I research and teach medieval and Renaissance Italian swordsmanship (I have a PhD in recreating historical martial arts), blog about it, write books about it, have developed a card game to teach it (which involved founding another company, and crowdfunding), and run Swordschool.
If you're new to historical martial arts, or just to my work, try the Start Here page.
And as if that wasn't enough, you can even contact me here.
I was in Dumfries in April visiting my mum, and a friend of the family there happened to buy a set of four balloon-back chairs, and mentioned it when they came over for dinner. I immediately asked whether they were coming apart in the usual place (where the balloon top rail meets the uprights). Of course they were. So I naturally offered to have a look…
Three of the balloon back rails needed fixing.
(The black and white photo of two kids in a pram are me and my sister in about 1976. Guess which one's which!)
Two of the chairs needed their rear joints (where the rails meet the backs) tightened up and their corner blocks re-fitted.
But one poor chair, oh my. This chair had been broken more than once in the past, most notably having the front left leg shattered at the top, the critical bit where it’s jointed to the rails. I didn’t take a photo of the chair in its original state, but take my word for it, this chair needed some love.
The original repair was done by a professional working fast (as professionals must). The two-part break was glued up in one go, and held together by screws. One part remains stuck fast, the other worked its way loose again. All four corner pieces were loose, two of them actually broken at the dowel holes. The one at the broken leg was broken in two places, and had been stuck back together with hide glue.
The rear joints where the rails meet the back were also very loose. They wouldn’t quite come apart without violence, but they had been very clearly repaired at least twice in the past. Two out of three of the ⅜” dowels on one side had been replaced with ½” ones. In the end I had to cut through all the dowels to take the joints apart.
The rear joints had been fixed at least twice: once properly-ish, including replacing those two dowels, and once by someone opening it up a bit, squooging in some white glue, and hoping for the best. They had done the same with the rear corner pieces. Very helpful. Really. Do that with all your nice old furniture. Future restorers will thank you.
This is exactly the kind of fun restoration that is simply uncommercial. There is no way to do a proper job on it in an amount of time that costs less than the chair is worth. I’m not a professional restorer any more, so I had no need to do this quickly. Where the previous restorer did the whole thing in one, maybe two, glue-ups, I did at least eight separate glue-ups. And a bunch of colouring in, as you shall see.
My overall goal is to return the chair to active service, and have the repairs un-datable. There is no way to tell whether they were done the day after the chair was made, or last week. To this end the only glue I use (and the only glue I would ever use on an antique because I’m not an animal) is hide glue (aka scotch glue, horse glue, hot glue, etc.). I cleaned out my glue pot (which took a while!), got a fresh batch warming up, and got to work.
Firstly I cleaned up and re-fitted the front right corner block. This was to stabilise the only unbroken joint while I was fiddling about with the broken ones. Once it was glued in, I re-drilled the dowel holes and glued the dowels in. Doing this in two separate glue-ups makes it much easier to be certain of a perfect fit. One issue with the original assembly and the subsequent professional repair was the old habit of just dipping the end of the dowel in glue and tapping it into the hole. The edges of the hole scrapes almost all the glue off the dowel, leaving it basically loose in its hole. I was careful to use a small brush to get a thorough coat of glue inside the hole, and painted more on the dowel, before knocking them home. Pro-tip: the dowel must have a groove cut in its side to allow glue to squeeze out, otherwise it can pool at the bottom of the hole and stop the dowel getting all the way in. Modern mass-produced dowels for dowel-joints are grooved all round for this reason. But they would date the repair, so I cut my own dowels from clean dowel rods, and cut the groove in by hand with a chisel.
Then I cleaned out all the dowels in the rear joints.
This involved drilling a smallish hole and cutting them out with a small chisel, then cleaning the holes out with a drill. I wanted to do this before repairing the leg break so there would be minimal fiddling with front legs after the break was repaired.
Then I dismantled the big leg break.
One of the screws was absolutely welded in place, so I heated it up with the heat gun and let it cool a few times to break the seal, got one of my biggest screwdrivers out, and it eventually yielded without damaging the wood. Here are the two halves before cleaning off the old glue:
Then I cleaned it all up and glued it back together with moderate clamping force.
