Food for Thought

[Jake Norwood]

I think you're selling yourself short, Kevin. Fencing to first blood on the scalp really isn't that big of a deal (the danger to the face is another issue). Have you ever boxed? Been in a schoolyard fight? I don’t think it would be that much different, frankly. Apparently they were holding Fechtschulen in Nuremburg something like every Monday for a while. You can’t have the working class getting beat up so badly they can’t work every Monday and keep an activity legal!

I’d wager you’re right about the thin tips on the swords, and using less “hard hitting” techniques to split the scalp than maybe Meyer lets on. A thin-edged tip like that and a fairly quick, light flick would draw blood from the scalp, I think.

But yeah, you’re selling yourself short on your skill. I hope to see you compete in more venues in the future, frankly. I think it would really energize your training. It did for me, at least.

Good thread.

Jake

[Becca B.]

And where does the self defense Rappier arts fit into all this. Why did the fechtschulen teach Longsword, Dussack, Staff, when the Rappier Dagger was the sidearm of the day? How did they balance those things. Do you think that real swordfighting means, to the death, rappier struggle?

Also @Becca, you are always welcome here, we appreciate everyone stopping by and sharing. The good the Bad and the Funny!

Kevin Maurer
MFFG

First of all, Kevin, thanks for the welcome to participate, and in response, I think I will. Now, I am new to Longsword, Dussack, and Staff and in all honesty they are still pretty foreign to me, which is why I try to follow threads like this, so that I can learn about them. I am currently studying Rapier & Dagger through fighting, lessons, and manuscripts (though I am no expert) so I would be curious to find out the answer to the question you posed as well. I have to wonder, however, if the answer could be as simple as the fact that the people putting on the events focused on those particular weapons? I mean, we all have favorite weapons and when we organize events, they are likely to be centered around that weapon. What do you guys think? Does anyone have other ideas or an answer based on research and not just my guess?

[Jake Norwood]

Events are generally driven by three things:

1. Demand (or at least likelihood that people will participate)
2. The organizer’s enthusiasm
3. Logistics (i.e. expense and staffing)

In both Fechtschule America’s and Longpoint’s case, we wanted to do a rapier tournament, but we couldn’t drum up enough participants to make it worthwhile. Dussack, OTOH, has a low bar to entry (anybody with experience in a cutting weapon can play), is safe, and doesn’t require much equipment. Longsword is, well, the most popular. Events like Franco-Belgians and Rapier tourneys will be limited for a few years still, since they require more expensive equipment.

Or that’s my view on it!

Jake

[Jeffrey Hull]

Just some admitted pontificating and conjecturing:

The bleeding-head stuff is simply unappealing to me; not just for its mutilation, but for it seems it led to later abomination of so-called "Mensur fencing" (i.e. what I like to call "sabre-masochism").

Would rather participate in events wearing safety gear without intentional mutilation.

Then again, and ironically, the earlier feats-of-arms (fait d'armes) by knights like Lalaing et.al. are very appealing to me, wherein they were constantly mutilating and hurting each other severely.

[Becca B.]

@ Jake. Well, if you guys decide to do a rapier tournament at the Fechtschule next year, I'm in!

@ Kevin. Thanks for the info. I don't mind you asking about me at all. I am taught by Robert McPherson out of Baited Blade in St. Louis MO. If you were at Fechstchule last year, he was there. My club is primarily a classical fencing club, but we do historical weapons as well (and treat the classical ones in the spirit of historical). Exactly what we do and how we approach classical weapons is a long and complicated story. I'd be happy to go into it, but I usually avoid it unless some one asks me specifically, as it can kind of take a while to explain. Suffice to say that we are not your typical classical fencers and I have a real passion for the historical weapons. Right now I fence smallsword, rapier and rapier & dagger. Though I certainly don't want to stop there, and I am slowly learning about other historical weapons, I feel I need to devote fair time to these before I expand to dedicated study of others. It is kind of hard for me just getting into the HEMA crowd because I hear all this great stuff about all these awesome weapons (many of which I just got a taste of in Houston) but I am still fairly ignorant of them. I am working on writing a book about WMA that will give a beginner's introduction to each weapon (among other things) so I am learning a ton with my research and having a blast working on it.

[Mike Cartier]

@becca welcome, sounds like your having a goodtime in HEMA, I would wager that Classical Fencing is an excellent existing skillset to have when moving into the other weapons.

