[Amanda B.]

Re: the French terms... yeah, it's pretty hard to avoid when they've become part of the English terminology also. I don't mind using archaic terms as long as it doesn't make one instantly think of a language that wouldn't exist in the world; in my example I was meaning more along the lines of specialized fencing terms and the like, i.e. moulinet or coquille or the various terms for parries and guards. Heh, even 'en garde'. But a lot of those can just be described or simplified instead of the proper term used (which would be best for non-fencing readers anyway) or in some cases replaced with a term unique to the world.

And yeah, that's definitely the kind of thing was thinking of, nothing extra-special or 'heroic'. Thanks for the picture!

As for the book... ooh, I have not seen it, and it is a bit out of my price range (otherwise I'd jump on it!), but I'll bet I can get a copy through the library or interlibrary loan. My research file is expanding by leaps and bounds, thank you all again!

[Jean Thibodeau]

Amanda;

Make sure you have a look at all the feature articles, reviews, collection, albums etc ... on this site as there is a lot of content here that is much more than just the Forums.

Depending on how familiar you already are with historical weapons and weapons use you should find a lot here that might inspire ideas for your writings: A few weeks or months of regularly reading and participating here should help a great deal in deepening your knowledge about it all and sometimes at the beginning of a search for information the most valuable thing is finding out even what questions to ask i.e. you can't ask about what you don't know until you know that you don't know.

Anyway, welcome here and I hope what you will find here will be helpful.

[Amanda B.]

[Jean Thibodeau]

Amanda;

Be careful you may become addicted to history. By the way I never liked history at school either and I'm just happy that school didn't succeed in turning me off the subject.

I liked history before school and continue to, obviously to this day, but the " history " taught at school by uninspired teachers and the dullest textbooks human ingenuity could devise only made me hate the history classes and not history itself.

[Amanda B.]

[Lafayette C Curtis]

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Amanda, if you're interested in knowing about the differences between "real" and "theatrical" combat, you could try to look at this page:

http://www.theatricalcombat.com/mainmenu/comfactrs.html

Which mentions the basic factors of theatrical combat, namely timing, distance, cueing and reversal of tension. In terms of the first two he would largely need to learn how to modify them to be lethal rather than non-lethal--not an easy task in itself. I suspect the last two are the ones that will involve the greatest amount of unlearning. Imagine spending years to learn how to fight on cues to avoid harming your opponent, then suddenly being forced to face an opponent who constantly tries to hide his movement and mislead with what few cues he gives. And suddenly learning that you're not supposed to pull your blow the moment you hit your enemy!

[George Hill]

[Sam Barris]

[Roger Hooper]

Another way for your character to acquire a sword would be to pick it up on a battlefield. After the fighting was over, Medieval battlefields were thoroughlyt scoured for every bit of arms and armor dropped on the ground or worn by a corpse. Much of this scrounging was probably done by the army's camp followers.

The Del Tin sword that Brad showed you is called a Falchion. They varied from that fairly light version to more massive ones that functioned as heavy cleavers.

[Amanda B.]

Hello again! I've heard of falchions before, but sometimes it's hard to put the name to the image so I'll have to do some more looking. of course, I'll have to outfit other characters with weapons, too, heh heh. Yeah, for realism he'll probably end up finding one, if not after the first battle (since he's involved during an ambush attack on the baggage camp rather than the battle itself) then afterward when they leave it.

I think I'm probably going to make it more of a duel style with "showy" flourishes that he has to have knocked out of him a bit, since the original point of giving him even a bit of background in fighting was to ensure that the character (and the royal "prisoner" he ends up travelling with) could plausibly survive their journey. I think it probably has to be more real than staged, even if it isn't to the death, to make it worthwhile for others to bet on. Not that such fights couldn't be fixed, but hey, that's plotline I can access for later. I figure he wasn't in the "game" long enough to be totally set in his ways, nor was he in the top ranks either.

