WMA VS EMA

[Joshua Immanuel Gani]

Yes, the fault is not from my language, but I write it wrong, I have already corrected it,

in the website where I look at the manual it said that the manual was specifically made like pike fighting but the website only show pictures from a manual I forgot the name but it clearly shows men with right hand in front,

Maybe the person who take the picture just reverse it so people was deceived , that waht I can say because I almost never look at bayonet fighting before 19th century.

I want to know how smallsword and rapier fencing different with each other, at one time I have download an old book about realtions of boxing with bayonet fighting and it lookedvery similar.

maybe they reverse musket with bayonet handling because its firearms.

From what I see from all WMA website, it seems that WMA must fight hard to gain acceptance from the people ( they are soaked with the mind that hitting is ALWAYS better than grappling, while most WMA I see features more grappling than hitting) but when the EMA almost doesn't have any martial concept not known in WMA, the BMA( Brazilian Martial Arts) have concepts not known in either EMA or WMA ( doesnt mean it is better) exp: Ginga, Pure Ground Fighting.

BJJ guys defeat striking guys in the UFC but I think that BJJ is too slow to fight against battle MA exp: Jujutsu, Kampfringen, Xingyiquan even Silat

The battle oriented MA doesnt waste to much time on the ground

Capoeira move like crazy people but when they are attacked with locks and chokes they will stop moving of course.

Muay Thai will have difficulty I hink when their feet is locked and then twisted.

[LafayetteCCurtis]

in the website where I look at the manual it said that the manual was specifically made like pike fighting but the website only show pictures from a manual I forgot the name but it clearly shows men with right hand in front,

Maybe the person who take the picture just reverse it so people was deceived , that waht I can say because I almost never look at bayonet fighting before 19th century.

Which website? Where? All the military pike and bayonet manuals I've seen, whether online or on paper, have the left leg forward in their basic postures. Even Japanese jukendo goes left leg forward. So, unless you could produce a link for examination, I'm afraid I have to reserve the right to feel skeptical about the existence of such a right-leg-forward manual at all....

(Look at the pike chapter from Hendrik van Buren's manual--arguably the most accessible military pike manual online--and you'll only find one posture that can be arguably interpreted as right hand/right leg forward, and that one was meant specifically for use in an unusual situation. So it'd be thoroughly bizarre to claim that any style of bayonet-fighting is based on pike-fighting because it has the right hand/ leg forward.)

[Joshua Immanuel Gani]

The website is http://www.thortrains.com/getright/drillbaypom1805.htm

The treatise is Treatise on the Science of Defense for the Sword, Bayonet and Pike in Close Action by Anthony Gordon( made in 1805)

Here is a quote from the website:

"The method below is dependent on the pikeman's stance, with the left hand holding the butt. The right-hand-forward method of fighting with pole arms traces to the Middle Ages. This is similar to the stance of medieval soldiers using the pollax.

The pike style of bayonet handling was devised in the 17th century, when musketeers first used bayonets."

I tried to download it,but no website seems to offer it for free.

I like to know where you can get jukenjutsu manual and download it for free.

The full list of bayonet techniques is in http://www.thortrains.com/getright/drillbay1.html.

And still there is possibility of Left Guard for bayonet like Southpaw in Boxing where right hand and foot in the front.

[RayMcCullough]

The website is http://www.thortrains.com/getright/drillbaypom1805.htm

The treatise is Treatise on the Science of Defense for the Sword, Bayonet and Pike in Close Action by Anthony Gordon( made in 1805)

Here is a quote from the website:

"The method below is dependent on the pikeman's stance, with the left hand holding the butt. The right-hand-forward method of fighting with pole arms traces to the Middle Ages. This is similar to the stance of medieval soldiers using the pollax.

I think who ever wrote that statement about the " right hand forward was the medieval method" just didn't really have a clue. The manuals show using polearms of all kinds in both positions. I know that J. Meyer taught polearms with the left hand and left leg forward. The method they taught was different than what is in the 1805 manual even if the supposed "hand position" was the same.

But I don't think it matters which hand and foot are forward as long as you do not have to switch in the moment of surprise. For example, Right handed shooters have their left foot and left hand forward. They need to be able to strike with out having to change hand position and vice versa for left handers.

[Joshua Immanuel Gani]

Maybe he just guess about that because when bayonet is invented it is a new weapon but look like a spear or glaive.

So what do you think about the 1805 manual and the website?

I have another question, why no one has written a full book of Ringen? just like John Clements write both Medieval Swordsmnaships and Renaissance Swordsmanships.

In the manual that I read, the persons doing the technique is like obsessed with making their opponents fall, but they will not be defeated by falling on their back, and do they have some way of breaking falls like in Jujutsu?

