[Nathan Robinson]

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

Again, the use of long-handled swords one-handed in period military artwork as well as fencing manual such as Fiore, Talhoffer, Paulus Kal, and Mair demonstrates that such weapons functioned well enough in this capacity. While such long-handled swords might be slightly less agile in one hand than dedicated single-handed weapons on foot, their prevalence amongst mounted warriors persuades me they provide just as good cavalry service as any blade. As noted previously, the long handle facilitated couching sword like a lance - a technique that appears in one of Mair's horse-against-foot plates.

Do any of the knightly fifteenth century sources like Fiore, Talhoffer, and Paulus Kal ever made any distinction between long-handed swords and dedicated single-handed blades? As far as I know, it's just "sword" for them.

[Bill Grandy]

[Vincent C]

[Nathan Robinson]

[Vincent K]

[Jean Thibodeau]

[Bill Grandy]

[Vincent K]

@Jean: Interesting! I would have guessed that the Black Prince would have been harder to handle one handed than the Schloss Erbach Arming sword due to the weight difference. It does seem logical that there a "continuum" of bastard swords exist, though it does make finding one that matches one's preferred style a bit more of a challenge

@Bill: I was a bit worried about the the blade length for that English longsword (it's an inch or two shorter than Silver's specs), but the weight does seem like it'd fit the bill for easy handling in one or two hands.

[Matthew P. Adams]

[Bill Grandy]

[Matthew P. Adams]

Sorry, Yes the second paragraph was Aleksei. I must have lost those quotes when editing down the original post to the portion I wanted clarified.

I was just curious which illustrations he found unrealistic.

[Aleksei Sosnovski]

[Bill Grandy]

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.

[Matthew P. Adams]

A quick swerve back to the original post, Tried & True had reached commission capacity for April, and so took down the sword selection. If you check now, there menu is back up for May.

Check out the XVIa.3, I've been eyeing it myself.

[Aleksei Sosnovski]

Bill, I get what you say. I don't think that fencing manuals are just ads and neither do I think that they consist mainly of flashy moves. After all I try to learn from them just as you do. Actually the very reason I always doubt in them a little is because they were written for people who were already familiar with the art. So these treatises often lack some "common sense" stuff. Like sword classification. We don't classify eating forks or spoons today, do we? Well, these are about as common for us as swords were 500 years ago. Not the best comparison, but you got the idea. Also some details in these manuals can imply some special meaning that we can only guess of. For example bare-handed knights in Gladiatoria probably mean that these techniques don't necessarily require gauntlets. We can interpret longswords in Kal's manual as "a longsword can be used in one hand just as well as a one-hander". But we might as well interpret them as "this technique works with a longsword as well". And this interpreatation can (but does not have to) imply that some moves don't. Which interpretation is correct? I don't know.

When speaking about simple moves, I meant mainly fencing (because, as I already wrote, I am not a very good wrestler). How much wrestling there is in an unarmored sword fight? How many master strokes? There certainly are some, but not that much. And out of all the moves we see described in manuals 80% of the time you probably use about 20%. Maybe a bit more, but still not that much. You can look at the videos of your fights, count and tell me if I am wrong, at least I won't be able to dismiss this fact. I don't think that more complex moves are useless. I only think that situations where these moves could be used and other, simpler moves could not are very rare.

Yes, I agree that it is very difficult to find solid evidence that something did happen. What I try to say is that people sometimes (for now let's not consider how exactly often) used longswords in one hand not because they were just as good in one hand as single-handed swords but because they were more versatile. Like in the modern warfare soldiers often carry .338 caliber rifles instead of .223 though the latter are definitely more convenient in certain situations such as close quarters combat. Longswords were generally usable in one hand, some more than others. Also armored combat and especially mounted armored combat is quite different from the unarmored one. There weapon speed is not that critical unlike unarmored fighting where even a small cut could end the fight. And if we go back to my first post, i wrote "using a longsword in one hand is reasonable only when the second hand cannot be used for some reason". Mounted fighting and even illustrations from Kal's manual that you linked in this thread depict fighters with their second hand busy.

I don't think I ever wrote a statement somewhere that is absolute and has words "all", "none", "never" or "always" but if I did I apologize. We know that there were swords and swords. One-handed messers did have longer hilts, but usually not very long (I have yet to see a one-handed messer with hilt over 20cm long) and thus even if we don't consider them to be purely one-handed weapons they fall into my first category. You will certainly find a sword with long hilt and short blade that handles very well in one hand. You will probably find a sword with long hilt and long blade that handles just as well. Just as you might find a sword with a relatively short hilt that is totally unusable in one hand. There were many variations and some worked better in one situation while others worked better in another. But there were definitely longswords designed mainly for two-handed use and longswords designed so that they could be used in one hand as well. I just looked at Kal's manual (since you describe it as very detailed) and this is what I found. When it depicts longswords used in one hand it shows a great variety of proportions, from oversized hilts and short blades on the picture that you linked to an almost one-handed hilt and long blade on this picture http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/bsb00...;seite=118 (sword in the hand of the right fighter). Was it done so on purpose? I don't think so. I tend to think that these images all depict one and the same general type of swords and Kal was simply not very good at depicting proportions (or just didn't care about them). "Bent" crossguards, uneven bucklers and other details also support this idea. And if we accept this idea, how can we make any conclusions about hilt size from these images? The only conclusion that we can make is that swords with two-handed hilts could be used in one hand instead of a one-handed sword, but I never argued against it. But when we get to the longsword section, we see a distinctly different type of sword. Again we see a great variation in blade and hilt size, but all these swords have schilts! I haven't looked through all the pages so feel free to correct me if I am wrong. But from what I have seen so far Kal makes a clear distinction between longswords intended for purely one-handed use as well as two-handed use and longswords meant mainly for two-handed use. I make the same distinction and recommend using a distinctively "two-handed" or "true" longsword for longsword training and one-handed sword for one-handed sword training because it is easier to learn proper technique this way though of course a sword from my first category could be used to learn both one-handed and two-handed techniques.

[Scott Hanson]

Finally got to compare the Earl and the Durer. I would say that both felt as if they could be used for one handed fencing, if not ideal for that purpose. I don't think either had a clear advantage in that regard.

I personally prefer the Earl, but that's probably because I own it.

[Vincent K]