The Weekly Warfare   Musings martial from across the SCA

On to the more specific discussion of particular feints, used to illustrate and reiterate:

How to Strike to the Chest with Single Sword – from the Measure and Parity of Swords

This illustration shows an artful manner to strike the opponent in the chest while assuring yourself of his weapon so that he may not attack you as you perform your pass

The illustration shows the opponent in a lunge.  “You” have passed forward, with your sword below your opponent’s extended arm, and your left hand on your opponent’s guard pushing it away to your outside.

Setup:

Set yourself in guard with your sword extended and to the outside.  If the opponent comes to gain your sword, let him do so until he steps into measure.

Feint:

As soon as he is in measure, perform a cavazione to the inside and present your point to his face.

The two choices:

If he does not parry, push your thrust home gliding with your true edge against the edge of his sword, turning your hand and bringing your body somewhat to the side.

This is the “feint, no reaction, extend into a lunge”, here on the inside, so turning your hand to quarta and keeping your body away from his sword.  This is not what’s illustrated.  What is:

If he instead parries and counterattacks as you perform the cavazione, refrain from thrusting, but keep your point a bit wide of his; as he attempts the parry and counterattack, perform another cavazione under his hilt and keep your point direct at the opponent’s chest…  Please make sure your two cavazioni are executed in the same tempo without stopping the motion of your point, or else the opponent’s steel may meet it.  As he attempts to parry, pass to the outside all the way to the opponent’s body with your hand on his hilt.

So, as he starts his parry and counterattack motion, you perform your second cavazione, bringing your sword under his hilt, AND pass forward.  From Gawin and I working through this, it turned out to need a fairly deep step to get the hand on the hilt, but keeping the motion as straightforward as possible (no side to side, no up and down), pretty much a left-handed lunge, gets you there in time.

And now you are within the point of his sword, have control of his blade, and have your own sword pointed at his chest.  Good place to be.

The Pass with Feint from out of Measure

In the note at the end of the introductory section on feints, Giganti mentions that the illustration for this might look similar to the illustration of the previous section, but he repeats them.  The illustration here has some notable differences, but, what’s much more worthwhile noting, is that the illustration should not be attached to this section at all.  So ignore it for now.

This is an artful way to pass against the opponent without him realizing it… It consists of passing with a feint, and proceeding to strike the opponent.

So far I don’t see how this is much different from the previous section.

The setup:

Observe in which guard the opponent stands; as soon as he is set in his guard, advance against him with your sword pointed at his face.  As soon as you are almost in measure, deliver a powerful thrust towards his face… If he does not parry with sufficient strength, this action will end with the strike shown [Leoni notes the illustration is not actually specified, but is probably from plate 6 or 8, strikes to the face from the inside] … and you will not need to perform any feints.  But if he does, your two blades will end in a position of equal strength.

All of this, still setup.  You recover into guard out of measure, and start the real attack.  But first, two things:

He talks about starting the attack from out of measure, and yet still landing it.  Given Giganti’s beautiful definition of measure (“Can you hit your oppponent?  Then you’re in measure”) this would seem to be impossible.  I wonder if he’s either thinking of it as “out of measure without a full lunge” or if he means an unspoken-of redoublement.  Do they even do that in late Italian?

The second thing: Sir Christian talks about finding your opponent’s panic parry.  What do they do when they’re pressed hard an reacting instinctively?  All of this setup is illustrating the way to find that panic parry.  Strong, believable thrust, not really intended as an attack (and therefore not a feint, but more of a fake), designed to pull out that panic parry.  But if there is no parry, extend it into a real attack.  A lot of the wasted work in my fight is these fakes, either throwing two when I should I only throw one (or none), or relying on them to reposition my opponent’s blade, or throwing in a lot of extra confusion between the fake and the feint/attack so that my opponent is not expecting it (if you get me to show you my panic parry, and your next attack is your feint to that same side, I will kill you).  A constant goal of mine is to throw only one fake, then my one feint and kill.

So much for setup.

Next: Feint.  Repeat as above.

As he attempts the parry… perform a cavazione with your point under his hilt, making sure to keep his point out of your presence.

