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I just completed a read of Paradoxes of Defense by George Silver. It was a fun read. Let me share with you some of my thoughts.

George Silver is an absolute jerk. Reading his writing is a hilarious reminder of just how much conflict and argument always existed between schools of this art. I say hilarious, yet the laughing stops at the end when George tells stories of friction between the Italian fencers and the English fencers. Unlike today, arguments were often settled with the sword. Sometimes in “play” sometimes in a drunken challenge with sharp steel. In either case, saying that things got ugly really does not cover it.

I was particularly drawn into the story of the unskilled Englishman Austin Bagger who challenged the famed Itallian teacher Signior Rocco Bonetti. Bagger was armed with a sword and buckler as he called out his challenge to Rocco. It was interesting to me that Signior Rocco came running out to attack him with a longsword rather than any arrangement of rapier. According to Silver, given all his prejudices, the Italian master was sorely wounded on the feet and lost the fight. Bagger was considered kind for letting Rocco live.

As wikipedia will miss lead you, Silver does not harp his preferences at the backsword. He seems to embrace a large array of weaponry and he writes general rules for which combinations of weapons have advantages over eachother. His notes that weapons’ advantages are still situational. I think that part of his work is an interesting read.

One of the main points of Silver’s writing is that weapons have a perfect length. Silver explains that there is a proper length for most weapons based on a person’s body. He is very critical of weapons that are too long to fight properly with or too short to give full advantage. Silver explains what the proper lengths are and why. I really think this is the best part of what Silver has to say. It is also why he hates the Italian rapier so much. This is Silver’s paradox by the way, that shorter swords of proper length have significant advantage over improperly long rapiers.

At the heart of this improper length argument is that rapiers were made too long to cut in close with. This is partly because long blades have to be thin to be light and thin blades cut poorly. Also, long blades can’t swing around the body tightly in close combat like shorter cutting blades can. The Italian schools which Silver criticizes taught the thrust to be superior. They abandoned teaching cutting with the sword and disregarded many swords that were capable of lethal cutting. Silver rages over these teachings which he bluntly calls “evil”. Silver stresses both cutting and thrusting and he makes his argument convincingly. I particularly enjoyed the story about the man stabbed with a rapier 10 times who then killed his enemy and recovered fully from his wounds. I also like the point about how a child can divert a rapier thrust yet it takes a trained man to stop the cut of a sword in the hands of a strong man.

Silver talks about how the advantages of the rapier seem true in demonstration but are false in real combat. I personally draw ability to relate this to the world of fencing today. He talks about how an unskilled and valiant person has advantage over a person trained to use a “false” martial art with a weapon founded on lies. I connect that to modern phenomenon as well. Silver shares personal stories to back up his points and I could do the same myself.

I think what made Paradoxes of Defense so fun for me to read was that there are so many parallels in Silver’s time of swordsmanship and today’s. I will leave you with one final example of this.

… “there are now in these days no grips, closes, wrestlings, striking with the hilts, daggers, or bucklers, used in fencing schools. Our plowmen will by nature will do these things with great strength & agility. But the schoolmen is altogether unacquainted with these things. He being fast tied to such school-play as he has learned, has lost thereby the benefit of nature, and the plowman is now by nature without art a far better man than he.”

… “There is no manner of teaching comparable to the old ancient teaching, that is, first their quarters, then their wards, blows, thrusts, and breaking of thrusts, then their closes and grips, striking with the hilts, daggers, bucklers, wrestlings, striking with the foot or knee in the cods, and all these are safely defended in learning perfectly of the grips.”

George Silver taken from Paradoxes of Defense (1599)

In those two statements are so many things I have to say to the modern historical fencing world.

When I was young, I did not have access to a community of experienced historical sword fighters to teach me the lost historical arts of the sword.  I did not have much money either.

There are a couple of things I wish I could tell the younger version of myself.  Meyer’s dusack teachings and the concept of the dusack as a training tool would have ranked very high.  In fact, if you only gave me 30 seconds to visit myself in the past, I would hand myself Meyer’s 1570 dusack book and say “cut you one of these out of board and do what this book tells you.  Oh, and buy a used fencing mask and lacrosse gloves.”

