Posts: 4,194 Location: Northern VA,USA
Thu 03 May, 2012 1:17 pm
Aleksei,
I don't mean any offense by this, but most of your ideas about fencing treatises seem to come from a misunderstanding of what the manuscripts actuall are. These were not ads for the general public in the same way that ads are used in modern marketing. Some were meant to preserve the art, some we don't know anything about, but even the ones that are more like "ads" are actually more analogous to the modern resume. They were porfolios to show a patron, and more likely than not, that patron had been around weapons, and had already employed professional masters of arms, so it wasn't like the patron was ignorant of fighting. I'm one of the lucky few who's gotten a chance to page through the original Peter Falkner manuscript housed in Vienna, and one of the really cool things about it is that it's bound in a small leather travel case (much like those cheap journals they sell to teenagers at bookstores) so that Falkner could take it with him to present to a potential client. It was not, however, used to drum up ignorant customers, because a book with text would have been a very poor way of doing that, particularly with how expensive they were to produce one at a time.
And the idea that most of the techniques shown are just the "fancy" techniques suggests to me that you misunderstand the treatises. Again, I'm not trying to cause offense, but the "fancy" stuff is by far the minority of techniques shown. Case in point: If you believe the under the leg grappling technique is an unusual technique that won't work on an experienced wrestler, then you simply haven't trained in enough wrestling (it exists in other martial arts, including modern wrestling). You also said that two equally skilled swordsman wouldn't use the techniques in the treatises but instead would use simple blows... ask a high level HEMA fencer, or a Kendoka, or epee fencer, or someone who practices any sword art at a high level if that's true, and I think they'd laugh. That's not meant to be an insult, but it is definitely meant to challenge your position. I train people professionally, so I'd like to think I know a little bit about what I'm talking about.
You're asking for actual textual evidence of a "true longsword". That isn't going to happen, since you yourself admit that you're using this term in a non-historical way. What you'll find is plenty of historical evidence of people describing using a sword, and many of these have very detailed pictures of swords with long hilts. Despite the fact that the Paulus Kal fechtbuch is so detailed that you can count the number of rivits in the armor, and despite the fact that such a detailed and expensive treatise so consistently shows the longsword being used over and over, you insist that this evidence is not acceptable. Well, if we go down that route, we may as well question what we had for breakfast last week (I for one don't keep written evidence of this), because after a certain point you simply have to accept Occam's Razor when it comes to interpreting history. Any history teacher will tell you that there's no such thing as pure "fact" in history, so we have to analyze our sources. And if our sources show a reason that they are trustworthy, it's poor scholarship to simply throw them out simply because they don't fit our preconceived notions.
There's also the matter of horsemanship: *EVERY* text describing fighting from horseback depicts detailed instruction for the actions done with the sword when side by side with an opponent (i.e. not charging at full speed). And since we know knights used both longswords and pure single handers for combat on horse, do you think they said to an opponent, "Excuse me, but can we wait until tomorrow to fight? I forgot to pack my one handed sword today."
But if none of the actual historical evidence can be used, then I'll go with my personal experience. I've handled literally hundreds of antique weapons, some of which are in museums. Many of these were longswords, and many were very easy to use in one hand. A few were easier to use in one hand despite the long grip. (this is true with many messers, such as the ones usually depicted in fencing treatises... but you don't seem to have much faith in those. ;) ) Unfortunately, I can't really use this as proof on the internet, since you can't download my experience. The best I can do is provide a picture of one such sword that I'm holding, and simply tell you that this longsword (once owned by
Ewart Oakeshott) was ridiculously light, and I could use it just as easily one handed than two handed. (In fact, I might even prefer it one handed, but that's subjective.) On the table in the picture were some longswords that were not easy to use in one hand. Is the one I'm holding not a "true" longsword, then? If that's the case, then we need to completely change our definitions.
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15th Century longsword. You'll have to take my word for it: It was very easy to use in one hand.