconda the same thing happens in that our fourth can protect us just as well, which we're about to see!

So even though Fabris previously said it would all work out the same, he's going into a little more detail with the "but what if they cavazione and try to hit me with an angled second" scenario. 

Here our fencer continues forward as normal, and our sword point has already moved from our opponent's hilt to their body. Just like the illustration would indicate, our arm doesn't extend so much as reach across our body, and we can see how our torso is helping get that breadth as well. The other important point which we can see in the illustration (and is made clear in the text) is that we're catching our opponent mid-cavazione, not after they complete it. This is made possible by the facts that we are closing constantly (forcing their cavazione to grow in size) and that our guard isn't changing, so there's less movement and time needed to just pick up their blade with our forte and hilt.

Fabris points out that we can get this same end result if we're approaching to the outside and our opponent tries to wound us over our sword. We can cavazione to the inside and cause them to try and point their sword down to parry us, and we end up pushing through it. That could work, but I think that one of the previous sequences could work just as well. I'd want to play around with it though.

Finally, we have an example of what we should do if our opponent presents us with a very low guard, refusing typical blade engagement. (This has also come up in the first, second, and fourth rule as well, which says to me that this would have been a pretty common concern. Certainly this situation comes up in the SCA regularly, when people just try super hard to avoid any semblance of blade contact.)

Fabris has us point at our opponent's hilt as we have been doing, with our sword in third and directly over theirs. This means that they will need to do something other than just bringing their blade straight up and into us, and the movement to one side or the other will give us the tempo we need to do something about it. If they don't do anything, we just move straight in, stay in third, keep our hilt close to their sword and pass our blade through them. (Specifically through their throat near their right shoulder.) Straightforward enough, as we can see in the final plate.

The aforementioned final plate has some serious similarity to "their sword is held low" plates from
earlier rules. (Seen in rule one, rule two, and rule four.) It's nice to see consistency inside a martial system, but also, I think it says a lot about best practices for dealing with certain problems. Don't reach with the tip of your sword. Get your hilt to their blade. Keep your sword between your body and their sword. Push them farther out of presence as you close. All of the things we've consistently seen applied whenever possible.

Fabris tells us that we'll end up using second in this situation, if our opponent tries anything. When they raise their tip, we'll either yield around them if they go to the inside or wound them underneath their arm if they go to the outside. These reactions only work if we continue to move forward. If we don't, we'll almost certainly take their sword through the chest, throat, or face. 

That's it! That's all of rule four, so I'm going to take a minute and poke at the one huge textual thing which caused me to blink a lot and be very confused before I just shrugged and rolled with it: the fact that in the introduction to this rule, Fabris said that our sword point should be pointing slightly downward. Which kind of is exactly not what was illustrated here except for maybe when our opponent is in the extremely low guard.

I kind of want to poke at the original Italian text for this but honestly, I don't have any fluency at all. I'd be relying mostly on Google Translate which loses me any possible chance of idiomatic usage or anything else. I could maybe stretch and say that the sword is pointing down from the point so maybe it's just a translation weirdness, but the language around why we point downward doesn't seem to support that. Maybe that we keep the sword pointed down as we begin enter measure but move to pointing at our opponent's hilt as we go? I could honestly see that (as I'm staring off into space trying to visualize it) but I'd want to try seeing how these play out with a partner before I really solidly conclude anything.

That concludes rule five for the single sword! I'd like to try to get another ramble about Fiore vs Marozzo Knife Fun but I might just get taken by the urge to push into rule six and wrap up all the single sword material in book two, so I promise nothing.

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!