I would want to teach myself longsword too, but that would take a lot longer than 30 seconds!  The point here is that there is just something so accessible about Meyer’s dusack.  You can eyeball it from the pictures, sketch it on a board, and literally just cut one out and start doing the guards and drills Meyer teaches in the starting chapters.

I have often wondered how historical fencing communities studied sword combat safely without all the plastic crap that we have today.  Meyer’s use of the dusack seems to be part of the answer.  The dusack is purely a training tool with application to “all one-handed swords”.  It can be constructed in a way that permits relatively safe and controlled freeplay to be possible.  It is an economical thing to make and it seems to be a really good historical starting place.

15 years ago when I first saw people training with the dusack I remember dismissing it.  It took me a while to understand it and learn things I wish I had learned long ago.  I can’t go back in time and slap myself and tell myself to notice Meyer’s dusack.  But I would be happy to do that to anyone else out there who needs such a slap.

Yesterday I completed a read-through of Meyer’s dusack book from his 1970 work.  I got a lot out of the reading which was mostly done over the holiday break.  I continue to be awestruck at just how much of a bridge Meyer creates between time, history, countries, and sword designs.  Meyer looks at the dusack as a fundamental set of skills which applies to all one-handed sword.  I may never fully believe that, but I saw it more than ever in this reading.  In the last few years, I have been branching out and cross pollinating with other swordsmen.  I now know more about higher renaissance Italian rapier and late saber techniques.  I know more about medieval one-handed sword.  As a result, I’m finding that Meyer’s dusack teachings synthesize and depict so much of the larger picture than I ever before realized.

I don’t think I noticed this earlier in my journey because to see the whole picture you have to read all of the devices in the book.  It is true that Meyer depicts a limited and small number of guards and techniques at the start of the book.  However, upon reading the devices it becomes clear that Meyer advocates a wealth of additional guards and techniques.  He references many of the teachings from his longsword book that must be read to be fully understood.  He depicts many things common to evolving Italian methods that a reader would not catch if they did not have a dual vantage point.  It is the synthesis of the old sword traditions with the new emerging ones that makes Meyer’s take on the dusack so exciting.  He gives the reader a license to do whatever works without placing rigid restrictions on movement that become common later in fencing schools.

Meyer understands:

• That it is OK for your left foot to be forward sometimes.
• Sometimes you should pull the cuts from head level, sometimes they pass through.
• You can deceitfully stab in all kinds of crazy ways.
• You can be really bossy with cuts.
• You can turn cuts into thrusts and thrusts into cuts.
• If you have a free hand you should do stuff with it.
• You can apply medieval sword techniques in so many ways.
• You can apply fancy emerging civilian sword techniques in so many ways.
• Stressing the importance of tactics with the techniques (for example: teaching provoker, taker, hitter concepts.)

What is great is that Meyer teaches when these things will work and when they won’t.  It feels like an everything and the kitchen sink foundation with explanations of how to build your own martial art based on what works for you.  This is, again, why I love Meyer.  You can hear what he has to say and really draw from it what you need to be your own kind of fighter.  He does not boss you around rigidly.  He teaches you useful drills and ways to train.  He teaches tactics, strategy, techniques, and mindset.  He covers a lot of material.  And he does not over “systemize” the martial art.  It’s a pragmatic teaching of fundamental one-handed sword in about as holistic a form as I have ever seen.  Meyer embraces so much of the art at once that any “systemized sword school” is sure to have an embarrassing fault that Meyer has a recipe for exploiting.  In fact I would say that Meyer reads like a cook book for how to embarrass other fencing schools.  If you understand Meyer’s unique background and historical backdrop then I’m sure this comes as no surprise.  The man has been around the block.

I have put together a dusack curriculum based on my findings. I’m really excited to present it to everyone at our future practices.

We will have shirts arriving in a couple weeks. I will be passing them out at the following practice. Hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year.

We had a really great practice last Saturday. A few of us in the group have had our heads in Meyer’s Dusack material. We all came to practice ready to experiment with what we had been reading. We did a workshop on the material and shared with each other what we had learned from it. Then we broke into freeplay to experiment with the principles.

We took a video and a few pictures of the exchanges. That is always a scary thing. I see a few things I need to address for sure. But I also immediately noticed that we were often ending up in the poses and guards depicted in the manual. That is such a validating thing to see.

