James Nicholls wrote:I've been looking around online, but I can't find the answer to a few questions that have been bugging me.
All right, general answer first: this could be the exact reason why some of the earlier German manuscripts (such as Ringeck and pseudo-Peter von Danzig) tucked the section on the Vier Leger (four guards) deep in the middle of the text, after several long sections on the Meisterhaue, rather than right up in front. This could imply that students of the Liechtenauer school
aren't supposed to make that much fuss about the guards, since they'd spend relatively little time resting in those guards while the rest of the fight would be spent moving around, cutting, thrusting, slicing, feinting, covering, and so on.
That being said, guards
are just about the first thing taught in Fiore's longsword, so there's nothing wrong with paying a great deal of particular attention to them if you're focusing upon Fiore's tradition. Meyer also places them early on in his longsword section so there's a decent case for making a great deal of fuss about them if you're studying him or other late German masters whose works are closely related to his.
Is there a right boar's tooth? As in, with the left foot forward? I can only find examples which show the right foot being forward.
I'm not an expert of Fiore, but I don't think I've seen a left-foot-forward
Dente de Zenghiare in his longsword stuff, and there's nothing strange about that. Longsword fighting isn't as asymmetrical as modern fencing but it
is still asymmetrical. Have a closer look at Fiore's cuts and you'll see that he's strongly against doing cuts that require a crossing of the arms, so a left-to-right sottano (rising cut) is almost exclusively done with the false edge, rarely (if ever) with the true edge.
That being said, the rest of your questions are about German longsword*, and (pedantically speaking) there's no such thing as "boar's tooth" there. The Alber (Fool) looks very similar and indeed can be used in a similar way but it's not
called the boar's tooth -- and there's a very important point of difference in that the Alber
does have a left-foot-forward version.
What is the name of the stance that you would end up in after following through with a right oberhau from an orthodox stance? (So that the tip points diagonnaly down, to the outside of the lead leg?)
Following through how far? I suppose you're not talking about cutting the Oberhau to the Langort (long/extended point), but there are many positions you can cut to beyond that; you could go just to a lower Hengen (with the hilt at thigh or knee height but the point towards the opponent's face), take it all the way until the point is towards the ground and pull the pommel higher than the navel into an Alber, or go even further into a Nebenhut with the sword pointing backwards and down. Or you could just go full circle and go to Ochs or vom Tag.
It's also worth noting that you mentioned "the tip points diagonnaly down, to the outside of the lead leg." This means you're
not stepping with the cut. While it's true that you'll eventually learn many cuts that are executed without stepping (just with a twist of the hip), if you're just starting with the Liechtenauer school then you'd better follow one of the very first things mentioned in the Zettel and its glosses:
Will you show Art,
You go left, and right with hewing.
And left with right
Is how you most strongly fence.
Gloss: Mark, that is the first art of the Long Sword, that you shall learn the hews correctly before all things, so that you will otherwise fence strongly, and undertake that thus: When you stand with the left foot before and hew from your right side, if you do not follow after the hew with a step forward of your right foot, thus the hew is false and incorrect. When your right side remains behind, thereby the hew becomes too short and may not have its correct path downwards to the other side before the left foot.
Or if you stand with the right foot before and hew from the left side, and you do not follow after the hew with your left foot, then the hew is yet false. Therefore mark when you hew from the right side that you always follow after the hew. Do also likewise the same when you hew from the left side. So put your body therewith correctly in the balance, thus the hews become long and hewn correctly
So, for the time being, if you start in Vom Tag with the left foot forward,
always pass the right foot ahead of the left when you strike from right to left. You'll end up with the right foot leading and the tip of your sword will be to the
inside of it. Similarly, when you start with the right foot forward and then strike from left to right,
always pass your left foot ahead. You'll learn the exceptions soon enough so
don't worry about them just yet. Just concern yourself with perfecting your form and your power-generation chain in the most basic form of cut, which comes with a passing step.
What stance would you use while in an orthodox stance (left foot forward) to attack from the left in order to do an unter or mittlehau?
Pflug? Schlussel maybe? Are there any others?
Yes, you can start with the Pflug. Yes, the Schlussel works too, though the resulting cut can be rather weak (I haven't studied Meyer much but I got the impression that actions from the Schlussel usually start with a thrust, and the thrust is often used to lure the enemy into beating it to one side so that he exposes an opening on the other side).
But that's just a tiny part of the list. You can also start from the Alber (especially if you want to strike with the false edge). You can start from Ochs by dropping the point to the left (for an Unterhau) or just lowering the hands as you snap a quick cut from the left (for a Mittelhau -- this one is usually not very powerful but makes for a very good feint or distraction). Hell, you can even start from Vom Tag -- which may feel awkward at first but suddenly makes a great deal of sense once you get the hang of it (and try it with the false edge too -- you'll be surprised at how fast you can snap that one out and return to Vom Tag with all but the heaviest blades).
The key here is don't think of the Unterhau in rigid terms. I used to see things under a rigid division where the Oberhau only strikes the upper openings, the Mittelhau strikes around the midsection, and the Unterhau goes to the lower openings. I couldn't have been more wrong. The manuals show the Oberhau being used to attack the low openings too, the Unterhau scooping around to hit the head or hands from below, and the Mittelhau going at just about every height you can think of (well, when it shows up at all, that is -- the simple Mittelhau doesn't appear all that often in most German manuals, and almost entirely absent from the early Liechtenauer glosses apart from the very brief mention in the introduction). Ask your instructors (or more experienced colleagues) about this or, failing that, go ahead and experiment with it yourself. You'll soon find that there are bewilderingly many ways to strike, even from the weak side (left to right for a right-handed swordsman).
*)
Fiore might have been German, and "his" tradition certainly had German adherents as shown in
these manuscripts, but for the moment let's pretend that his art is "Italian."
with your left leg forward, you cut from the right, so that you can follow after your cut with the right leg. If you want to cut from the left, you need to step with the left leg, which means you need to start right side forward. That is established in the first few lessons in Ringeck.
