Stances in Man vs animal

[CalebChow]

This question is kind of an appeal to the Roman gladiatorial games and the mythical knight in shining armor lopping the head off the great dragon.

Clearly, the guards and stances studied in ARMA are meant to face humans.

Yet against more distant adversaries that may employ beasts on the battlefield or in scouting groups (elephants and dogs come to mind), are there any instructions/accounts on how to take down animals with particular weapons, or was it just a "duhhh" thing that wasn't bothered to be written down?

...

and no, I don't have anything against animals...really.

[Stacy Clifford]

There is at least one short Italian piece that has some advice on fighting animals, though I don't think it's been translated: Antonio Quintino's "Jewels of Wisdom" from 1614. I believe it mentions bulls, buffalo, wolves and snakes. That's the only one I know of though.

The guards we learn are meant to use against humans, true, but the ones that keep the point forward are exploiting a principle that works against most animals with decent eyesight too: sharp pointy things aimed at the face are threatening and best respected if you want to live. Seeing how popular horns are as a defense mechanism in the animal kingdom, I would exploit that as much as possible. I don't think animals reconize cutting edges in the same way and would probably see vom tag or tail guard as an opening to attack (and since they're faster than we are, they'd probably be right).

[s_taillebois]

Such concerns where predominately addressed by the nobility's affection for hunting. Boars, bears and stags would have served that need.

Plus in general the main martial animal that the Europeans would have had to worry about was the trained warhorse. There were obviously dogs but these tended to be aimed at stags, boars, and peasants.

And until much later war elephants and such were on the far end of the European sphere of influence. Charlemagne for example did have an elephant, but it was more a symbol of affluence (and a very expensive pet) than anything martial oriented. He valued too much to use it on campaign, and was terribly upset when it died.

And as M. Clifford notes, most of the guards, thrusts and etc established for human rivals, plus the psychological traits of animals (especially horses) would have meant they already had the means to deal with these problems.

For example, on the right ground, and until it's cohesion was broken by archers, artillery, other infantry or the gun, pike squares could often negate the effect of cavalry. Horses by their nature are reluctant to charge into those type of obstructions.

Faining guards, or those which do not project would, as M. Clifford notes likely be ineffective against predatory animals. But in those conditions a sword was often a secondary weapon after the spear, crossbow, bow or gun.

And because much of Europe was actually quite wild until fairly recently, they did have problems with wolves, bears and etc. And one of the obligations of the nobility was to remove those problems. So in some cases their lances and etc would have been used as much for pest control as for warfare. Especially in times of peace and when a noble's land was in one of the areas which was assarting.

Incidentally the knight and dragon symbol was intended to make the armor plated aristocracy behave better...it was intended to get the actual knight to quit rapine and plunder (or at least quit doing it to their own people)

[Joel Norman]

If you are looking at historical fighting with animals, modern bullfighting might also give you some clues. It is of course highly sportified and ritualized, but is a descendant of gladitorial games. Plus, to the bull it's not really a sport; it's life-and-death. Spain and various Latin American countries have different styles, too. Some fight the bulls on foot, some mounted. There are different kinds of swords, spears, and knives used, as well.
I've tried looking into how bullfighters are trained, to see if anything relates at all to historical fighting styles, but haven't really found much that's conclusive. Maybe someone else has found more than me.