The experience of an isolated group of men studying Meyer, coming together and sharing their findings, and then putting it all together in freeplay is a tried-and-true recipe among study groups like ours. Most of the progress in rebuilding this art in the last 20 years was built on study groups meeting in this manner. The internet’s resources are no substitute for the organic process that happens with eyes are on the manuals and fingers are wrapped around swords.

And by the way, when I have a practice like that, I walk around the rest of the day exhausted with a smile on my face all day. Because doing this is fun and satisfying. Having it in my life just makes me extra happy.

Our group has officially survived the popularly declared pandemic.  We are meeting again.  We found ways to stay active and worked around restrictions. As meetings resumed it became evident that everyone was still practicing and developing skill.  We have grown in numbers and enthusiasm.  The brotherhood in the group seems strong as ever.  I could not be happier.

Or so I thought, until we held our annual pumpkin massacre!  That was a seriously fun time.

Thank you to everyone who showed up and made that awesome.  One helped with pictures, many brought real weapons to test cut with, and everyone contributed to the great mood.

I’m very grateful that we have this right now.  This is a great group of guys to train with.

Two years ago I pulled this april fools joke. Our group’s front page was replaced with an alternate page declaring us to be a school that picks kids up from school and teaches the historical art of ninja knights. Today I decided to dig that old prank up. After rereading it I have to post it again. Its just too funny. Enjoy.

Now that this group has been in the area for about a year, I have met a number of people here in Tennessee.  I really love it here.  As I share this art with others, I find that some people are able to recognize what this is and are shocked that way out here in the middle of nowhere we can have a community like this.  I’m equally shocked to find people out here who appreciate such a specific historical martial art.  I’m not just talking about people who think swords are cool.  It takes a special person to spend hundreds of dollars on training equipment.  Then to spend the time, effort, travel, and discipline needed to perfect an art that society as a whole no longer understands nor celebrates.

And no, I don’t consider LARP, modern movies, or HEMA tournament sports to be a celebration of what was taught by Ringeck (for example) or any other masters connected to the Liechtenauer tradition.

Therefore it is no wonder that this free knightly practice has not only come into decline, but also somewhat come into contempt, not without some prejudice to the commendable custom of the combat masters of old.

From Meyer’s 1570 work, the letter to Lord Johann Casimir

Meyer saw the start of this art’s decline but in defiance of the world around him, he worked and sacrificed much to preserve it.  There are a lot of other things he could have been doing with his time, yet he obsessively worked to preserve this art.

Thank you to Meyer and thank you to those out here who, like Meyer, could spend their time doing something else.  Thank you to those who take the time to come out here, pick up the sword, and preserve this art enthusiastically, diligently, and without end.

I’m here with you.

Every year, as the end of winter approaches, potentially new brothers of the sword contact me about joining us at practice.

That is great.  I’m glad to hear from them.

Usually, I quickly try to determine if the person contacting us already has experience with Meyer Longsword.  If they don’t, I think it is important to meet 1-on-1 or in a 101 group of just new people so that certain fundamentals and basics can be learned apart from the rest of the group.  Once a person knows the basic drills, guards, and strikes and has had time to practice them a bit; they are ready to show up for regular practice and will keep up just fine.  It usually only takes one 101 class and they are good to go.

So, if you are new to this, prepare for the 101 class.  Let’s find a time to meet.  Oh, and read the FAQ.  It will really help you.

I really enjoy this time of year and the new people it brings.  I look forward to meeting.

We had the opportunity to teach a class to a church youth group this week. That was an interesting experience for me.

Why you ask?

Moreover no proof is needed that it was the custom with our ancestors and the ancient Germans to raise their youth in knightly practice along with other good arts, since this is self-evident from what they achieved.

-Meyer 1570

Meyer speaks about the training of the youth several times in the opening letter of his 1570 work. He also talks a lot about this theme too:

For once the Romans thought they had conquered the entire world, as an overconfident nation they devoted themselves to sensualities more than to good arts, policy, and knightly practices …

-Meyer 1570

These things were on my mind as I showed teenage boys how to fight in the historical German tradition. I wish I could capture for you here their reaction to being shown this. There are so many things missing from the life balance of a typical teenage boy. Lawyers make this hard, but I think our community should train more youth.