Because I couldn’t open up one part of the previous repair without doing more damage the break is still slightly off, but it’s much more together than it was.
After it had dried I then I drilled 10mm dowel holes where the screws had been, and glued them in. They should make the repair much more stable.
They then had to be cut down, the ends shaped to the form of the rail, and stained and polished. This could have been done at the end of the job, but I felt like doing it then and there. I also disappeared the cracks with some coloured hard wax.
I decided to replace the front left corner block with a slightly beefier version. It will always be a somewhat weakened area, but at least it has a solid, unbroken, properly-fitted corner block helping to keep it together. You can see the new block next to the shattered old one here:
I decided to do the main glue-up in two stages. First I cut and fit the six new dowels, then glued them in to the rails.
You'll notice they're all different lengths. This is because the dowel holes are very irregular. I then did two dry-run assemblies, adjusting the dowels slightly each time to get an immaculate fit.
Then I glued up the rear joints. I used light trigger clamps for this, because I don’t want to introduce any tension into the system which will work away at the joints over time.
At this point I decided to fill the dowel holes for the corner blocks, by gluing in new dowels and trimming them down. The blocks will be slightly re-shaped to fit, so the original dowel holes won’t line up quite perfectly. This way I can glue them in, re-drill the holes, and the patches will accommodate any shift in the holes so the dowels will fit perfectly.
Having glued in the two rear corner blocks, and the new front corner block, I let the glue dry before re-drilling all the dowel holes, and fitting new dowels. Once the dowels were in, I cut them down and coloured all the new wood, then gave the whole thing a clean and wax.
I left the new glue block uncoloured on the underside so it is clearly a replacement. Back when I trained there was a boom in antique furniture, so it was quite common for restorers to get into trouble for faking. Unscrupulous dealers would get you to fix up a nice old piece, and then sell it as being in immaculate condition, which is fraud. The difference between ‘immaculate’ and ‘nicely restored’ could be thousands of pounds. While there should be nothing in the repair itself to date it, any new pieces really ought to be discreetly named and dated. And besides, I’m quite please with how this chair turned out, so don’t mind putting my name to it!
If you’re on my mailing list you’ll be aware that I’m currently on compassionate leave. I’ve had no brain for dealing with proper work stuff (books, courses, podcast, etc.) but having a project like this to tinker with has been very good for my mental health. It’s straightforward, you can see your progress, and it’s very satisfying to see a nice old chair brought back to life.
Students on guard, in our first proper salle, 2001.
When I started Swordschool in 2001 I had no business plan, nor any other kind of plan, really. Just a clear idea of what I was supposed to do: show up and teach classes.
From that unstructured beginning, the School grew. It’s hard to separate “The School” from “the Guy”, because especially in the early years they were very much one thing. Was my first book a “school” project? Well, yes and no. Were my seminars in other countries part of the school? Yes and no.
The School, as I see it, is the emergent property of students, space, curriculum, and instructor. Remove any one element and you don’t really have “The School”.
Whatever it actually is, the School has attracted helpful people every step of the way. I won't list them all here, but everything from finding training spaces, to setting up websites, to building the wiki, to covering classes for me, to sourcing equipment, to getting the word out, to organising photo shoots, and on and on, whatever it was we were doing, there were people stepping up to help. Without them the school would have died in infancy. Just in case you thought I did it all by myself.
From a martial arts school perspective, we started out as a single salle under a single instructor.
Guy, the very serious instructor, with Tomi the very serious student.
Within a couple of years the first branch opened, in Linköping, Sweden. I had nothing to do with it directly— I was approached by three enthusiasts who wanted to start training under my direction.
This was the pattern for all the branches that followed: local people starting something and wanting help to make it more organised, more official. The Singapore founders originally got in touch because they needed a bit of paper to show the police that would allow them to import swords! Branches opened in many Finnish cities too.
I don’t take credit for any of that growth. It was always and entirely the idea and the work of a person or group that wanted to be able to train closer to home.
Over time just about all of these groups became independent, as founders moved on, and those that kept things going wanted either to keep training using my interpretations and syllabi but without the formal connection, or wanted to go off in other directions, such as focussing on tournaments or taking up a different style (such as German longsword).
