Crosse Guard with the rapier and dagger.

Carry the point of your dagger upright and the hilt so low as your girdle-stead, without putting your thumb against the blade of your dagger, but gripping him fast in your hand, and the point of your rapier under the Dagger hand according to the picture (which, conveniently is not there)

This has required some guesswork- mainly because of the lack of the picture. It's a fairly straight forward stance. The big question is where the point of your sword goes. Obviously it's under your dagger, but do you carry the point near the ground or close to your fist?

Personally, after practice and some of the bits that he says later, I think the point should be carried close to the ground- in a position similar to one of the iron guards. You still have a lot covered by the sword but it looks a bit more open because of the increased space. It also stops you from getting tangled up with yourself.

This guard will make your chest appear open and it helps limit the effectiveness of the opponents dagger.

There is one particularly beautiful move from this position and it comes when you receive a thrust to the chest. It is a simple passing step where you turn the point of your sword up to offend. Providing you keep your dagger arm locked (relative to your body) as you step, you move to behind your dagger and your opponent runs onto your sword.

This looks quite Hollywood and foppish when done- which is a bonus- it feels really satisfying when it works. The hardest thing about the whole manoeuvre is stepping forwards when a sword is coming at you.

The Greatest Weapon of them all.

What is it? The bill, the longsword, the rapier.. Well, according to Swetnam it is a fair tongue. For a fair tongue, used with skill will prevent swords from being drawn. Solve fights before they occur and so on.

Which is true. Not getting into a fight is the best method of self defence around. Especially since training is usually done with gentlefolk- the kind of people who won't rip your testicles off, bite your ear and gouge at your eyes. In general, we don't fight too seriously (as I've mentioned when talking about intention).

However, one of the reasons I thought Swetnam would be interesting to study is due to the lewd arraignment of women. Not because I stand by his beliefs- but due to the fact that London women probably haven't changed that much over the past 400 years and anyone who can publish that kind of thing would have learned a lot about how to defend himself.

So there we go- a chapter on being polite and civil to avoid fights and yet he publishes something that is so sexist that it results in satirical plays decrying him as a misogynist.

Rapier 2011

I had the good fortune to be able to attend the rather excellent Rapier 2011 event held by the School of the Sword and I'd like to see more events like that. Don't get me wrong- Fightcamp is an excellent event for deciding what you want to look at properly and generally having fun with new concepts, it also runs the risk of decision lock. Where you have so many options you can't choose what to do.

In contrast, Rapier 2011 was a single weapon event with one workshop on at a time. One of the first things that I've learned over that weekend is that I should really do some yoga/core strength and flexibility work. Rapier is a very demanding weapon and being able to hold a 3-4 pound weight at arms length for the entire fight is only the start of it.

I have said before that sword fighting is very simple. Which it is- there are easily grasped rules and body mechanics to it. The beauty is that these simple things build together to create a complex whole. How you apply these rules is largely a matter of preference and then building them into a bigger picture comes with skill and experience.

You could see this in some competition fights. A nice bout of mental chess happening then despite nobody actually attacking, one person loses, retreats out of distance and tries a different approach. It also appeared in the lessons- despite some movements being unusual, people easily grasped the concepts and could see how it works. Nothing was counter intuitive. Although, I am still having difficulty stepping inwards when someone is trying to stab me in the face.

Anyway, comments about the workshops:

There were two recycled from Fightcamp. The School of the Sword's slow-motion flow drill and Dave Rawlings' introduction to Thibault. I have no problem with this, especially because the slow motion flow drill is a brilliant training technique.

The Thibault stuff. Personally I'd have liked a broader sweep of the subject so I could put things into context and see how it all fits in. However, it's clear that Mr Rawlings knows his stuff and is a perfectionist. I suspect he's got this flowchart/decision tree tattooed on the back of his eyelids and he was reading the first few branches.

A nice touch was changing hands all the time. The other arm tends to get neglected and doing 2 hours of holding your sword at shoulder height is knackering. It was an intensely technical lesson and quite mentally tiring. Maybe concentrating on the principle of blade feel would have made it clearer. I'm not entirely sure exactly what I've taken away from that lesson, but I think I got a lot.

Dutch rapier. Now, this was interesting. I've had a question about something Swetnam mentions. I can't be bothered to find the exact text but it is along the lines of turning your knuckles up and stepping in. It appears there's a Dutch analogue and all is now clear. And it also seems to work as a point down/point up parry with rapier and dagger.