Here, I’m not sure about “keeping his point out of your presence”.  He’s parrying, but should nonetheless parry in such a manner that his point is on you, keeping it out of your presence isn’t going to be possible while performing a cavazione.  That happens next.  We’ve assumed he’s throwing his parry, so we go straight to the feint/attack combo:

In the same tempo [as the cavazione under his hilt] pass while gliding with your sword above his hilt , immediately placing your left hand on his hilt.

So you pass, you disengage and bring your sword above his, and with your left hand on his guard force access to his vita.  And no illustration shows “your” sword above the opponent’s.  Oh well.

Afterwards, recover by jumping out of measure

Here, Gawin said “He probably used the verb ‘saltare’ or something”.  Gawin’s learned Latin somewhere along the lines in his scientific endeavors.  Which is exactly what the footnote says.  So, it could be “jump” or “spring”.  Since you’ve taken a big passing step and are now heavily upon your left foot, I take it as “spring” back to your guard.

The Pass with Feint above the Opponent’s Point

The illustration attached to the previous section illustrates this action.  Opponent is defensively back in his guard.  “You” have your left hand on his hilt and have forced his sword high and to the outside, while your own blade goes into his ribs, driven by a large passing step.  How to get there:

Set up:

Set yourself in guard to the outside, with the arm extended, so as to let the opponent gain your blade as described.

The feint:

As he arrives in measure, perform a cavazione above the point of his sword.

The “no reaction” path:

If he does not parry, push a strong, full-intent thrust

The reaction path:

If he parries, do not stop the motion of your sword, but avoid the opponent’s hilt and pass as described in the previous illustration.

Before, you disengaged under to get here.  In this one, you disengage over to get here.

The Feint to the Face from out of Measure

This action only differs from the other feint in the fact that in the former the cavazione ends under the opponent’s blade, while in this it ends above – so as to strike him in the face

So, where before we were dropping our swords to the ribs, here we’re going over the opponent’s blade to hit them in the eye, with appropriate quantities of gore illustrated.

The next few sentences reiterate everything already taught, so let’s jump down to another important lesson.

The important thing is that you perform the feint in a natural manner, so that the opponent cannot distinguish it from a full-intent thrust.

You gotta sell it.  As the kids say, ‘srsly’.  If you hesitate, if you pull short, if you jerk it, if, basically, you do anything saying “This is not a real attack”, your opponent will move his sword to block the real attack he knows is coming on the other line, and you will die.

The action:

Perform a cavazione above his blade to the high outside, threatening his face.  Then as you perform a cavazione under the opponent’s hilt to hit him to the inside, make sure that your action ends with your point to his face or chest.

And this is the sum total description of the action.  I interpret it as the high cavazione as the feint, the low remise the actual attack.  He doesn’t provide more details on actions, but again we see the illustration has the pass, the left hand to the hilt, and the sword crossed over the outside of the opponent’s guard-

And here again we find the illustration to not be representative of the text.  The attack should end with the blade to the inside, and under the opponent’s guard, but it is illustrated outside and above.  This illustration seems to be the result of the same action, with inside and outside switch (so a feint high to the inside, a cavazione to the outside).  Otherwise, the footwork and off-handwork would be the same.

He wraps up this introduction to feints with a final lesson:

Be careful never to perform a feint unless the opponent attempts to parry your full-intent thrust

If your opponent doesn’t parry, turn the “feint” into a single tempo attack, straight in.  Only if he parries do you disengage and launch the remise on the new line.

A whole lot to work through, but I wanted to wrap it up in as few posts as possible because next he gets in to some interesting situational responses (overhead cuts, attacks to the leg, etc).

Throughout this, I notice his feints all conclude with a pass, and I’ve been musing on that.  I believe that he intends his “natural attack” to include a shift of body weight forward, onto the front foot.  From here the easiest action to close measure is the pass.  However, the “natural attack” would still need to be able to be extended into a lunge if there is no parry.  The timing, then, and body weight shifts, are not readily apparent to me.  Anybody have any thoughts?

And again:

Setup in your guard

Feint in a natural way to draw your opponent’s sword

IF HE PARRIES, disengage and extend the attack into a large pass.