Ebbing-Hand Equals Flat-Use

[Rabbe J.O. Laine]

Sorry for the brief message and possibly typos, but I'm in something of a hurry right now.

George,

Oh, but they can be both.

Yes, they can - if improperly performed. A proper parry, with the forte, often assisted by a forwards step to choke up the blow, won't damage your sword, and will not in any way hinder your capablity to adminster a riposte.

On the second point, if you block with the flat then the motion in your cutting plane is unhindered by motions perpendicular to that cutting plane, meaning that you can defend with your counter strike already in hard acceleration, your counterblow interrupted by nothing but the sharp sound of impact from your opponent's strike. Edge-on-edge confounds your abourning counterblow by having your opponent's blade impeding the natural motion, and if your opponent presses you have to come up with something else.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean here, to be honest. Chalk it up to my poor English or something...

I'd appreciate it if you could clarify a bit, though.

In double-time fencing styles this isn't an issue, but in single-time it is.

A lot of Renaissance, and even Medieval, fencing was done in double time, as you propably know.

Now this just shows that you actually advocate using edge parries all the time, because obviously you've not tried the flat or you wouldn't think such crazy things.

What? That I think the edge is more suited for certain defences means that I advocate their usage for all situations? I'm not sure where you got that (though if I was unclear in my post, then my apologies).

However, we can also flip to the edge and engage in a pushing contest if there's any prize money in it.

Or, we could just stop their blow with the edge and riposte.

Or, we could deflect it with the flat, and then riposte. As I've repeated several times already, I'm not saying that flat parries are useless, or that they weren't done, just that some defences do result in edge-to-edge contact, while still remaining perfectly effective.

And why don't you try explaining that flat-damaging blow to a mechanical engineer. I'm sure they'll find it highly amusing.

I'm certainly no engineer or metallurgist myself, but I know of at least one respected swordmaker who would agree with me in that doing hard stops with the flat of the forte is not exactly good for a sword, and many people who've practised systems that feature heavy use of stops for decades hold similar views on the matter.

You mean the Hungarian military sabre that gave us Olympic saber fencing? When asked about their earlier styles Hungarians just shake their heads.

Nope, not referring to anything related to sport fencing, but a military system for heavy sabres.

And he, an idiotic 16th century fencing master knows better than a 15th century fencing master? Please… On the bright side no matter what I write on this subject it'll be better than anything ever thought of in the 25th century, just because…

Um... idiotic? I'm not exactly sure what that was supposed to mean, but nonetheless:

He was a master taught in a lineage of masters that likely went back at least several centuries, and provably at least several decades without changing greatly. He lived in an age where swords were still used for deadly combat with some regularity. He also advocated fencing with sharps.

I know I would trust his word far more in matters related to fencing than that of anyone today.


John,

... if anything it would seem a warning against edge to edge bashing not a support it.

I mostly agree about Viggiani, but I don't quite see how a comment about potentially breaking your *adversary's* sword with a parry can be seen as a warning against that parry, though.

Besides, it's not like all edge-to-edge parries are damaging to either sword. Silver's true gardant, which I've used as an example in this thread quite a few times, is one such defence (according to the vast majority of interpretions, anyway) and despite being edge-to-edge, does not damage either sword.

[Casper Bradak]

I'd like to see this resolved with sparring, and full force technique practice between members of both schools of thought.

[Jon Pellett]

George:

Oh, and having read Silver I can assure you there are almost no hard stops at all, just lots and lots and lots of commas.

Yeah, I recall someone on SFI complaining of comma poisoning.

As for the matter of swords breaking, all the evidence is anecdotal, and runs both ways. It would be nice to have a proper study, but no one is about to shell out the cash to bust dozens of swords made to period specifications.

Of course if you don't work out any then your true-edge torque applied with wrist supination will likely be your weakest axis, even with your thumb on the spine which merely adds stiffness and control but no extra stength.

I understand all those words individually, but not the way you just strung them together. <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

Edge-on-edge confounds your abourning counterblow by having your opponent's blade impeding the natural motion, and if your opponent presses you have to come up with something else.

As a native speaker I have no idea what 'abourning' means - it seems a trifle unfair to inflict it on our Finnish compadre. Anyway, yes, the riposte after a flat parry can be slightly faster because you don't have to realign your edge, but what do you mean by "if your opponent presses"? What on earth would that accomplish, other than to leave him open for the riposte?

