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SQG6-Fencing-Theory The Swordsman’s Quick Guide Series part six Fencing Theory Guy Windsor In Memory of Julian Clark While I was writing this booklet my friend Julian, a lifelong fencer whose input would have made it all the better, succumbed to cancer. He would no doubt have responded to this with more praise than it deserves and an apt quote from a classical text. So long, old friend. Table of Contents The Swordsman’s Quick Guide Series Introduction 3 Introduction 4 Doctrine, Strategy, Tactics 6 Time 7 Measure 10 Guards 11 Actions 12 Combinations 16 Mechanics 16 Additional Theoretical Elements 20 Conclusion 21 Thanks and Credits 23 Further reading 23 The Swordsman’s Quick Guide Series Introduction Hello, and welcome to The Swordsman’s Quick Guide series of booklets on various aspects of life in general and training historical swordsmanship in particular. My name is Guy Windsor, and I have been working on historical European swordsmanship, mostly from medieval and renaissance Italian sources, since the early 1990s. In 2001 I opened my first proper school, and have been making my living as an instructor and writer on this topic ever since. Each instalment is intended to put my key ideas about a single subject together in one place for easy reference, and so they are not specific to one weapon, style, or system. As such, they should also be useful to most other martial artists. In many cases, I cover the specific systems in detail in one or another of my books. For Fiore’s longsword techniques, you will probably find my The Medieval Longsword and Advanced Longsword, Form and Function useful. For Capoferro’s rapier plays, The Duellist's Companion. In this series I will do my best to stay general, so that the fundamental principles are not hidden behind system-specific jargon and examples. The ideas for which topics to cover in this series mostly come from the questions I get asked by my readers and students, so if you think of a topic you’d like me to include please let me know! You can find me on the usual social networking sites, and also on my own website, www.guywindsor.net/blog The rest of the series includes The Seven Principles of Mastery, available free in most ebook shops, Choosing a Sword, available free when you sign up to my mailing list, Preparing for Freeplay, Ethics, and Teaching a Basic Class. Introduction Fencing theory is the intellectual, abstract structure that fencers use to describe, define, and explain their art. For modern sport fencers, the fencing theory that their art is based on has been refined and defined and described to the nth degree; it can be simply learned from a book (I recommend the British Academy of Fencing’s documentation for this; you can order it here). For historical fencers the situation is very different. Many historical sources don’t discuss theory at all, they just describe a list of guards and techniques. Others describe the theory of their art in such metaphorical or culturally specific terms that it is very hard to understand what they are actually trying to say. The purpose of this instalment of The Swordsman’s Quick Guide is to give you the mental tools to analyse the fencing theory of any style. Fencing theory is not a new idea. At the bottom of the first page of the earliest fencing treatise we have, Royal Armouries MS I.33, there is the phrase Notandum quod ars dimicatoria sic describitur: Dimicatio est diversarum plagarum ordinatio, et dividitur in septem partes vt hic. Jeffrey Forgeng translates it as: “Note that the art of combat is described as follows: Combat is the organising of various blows, and it is divided into seven parts as here.” (Forgeng 2013, page 47.) In his first translation, he translated “dimicatio” as “fencing” (Forgeng 2003), and so we had the immortal line “fencing is the ordering of blows”. This ordering is strictly theoretical; it is the mental structure that allows you to bring order and reason to the chaos of combat. Every fencing system has a theory behind it. In some cases, the practice of the art is based on the theory; somebody figures out a new system and tries to apply it. But as I see it, more often the theory is an attempt to explain what is going on after the fact; “this stuff seems to work. I wonder why?” The point of all this is to be able to figure out what went wrong so you can fix it, or to figure out what is working so you can do it again. Fencing theory, like cosmology, religion, fashion, and manners, is very culture-specific. The notion of what makes a good sword, or the winning conditions of a swordfight, are largely culturally determined. Fencing theory changes from period to period, style to style, and era to era. There is no one consistent theory of fencing that binds it all together. This is true of all sorts of ways of organising information. Let’s take road maps as an example. We are all familiar with how they work. Streets have names, and the buildings along them usually have numbers indicating where on the street you can find them. 277 Tawana Close, Gaborone, for example. In America, they pay a lot of attention to crossroads as well (though they call them intersections), so you can find the right bit of the street. “The restaurant is on Madison and 47th” means that it’s on Madison avenue, near where 47th street crosses it. The blocks in between the road intersections don’t have names. They are just space. But in Japan, roads don’t usually have names. Blocks have names, the streets are the unnamed spaces between them. And the buildings in the blocks are numbered according to when they were built, not where they sit along the (unnamed) street. Does this mean that the Japanese are perennially lost, and their postal system doesn’t work? No. But it does mean that the ways in which we divide things up so we can understand their structures varies hugely from culture to culture. We do not live in the same culture that spawned the arts we study: cultures change enormously over time. I would argue that modern Japan probably has more in common with modern Manhattan than modern Manhattan does with medieval Milan. It is possible to use terminology and theory from one style to explain another, but it is a risky business, as the assumptions and goals of the two styles in question might be very different. I learned this the hard way: my background in sports fencing lead me to start my longsword training by treating it as basically a big fencing sabre. I broke a finger before I realised that this was a bad approach! I think that in general, fencing theories contain and define the following components: • Doctrine: the idea behind the art. What is the best way to win a sword fight? What is the best kind of sword fight? • Strategy: the end-state that you aim for in a fight. Stab him in the face; disarm him; throw him to the ground, score 5 points before he does. • Tactics: the choice of specific techniques that will lead to your strategic goal. • Time: the timing of your actions relative to those of your opponent. Many styles define actions in terms of the number of motions they require, and distinguish between acting before, during or after your opponent’s motion. • Measure: the distance between the two fencers. Any fencing action has a specific measure in which it works best, and most styles distinguish between being able to hit without stepping, or with a single footwork action, or requiring more than one step. Many also include grappling measure. • Postures: the static positions that are defined in the art; even in arts where there is no standing still, there is usually at least one “on guard” position defined somewhere. • Actions: movements of the sword or body. Cuts, thrusts, parries, lunges, passing steps, turns, steps, even backflips. • Combinations: specific actions strung together in sequence, usually for tactical reasons. Common combinations often get given names and are thought of as “a technique”, such as the punta falsa, the krumphau, the scannatura, the one-two. • Mechanics: very few historical fencing sources discuss mechanics in any detail, but most give at least some indication of how an action should be done. • Additional elements: many sources or styles also include other elements, such as virtues, philosophy, or even astrology. It is my intention that having studied this booklet you will be able to determine and describe the fencing theory behind whatever swordsmanship style you favour, and be able to state definitively which elements are historical (derived directly from the source) and which you have had to interpolate, extrapolate, or import from other systems. You may have noticed that I have just invented a meta-theory of fencing; a theory about how fencing theory works in general. And if you have a deep background in martial arts or fencing, you may very well disagree with my analysis of the components. I’d be very interested to hear from you if so! When you approach a treatise or system, you can ask yourself what the doctrine, strategy, tactics, postures, actions and combinations are, and note where these are clearly stated in the text, and (more interestingly perhaps) where they are missing and have to be interpolated from the evidence. For example, very few texts clearly state their doctrine.
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