Hello, this thread is slightly old so a response may be too late at this point, but I will give it a try nonetheless. This thread caught my eye due to the presence of Fiore Dei Liberi's Flos Duellatorum being mentioned in it. Just to introduce myself, and to give an understanding of my background, I am a fairly long time member (about 7 years now) of the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts. If you don't know who we are here is our website: www.thearma.org/about.htm. In brief, we research, practice, and train in martial arts and combatives from the late medieval and renaissance period. I have been doing this for a fair amount of time now, so I feel qualified to respond to the martial component of this topic thread. Due to the fact a lot of what we do involves historical research, as well as realistic martial arts training, we often end up with a deeper understanding of the historical roots of martial arts than the average person who may have solid experience, but hasn't delved too deeply into martial arts origins. One of the things I noticed in your story, is the assumption that your modern character knows something this ancient person would not. We know that submission grappling, including joint locks, chokes, throws, arm breaks, leg locks and the full range of unarmed combative techniques go back well to ancient Greece and Mesopotamia. In ancient Greece a combat sport and martial art known as Pankration (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pankration) (http://historical-pankration.com/) was one of the most commonly practiced and most popular sports of the original Olympic games. In ancient Persia the grappling style Varsesh e Pahlevani was also very widespread. Combative wrestling and grappling skills were generally more widely known and practiced in the ancient world than they are today. Whereas a modern person may dabble in self-defense training from time to time, many ancient peoples were warrior cultures with significant martial training starting at a young age. Keep this in mind in writing your story. Hope that helps, good luck!
@ARMAScholar, oh man, I can't tell you how many hours I've spent at The ARMA, researching medieval fencing/martial arts: I have quite a bit of experience of the "modern" stuff (krav maga, muay thai, BJJ), some knife and gun stuff (IPSC) etc, but I have barely grasped the basics of HEMA, and while I'm just putting finishing touches on my current WIP (with my wife/writing partner, @KaTrian), our next project is returning to an older story we wrote before, a medieval hack'n'slash which is fantasy, but as always, we want it to be as realistic as possible, especially the fight scenes, so if you have the time, we could definitely use your help with some of the scenes involving edged weapons because we only have a basic course (of the German school of fencing, but we'd actually like to learn more about Fiore's style) under our belts. Oh, and welcome to the forums; more HEMA knowledge would definitely be a welcome addition. You could post an introduction thread at New Member Introductions. Hope you stick around.
Very good analysis T.Trian. My background is mainly in grappling, wrestling at the college level and moonlighting in different MMA Gyms since high school. Just a thought, but considering the odds of someone knowing the name of the lock (probably a 50/50 chance due to the uptick of interest in MMA via UFC/MMA Promotions) a description that omits certain terms may benefit the general reader, or maybe a brief explanation of the hold will help them understand what you're talking about. Anyway, you've got some solid feedback here, so nothing else to add.
There is nothing technically wrong with what anyone has described or recommended, but closing with an opponent of unknown capabilities for a hammerlock other grip like the Americana is taking an unnecessary risk. You are assuming your opponent is unarmed. Most people in preindustrial days carried at least a small knife for eating purposes. Grappling leaves you open to a stab to the inner thigh, side of the neck, under the ribs etc. You could bleed to death even from a wound inflicted by a 4 inch/10cm knife. One simple alternative would be to come up behind the person, grab his wrist, quickly twist and extend his arm with his elbow upwards, and then break the elbow joint with a downward forearm or palm heel strike. Using his broken arm you then take him to the ground. A knee on that arm will control him without bringing your own body near to his other hand.
Holy crap! Another Fiore fan! I've been working with a guy in the SCA for the last couple of years working on translating and relearning his techniques.
Yet another reason why I'd go with the rock-in-a-sock -option. It's easy to make (any piece of cloth that leaves about 8" between your hand and the heavy&hard object will do), easy to wield/learn to use, quick to discard (it's cheap, so you won't suffer financial loss, and a rock in a bush and a scarf in an oven won't leave much "tracks"), and you can even carry the weight and the cloth separately, so if someone frisks you, it just looks like you're carrying, say, a scarf (e.g. around your neck) and e.g. a bar of soap/a lead/metal object in your pocket (like a decorative item). Plus, it provides so much oomph, a 12yo girl could KO a grown man with one of those. I actually know next to nothing of Fiore's style (except from what I've gathered from examining his book), but I'm especially interested in his style because from what I've gathered, it was aggressive, straightforward, and ruthless, just like I need one of my characters to be in my and @KaTrian's next WIP. I just don't know enough about fencing to pull off the sword scenes as well as I want to, so we still need to read more/watch YT videos, and bother a whole lot of swordsmen and women. Btw, you wouldn't happen to know historical European fencing, would you?
I'm afraid not, I mostly stick with bastard sword or dagger. The thing about Fiore, and most other martial arts, is that once you've learned the technique with one weapon, you can do it with just about any. Or barehanded. But you knew that. Most members of the SCA treat fencing with contempt so I'm not even sure who to ask about that.
