Sword drawing and attacking. -- myArmoury.com

Chuck Wyatt · Posted: Fri 15 Oct, 2004 5:32 pm Post subject: Sword drawing and attacking.

Do western sword fighting styles have anything similar to Iadio?
The japanese art of drawing the sword and attacking with the same stroke.
Question

Lancelot Chan · Industry Professional

I remember there's mention of sword drawing techniques in rapier manual. Can't get you the exact information though because I'm not big into rapier swordsmanship but this is a direction to look at.

Alina Boyden · Posted: Sat 16 Oct, 2004 12:03 am Post subject:

Yes they do. There have been a couple of threads covering this on SwordForum but I'll go over the basics here too.

Firstly, some people argue that I.33's first ward, the underarm ward, is actually the position one would be in when drawing a sword. Therefore, the techniques from that position it is reasoned, would be those one could use in a surprise encounter. I myself am not familiar enough with the I.33 system to be certain of this but that is what is being bandied about.

Secondly, Hans Talhoffer has an excellent example in one of his fechbucher. I don't have the bookmark anymore as I've recently changed comps, but it is of a man drawing a sword and making an upward attack to counter a downward stroke - presumably the messer equivalent of zornhau from vom tag. The result is that the man attacking with zornhau has his hand cut off at the wrist.

Finally, I've seen a couple of examples of sheathed swords being used with attack with the pommel and quillons. I don't remember which specific manuals though so I'm not going to elaborate too far without any documentary evidence to back me up. Still, attacks with quillons and pommel were very common in medieval longsword and a sheathed sword being used in this manner makes sense - depending on the method of carry etc.

I hope this helps somewhat even though the information is sketchy and I don't have the documentary evidence at hand.

Alina

Christian Henry Tobler · Posted: Sat 16 Oct, 2004 9:53 am Post subject:

Hello Alina et. al.,

The sequence you're thinking of can be found here - http://flaez.ch/talhoffer/teil4.html. Look at folios 79r-79v.

Cheers,

Christian

R. Laine · Posted: Sat 16 Oct, 2004 11:51 pm Post subject:

Silver's True gardant ward (high prime - hilt above head, point down or slightly backwards, which really isn't too far from the already mentioned I.33 underarm) can be performed with a partially drawn blade, and his parry for the right side of the head from TG (moving the blade forcefully to the right while lowering the hilt and raising the point) should work just fine while drawing the sword as well.

Rabbe