At the end of the day it's just another parry, which fits the tactics and positioning of some styles, and is lousy for others. The purpose of any parry is to keep your opponent's weapon out of your tender flesh while you get into position to strike (differing from an offensive bind in that it is your opponent who breaks distance rather than you.) As long as it serves that purpose, it's a good parry in my books.

Full disclosure: I don't fight or drill with steel.

I doubt this argument will ever be settled, unless smoking-gun period evidence turns up. But I do find the discussions informative - which is probably due to me being a rank amateur in this business. <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

John:

While I concur with you re the ritualistic nature of smallsword duels and their method of practice, still the historical accounts of such encounters show overwhelming evidence that their outcomes could very often be quite bloody and "uncouth" affairs involving all manner of crude actions ---no doubt why they kept trying to stress decorum and composure, instead.

Definitely! What I was really trying to suggest was that duels are not like other kinds of fights, in that you aren't there to try to kill the other guy, or defend yourself, but rather to prove your honour by putting life and limb on the line. Imagine a hypothetical weapon with which success depended entirely on skill - anyone who was skillful with that weapon could attack a less skilled man's reputation without fear of repercussions. The possibilty of wounds or death for both parties in the duel is very important, and for this reason a weapon like a smallsword (or pistol), which is relatively chancy, might actually serve better for the duel as a social institution, if not for the hapless participants. Granted, once the duel is underway the combatants will usually do whatever they can to survive. This is just a spur-of-the-moment crackpot theory, though. <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

Cheers everyone. I really should be writing my two final papers and studying for my exams. <img src="/forum/images/icons/crazy.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forum/images/icons/frown.gif" alt="" />

[George Turner]

Rabbe,

Yes, they can - if improperly performed. A proper parry, with the forte, often assisted by a forwards step to choke up the blow, won't damage your sword, and will not in any way hinder your capablity to adminster a riposte.

But what if we're not doing parry-riposte? What if instead we want the incoming blow to hit the flat of our forte as we're making our counter blow – a blow already in begun just prior to the impact? We swing our swords through the air kind of like a wing or helicopter blade (well, actually exactly like a sword) with a leading edge and a trailing edge. The only way to stop this motion is by applying forces to the leading edge. If you don't put your sword's own leading edge in contact with any part of your opponent's sword then his sword can't stop the cutting motion of your sword. By cleverly blocking his edge with your flat you can simultaneously stop his sword (opposing the motion of his leading edge) while he's unable to stop yours. Of course not all techniques make use of the effect, but some do, and once you learn how it works marvelously.

Since your opponents blow can't get through your flat his blade is robbed of its motion, just as with an edge block, but unlike an edge block your own blow can continue with its progress unhindered, though knocked a bit to the side. For oblique impacts where your opponent's blade slides down and off the tip of yours you don't have to wait for his blade to clear because your natural swing is already set up opposite the final path of his sword. Basically, as he glides down your blade his sword rolls so it's flat on flat with yours, both edges and both natural strokes lying in the same plane, unable to further hinder one another. Since he's in the middle of missing your body (because of the oblique deflection) you're freely able to go ahead and swing. If you did the same technique with the edge your blade wouldn't be free to move in its natural swing plane until the opponent's blade cleared itself from your leading edge, because your edge would have another sword against it.

There's a timing and placement element that determines whether the striker or blocker wins the exchange, because instead of stopping the opponent's sword by impeding it along its leading edge we can also hit it past the forte and redirect its motion to somewhere other than at us. The genius of this is that our opponent just put his time and energy into getting his blade up to speed and when you knock it down or away (by striking it on the flat) you haven't rendered both blades motionless, you've sent his blade flying past you at full speed, now headed in the completely wrong direction. While he's off coping with that little direction problem you can do quite a variety of unpleasant things to him. The harder the swing the greater this effect, so when people quit making powerful swings the advantage largely went out of it.

Now as for edge damage, you can read John's essay on it

Damaged Edge

Note that a sword is resilient (flexible, springy) when hit on the flat. Since it flexes, not all the sword's molecules have to move as suddenly nor as fast as when hit on the edge, meaning the total mass being rudely accelerated is less. The impacting sword (called the percussent body in some older texts from the 1600's – a word now dead to us that once referred to the body making the percussion) isn't slowed down as abruptly, meaning its rate of deceleration is less, and thus the instantaneous force on the edge is less (also figured out in the 1600's). This lessened force (because of the flex) is also spread along more of the edge, resulting in much less applied pressure (force / area) in between the two swords, since forces are equal and opposite (more stuff from the 1600's). This becomes a handy thing to know when the blows become powerful enough to start seriously damaging the blades.