Pretty much, I just haven't been able to translate krav maga and modern knife stuff for longer blades. But I could imagine the bastard sword is pretty close to a longsword. How long have you trained with the bastard? Why do they treat fencing with contempt? Or do we mean different things with "fencing"? I mean the effective use of a sword/the lifelong process of learning to use a sword effectively.
Since I was 18 or 19, so I guess 10 years or so. Most of the people I trained with have moved away though, so for the past 6 months all my trainers have been gathering dust in a closet. And we are using the term "fencing" differently I think. I'm referring to the carefully controlled and regimented sport, where most all of Fiore's moves would be grounds for permanent ban.
We still have some work before our sci-fi piece is finished, but when we get to the sword story (probably around/after summer), mind if I PM you with a few questions regarding the fight scenes involving swords? Right, well I can't really blame them for not appreciating that sort of "fencing." I don't care for it really either, nor do I enjoy such methods as a form of any kind of martial arts/combat sports training/competing unless it's intended only as a more preferable option to line dancing or some such. But that's just my opinion; some may like it, of course, even benefit from it in some ways, but I just don't see it as a very viable method of learning to fight, which is the most important reason for me to train any martial/combat system (the others being health benefits and the sheer fun of it, which, I guess, might apply to that sort of "fencing").
@T. Trian, Thanks for the warm welcome. I would be glad to assist any of the writers here in questions they may have concerning Historical European Martial Arts, weaponry, European martial culture, or other related topics.
I think overall it is better to leave out the modern MMA name of the hold. Especially since a given hold will be known by different names depending on which martial art one has studied. A given reader may not be familiar with any of the myriad names a certain lock may have. For instance, the lock being discussed in this thread is called a hammerlock in CACC, but would have been known to Fiore as the Chiave de Soto (lower key). It's probably going to have some other name in Jiujitsu or whatever else. A given reader might not be familiar with any of these names, and it is probably best to just describe the action being performed as this is more descriptive and interesting to read, than simply stating the name of a hold a reader might not be familiar with.
I would also like to discuss briefly the original meaning of the term fencing, since it came up in the above discussion. While the word 'fencing' today in common parlance refers to the modern sport form which developed at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. That is not what the word originally meant. Historically, the word fence, fechten, scrimare, esgrimar, or various other European language words for fencing, referred to all weapon combat arts collectively, including unarmed components integrated with the armed component. The words offense and defense are in fact etymologically related to the word 'fencing'. Although this is less obvious in the American spelling than it is in the British spelling of the words (i.e offence, defence). Our historical manuals refer to using all manner of weapons as fencing, and this is the more accurate usage of the term in the context of the period in which swords or other weapons were regularly used combatively. The word "fight" is related to German "fechten" meaning "fencing". Fighting with longswords, halberds, two-handed swords, sideswords, kriegsmessers, rapiers, or any myriad weapons is in fact; fencing. I understand that a typical modern person won't understand the word as such. In ARMA and other elements of the Historical European Martial Arts community we tend to use the term Modern Sport Fencing in conversation amongst ourselves so we know when we are referring to the modern artificial game, and we tend to utilize the word 'fencing' in its more originalist meaning.
I wasn't aware there was any uncertainty of the definition. A sword around 3.5 feet long with room at the hilt for one hand and a half. Light enough that simple action can be made with one hand, but to wield fully requires the strength of two.
I was clarifying as the issue of terminology has actually become quite muddy over the centuries. Role playing Games, video games, TV and movies, and popular culture in general have put a lot of sword terms out into regular vernacular that aren't accurate or are significantly different than the words used in historical sources to refer to various weapons. Add to this the various terms museum curators and collectors began using in the Victorian era up to the modern era (a good example of such a term is hand-and-a-half sword) and you can actually have a lot of confusion between people when talking about certain weapons. Sources from the 15th-17th centuries generally refer to swords meeting your specifications as 'longsword' (Langschwert in German, spada longa, Italian) Here is an image of the type of sword I'm talking about: http://www.hroarr.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/albion_regent.jpg Here is another image from a historical source from the mid 16h century which refers to the illustrated weapon as Langschwert (longsword): http://www.thearma.org/Manuals/Mair/PHMx.jpg The term bastard sword was used historically but it seems to have a slightly different meaning than how many people seem to be using the term today. In Joseph Swetnam's 1617 work, The School of the Noble and Worthy Science of Defence, Swetnam defines the bastard sword as “The bastard sword, the which Sword is some-thing shorter than a long Sword, and yet longer than a Short-sword”. So it would appear that if you had a single-handed sword with a long grip, or thinking of it a different way, a longsword with a short blade, it was neither and was therefore a 'bastard'.
Agreed, especially since most of the stuff used in real fights is dead simple and the hammerlock is about as complicated as you're likely to see in a real tussle, but even that's easily described without the technique's name. E.g. "she twisted his arm behind his back." In the context of a fight, I think most people will immediately thinks about the hammerlock anyway because most have experienced it (usually in their childhood sandbox battles) or seen it at some point in their lives, probably usually onscreen.