@Jake and Kevin
I think I would really like to see a year by year study of Fechtschule events with corresponding rules and other data associated with them to really see how it evolved. I would be very surprised if the Fechtschule events close to the 14th century were not much more like the root of the art being so close chronologically. I Think the rules set we work with today is far better than the Fechtschule event rule sets we hear about but thats just a sampling and thats just an event. I think freeplay at actual schools was far different than a fechtschule event, I think the restrictive rulesets were a symptom of their open nature, catering to the lowest common skill denominator much like insurance does to us in the present day.

Just because they didn't have thrusting in a fechtschule event doesn't mean they didn't do plenty of it during the course of learning the art. Our open rulesets are much freeer as you say Jake but their willingness to strike to blood on occassion (that certainly wasn't the case most of the time) But anytime they picked up steel to fight even freindly matches I think they were taking a much bigger risk than any of us do today. I don't discount the effect this had on the learning of the art. They clearly seemed to think its push one closer to skill.

But this is all theory, we need to get some hard data one of these days (I had planned my HEMA Map/Database to be something that would help get some raw data from many sources for just this sort of analysis.
I Think they did lods of actual freeplay back then so fechtschule event rules might just be a small, strikingly visible aspect of the art, but there might have been alot more going than that for the transmission of the art.

Its been my understanding from a loose understanding of all this from many sources that the rules for fechtschule events were different from place to place and time to time making it a bit difficult to make any concrete assumptions on the rest of the art by looking at them. i could be wrong of course and i think alot more study has to be done to even begin understanding alot of this. But thats a very good point about freedom of rule sets Jake.

I don't mean to imply that the restrictive rule sets in some of these with limited targets were n real swordfighting, that would be absurd. I am thinking about the practitioners who using blossen and ungeared true freeplay with martial intent willing to split heads and break bones to prepare for real swordfighting.

[Mike Cartier]

Kev we are going to have to carve a little M on Jeff's forehead for him to appreciate the mutilation aspect.

M for Meyer Jeff

I am glad you are in this discussion Jeff I would love to get your take on some of these historical aspects.
Data data data old chap

[Jeffrey Hull]

Kev we are going to have to carve a little M on Jeff's forehead for him to appreciate the mutilation aspect.

M for Meyer Jeff

I am glad you are in this discussion Jeff I would love to get your take on some of these historical aspects.
Data data data old chap

No way - nobody is doing any of that to me.

To my irrational mindset, if we maim each other, it is alright as long as we call it fait d'armes.

Guess I need to be ready to carve a T for Talhoffer into the skulls of you-all boys, when we get to finally meet at an event someday.

Just wait - someday those Wehrmacht-officer cheek-scars are going to come back into style, and then the Mensur guys shall be fashionable again.

Argh!

[Jay Vail]

Remember my fight with Jay Vail, steel swords, at Dixie Krieg? Jay wanted it—bad! And he came for me with everything he had. That was like a tournament fight. It’s all-in.

That made it a little more dangerous, because a small measure of control is replaced with speed and aggression. But it was a risk both of us were comfortable with, because we wanted that test of skill and to train that speed and aggression.

Contrast to Mike and my fight the year prior. It’s a beautiful fight, lots of good technique on both sides. Lots of probing, trying stuff out. It was great fun. But it wasn’t 1/3rd as intense as the fight with Jay a year later. Mike and I were training together; it was almost cooperative in that we would do things to see what the other would do, like quizzing your buddy before a test.

Jay and I were fighting. We were both really trying to beat the other guy. We didn’t respect each other any less—in fact, I think we both gained respect for each other in that fight.

The desire to “win” is a good thing. Our predecessors, walking into a judicial duel or a fechtschule match, most certainly wanted to win. The desire to win can be bad, though, if the victory conditions suck. I think the current tourney victory conditions are at least 80% good. Definitely room to grow, though.

Jake

Well, not everything, but most of it. Jake and I had never sparred with steel before, so I wanted to see what would happen if we both went hard at it: testing him and myself.


A lot of what I used didn't work too well against Jake. He is a bad bad man.

It was a fun fight though and as he said, very much a learning experience. You know, Jake, Dave Parker videoed the fight but I haven't been able to get him to send me the vid. It would be fun to watch, but he's probably deleted it by now.

[Becca B.]

Kevin,

Thank you very much for the link! I am currently reading the Capo Ferro manuscript and "The Duellist's Companion" together but I am compiling a Fencing Manual pdf Library on my iPhone so that when I finish one, I can move to the next and also so that I can reference them. I didn't have this one yet, so I'm glad to have it now!

I certainly recognize Meyer's importance and will not overlook him when I start my longsword research. I don't have his manual on my phone yet but I will be sure to find it.

Becca