It’s a simple fact that thousands of people owe their training, and dozens of clubs owe their existence, to their current or previous connection with the School.
That is beyond awesome.
The effect is especially noticeable in Finland, where just about every person currently training in historical martial arts has trained under me, or one of my students, or one of my students’ students, at some point.
None of that was part of the original plan. There was no plan.
Key milestones
Over time the School expanded in ways I could never have predicted. Here are some of the milestones along the way (leaving aside book publications, of which there have been over 20):
• August 2000: I decided to move to Finland and open a school of historical swordsmanship.
• January 22nd 2001: I registered the swordschool.com domain.
• March 17th 2001: the first, free, taster class was held at the Olympic Stadium.
• June 1st 2001: we move into our first permanent training space, in Jakomäki, Helsinki.
• 2001: demos and classes at Finnconn, Jyväskylä, brought in a lot of new students.
Gareth Hunt and Guy doing demo fights at Finnconn, 2001
• 2002: the first branch opens, in Linköping, Sweden.
• 2004: The Swordsman’s Companion is published in the USA.
• 2006: The Duellist’s Companion is published in the USA.
• 2010: I began uploading free videos of the School’s syllabus, published the entire school syllabus online for free, and later pioneered the use of crowdfunding for HMA projects.
• 2012: I began blogging, providing useful free content to the HMA community.
• 2013: I published Veni Vadi Vici, a translation of Philippo Vadi’s manuscript De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi, and released the translation online for free.
• 2014: The number of free training videos online passed 100, including many full-length seminars. I also published the first two decks of Audatia, the first ever card game that teaches historical swordsmanship.
• 2016: I released the first online course to help students research HMA, called Recreate Historical Swordsmanship from Historical Sources. We also moved to the UK.
• 2018: I was awarded a PhD by Research Publications by Edinburgh University.
• 2020: I started The Sword Guy podcast, which also led to the newsletter becoming much more regular.
• 2022: The Sword People social media platform launches.
• 2025: The Helsinki Salle is sold to the SHMS Ry. Major overhaul of the Syllabus Wiki and the blog begun.
The Swordschool “Business”
From a business perspective, the School has been:
2001–2007 my toiminimi, or sole tradership, “The School of European Swordsmanship, Helsinki tmi”.
In 2002 my students created the Suomen Historiallisen Miekkailun Seura Ry, a non-profit, which simplified things greatly and also enabled us to apply for certain grants.
For legal and practical reasons in 2007 I folded the sole tradership and created a limited liability company, “The School of European Swordsmanship Oy”, which trades under Swordschool Oy, and which is still running.
I bought a larger space in the same building in 2007, and we moved across the hall. I had to buy it personally because the bank wouldn’t lend money to the tiny wee company. The SHMS paid me personally rent on the space, and paid training fees to my company.
In 2016, after moving to the UK, I created Swordschool Ltd, another limited liability company here in the UK, because it’s much simpler to run everything through a company in the same country that you live in.
None of these legal entities are “The School”. They are necessary legal fictions that allow me to get paid and pay taxes without going to jail, while keeping a legal wall between me personally and the business activities (publishing, teaching, etc.) that I engage in.
For the first dozen years the business of the school was only and entirely me teaching in person.
My books were published by small presses in the USA, and brought in no real income at all (there's a story there, but also a legal settlement preventing me from telling it). When I started publishing my own books (starting with Veni Vadi Vici, in 2012), they began to bring in real income.
By 2016 we could— with a lot of belt-tightening— live off my book earnings, the salle rent, and occasional weekend seminar fees, to the point that we could move to the UK to look after elderly parents.
In 2016 I got the idea to create online courses, which swiftly overtook books as the single biggest income stream.
Leaving Helsinki
My family left Helsinki in 2016 primarily due to ageing parents in the UK.
I officially retired as the School’s director in November 2015, to give my students time to adjust while I was still around to help as needed.
The original branch is still running in the salle in Jakomäki, Helsinki, and is solely owned and operated by the Suomen Historiallisen Miekkailun Seura Ry. We figured out a way for them to buy the salle off me without involving bank loans, and they now own the space.
Swordschool Today
The School currently offers a ton of free and paid resources for anyone interested in the Art of Arms.