He was a master taught in a lineage of masters that likely went back at least several centuries, and provably at least several decades without changing greatly. He lived in an age where swords were still used for deadly combat with some regularity. He also advocated fencing with sharps.

I know I would trust his word far more in matters related to fencing than that of anyone today.

Now wait a minute. On the one hand fencers claim how their true and deadly art was born in the Renaissance when earlier crude and primitive systems were superceded by the much deadlier method of the thrust, with the lunge-proper and all. Yet on the other hand you here try to give credence to these revolutionary innovators by citing the long and distinguished line of earlier "crude" people who would've strongly disagreed with them on many points, and who are still to this day dismissed as mere hackers.

You can't argue that flat use is ok while also claiming it will somehow damage your sword, which is actually an argument that you should never use the flat. We're really not trying to mess with your received wisdom, but if the fencers were as innovative as claimed doesn't this mean the earlier styles that are dismissed as "crude" were dismissed as such because they were based on something quite different? Or is it that the earlier styles were only considered "different" when they were being dismissed as crude and primitive, but as they got interesting they're quite suddenly declared to be the same thing all along. If medieval edge-play was like later systems we wouldn't all talk about the birth of proper fencing, would we? The new system had to be different from its predecessors in many key ways or they wouldn't have called it knew, and people in the old styles like Silver wouldn't have spent their time denouncing the new-fangled methods. One thing all the masters certainly agreed on is that in their arguments a position should be coherent, not contradictory.

All we're really try to do here is increase you're own options and expand your knowledge of the possibilities and the evidence, but as messengers we're quite used to being shot for it.

Casper,

I'd like to see this resolved with sparring, and full force technique practice between members of both schools of thought.

Only if we get to exchange swords first. <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

Jon,

Sorry about that! Abourning is a rare one. It means "being born". I think I've been reading too much Burton or something.

[Stacy Clifford]

Rabbe,

One note here on something that just occurred to me: You've been saying that the forte is often left unsharpened on blades. Yes and no. A great many blades have the first 2-4 inches completely squared off like a steel bar, the are called the ricasso. However, the forte generally refers to the entire lower 1/4 - 1/3 portion of the blade, most of which is indeed sharpened. It may not be razor sharp like the tip of the blade, but it usually still has enough of an edge to chop wood with. There is simply no way you can use only the bottom 4 inches of the blade to defend yourself every single time, the edged portion is going to get hit. This comes back to what I said earlier - any kind of honed edge will be deeply gouged by hard impact with another steel sword edge, exactly like the damage shown in the Edge Damage article George linked to. I took the pictures for that cutting experiment and can attest to the severity of the damage inflicted.

What we are saying is that 90 degree perpendicular blocks are very likely to damage your sword anywhere along its length. Oblique angled deflections and scoops with the edge are a little bit different because they lessen the instantaneous magnitude of the opposing forces and draw the deceleration out over a longer interval, giving your muscles more opportunity to handle shock absorption, which is exactly why you do them that way. Flat parries take advantage of surface area to spread out the force of the impact, lessening the amount of damage to any one small spot. Stifling a blow means meeting it before it has achieved its full force at the apex of the swing, so a flat should work just as well for this because there is less energy there to "push through" your parry. This is also less dangerous to your edge, but it really doesn't take much for two steel edges to chew each other up, and I would prefer to avoid edge contact anywhere I don't feel it necessary.

Regarding your statements about other practitioners using swords with a comparable degree of sharpness at the forte to originals, I think we have to take that with a grain of salt. Knowing the wide disparity of quality and historical accuracy in the replica market, we would have to know the specific models used by your acquaintances in the actions you referenced to have any idea if those swords would really be analogous to the originals.

[Jon Pellett]

Hello Stewart. I'm obviously not Rabbe, but would like to address some of your points (which are excellent ones), since I come from a similar POV.

The differences of opinion that we are talking about, I beleive, are actually founded in the different chronological direction in which we approach our study. In ARMA we beleive in gleaning as much information from the oldest texts as we can first. These older texts represent the core assumptions upon which are based the later texts (YOu could argue that the RApier texts have different primary supposisiotns, but from my study of the rapier, I would say the transisiotn in primary assumptions did not take over until the advent of the smallsword).

