a thankyou to the Wallace Colletion

Many thanks from us at The Sword, to Tobias Capwell and the Wallace Collection for donating the footwork Diagram from their excellent "Noble Art of the sword" exhibition.
I was most pleased that Toby was willing to listen and include the diagram in the exhibition, and most grateful for this (as you can see from this shot of a private lesson) immediately and immensely useful training aid.

 

We are The Sword, London.

 We have a new facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/TheSwordLondon don't forget to like us.

There will be a new website too, offering a lot more content on our academic, martial and documentary work. The unified name for all these aspects of the London Longsword Academy and Boar's Tooth Fight-School will be... The Sword, London. 

Longsword syllabus part 1.

As requested by several students of The Sword*: The first part of the longsword course.
 The syllabus uses information from several sources (amongst them, Fiore, Fabris, Liechtenauer, Meyer, Silver and Thibault), depending on which offers the best explanation of a technique or principle. I have generally (though not always) kept the terminology Liechtenauer based**.


Longsword Syllabus part 1:
4 guards. 1389 post 1389
and the geometry of those positions.

Cutting drill 1 true, cutting drill 1 false.

Wrath hew at left ear:
Distance, correct usage and explanations of the times.
Footwork, extend then bend. The geometry and structure of the step.
Explanation of the omission of the step in this defence.
Wrath to left ear no stop.
wrath to left ear cut a lateral parry.

Wrath to left ear cut a lateral parry out, wind to left ox high thrust.

Explanation of reasoning for the lateral parry in this exercise.

Counter these with Running off false edge cut to four

Wrath to left ear, set aside and cut to face.

Counter setting aside with the high winding. strong to weak.
show and explain this mechanic.

Counter cut against wrath, mutate

counter cut against wrath hew, wind to left ox,  second party subject sword into a left parry and wind to Ox

Counter against wrath hew, subject, counter double.

Counter against wrath hew. crown, wind low

Counter against wrath, press wide, pulling.

Part 2 will follow shortly.
*you will notice that the London Longsword Academy page will change shortly to "The Sword" and the web address to www.theswordlondon.com stick it in your browser.
**please note the non longsword sources listed here still have much to offer, which is why I have included principles from these authors.

A hacker caught at Hampton Court

This weekend just past, I was at Hampton Court Palace, teaching a dussack workshop to a mix of long term sports fencers, Eastern martial artists and total novices.

I went in with a very set class structure, cuts followed by drills and summery, this all changed very quickly.

It became evident early on that these people needed a more rounded view of EBBMA (European blade based martial arts), than just waving the swords at each other.
So to begin with we went through the idea of memes, of choosing names for a position or technique,allow the mind to easily retain and fathom it's purpose (much like the naming systems used in kung fu styles).

This allowed us to cover the guard positions from Leichtenauer's longsword (both prior and post 1389), Lechkuchner's falchion and Meyer's dussack in short order.
The cuts were dealt with in the same way, working through Meyers, parting wrath and thwart lines, these identifying names really seemed to aid their understanding of the cuts and flows simply and quickly.

For the paired technique part of the class, I focused on Meyer's Bogen, dealing not only with the method of breaking that guard, but a

Yes I am using Fabris with a dussack, no I don't recommend it.

lso manners of entering past the point, of encouraging certain responses from an opponent, and if unable to dictate that; limiting his options to more predictable forms.

This led to some healthy debate, with the class taking breaks every 15 minutes or so , to assess the logic of entering in a certain way, offering at the viewpoints of several masters to colour and guide the students reasoning.
We spent a little time on Silver's times and definition of "the place"*; his, Thibault's and Fabris's use of distance to asses and deal with a threat as it develops (or lack thereof). From there we worked out how to use that information, advancing and retreating from the opponent in the Bogen.

The last part of the lesson was back to Talhoffer, looking again at the use of distance and visual tricks to encourage a response, tied this briefly into Fiore's sword in one hand, and childhood toy snatching (you have to take a class with me to understand this, it helps... honest).

It seems that this approach, my decision to argue from the perspective of several different masters, really helped give a varied, cross referenced overview of historical fencing styles and EBBMA. The feedback was glowing and I hope very much we get the opportunity to do something like this again soon.


*and of course the argument about thrust being faster than the cut...
Pictures courtesy of Nili S.