Semi-Weekly Swordstuff Update
An evening and a morning late, I suppose, but better late than never. This week was meant to be longsword, but something happened with Matt and the club weapons, so another scholar led the class, and the beginner section ended up being on the start of the hand-to-handy grapply (abrazare) bit of Fioreās treatise.
Pretty interesting, generally, for any number of reasons. Namely, that the existence of and attempts to reconstruct like...14th/15th century Italian hand-to-hand martial arts, as opposed to East Asian ones, is an interesting contrast to make. Like, the fact that they exist at all is a fact worth noting. But for those vaguely familiar with the rest of Fioreās system, itās also interesting to see how it sort of operates on the same systems. He basically implements and reworks four of the guards that appear in his two-handed and one-handed sword systems for unarmed fighting. Posta longa, denta di cinghiale, porta di ferro, and posta frontale. And a lot of the plays are sort of translations of stuff I recognised from the later sections in the treatise: his gioco stretto pommel strike plays, for instance. That gives the whole treatise a nice sense of continuity and holism, to my mind, and means that knowledge of different sections are applicable acrossĀ weapons systems too, if youāre clever with them.
Also, I guess the fact that a lot of these are techniques that presume your opponent is trying to stab you with a dagger, and often has surprised you, make them pretty interesting too in the context of like...medieval Italian street brawls and suchlike. And the content of the section, if you read it, clearly has these sorts of life-or-death no-holds-barred brawl situations in mind, given how fucking dirty most of the techniques are --- itās all joint-locks and -breaks, eye gouging, nose-smashing, andĀ āBY THIS PLAY I WILL DESTROY YOUR TESTICLES, SUCH THAT NO STRENGTH WILL REMAIN IN YOUR HEARTā.
(For more cute little bits of nastiness from this bit of Fioreās treatise, at least according to my interpretation, see here.)
Anyway, we went through like the first four plays, which are basically ways to fuck someone up who tries to grip you by the shoulder or throat in one hand, and wail on you with a knife or just their other fist. Mostly it involves stopping the momentum of their potentially-knifey hand, getting your body the fuck away from it, while breaking, locking, or straight-up dislocating their left elbow and forcing them to the ground. That, and various ways to respond to their likely responses.
But this throws up something else interesting, for me. Sword techniques are sort of distanced from their likely effect, when you practice them. Which is probably for the best because, god, do you really wanna be thinking about what a sharp longsword wielded proficiently is gonna do to someone? (I mean, kinda, yeah, in the abstract, but Iām in no hurry at all to literally find out.) Itās hard to imagine, when youāre just drilling with a partner, what the effects of these plays were meant to be. But with unarmed stuff, grappling, locks, etc., even just slowly and gently practicing them gives you a sense of their likely effects. When you practice, you push to just the beginning of possible discomfort for your partner, and when youāre on the receiving end, that discomfort is a warning sign --- the mechanics of your body are getting turned against themselves, and you sort of feelĀ that if your partner pushed a little further, applied a little more force or torque, that they could do real damage. Even applying very little force, as the one executing the grapples and stuff, itās weirdly easy to get your opponent very thoroughly off-balance, or immobilised, or on the ground.
Anyway, after that, the advanced class was longsword. Footwork exercises, and some full-speed, full-intent crosses and thrusting ripostes. Then sparring, but nothing really so interesting or new as the unarmed stuff...which honestly Iām proud of myself for managing to go through without breaking or dislocating anything!