What core assumptions are you referring to? I think I have some idea of what you mean... There is the use of guards and motions between, particularly the use of relatively fixed guards as the chief defence with the blade in 'modern' methods as opposed to the counterstrokes favoured in 'medieval' ones; also the tendency of the older styles to stay in close distance where the newer retreat immediately. Of course both types use lots of evasion, have counterattacks in time, grappling (though more in the Medieval stuff of course), parry-riposte, etc. What do you see as the major differences? This is something I've thought about as well, and I'd be very interested to hear your opinion.

If you are intent on finding evidence of hard stops, parry-riposte fencing, or intentional edge parries--all advocated initially by small sword masters--you can stretch and find some small shreds of evidence that you can twist to support your claims.

All initially advocated by small-sword masters?? Both new and old methods have both single- and double-time actions. I agree that there a few if any hard stops before 1500 (depending how exactly you define 'stifling', that may be before 1600 or even later), but there most certainly are intentional edge parries in the 16th c. Italian stuff, though no doubt you will define them out of existence. <img src="/forum/images/icons/tongue.gif" alt="" />

What is the small-sword obsession here anyway? Backsword long predates smallsword after all, and smallswords are hardly concerned with parrying blows! The advice I've seen for facing a cutting sword with a smallsword is to slip the blows; except from those like Hope who advocate adopting backsword guards for defence. I'll grant you I haven't exhaustively researched this by any means, and I am perfectly willing to be proven wrong.

It seems to me that this stylistic change was not sudden and derived from smallsword, but slow, begun before even the rapier, and lasting into 18th c. backsword, if not later, IMHO. Why it happened I don't know.

This is nothing in comparison the the myriad evidences that continue to be asserted on this website, complete with direct quotes from historical texts, physical evidence of sword failure, and biomechanical advantages/disadvantages of either type of parry. There simply is not evidence of hard stops or edge parries after the manner of those advocated by later fencers

The essays on this site provide excellent evidence of parries with/on the flat. I believe they were very common and useful actions. (Actually, when I first got into this stuff, the HACA site was where I started. <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />). However, I do not find these articles very persuasive as evidence against edge parries. Sorry.

I think you underestimate the other researchers in WMA. Remember that many people who study Silver, etc. also study stuff like I.33, and don't see any hard blocks in that!

As for assertions that George Silver advocates hard stops, I beleive that is a product of the presuppositions of those who are working backwards chronologically through their fencing interpretation.

Actually, this is a point of some argument. Steve Hand and Greg Mele, for instance, argue that Silver is quite medieval - personally, I think they overstate the case, but whatever.

Silver is problematical because he is the earliest useful English source. If we want to look at him from a British perspective, we have to use later sources (eg for the concept of 'place'). I also look at near-contemporary sources such as DiGrassi (and Saviolo - did you notice how Silver blatantly plagiarizes him? <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />), and I like to have some idea of what Talhoffer, I.33, etc are all about.

I have read Silver's description of the Guardant Ward, and find no evidence there for a hard stop, let alone and edge parry, event with the forte.

Dude, you can't be in the Silver club unless you've read Paradoxes and BI at least 10 times each, obsessively analyzed every niggling detail, and come up with a conception of true and false times which conflicts with everyone else's. <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

Silver's Guardant parry (on the left) is relatively static and uses the forte of the blade. His terminology suggests that it is a hard stop or a stifling action. Please see my post on page 4 of this thread for evidence.

I personally would love to hear anyone's ideas about Silver. I am always interested in another take on him.

When we talk about stiffling motions with the forte, we are not talking about the same thing that you are talking about when you say "hard stop with the forte" or even "parry with the edge of the forte".

So what do you mean then? This really is important. Suppose for example that you strike to the left side of my head. I pivot a little into the blow, "drawing my hind foot circularly" to my right, and parry the blow "statically" with my arm extended nearly straight. Was that a stifling or a hard stop? Why?

Try an intellectual exercise adn read some fo the older texts without any of your personal core assumptions. If you can do this honestly I doubt you will find any evidence of your edge parries, and if you do find that evidence, then we will have something further to discuss on this topic.

You need to pick a bunch of assumptions to analyze Silver - he fails to give some crucial infromation. There is one case where Silver says explicitly to use the edge to parry (two if you count the back.) There are none where he says to use the flat. The Italian styles he despised use the edge, yet he never objects to this. The evidence suggests fairly forceful direct blocks.