We are currently rebuilding it, but it’s as usable as it ever was during the process. It’s how we host and organise our free reference resource for syllabus and interpretation. We started it in 2011, and while it was neglected somewhat as we built the online school, it’s still useful and is being thoroughly reorganised, expanded, and brought up to date. We have added over 200 new pages this year alone.
I started this during lockdown so that sword people stuck at home and missing the social aspect of training could virtually hang out while sword geeks chatted about swords. It now boasts over 200 episodes with a range of well-known and less well-known guests.
GuyWindsor.net
I started this blog in 2012, and it now has over 500 posts on various topics. I recently reorganised it and created a “start here” page.
With over 500 videos, it’s a monster and hard to navigate, which is why we have the Syllabus Wiki. Almost all public interpretation and training videos are on the wiki (or will be soon). It also hosts backups of our online courses in case that platform goes down, so not all of those 500 videos are public.
This has existed since about 2015, but I didn’t do much with it until lockdown. Since then it’s been a regular fortnightly bit of swordy positivity in your inbox. About 6,000 people subscribe at present—you should join them.
This is the best place to get my books. The fact is that most online retailers of ebooks, audiobooks, and print have pretty bad terms of service, and like to hide your work unless you pay them to advertise it. So this is the place to go to get ebooks, audiobooks, paperbacks, hardbacks, and even T-shirts.
I began creating online courses in 2016, and they have proved extremely popular. You can get online courses on a huge range of topics, from Solo Training to Fiore’s art of arms, Vadi’s art of arms, Capoferro rapier, I.33 sword and buckler, and more.
Buying courses individually can get quite expensive, but you can get access to whatever you are interested in through one of our subscription packages at very reasonable prices. All courses are fully downloadable, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Seminars
My favourite thing to do is teach classes. I’m a consulting swordsman, so you tell me what you need, and I deliver it. Drop me an email to discuss your needs.
Looking back
When I started in 2001 I had no thought beyond teaching full time in one place. What actually happened was something much bigger: a network of people, clubs, books, courses, and conversations about the Art of Arms that has now been growing for a quarter of a century.
The School has never really been a building, or a company, or even a curriculum.
It’s the people who show up to train, to teach, to research, and to share what they’ve learned.
Now the real question is: what about the next 25 years?
On March 17th 2001 I ran the first official class of what was then called “The School of European Swordsmanship, Helsinki”, or SESH, in a small room at the Olympic Stadium, in Helsinki, Finland. So today is our 25th birthday: happy birthday to us!
Our classes were held in primary school sports halls:
Training in Töölön Ala-aste koulu, 2001
And even outside, when the Finnish weather allowed:
Training in Sibelius Park, Helsinki, May 2001
It's fair to say we've come a long way since then!
To celebrate, I’ve created a COOL FREE THING. (Well, I've caused to be created by paying the excellent Katie to do the actual work.) Would you like a full-colour facsimile of Philippo Vadi’s De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi, with a second copy with my English translation laid out like the original?
Of course you would. You can use these print files to get it printed wherever you like (I use BookVault in the UK).
While you are there (the files are hosted at swordschool.shop) use the birthday discount code SWORDSCHOOL25! to get 25% off all digital products (ebooks and audiobooks). The code also works on our courses platform: courses.swordschool.com
The code expires at the end of April, so no desperate rush.
Note: no purchase or sign-up is required to get the facsimile print files. It's entirely free. You'll need to put your email address in to download it, but we won't sign you up to anything unless you opt-in during the process.
Written in the 1480s for the court of Urbino, Filippo Vadi’s De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi is a cornerstone source for historical European martial arts: concise, sharp, and packed with principles that still matter in fencing today—timing, measure, courage, deception, and decisive action. This book is designed to reproduce the experience of reading the original manuscript as closely as possible.
The first half is a full-colour facsimile of the 42-folio vellum original held in Rome. The second half is a layout-matched English translation, replacing Vadi’s text while keeping the manuscript’s structure and rhythm intact.
For clubs, instructors, and independent students, this is Vadi as he should be read: directly, clearly, and in context. And for practical study, every play has video support available via simple links keyed to the folio number.
