The Weekly Warfare   Musings martial from across the SCA

The long lost Giganti book has returned from its walk about, with a signature on the inside front cover, and now I can finally resume where we left off before Pennsic.  Having addressed the use of the single sword against single sword, Giganti now moves to the dagger.  Starting with what to do when your opponent has one and you don’t.

How to Use Single Sword Against Sword and Dagger

In my personal experience, dagger tends to degrade an opponent’s form ever so slightly.  Center line and mezzo-tempo attacks open up that weren’t there in single sword.  Giganti illustrates some of the causes of that, a lesson both for those taking single against dagger, and dagger against single.

This illustration shows you… [see the title]

So what does it show?  The opponent has taken a large step forward, shoulder almost squared.  The defender has parried to the inside, and delivered a thrust through his opponent’s eyeball between sword and dagger.

Do not strike first

An attack into a prepared opponent with two weapons seems a great way to get yourself killed, so Giganti suggests against it.  Instead…

show a certain fear of him, so that he may attack you without taking the necessary precautions.

And then parry and kill him.  Lessons then: If carrying sword and dagger, don’t be tricked by your opponent acting scared, and attack with the same caution you would against an equally armed opponent.  For the defender, Giganti doesn’t go into the details of how to look scared.  This is the only clear instance of discussion of “mental combat” that I’ve found in Giganti, or in most of the manuals I’ve had the chance to read.  Giganti’s general plan of assume your guard, execute your single action when the opponent comes into measure, recover, and repeat, doesn’t really admit much room for  intimidation, distraction, and deception.  Yet here is an acknowledgment that it plays a role.

As he launches his attack, parry strongly with your forte and strike him in the face… his dagger will likely offer the opening

Kind of a weak assumption build your strategy on, so he goes on:

Be mindful not to direct your thrust to his chest… [he] will be very much emboldened, so he will likely come forward and attack you rather carelessly.

It still carries with it the hint of assuming your opponent’s behavior, and I’m not quite sure how much I can get behind his strategy here.  He mentions that if your opponent performs a cavazione you can just turn your hand and counter-attack, but it still all has an assumption that he’s not covering his face because he is incautious.  It’s just a little unsatisfactory.

How to Parry a Thrust to the Face in Sword and Dagger

Starts as usual: set yourself in guard, point your dagger at your opponent’s shoulder (“guarding the opponent’s sword”) Then:

If he attacks you with a thrust to the face, parry with the edge of the dagger and, in the same tempo, strike him with a thrust into the right armpit.

So, parry with the edge, and counter in the same tempo.  Not much difference from single sword.  The targeting is noteworthy, just about as far away from the opponent’s dagger as you can get and still land a lethal shot.  Adding the dagger adds a twist to the shallow or most lethal target options, and adds “least likely to get parried by dagger”.

Back to the “in the same tempo” statement: Most of the rapier fighters out there perform this with two tempi, parrying with the dagger and then lunging.  This opens the gate for an easy disengage during the attacker’s recovery which ends in a stop thrust on the lunging opponent.  Combining the dagger block and lunge into one motion shuts this down.  Of course, this also tends to result in your opponent still being mid-lunge as you lunge forward with your blade.  Hurts like a mother fucker, but only if you miss your parry.  Generally when this is successful, I apologize, and hope my opponent learns to parry next time.

To make this action succeed, you must not only understand the theory behind it, but also have the necessary agility to put theory into practice.

So, don’t just read the books, but work your ass off to be able to lunge instantly and recover quickly.  This is not just lip service.  This coming Thursday practice is going to hurt everybody before anybody even masks up.

Nuances:

Start from a strong guard… the left foot steadily supporting the wholte body
Be ready to quickly advance or retreat while keeping the point of your sword… at the opponent’s face
Lean back with your body rather than forward, to keep your eye lively and attentive

And he closes out the chapter with this advice:

Recover correctly… first withdraw your head and body followed by your leg.

and

Although he moves first, you strike first

Which is back to Giganti’s fundamental plan: Take a tempo and kill the bastard.