Balls in your court then: why do you think he used flat parries? (Incidently, there is one parry of his which is often interpreted as being done with the flat.)

Cheers

PS You may not have noticed, but some of your statements are rather rude and insulting, e.g. "twisting the evidence." Do you consider this kind of language appropriate in polite discussion?

[Derek Gulas]

Hi George,

I think you guys have probably moved past this topic a long time ago, but reading your question and statements regarding the thumb grip, and turning the sword to deflect attacks got me thinking. What about the Messer? There is plate 226 which shows the weapon turned, and an attack being caught on the Nagel (a sort of knuckle guard). Unlike other weaons, the Messer is not symmetrical; other than having the Nagel, it also has only one edge. As a side note, the attack is clearly being deflected with the flat. I think it would be highly probable to use a thumb grip with this deflection as well. What do you guys think?

[Rabbe J.O. Laine]

There have been so many replies since my last post in this thread that it'd take quite a bit of time to specifically answer every point raised, so I'll try to address them a bit more generally. Sorry about that.

First, about my comment on flat parries causing potential breakage: I *never* said all flat parries have to damage your sword, only that a stop made with the flat might end up being harmful, since such parries are made with the forte, and thus the sword may not be able to flex as it would if struck on the foible.

Second, about double time - well, Silver's clear enough:

"2. Let all your lying be such as shall best like yourself, ever considering out what fight your enemy charges you, but be sure to keep your distance, so that neither head, arms, hands, body, nor legs be within his reach, but that he must first of necessity put in his foot(1) or feet, at which time you have the choice of 3 actions by which you may endanger him &amp; go free yourself.

1. The first is to strike or thrust at him, the instant when he has gained you the place by his coming in.(2)

2. The second is to ward, &amp; after to strike him or thrust from it, remembering your governors

3. The third is to slip a little back &amp; to strike or thrust after him."

- BI 2:2. (Stephen Hick's transcription)

The blade was at least occasionally left unsharpened for the entire length of the forte, not just the ricasso, at least at some time periods. I've personally seen 17th century military swords with nicks on the (unsharpened) forte that are so small they couldn't possibly have affected the sword's functionality in any way, and yet clearly were caused by another sword impacting the edge.

Try an intellectual exercise adn read some fo the older texts without any of your personal core assumptions. If you can do this honestly I doubt you will find any evidence of your edge parries, and if you do find that evidence, then we will have something further to discuss on this topic.

I'm not really very familiar with the earlier texts, aside from my short Liechtenauer-with--really-cruddy-boffers period, but I believe many leading researchers, who do not practise any of the later systems, have interpreted some defences as being edge-to-edge. I wouldn't really know, though.

I don't think I ever argued for the presence of stops and other hard edge-to-edge parries in the early (ie. Medieval) systems, though. I find plenty in various Renaissance and early Modern ones, however.

Best,
Rabbe

[Matt Bailey]

Rabbe:

"I'm not really very familiar with the earlier texts, aside from my short Liechtenauer-with--really-cruddy-boffers period, but I believe many leading researchers, who do not practise any of the later systems, have interpreted some defences as being edge-to-edge. I wouldn't really know, though."

Well, there's Kron, that's a stoppe.

I think the defenses many of the German attacking techniques are designed to defeat are stoppes. Which to me means such dui tempo defenses were not favored by Liechtenauer, but it was perfectly plausible that one might encounter them in a swordfight.

The edge parry/sword damage argument is a worn out straw-man to me.

-One, I don't know of any serious WMA researcher whose interpreted techniques severly damage swords.

-Two, as cruddy re-enactments have shown, well-made swords can often hold up to years of abuse from even absolutely lousy technique without breaking.

-Three, sword arts around the world have a range of parries, flat and edge. The most common defensive technique in most extant styles of Chinese broadsword for instance, is the parry with the edge of the forte. Some styles of Japanese swordsmanship deflect with the flat, yet many styles, including the oldest, include some edge parries, even edge blocks. Or are styles from the 1400s Japan not old or martial enough to be valid? What about a style from the Phillipines, where frank encounters with sharp weapons haven't entirely died out even in 2005?

-Four, if "never get a nick in your edge" was ever a commandment of European swordplay, why so little evidence of it? Why no lines in Von Danzig or Ringeck about "Thus we parry to avoid damaging our sword" or some such?