Voids, contratempo and work against the blade. I found myself getting quite frustrated during this. Not because it was difficult or boring but because it moved at a very fast pace, so I managed to get it right once or twice but not enough to seal it in my mind. For me the lesson went "Ow. Bollocks, that wasn't right. Ah, I know what I did wrong. Ah-ha!. Yes, I think I have it. What do you mean stop? I've only just got up to speed". It has shown me something about organising lessons which is plan too much, know you're planning too much and then let the students set the pace. If they need more time on it, give them more time. If they get bored, up the conflict. Techniques I've taken away are few- I've improved the void of the head (although, I doubt I'll use it in sparring) and stepping in and striking from off line.

French rapier. The thing that stood out from this was a very neat way to deal with having your sword grabbed. I'm not going to say much about it apart from it's a bit devious. Lots of good things about fight psychology- things that don't appear in sparring, like if you thoroughly stab someone they are "not dead yet" and so have nothing left to lose and can turn into a very dangerous opponent until they finally drop.

The competition: There should be some video of this from the School of the Sword. It's quite hard to comment on that because of the amount of fighting and the tendency for it to blur together after the first hour. Especially when you're wondering about getting back to the hotel and changed for dinner.

There was also a little presentation from an assistant curator of the Wallace Collection. They're doing a very interesting event next spring/summer involving what we do. The Wallace is a hidden treasure of London and I'd recommend going anyway but the addition of the original manuscripts and an exhibition on the evolution of sword arts- it's now a must see rather than a mere "you'll enjoy this".

Thie was written in advance, but for some reason, the scheduling had messed up (probably due to me)

Scheduling

In an effort to keep this alive, I wrote a bunch of posts and set up a thrice-weekly schedule. It's now occurred to me (after having a busy and brainfilled weekend of stabbing and then subsequent life stuff) that I'm going to burn out at that pace. However, if I don't hold myself to some kind of update routine- this will fade away yet again.

I like sharing the good things about this hobby and that includes the frustrations of interpretation and.. I've put a fair amount of work into trying to understand the noble art of stabbing people in the face. It's nice to feel as if some of my knowledge is being used by other people. Also, now I'm looking at teaching, putting my notes and ideas up means that I'll get people challenging them and helping me improve.

I think once a week should be sustainable. Especially after I've I taken the final step- get a room to teach in and start my arm of the club.

The myth of Full Intent

Right, I see a lot of complaints about not fighting with full intent and suchlike. Now, let's be honest- nobody fights with full intent. And as the rattling of sabres and general harrumphing starts up, I shall go further and say you should never trust someone who- in this day and age- fights with full intent, for they are a callous fuckwit.

How dare I say this? Well.. We're good people. We don't fight to kill, or even injure our opponents. We have padding and safety measures to enable us to fight with more intent than we could otherwise and we aim for blows that would be fatal in a real fight. But. You would feel awful if you severely injured your opponent. Sometimes your actions are directed by where you know the padding is soundest, sometimes you avoid shots where you know your opponent is unprotected- you do not go for a groin shot he isn't wearing a box. There's a range of disarms that I will not attempt with the rapier unless I know my opponent is holding their blade in a certain way. Not because it's ineffective, but because I don't want to break their fingers.

In reality, the ideal would be to kill or seriously wound your opponent by any means necessary. I don't know about you- but the idea of doing that to someone fills me with horror.

We will (hopefully) never be called upon to use a sword in a duelling context and that fight- where your life is literally in the balance and it is kill or be killed- is going to be different to even the most intense competition fights. I will admit that I don't fight with intent, I commit to the attack and do what I can, following martial principles and suchlike. But at the back of my mind is the fact that I could seriously injure my opponent and I am wary of it. I'm not big on winning or losing, in fact I consider a poor fight as a loss regardless of who got the most hits in.

Obviously, "fair" intent is a moveable feast. My competition head is very different from my freeplay head, which is different from my "let's see if I can do this under fight conditions" head. For me, I think that my intent is related to how pressured I feel- and I suspect that's the same for most people. There are a lot of compromises necessary to keep things safe and as realistic as possible.

Swetnam says something along these lines- Be cautious of calling yourself great simply because you can beat your friends at play, for they are all gentlemen and do not wish to kill you. It may give you an idea of how good you are, but you will never know your real capabilities until you are forced into a live fight.

Although this is a martial art and it is taken seriously by practitioners, there are concepts of "acceptable injury" at play all the time. It's why we wear padding and use foiled swords. We do not want to wound our opponents, let alone hit them with a devastating blow.

With HEMA, there tends to be only two types of people you fight- people you think you want to have a beer with afterwards and people you know you want to have a beer with afterwards.