Made available under a Creative Commons Attribution–Non Commercial–ShareAlike licence, this facsimile is free for anyone to print and share.
For deeper scholarship, footnotes, interpretation, and video-supported training for every play, see the companion volume (available for pre-order, due out in May).
Please note: You will receive a zip file containing the PDF download of the interior file, and a separate PDF cover file. Recommendations for how to have this printed into your own hardback book are included. You can download the zip file from the confirmation page after checkout, and you will also receive an email with a download link.
Please share this post, and the book,with anyone you think will be interested.
So what happened in the last 25 years? I’ll post a lengthy “history of Swordschool’ post next week. In the meantime, avail yourself of all our other cool free stuff:
Free Resources from Swordschool
The Syllabus Wiki. We are currently rebuilding it, but it’s as usable as it ever was during the rebuild process. It’s how we host and organise our free reference resource for syllabus and interpretation. We started it in 2010, and while it was neglected somewhat as we built the online school, it’s still useful, and is being thoroughly re-organised, expanded, and brought up to date. For instance, we have now got the first 20 plates from Capoferro represented with image, text, and video. And we've made a solid start on Fiore too.
The Sword Guy Podcast. I started this during lockdown so that sword people stuck at home and missing the social aspect of training could virtually hang out while sword geeks chatted about swords. It now boasts over 200 episodes, with a range of well-known and less well-known guests.
GuyWindsor.Net. This blog! I started it in 2012, and it now has over 500 posts on various topics. I recently reorganised it and created a ‘start here’ page.
Swordschool Vimeo channel. With over 500 videos, it’s a monster, and hard to navigate, which is why we have the Syllabus Wiki. Almost all public interpretation and training videos are on the wiki (or will be soon). It also hosts backups of our online courses, in case that platform goes down, so not all of those 500 videos are public. But feel free to dig around for something interesting.
The Newsletter. This has existed since about 2015, but I didn’t do much with it until lockdown. Since then it’s been a regular fortnightly bit of swordy positivity in your inbox. About 6,000 people subscribe at present- you should join them! Subscribe below, or click the link for access to all previous emails.
That's a whole lot of free stuff. It's all made possible by the people who actually buy our products: books, courses, seminars; or who support us on Patreon. Until the end of April you can get 25% off all digital products (sadly not physical books or t-shirts: they cost too much money to make and ship), with the code:
Receiving the prize for “because someone had to teach the slot”.
I'm not known as a tournament fencer these days. Indeed it's been well over 20 years since I last officially competed. But one of the great benefits of interviewing so many people on The Sword Guy is that they spark ideas in me that then get acted on. My conversation with Martin Hoeppner included a lengthy discussion of tournament rulesets, and cemented my pre-existing opinion that his club holds great events (I’ve taught at their Swords of the Renaissance four years in a row). A few weeks later I interviewed Maciej Talaga about an academic article he wrote on medieval physical culture, and we got talking about the benefits of tournaments for historical martial artists.
This got me really thinking… I have a decent amount of tournament experience from sport fencing in the 80s and early 90s, but the last time I entered a tournament was in (if I recall correctly) 2003. It was a rapier tournament, in Italy, and I won it. But I had been a professional instructor for two years by this point. If I win, so what? Being a competent fencer is part of my job. If I don’t, then what does that say about my right to teach?
Bear in mind this was a very, very, long time ago.
There are some major equipment issues with modern tournaments: most don’t allow steel gauntlets (I absolutely will not use any of the synthetic gauntlets currently on the market, for the simple reason that they prevent me from holding my sword correctly), and most probably wouldn’t allow my That Guy’s Products mask. In situations where cuts to the head with a heavy weapon are likely, anything built on a fencing mask foundation are simply inadequate.
I understand that creating equipment requirements for a tournament is a nightmare job for the organisers; it’s much easier if you can insist on established brands and models. But the restriction on steel gauntlets extends back to well before the time that companies were making synthetic gauntlets, and organisers were requiring things like lacrosse gloves because “steel gauntlets are dangerous”. Which in an activity that involves swinging steel bars at people’s heads seems at best misguided.
(I think I need to do a deep dive into sparring gear for longswords and other heavier swords… interested?)
