Check Your Height

Greetings,

Much has been said in various manuals and treatises about the combat of the short fencer against the tall fencer and also vice versa. These are considerations of note and need to be taken into account. What does not seem to appear all that often are considerations of teaching a shorter or taller student and how this may change the approach that the teacher might take. This is something which needs to be considered as this will affect how the individual will be effective with their weapon.

Being a taller person, actions are performed in a particular way, and tactics are appropriate to a particular method. These are not so much for a shorter person. Thus as a taller person who is teaching people who are shorter, these things need to be taken into account. This is vital otherwise we are teaching the shorter person simply that they will be less effective because they are shorter and cannot do what the taller people can do, and this does everyone concerned a disservice.

What is ironic is that most people assume that because taller people have the length that they have the advantage, this is not necessarily the case. If a person who is shorter than their opponent extends their weapon from their shoulder, they will be directing their point toward the target area of the opponent.  If a taller person extends their weapon from their shoulder, they may be directing their point over the head of their opponent. By having to drop the point down, length is lost due to the change in angle from the right angle at origin to an acute angle. The same reason a person may safely stop-hit at the face while keeping their leg free from attack. This is also something that should be taken into account.

In teaching the height of the individual must be taken into account, especially if there is a marked difference in height between the trainer and student. There is little point in teaching a short person to fight like a tall person as they do not have the reach, and there is not much greater advantage of the reverse because then the taller person will not learn to use the advantage of their reach. Actions which rely on an individual being a particular height as compared to their opponent should be examined, as many of them will not be as effective, and in some cases effective at all when the fencer is shorter. It is at this point in time that the trainer needs to change tact to suit the student.

A cut delivered vertically designed to clear or at least block the opponent's weapon while striking them is an excellent attack and works beautifully when executed properly, when the fencer is the same height or taller than the opponent. When the fencer is shorter, the angles are changed. The sword will connect further up on the weapon and so will not have the strength to do the job designed and the striking part of the weapon is less likely to strike the opponent due to length. The result is that this technique is not as effective, if at all. The trainer thus needs to find an alternative, such as stepping off-line and striking the arm, or stepping off-line and coming upward and underneath to strike the flank. This is only one example, there are many more.

Both teachers and students need to take height differences into account, not only from the point of view of combat situations, but also from a teaching point of view. A shorter or taller student is going to result in different angles as a result of their height. These are going to have to be taken into account in their training, and some actions will have to be modified. A good teacher will look at this as just another challenge to be surmounted in the adventure of teaching.

Cheers,

Henry.

Re-Inventing the Wheel

Greetings,

There are questions which are going to be asked about this particular post, like what is he on about? That is simple. There is the propensity for the Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) community for re-inventing the wheel rather than taking perfectly good examples of things and either just using them or modifying them slightly to suit their purposes. This post will give three examples which seem to keep coming up as issues for the community which have been dealt with elsewhere before.

Why?

Why is it that in HEMA people seem to need to keep re-inventing the wheel? It is almost like that what has come before is just not good enough, or because it comes from another sport, or similar area and they do not want to be like them that they cannot use anything which is anything like them. There are three topics which have histories which are established which could be used as they are, or modified to purpose, yet they are not. This is, of course, causing people issues and in some cases injuries as a result because people are doing the hard work that has been done before all over again.

Armour

Armour has been around for literally thousands of years, yet when it comes to HEMA rather than looking at existing examples of armour and simply copying it or modifying the armour to suit, new armour has to be invented. The great saga of the gauntlet is the greatest example of this one that can be put up as a prime example. There were fully-articulate gauntlets manufactured and used in the medieval and Renaissance period. Why are they not just copied? Or at least the principles of their designs not copied? Its not like they did not work.

What I find really amusing about this one is that people in HEMA have been cobbling together protective gear from other sports or designing it based on other sports, and then realising that it has holes in it, which are not covered. Then these holes are being covered by examples which are found on medieval and Renaissance armours. Knee protection first just covered the front of the knee for HEMA, now it seems that fans are being added to protect the sides and give some protection to the back of the knee, which are, of course, found on medieval and Renaissance knee cops. Why go through the effort of having to find out what does not work when we already know what does?

