Posta di Bicorno/Unterhau connection

[Bart Walczak]

Interesting. Agreed.

[Jay Vail]

posta di bicorno, not speaking italian myself, is that guard of the unicorn?

[David Kite]

Tactically, I believe it is the same, but as a strict translation, it doesn't make sense to me. Unicorn means literally one-horn, so bicorno would mean two-horn. Uni = one; Bi = two.

In the German school, "Ochs" (Ox) and "Einhorn" (Unicorn) are very similar positions (differning only in where the point is pointing, IMO), so perhaps it is effectively the same thing for Italians. The Flos Duellatorium at www.varmouries.com/wildrose/fiore/fiore.html only gives the English translation without the original Italian with it, and it only lists the guard of the Unicorn in the longsword section. I don't have any idea what posta di bicorno looks like, or even if their translation is accurate, but it makes sense to me that they are similar positions.

But again, tactically, an undercut with the longedge will put you in either the ox or unicorn guard, so maybe I'm just splitting hairs, here.

David Kite

[David Kite]

Sorry if I'm a little confused here, but is finestra "The Royal Guard of the True Window" as on the Wild Rose translation? Again, they didn't give the original Italian, so I don't know. I also don't see a "two-horn" guard listed. All I can find is the unicorn.

David Kite

[Derek Wassom]

Oh, OK.
Yeah, I always thought that this was either a cut from below or a winding action. Like Einhorn, only when the cut is executed from the elbow, rather than from the shoulder.

[David Kite]

Yep, that's the one I was talking about as well. I always thought it looked really weird, and couldn't imagine its utility, but your original post makes it all come clear.

Cool.

David Kite

[Jake_Norwood]

Stew-

It's Meyer that throws the unterhau with the true edge from Alber (or, in Meyer, Olber). Fascinating insight on Bicornio, and very similar to what Bob showed in Denver.

Jake

[Jake_Norwood]

The TROS site can, and I can give you upload info, but my connection is 56k at the moment, so I can't middle-man anything.

Back on topic...

We tried this in practice today, following with Meyer's excercise from the end of cap 4, which (in short) says:

Start in zornhut or tag (I start leading left)
Cut scheitelhau to Olber (now I'l leading right)
from Olber cut true edge into Einhorn (passing through langort) (still leading right)
recover to Schlussel (key) for a thrust. (Still right, though I could have passed on the unterhau and ended up leading left).

Jake

[John_Clements]

You also achieve the bicornio posta from a left schrankhut action that then suddenly cuts back and around with the short edge. Very quick, and effective. Ends in same position as bicornio.

JC