Posts: 704 Location: Oxford, CT
Tue 18 Sep, 2007 8:13 pm
Hi Hugh,
There's plenty of evidence for striking first with the axe.
Kal's guard plate certainly sets up a stroke from vom Tag. The anonymous axe treatise in the coda to the Vienna Kal manuscript has techniques where both parties strike.
Peter Falkner says in the preamble to the poleaxe chapter, "Note this is also a lesson of how you should with dueling weapons act with the murder axe and the halberd, which is also in the judicial duel the striking, thrusting and wrestling." In the last of the few plays that he includes, he says "Note that this is the best technique of those specificially for the halberd: when you both stand against each other and no one wants to strike first, then prepare a great stroke. If he goes to parry it, then pull the stroke and thrust to his body or face. This he cannot counter well and that is good."
The bottom of Plate 43 of Cod. Vind. B 11093 shows a windup for a blow with the axe. The hand position is quite conventional and aligned with the axe blade, not the hammer. And, this plate has an excellent analogue in a non-technical manuscript illustration showing the same pairing of guards (I wish I could find the citation! - do you know where this is from?). Obviously, the guy at left isn't swinging the beak at him:
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The above are all dueling examples. A blow with the poleaxe can seriously rock someone's world (as you know from incidents arising even from rubber headed reenactment axes), so a stunning blow is a great opener if someone hands you the tempo to use.
To me, it's advantageous to think of Liechtenauer's 'Three Wounders' with the sword - the stroke, thrust, and slice. Now, the axe doesn't slice well, but it does hook. And the advice carries over: make whichever one that is available work, depending on the situation, or as Liechtenauer has it "in all binds, learn to seek strokes, slices, and thrusts."
All the best,
Christian