When you're fencing or whatever...

No clue about what an official word might be. "Under threat", perhaps?

Is this a formal sparring session? Also, I think real world terminology varies based on which sword discipline (saber vs. epee, for example).

Write Knight is a fencer. So is Smiling Ted.

My daughter fences saber, but I haven't heard of any such thing. They would just attack, touch and get the point. It's very fast.

I'm no expert, though. I'll go ask her. This might help. Scroll to the bottom.

I'd probably just go with "X had her in check" in that case.

Bahamutchild said:

I was thinking more woven 2x4"

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Ha ha ha, you're quick. Good sense of humor, too.

When I asked which fencing, barbed wire or chicken coop, I mistakenly thought my response was first, because some glitch showed number 1 on this thread as a blank and none after.

A few minutes later, I discovered there were several honest, serious answers. My quip seemed a day late and a dollar short, so I deleted it.

Another mistake was that I deleted it before I saw your kind response.

Chase, who fenced as a lad in Montana, but not with an épée.

If they are fighting with a staff - then you would probably want the opponent to be disarmed. Any sort of bind that would render one end of a staff unusable as a threat, usually leaves the other end open, unlike with a sword. So if it's a staff fight, you'll want to do some sort of bind, and possible a body punch with leverage to remove the staff. Then face your opponet with the butt - no threat there, but if they mouth off at you, pop them once in the nose or chin... especially if they go for their own staff. They might try to grab the end of the staff though - it's not like a sword - hard to threaten someone with the butt of a staff.

- If I was fighting with a sword, I'd probably do some sort of action with second intention, to provoke a specific attack, perform a yielding parry, closing the distance, coming into a grip with THEIR point past me, and mine shortened up to their throat.

But again, that's swords ( specifically a rapier or small sword type of action). "Between the sword point and the wall" is the Spanish equivellant of "Between a rock and a hard place."

There is no phrase that I know of that is the same as "Check" in Chess. "Point in Line" - is the description of a point that is threating a 'valid' target - indicating a threat that must be removed before one can take action. Touche' is simply French for 'touch' - usually spoken BY the one receiving the touch, NOT delivering it (It's arrogant to claim the touch, honorable to acknowledge it) In old school classical fencing, you sometimes still hear "Et LA!" cried out on the attack - again simply French for "And THERE!"

When two fencers are face to face, staring across blades at one another (Think classic Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone) they are said to be in a "Corps a' corps" - French for 'body to body' - as opposed to a 'tete-a-tete'

(Damn, can't get my keyboard to make the accents...)

Yeah well, I've been on the 'delivery' and 'receiving' end of a staff before... so I can relate.

For what it's worth, the masters of the 17th century all considered the staff superior to single sword in one-on-one combat. Distance and power were the reasons mostly.

For quarterstaff info, this thread might help:

"Quarterstaff vs. Sword" from the Science Fiction/Fantasy forum
http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17889

I fence, and never heard of anything like that. Its touch till it would have been a kill.

In saber its 5-10 in foil its 15 in epee they do 10-20. Its big and fast and they only count if they touch you without you touching them. smacking her opponent on the knuckles would have been a red card for brutality though, if she did it on purpose. The ref might have awarded her opponent a point, taken one away from her or just warned her.

The point under the chin wouldn't have meant anything in a real duel as they put a gorget on the duelers to make it more interesting, and to help keep someone from being preemptively killed. Unless it was a death duel.

What form is she fencing, what is the situation and how skilled is she?

Hehe, if you want to know my luck in fencing though, I loved to fence foil and hated epee. I was ranked in epee and not in foil.

if you need any help on fencing terms and rules...

WriteKnight said:

For what it's worth, the masters of the 17th century all considered the staff superior to single sword in one-on-one combat. Distance and power were the reasons mostly.

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Ooh. Small sidetrack, but I'd be really interested to know which. The Germans, of course, and Silver and Swetman in England, but I haven't found this aspect in the great sword nations of the 17th century - Italy, Spain and (of course!) France. Seriously, I'd love to know, because there may be a master of my period I've missed altogether (which could be slightly embarrassing... )

Apologies for hijack. As you were...

Louise

Sounds like a scene like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmEDyh0azk

(skip to the 9:00 mark)

Bahamutchild said:

is there a word for having someone in check (like in chess)? For example, a character is holding a sword under the other's throat during practice. Do you just say 'X had her checked' or what?

Cheers

Click to expand...

"Yield."

WriteKnight said:

For what it's worth, the masters of the 17th century all considered the staff superior to single sword in one-on-one combat. Distance and power were the reasons mostly.

Click to expand...

WriteKnight,

Everything that I've read seems to point in the opposite direction. I would love to see documentation regarding this, after all knowledge is power and it looks like I've missed some.

Allow me a few bits of documentation for context:

I have, in my experience, yet to read a WMA treatise of any time/place, that implies in any way that the staff is superior to the sword, except maybe Jue de Hache (which I haven't read, so I'm supposing).
As far as getting into the 17th century, Di Grassi (1570/1594) states explicitly in his text the benefits of knowing how to use a sword will lead to being able to use any other weapon, staff, bill, polearms includes. Fabris (1606) dedicates one brief section, afterf a rather complete and dense instruction on the sword and a significantly larger proportion of instruction on the use of the dagger solo, to the use of sword against spear(partisan) .

In the 1570 Meyer, he's pretty clear that the treatise is organized based on the hierarchy of weapons and puts staff, halberd and pike in the 5th book, after Sword (longsword), Dusack, Rapier, and Dagger.


