Posts: 1,420 Location: New Orleans
Tue 10 Mar, 2015 8:51 am
I believe the thing about not hitting the leg so much in tournaments or sparring is a peculiarity really limited to unarmored longsword fencing specifically. Due to the physics of fighting with a longsword, striking at the lower legs is kind of risky though there are some ways to do it. It's rare enough, and the ways it can happen are predictable enough, that for example when I'm sparring with friends I don't wear any leg protection. In a tournament though where people are more amped up and try more sneaky 'dirty tricks' I do. (it's mandatory anyway)
Upper legs (thighs to knees) get hit much more, it's one of Axel Petterson's go-to moves for example (strike high, then after the parry, drop down to a thigh cut or a middle-body cut and then exit).
I don't know if it works out any differently when fencing in harness, maybe Kel can chime in on that since he actually owns some nice harness and isn't a blossfechten bum like me.
With other weapons I think the lower leg is a major target, certainly with staff, sword and buckler, and even rapier. I haven't done much
rotella or targe fencing but I think when your opponent is using a big
shield, their lower legs is one of the few available openings, a lot of times you try to attack low and high openings in an alternating fashion, and attack their arm when they try to strike.
So I think the Wisby forensics are partly representative of the losers of the battle being armed largely with shields, though as previously noted only around 25% of the bodies showed marks on the skeletons, many of them may have been killed by spear or arrow wounds to the soft tissue which didn't show on the hard bits.
Now we all know of course that if the Danish soldiers only had << Katanas >>then every corpse would have a shattered skull and / or a caved in helmet, except for the ones who were cut in half including their shields.
Jean