How do you all reconstruct techniques from old manual? how do you know wihich is the correct movements? etc

I read in wikipedia that Korean martial arts was reconstructed from old manual also.

[LafayetteCCurtis]

I think who ever wrote that statement about the " right hand forward was the medieval method" just didn't really have a clue.

(snip)

But I don't think it matters which hand and foot are forward as long as you do not have to switch in the moment of surprise. For example, Right handed shooters have their left foot and left hand forward. They need to be able to strike with out having to change hand position and vice versa for left handers.

Agreed on both counts.

So what do you think about the 1805 manual and the website?

It's not hard to find the Anthony Gordon manual online. Just typing "anthony gordon bayonet" in Google got me two meaningful results:

http://books.google.com/books/about/A_t ... gCAAAAYAAJ

http://www.archive.org/details/atreatis ... 00gordgoog

It's a rather odd little book, and the bizarre right-foot-forward postures appear to have been derived directly from the smallsword-based methods described in the first half of the text. One of the plates even goes so far as to depict both a Roman legionary and his opponent in right-foot-forward poses, entirely foregoing the use of the shields they visibly carried. Judging by the lack of similar poses in contemporary illustrations of actual battles, it appears that the methods set down in this manual was never widely adopted.


As for the site, it's a quick-and-dirty pose guide for miniature wargame figure designers and that's that. It's honest enough to make a disclaimer that the images presented therein should not be used as reference for learning actual combat or self-defence techniques--a disclaimer you had better take quite seriously since the images are presented without the context you need to interpret them in a martial sense.

[Joshua Immanuel Gani]

I know that the picture is just showing postures what I think useful is the list of manual also available on the website. Do you want the link ?

So it's an unusual manual from its period but it's still a good source for bayonet fighting. Thank you for your information for downloading.

The bayonet fighting in the manual is not derived from medieval age techniques. I know it isn't and the person just post it for miniature so hedoesn't really care about it, but why do you think it is not widely used and that it is not middle age techniques?

just want to know.

[LafayetteCCurtis]

I know that the picture is just showing postures what I think useful is the list of manual also available on the website. Do you want the link ?

No, thanks--there's no shortage of such resources on the Web if you know where to look, and I already have far too many broadsword and bayonet manuals in my hard drive waiting to be read.

So it's an unusual manual from its period but it's still a good source for bayonet fighting.

I wouldn't say it's a "good source" because I haven't seen any evidence that its techniques (or at least the techniques unique to this manual) were actually adopted on the battlefield.

The bayonet fighting in the manual is not derived from medieval age techniques. I know it isn't and the person just post it for miniature so hedoesn't really care about it, but why do you think it is not widely used

Because I have (what I'd like to think of as) a respectable collection of scans and prints of 19th-century battle illustrations, and when I look at them (especially the ones contemporary to the battles they depicted--say, painted no more than 10-20 years after the event) I can't find the right-foot-forward postures described and depicted in the Anthony Gordon manual. Even the soldiers kneeling in the foremost rank with their bayonets slanted upwards (from the Napoleonic Wars onwards) did so with their left foot forward.

We can't assume that a manual was used just because it was printed--we must also look at the pictorial and textual evidence from contemporary battles to see what techniques the soldiers actually used.

and that it is not middle age techniques?

Because Gordon's techniques don't look like the illustrations in medieval spear-fighting manuals either! There's no shortage of these--Fiore, Talhoffer, Gladiatoria, and the like--but none of them show guards or techniques that closely resemble those in Gordon's smallsword-based system.

[Joshua Immanuel Gani]

So you have many manuals, and never read all of it until finish. I also like that I download many books and now I have to master all of it, by the way do you have any rare manual( bayonet, swords, unarmed).

The bayonet manual that I have is 19th century style, WW1 and WW2, Modern bayonet, what I never have is Jukenjutsu manual from WW2 only that.

And where do you search all the manuals?

[LafayetteCCurtis]

Google Books, archive.org, and Project Gutenberg all have a number of interesting manuals--just search them with keywords like "sword," "bayonet," "singlestick," and the like. There are also a number of online translation projects, such as the ones for Marozzo's and Fiore's works. And of course there are publishers like Paladin Press and Chivalry Bookshelf--they carry a number of important translations and interpretations of medieval and Renaissance combat texts.

[Joshua Immanuel Gani]

Thank you!

[LafayetteCCurtis]

Interestingly enough, I've recently become aware of the information that pikes were wielded with the right hand and right foot forward in the late 15th century, as shown in Paul Dolnstein's graphic diary. It still doesn't resemble Anhony Gordon's smallsword-derived methods, though. The relevant discussion and illustrations are here:

http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=7906