And here is another:

Ridolfo Capoferro of Cagli wrote in 1610,

But turning to our matter, I say that the sword is the most useful
and just arm, because it is proportioned to the distance at which offense is naturally performed, and all arms, to the degree that they differ from this distance of natural defense and offense, are to that extent more bestial and adverse to nature, and therefore useless to civic converse; the one is the way of virtue and of true reason, and the other
burdensome and coarse, from which nature never departs, keeping company with sin and ignorance, and sliding about by many routes; one is the straight line, which none but the artful knows how to do; the oblique lines are infinite, and anyone can do them. Whence in our times we see offenses and defenses multiply themselves and the art unto infinity, human endeavor imitating nature from principles; and while it follows
the traces thereof it is useful and advantageous to the human life,
but as soon as it departs from the footprints of nature, it begins to degenerate from the nobility of its origin, and hurls itself into the snares of harmful fancy, and plunges human kind into the abyss of ignorance, leading it from the age of gold into the filthiness of mud.

Kind regards,


Cris

Nivarion said:

The point under the chin wouldn't have meant anything in a real duel as they put a gorget on the duelers to make it more interesting, and to help keep someone from being preemptively killed. Unless it was a death duel.

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There were many different kinds of duels, with many different weapons. A Heidelberg duel with schlagers wasn't the same as an 18th Century affair with small swords. Rules and tactics changed.

WriteKnight said:

Yeah well, I've been on the 'delivery' and 'receiving' end of a staff before... so I can relate.

For what it's worth, the masters of the 17th century all considered the staff superior to single sword in one-on-one combat. Distance and power were the reasons mostly.

Click to expand...

I would have thought it's because you don't have to draw a staff.

Keep in mind while reading Silver, Saviolo, Di Grassi, Swetnam, Fabris, and others – that each master brings to his writings his own personal preference and PREJUDICES based on nationality and class. Englishman George Silver was a notorious bigot when it came to ‘all things Italianate’ – hating with a venom the long rapiers that were becoming all the rage. Saviolo spends more time addressing how to ANSWER A CHALLENGE than acquiring the skills necessary to survive one. (It is Saviolo’s Italian treatise that Shakespeare mocks so thoroughly) Some masters don’t address the staff in particular as it was ‘beneath the class’ of a nobleman – yet they might address fighting against a pike or halberd. So it’s important to read these instructions with a careful eye towards ‘universal applications’ that hold true throughout all of them, as well as practical application on the field. When doing so, bear in mind that a staff is a “Poll Arm”.

The various fencing manuals all talk about the advantage of different “Pole Arms” against the sword. Giacomo Di Grassi, the Italian Master writing in “His True Arte of Defense” in 1594, begins his section on the various poll arms with this statement.

“Because it may seem strange unto many that I have here placed these sorts of weapons together, as though I would frame but one only way for the handling of all, although they differ in form, from which form is gathered their difference in use. Therefore, for as much as I am of opinion, that all of them may be handled in manner after one way, it shall not be amiss if I declare the reason thereof, speaking first of every one severally by it self, and then generally of all together, holding and maintaining always for my conclusion; that skill from handling of them, helpeth the man to the knowledge of all the rest, for as much as concerneth true Arte.”

George Silver (writing in 1599) does a particularly good job in addressing the advantages of one weapon against another. At the start of his book, he gives advice for matching different combinations. One section addresses the ‘short staff’ against various edged weapons. For the un-initiated a ‘ward’ is loosely equivalent to a ‘guard position’ in modern fencing. It indicates a particular position of the weapon, hand and body. A short-staff would be cut to length for the individual, but figure between six and eight feet in length. (A ‘target’ is a small shield usually round, but sometimes square. A buckler is a small round shield). So in the words of George Silver:

“Now for the vantage of the short staff against the Sword & Buckler, Sword & Target, Two hand sword, Single sword, Sword and Dagger, or Rapier and Poniard, there is no great question to be made in any of these weapons: whensoever any blow or thrust shall be strongly made with the staffe, they are ever in false place, in the carriage of the wards, for if at any of these six weapons he carries his ward high and strong for his head, as of necessity he must carry it very high, otherwise it will be too weak to defend a blow being strongly made at his head, then will his space be too wide, in due time to break the thrust from his body. Again, if he carries his ward lower, thereby to be in equal space for readiness to break both blow and thrust, then in that space his ward is too low, and too weak to defend the blow of the staff: for the blow being strongly made at the head upon that ward, will beate down the ward and his head together, and put him in great danger of his life. And here it is to be noted, that if he fight well, the staff-man never striketh but at the head, and thrusteth presently under at the body; and if a blow be first made, a thrust followeth, & if a thrust be first made, a blow followeth,; and in doing any of them, the one breedeth the other: so that howsoever any of these six weapons shall carry his ward strongly to defend the first, he shall be too far in space to defend the second, whether it be blow or thrust.

Yet again for the short staff; The short staff has the vantage against the battle-axe, black-bill or halberd. The short staff has the vantage by reason of the nimbleness and length: he will strike and thrust freely, and in better and swifter time then can the Battle-axe, Blacke-bill or Halbard; and by reason of his hudgement, distance and time fight safe. And this resolve upon, the short staff is the best weapon against all manner of weapons, the Forrest bill excepted.”

He goes on to say the short staff is superior against TWO opponents, and the long staff, and the Morris Pike but NOT the Forrest Bill.

But all of these points assume that ALL THINGS BEING EQUAL between the two fighters. And in a duel, like a street fight – this is seldom the case.

The point of my original reply being that the length and speed of a 'double ended' weapon are seen as superior against a shorter weapon. Though Silver does distinguish the fact that there is a point of diminishing returns in the length of the weapon.