[George Turner]

First, about my comment on flat parries causing potential breakage: I *never* said all flat parries have to damage your sword, only that a stop made with the flat might end up being harmful, since such parries are made with the forte, and thus the sword may not be able to flex as it would if struck on the foible.

You've penned the ever elusive self-contradicting sentence. If a stop with the flat might end up being harmful because the sword can't flex as much, wouldn't it mean they damage your sword? Harmful – to cause damage.

Your earlier statement

I'm certainly no engineer or metallurgist myself, but I know of at least one respected swordmaker who would agree with me in that doing hard stops with the flat of the forte is not exactly good for a sword, and many people who've practised systems that feature heavy use of stops for decades hold similar views on the matter.

That clearly says that using the flat of the forte is not good for the sword. Yet if blocking with the flat doesn't harm the incoming foible how can it be harming the much stronger forte of the sword getting hit?

I've personally seen 17th century military swords with nicks on the (unsharpened) forte that are so small they couldn't possibly have affected the sword's functionality in any way, and yet clearly were caused by another sword impacting the edge.

Yet throughout the 17th century they were changing to a system of edge-blocking, using swords according to our later methods. And we have another problem, because if anyone uses an older sword at any point after any change to edge-blocking then the older swords get nicked up exactly in the manner that is expected by people who argue we always edge-blocked. I've seen an older katana with its edges chewed back a quarter inch for half the length of the blade. Is this proof that the Japanese used edge blocking or proof that the American Green Beret who owned it had been playing Samurai? It's hard for a sword to lay around without somebody taking it out for a test drive. Do you really think we edge blocked in the Bronze Age, and would Hephaetsus have put up with it? These are some of the core assumptions we're talking about, as Jon earlier enquired.

When we shed our armor the rule went from "Hit your opponent really hard without getting hit really hard in return" to "Hit your opponent without getting hit in return". The difference in the two sets of rules optimizes to two very different biomechanical systems. A thrust is only marginally useful against someone in maille and padding or better, with the fragile and unarmored face as the only good target area. A weak blow, drawcuts, and rakes are almost totally useless, so you can stand in range like you see in the earlier works, wrestling at the blade. I let people drawcut at me in my maille till they tire of it and have sat on the point of an authentic bayonet with all my body weight. Armor places a minimum level of impetus or energy on a blow and a minimum level of force on a thrust below which they are ineffective.

Our later systems don't present a significant threat to someone in armor, yet the older styles did leave openings where you could get lightly hit by light quick actions. It's just that in armor you don't have to care about these powerless blows. But once the armor got shed, and note that it was shed because everyone was using guns on the battlefield, the whole body was vulnerable to rapier thrusts and light cuts with a cut-and-thrust sword. Swordsmen would quickly notice that this is so, and would probably notice first where the maximum clothing is lightest, in warm countries like Spain and Italy.

You could imagine swordsmanship as a chaotic system, a collection of techniques, weapons, and elements chosen from the universe of possibilities. Such systems could come to emphasize hard blows or light blows, thrusts to the whole body or just at some tiny remaining vulnerability. The job of innovative masters in the Western fighting arts isn't to mindlessly pass on inherited techniques without reappraisal; it's to constantly strive to keep the techniques matched to the environment. There are multiple basins of attraction, with the drift toward some later system determined by these slight changes in the vulnerabilities of the practitioners. In our particular history we shed the armor and kept it off because it was useless against firearms, so we developed a system of swordsmanship optimized for a world in which serious war fighting is carried out with guns. If you removed the guns we'd quickly rearmor and our "apex" of inherited swordsmanship would be abandoned as totally useless in a world where people actually fight with swords in armor, and our system would largely go back to the older but currently abandoned optimizations.

You shouldn't assume that the techniques found in one basin of attraction must remain valid in the other just because proponents who can't see beyond the edge of their own little pond and into another assume and teach that all their techniques are universally valid.

And Jon, Stew may not have put it politely as possible, but then we spend all day thinking about hacking people's arms off, too. <img src="/forum/images/icons/grin.gif" alt="" />

[Stacy Clifford]

...only that a stop made with the flat might end up being harmful, since such parries are made with the forte, and thus the sword may not be able to flex as it would if struck on the foible.

True that the sword cannot flex as much at the forte, but then again that part of the sword should be structurally stronger to begin with because it is usually thicker than the foible and benefits from the structural bracing of the nearby hilt (and the arm holding it). The foible has to flex to compensate for its deficiencies in those areas.

