The Facebook Fencing Fairies came through on 2/2/13

[ellenkushner]

QUESTION:

If anyone knows the fine points of the differences between 18c smallsword fighting and contemporary fencing, you'd better tell me now. #amwriting

Ken Burnside  http://www.adastragames.com

Ellen: I've taught Western Sword and smallsword as a martial arts class in the last 15 years.

Some basic principles: You wrap something loose around your off hand (left for most people) and you advance with your left arm forward. A classic example is a cloak. Some gentlemen would also have, for lack of a better term, a bicyclist's glove with very fine chainmail cover the palm and up to the front of the second knuckle; you'd try to grab the other person's sword.

These techniques are also directly translatable to using a knife. You want something loose on your left arm, you want to try and grab someone's weapon-using wrist, and turn out - it's very hard to cut through loose fabric with a slashing attack unless the blade is very sharp, and a smallsword (and most switchblades) don't have that sharp of an edge. (Sharp edges tend to chip or dull in routine use.)

Stance: You're going to use off-hand lead, which usually means your left foot leads as well. Much of the technique is learning how to conceal your reach with the sword in your primary hand, and there are tricks with the main sword's elbow and where your ribs are to give optical illusions to make your reach seem shorter than it is. Weight is about 60/40 on the back leg and the front; modern fencing is about 50/50.

These matches tend to be SHORT. You want to do enough damage on someone's lead foot or leading hand to get them to withdraw - in this, it's more like modern epee fencing. Depending on how you were taught, you might develop a habit of stopping there, which can be a deadly mistake against someone who was taught to beat, pull aside and go for the center of mass. About the only place where modern fencing truly resembles smallsword fencing is how quickly the matches are over - watch some Olympic fencing to see this.

Here's the thought process that goes through my mind with a blade in hand. Note that "thought process" is the wrong term here - if you're thinking, you're too slow; it's as automatic as knowing where your fingers are on the keyboard.

1) Where are his shoulders in relation to his hips? If they're not lined up identically, he's trying to conceal or extend his reach.

2) How bent are his knees? The deeper his knees are bent, the more reach he has without moving his feet, but the less lateral mobility he has. His front-to-back mobility is unaffected.

3) What's the ground condition like? Is there anything near my feet that feels like a curb, a loose rock, a cobblestone? If so, can I avoid it and lead him over it?

4) Is his blade in a high line (Northern European) style, or mid-line (French) or low-line (Iberian/Italian) These determine where I have to move to parry - high line is likelier to lead to an attack at the head, shoulder, or forearm in about that priority list. Mid-line is likelier to go forearm, torso, shoulder, in about that priority list, low-line is likelier to go knee/thigh, abdomen, forearm in about that priority.

5) I have a mild form of kinetic synesthesia - I go into a very non-verbal thinking mode, a "no thought" space very easily. While in this space, I see vector arrows radiating out from the target I'm focusing on from their joints, and I "see" their range of motion. If I know where the back shoulder and elbow are, I know where the blade "can be." This helps a lot; other martial artists report similar things, so I suspect it's a mixture of brain wiring and training.

While there were more parries, EVERY parry (and every block with the off-hand) is meant to lead through to one of two things: First - get their blade out of line. Second - make sure that your blade is moving towards your intended target area, ideally in a way where their natural response to your parry is to push back on your blade and give you some resistance - this guides your blade back and makes you more accurate. One of the hardest lessons to teach is to teach someone when to go from what their body thinks is right (push back on the blade) to what IS right (don't push, pull away, let his muscles move the blade out of line).

Italian-style modern fencing retains most of the parries from a mishmash of smallsword schools - parry 1 and 2 are high line parries that riposte to high line attacks. Parry 3 is designed to keep your ear and neck from being sliced and ripostes naturally to someone's face or upper chest. Parry four is your basic deflection across the chest, parry six is the mirror of this to deflect outside. Parry seven and eight are the low-line versions of these. Parry 5 is used to defend against a cut coming in from mid-chest down to upper thigh.

Every single parry is taught, in small sword, with a step-and-pivot. You're also taught to parry with the off-hand FIRST, and to throw 'parry-step-counterstrike-pivot." One of the things that modern fencing lost is the emphasis on lateral footwork, and on aggressiveness. Most people's view of swordfighting from Hollywood try to emphasise fencing as some sort of "work out the holes in the defense and attack" routine - what it's more akin to is "see opening, exploit opening, think about it later if you live."

Don't forget that you can grapple, kick, leg sweep and pull/throw.

Smallsword was really the last time "sword" was taught as a serious-it-can-save-your-life martial art in the Western world. Pistols democratized violence; they didn't put nearly as much of a premium on training, reflex speed or strength.