This week we worked on parries from the left side, building from a couple of plays that Guy Windsor teaches. We are defending attacks from the strong side (mandritto fendente).
The first left-side guard comes from Fiore’s Master of the Sword in one Hand. This master holds his sword on the left, with his back to his enemies. The parry movement out of this guard starts with a volta stabile with right accressere, accompanied by a large sweeping parry rising from the left, with the true edge.
The second left-side guard is dente di zinghiaro, or boar’s tooth, in which the sword is held at the left hip, point forward, with right foot forward. The parry in this case is a false-edge sottano, also rising from the left.
When defending using either of these parries, you are sweeping your sword upward, collecting the opponent’s blade from the outside. Your accressare right helps to power the motion of the parry. As with any parry, you want to meet the middle of the opponent’s blade with the middle of yours, and you achieve a mechanical advantage if you are parrying your edge against his flat.
Guy prescribes a canonical drill that uses this exchange, as one of his foundational exercises:
First, you allow the strike to land. Second, you perform the parry, the attacker’s point is beaten wide, and he is open to your mandritto fendente counter-attack. Third and fourth steps play through counter-remedies using the pommel strike for follow-up. Playing through to the third or fourth steps, everyone continues their roles. In other words, when performing the pommel attack, the attacker is forced to cover properly, because the defender is performing his fendente as planned.
Note that in this sequence, the attacker *allows* his point to be beaten wide because he has chosen to continue his attack by covering with the pommel strike and stepping in.
We then looked at some stretto variations of the above, also taught by Mr. Windsor. Both of these stretto variations occur when the parry succeeds in moving the point to the right, but the attacker resists having his point beaten wide. So, as the defender, you have an open line on the left of the blades. Your blade is on your right side, and the attacker’s blade is parried to the right of your blade. But, he is not going wide with his point. He is sticking with the bind.
The two defender options we explored are the following:
- You move in slightly, maintaining the bind and reaching with the left hand to palm the attacker’s hands. With a good hand-check in place, you can then march in with your stance behind your arm, forcing the attacker’s hilt upward, while simultaneously stabbing from the right side.
- You slide up on the attacker’s sword, bringing the edge of your strong (hilt) in contact with the flat of his weak (point). The resulting leverage advantage lets you perform a clockwise circle, driving his point down, while palming his hilt left to right from the outside. The circle brings your point on line to his body and you can then complete with a thrust, and/or perform a disarm.
If he is binding hard enough to bring his sword more into the middle, you’ll be forced to cover, wind around and hit, enter with the pommel strike, or move to one of the stretto plays that deal with the opportunity created when there is a lane made available to the right of the blade. I note these here, even though we did not practice them.
Tips and thoughts collected during these practices include
- The acressare is a sideways movement. You don’t advance.
- Proper timing of the parry arm movement with the accressare, contributes to a more substantial parry that does a better job of clearing the line. Start the hit first, cross in the middle and then accress right.
- When delivering the pommel strike counter-remedy, if the attacker’s hands are high, you can strike upward through the triangle of his forearms, if you are in front of his arms. You can also hook your pommel over his forearm and slam it down, cutting into his face, if you are on the side of his arms.
- As Guy points out, Fiore did not show hand snipes with the tip. He does show attacks to the arms, across the forearms. The former does not mechanically control the enemy’s sword, while the latter does.
- Fendentes delivered with the hands high are susceptible to hand snipes. Fendentes delivered with the hands low, are much less susceptible, as the sword point is brought into threat more quickly. That said, partners sometimes attack with hands high, which causes this parry to feel different. The parry will be more on the tip of your sword than in the middle, due to the partner’s position. So attack the hands in this situation.
- The parry for both of these movements, is a large motion. The sword point ends up well in front of the right shoulder. The point needs to clear high enough to decisively knock the opponent’s point out of line. For the sword in one hand version, the hand ends up in front of and above the right shoulder. For the sottano version, the hands end up in front of the body, in the middle of the trunk.