The blade was at least occasionally left unsharpened for the entire length of the forte, not just the ricasso, at least at some time periods. I've personally seen 17th century military swords with nicks on the (unsharpened) forte that are so small they couldn't possibly have affected the sword's functionality in any way, and yet clearly were caused by another sword impacting the edge.

How exactly are you defining "unsharpened"? Do you mean a dull but still bladed edge (like a butter knife), or completely blunt to the point of being rounded or squared off (like the back of a single edged blade)? I am saying that a rounded or squared edge can indeed take a lot of punishment with only minor damage, but any kind of blade edge, even a butter knife edge, will gouge significantly on 90 degree violent impact with another blade edge. You can see on our Edge Damage article that some of the gouges made in our test blade are nearly a half centimeter or more deep. That blade was an Angel Sword, which is known for having strong, durable edges. (I know what you're thinking, but at least we destroyed it in the name of science.) That is the kind of blade-endangering damage we are referring to.

You are correct that small, shallow nicks have virtually no effect. Even the most ardent of us flat-parriers do not have our edges unmarked. Making perfect edge-to-flat contact in the chaos of a fight isn't going to be possible 100% of the time, but we also know that a margin of 25-35 degrees is an acceptable range because the edge contact is oblique enough to make the damage relatively inconsequential. The closer the angle of intersection gets to 90 degrees, the deeper the edges bite into each other.

I say all this because I still suspect we are thinking with different terminologies, and I think your definition of unsharpened would help explain to us your point of view. In my opinion, you can only be correct in your damage assessments of fortes you have seen if you are referring to a completely blunted edge, or if the impacts sustained were not as violent as you thought. Anything sharper than a butter knife, and a truly hard impact by another edge is probably going to make a nasty mark. All of this is very testable and demonstrable in person, but very hard to demonstrate in writing on an internet forum unfortunately.

[Casper Bradak]

According to the late Mr. Oakeshott, the vast majority of european swords were sharpened the entire length of the blade. Squared off ricassos were a small minority appearing late in the 15th c.
Given that antique swords often had a very pronounced distal taper, they'd be more resistant to breakage at the strong, but most of them would still more than likely gouge badly on hard edge to edge blocks.

[Jeffrey Hull]

Hey MB,

Not that we should need Asian analogues, but since you mentioned it: I know of a thirty+ year authority on Yang style jian who also happens to be a PhD of physics who utilises and advocates the flat to parry in his book on the subject. I have seen a rare legitimate Ninjitsu book which clearly illustrates flat-use.

The cruddy re-enactments with such "well-made" swords that I have personally witnessed at various of Ye Olde Renny Faires have been done by admittedly cruddy re-enactors, but with *utterly* unauthentic 1/4 inch-thick unsharpened "great-swords" which weigh 10 to 15 pounds, which these sods huffingly-puffingly bash together. Just give me a four-foot piece of re-bar and it would probably last as long from klopffechter abuse as those ridiculous pseudo-weapons.

So tell me, just who puts up any *worn out straw-man*, as you state? Certainly not Herr Duerer -- he clearly and doubtlessly shows us flat-use with the falchion, as he must have witnessed in the late 1400s and early 1500s. I think that those who de-facto dismiss him or other legitimate period sources -- as a certain unnamed overrated modern author has done, who has vilified period sources to legitimise the sabre-masochism of mensur versus historical and martially valid fencing -- are really the ones who put up the straw-men.

JH

[Randall Pleasant]

Matt Bailey wrote:
I don't know of any serious WMA researcher whose interpreted techniques severly damage swords.

ALL researchers who performs edge-on-edge (90 degrees head-on) techniques with speed and force with sharp swords will experience hacking damage to their swords. It is just the Laws of Physics at play - and those researchers cannot change that fact. Just as we know the earth is round rather than flat, we also know that hacking a thin metal edge will damage that edge. This is easy to observe, thus it is easy to test. I think almost every man who ever worked with a knife as a tool and almost every housewife who can cook understands this simple fact and almost all of them understand to take care of their tools.

While it is possible that my eyes may be playing tricks on me it appears that the cover picture of a recent book on I.33 shows one of the authors holding a sword that looks like a saw. That author has stated many times that he engages in edge-on-edge parries, thus I am not surprize to see him with a hacked up sword. <img src="/forum/images/icons/smirk.gif" alt="" />