I did an interlibrary order on that book mentioned earlier, and I hope it will answer some of my logistics questions (it's so much harder to to write from the POV of servants in an army than the nobility who just leaves the details to the underlings), like what happens to the bodies and equipment after a battle, some questions about wintering, etc.. Very few of the sources I've looked at mention this kind of administrative or campaign-life detail more than in passing, and it definitely focuses on the nobility. Anyway, this doesn't really fall under the weaponry category, so I'll refrain from off-topicking even more.

Thanks!

[Roger Hooper]

the Osprey Warrior series of books might be interesting to look at - 15th century soldiers, right? Here - http://www.kultofathena.com/product~item~WAR3...2D1500.htm - or in a library.

[Stephen Hand]

Dear Amanda,

The sword you show in your illustration doesn't look like any historical sabre. It does look like a rapier, specifically a 17th century rapier, which as others have said were still quite robust weapons. If you want to see how these were used then you should look at Tom Leoni's Art of Duelling, published by Chivalry Bookshelf and/or (preferably and) Jared Kirby's Italian Rapier Combat, published by Greenhill. Both of these are translations of original rapier fencing treatises.

If you want a more medieval civilian style then you might want to look at sword and buckler fighting and perhaps Paul Wagner and my book, Medieval Sword and Shield (Chivalry Bookshelf). All of these styles are fast, subtle and point orientated. Anyone who tells you that medieval swordsmanship was crude hack and slash clearly knows nothing about medieval swordsmanship.

Cheers
Stephen

[Amanda B.]

Yay, more to look at! And the more that I do, I can see that they are pretty sturdy-looking swords, I don't know why my mind keeps insisting they were so delicate...

This was the reference that I used for the picture; I actually had my sister find a design she liked, so I'm not sure where it came from and I couldn't find it in Google again. (She says the site has Essex on it somewhere, as far as she recalls.) I think she specifically looked for sabre as opposed to foil/epee/rapier, so that's what I obliged with. It could end up being whatever actually works the best, though.

Though I definitely plan on using accurate techniques when a fencing style comes up, the character won't initially be facing any opponents who would also know the "rules", so I'm curious how it might be adapted to such a "street fight". I'm sure it's possible if the style was originally meant for defense. *puts it on the list* Ah, the neverending quest for knowledge.

[Lafayette C Curtis]

Ah. In that case you should keep in mind that practical techniques for single combat and massed battlefield combat (including no-hold-barred street fights) do not always exactly coincide with each other, though their basics were definitely the same. Battlefield (massed) techniques would have used fewer, simpler, tighter movements, emphasizing on the more instinctive aspects of fighting. Such tchniques would also have emphasized a feature that would not have been such a big deal in single combat systems--namely, awareness of and cooperation with friends.

In medieval times the differences were generally relatively few and subtle but, as the Renaissance progressed and single combat became increasingly formalized into the gentleman's duel, the two diverged farther and farther.

What's interesting is that there's a passage in Achille Marozzo's Opera Nova that can be interpreted to imply that Marozzo meant his system to be studied by people who already had a grounding in a simpler military style. So the two are related but different--though, unlike with stage fighting, it is possible to be good in both dueling and no-holds-barred combat (including massed varieties like battles and street fights).

BTW, the weapons in that last photograph are definitely a variety of the later, specifically thrust-oriented rapier and its companion dagger. Such rapiers might have narrow blades, but to compensate for it their blade cross-sections are also significantly thicker than those of more cut-oriented swords. So they're "narrow" but by no means "fragile."

[Eric Allen]

[Nathan Robinson]

Amanda-

That photo you posted is of modern practice tools. They're not real weapons. The blades are meant to be very flexible and to bend without injuring your sporting partner. There are very narrow-bladed rapiers found in history, but the blades are often very stiff and equipped with extremely sharp points to do thrusting damage.

I humbly suggest any further research be done on historical weapons and not replicas. This makes your work that much closer to the "real thing" and avoids the "copy of a copy of a copy" syndrome. In other words, why base your own fantasy on another person's fantasy? Start with an original source and adjust from there.

Cheers.

[Lafayette C Curtis]

[Eric Allen]

[Bryce Felperin]