Armour Standards

When it comes to the question of protective gear, each club or organisation will have their own ideas about what will be required for their own people. Obviously it will be dependent on the weapon that is being used, i.e. more will be required for doing longsword than smallsword. What is a little silly is that for the most part these standards are created on the spot from what the individuals think is reasonable. There is in existence an armour standard, for rapier at least, which has been around since at least the late 1990s which is an international standard, that being used by the Society for Creative Anachronisms (SCA).

Why not start with this and then add on to it? Obviously it is effective, and all of the hard work has already been done. Seems that some would rather not want to be in anyway associated with the group than use a standard which is known and works, which is ridiculous. Instead these people would rather go through the trials and issues of finding out what works and what doesn't, which puts their members at risk.

Refereeing

There has been a lot of discussion about how tournaments should be judged, whether one referee should be used and four linesmen, or one senior referee and one junior and two linesmen, or some other combination. My particular preference is to teach the combatants to call their own blows, I mean they are the ones receiving them so they would know the best if they have been hit or not. Some of this has started to filter into competitions and gradually it is beginning to hold some sway.

Again what we see is the HEMA community trying to re-invent the wheel when there is a system already available for them to use. This system is found in non-electric sport fencing. There is a presiding judge and one for each fencer. The presiding watches both competitors the others only watch their one fencer for a hit and indicate when theirs has been hit. Again, it is a recognised method with a recognised standard. It also results in using only three people and not four or five people to staff it, which has advantages when the staff are primarily volunteers.

Conclusion

Three different areas have been examined where standards or examples are have already been established, and yet in all three cases the HEMA community is trying to invent their own. The question has to be at this point in time, why? Is it an ego thing? Not willing to accept that maybe it has been done before? Or not willing to borrow from another group and thus admit that they may have some good ideas? Both of these are ridiculous reasons not to use ideas or standards used by another group and modify them to suit what is required. In most instances in the HEMA community, there is probably already an answer out there to the question which has been posed, it is a matter of finding the answer, and accepting that it is the answer. For some, it is the last bit that is the most difficult.

Some Curatorial Discussions

Greetings,

There have been some statements made which I have overheard that need correction. The reason that these are being presented here are that they seem to be present in more than one situation by more than one person. There are three elements of the sword which are going to be discussed here, fullers, piercings and cross-guards or quillons. The reasons for these discussions will become clear as the discussions proceed.

1. The Fuller

The fuller is a shallow channel which you will find present on some swords. It is most likely found on swords with a wide blade. It has been referred to some as a "blood groove" with the explanation that it allows the easy withdrawal of the sword when thrust into a person. It is not a "blood groove" at all.

The purpose of the fuller is to lighten the weapon while strengthening it at the same time. This feature of the blade is added during the construction of the blade. Attempting to add a fuller or fullers post-manufacture will weaken the blade, possibly in two ways. The first way is that by taking metal away from the blade it weakens it, and the second method is by heating the blade, especially by grinding or other modern methods, this can affect the temper of the blade.

2. Piercings

The piercings which are being spoken about in this case are through the blade. The purpose of these piercings are both to lighten the weapon and they were also added as decoration. There are examples of this being performed on rapiers from the approximately 1590s onward. This feature was, again, added during the manufacture of the blade, not as a post-manufacture modification of the weapon.

Just as with the addition of a fuller or fullers, above, the post-manufacture addition of piercings to a blade will weaken the blade and shorten its potential life and for similar reasons to the addition of post-manufacture fullers. The removal of metal from the blade creates an inherent weakness in the blade, also the creation of any piercing by modern means will, again, create heat which can affect the temper of the blade around the area in which the piercings are made, thus creating weakness.

3. Cross-guard and Quillons

The final discussion to be made is a matter of lexical accuracy when discussing weapons. People will randomly switch between the use of "cross-guard" and "quillons" for various weapons and with free abandon. What should be noted, and to be more accurate when discussing the terms, is that the term "cross-guard" should be used to refer to weapons up to the seventeenth-century, after which the term quillions should be used. This is especially the case with regard to single-handed weapons.

Interestingly, the term being Middle French in origin, was not picked up by the English until the 19th century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossguard) so should not be used at all when referring to English weapons at all until the 19th century.

These are three curatorial points which people should keep in mind when discussing swords, examining swords, and thinking of modifying their own weapons. Care needs to be taken so that a perfectly good weapon is not destroyed by a rash decision to make a sword "faster", where some more training and application will have much longer lasting effects. The modification of the sword to take a couple of grams off the sword will not effect the speed all that much, but may shorten the life of a sword considerably.

Cheers,

Henry