I’d heard about the Torneo di Spada through attending Swords of the Renaissance, and checked with them that my mask and gauntlets were allowed. They are!* And they very kindly lent me some of the extra bits of kit (such as forearm guards) that I don’t have. They also asked me to teach a class on the Sunday afternoon, which made the whole thing even easier to approach.
I flew in to Berlin on Friday night, and on Saturday geared up and got stuck in. The first day was sidesword. This was perfect for me because I’m not a sidesword instructor. I haven’t taught a class in Bolognese fencing since maybe 2007, so I could go into it with no particular expectations. My goals were simple:
1. to break the seal on my tournament fencing,
2. evaluate my current level of training,
3. and, most importantly, to embody the spirit of the Art of Arms.
How does one embody the spirit of the Bolognese Art of Arms? In the 16th century duels were very often public affairs. Your reputation is on the line, as well as your skin. The most important thing is to fence boldly.**
The ruleset was simple: hits to the head score 3 points, to the lower leg 2 (hence the need for shin guards), and anywhere else only 1. This is to reflect the opinion of Antonio Manciolino in his 1531 Opera Nova, in which the author writes that the head is the most noble target (a common opinion at the time), and that the lower leg should count higher because it’s so hard to hit without getting hit yourself.***
Every bout consisted of three scoring passes, so the maximum possible points in a bout was 9.
The twist was that the ranking is primarily based not on the points, but on how many passes you survive untouched. Winning 9-3, where you get 3 points in every pass and your opponent gets one, is useless; it’s better for your ranking to win 3-0.
A tournament-minded fencer will then be very cautious, and if they can’t stop the attack, at least go for a double.
To my mind though, to properly embody the spirit of the art, I needed to march in and hit them in the head, with style and control, but absolutely no dicking about at the edge of measure trying to not get hit. So that’s what I did.
The results? In my pool of 8, I had 7 bouts (21 passes), and scored 37 points, of which 33 were from hits to the head. But I had only 5 clean passes. That put me 21st out of 25 fencers. (Where the ratio of clean passes was the same, ranking was decided on points.)
I was delighted. My points per bout were the highest overall (37 out of 7, so 5.3). The next best was 38 out of 8 bouts, so 4.8. The next highest number of head hits was 7 to my 11. And several people complimented me on my fencing style.
Of course, if it was the points that counted, not the clean passes, the other fencers would have been motivated to go for head shots too, they would probably have scored a lot higher: the comparison isn’t really fair, but it is illustrative.
The Rapier Tournament
The second day was the rapier tournament. My goal was the same: to embody the spirit of the art. But the art was different. When it comes to rapier, I’m a Capoferro man, so the year is 1610, the duel is private, the top priority is going home in a whole skin. Fencing to first blood is fine: murder is an option not an obligation. So my fencing was totally different. Not just the style, but also the incentives.
The clean passes ranking was the same. Points were scored so that thrusts to the head or body were 3 points, cuts to the head 2, and cuts or thrusts anywhere else just one.
Fencers could choose rapier, or rapier and dagger, but they had to agree (so, both fencers had the same weapons). I always gave my opponent the choice, because I want their best game. In the end I think I used a dagger in three of my bouts.
In the qualifying pools I had 9 bouts (27 passes) and scored 19 clean passes, so a 70% success rate. I only scored 42 points, of which only 5 hits were to the head. This put me at the top of the rankings for all 30 fencers (the next best was 63%), but lots of fencers scored more points than me.
I conclude from this that the clean-passes ranking system rewards a private-duel mindset and approach.
Safety First
Unfortunately I wasn’t careful enough with one of my opponents. I knew he was wild, but after the halt was called he was chambered to cut me in the head. I stopped at the halt, and so didn’t parry his full-force horizontal cut to the right side of my head. As I was not expecting heavy head cuts in a rapier pool, I was wearing my regular fencing mask (it’s a bit better for face thrusts), with the usual HEMA overlay. This is totally inadequate to deal with that kind of blow, and he rung my bell. He also got a red card.
I sat down for a bit, and thought about my options. I had no obvious signs of concussion: vision and balance were fine. My last three opponents were all relative beginners, and not prone to hard hitting, and I didn’t want to drop out, so I fenced them very carefully (I got three clean passes in all three bouts).
There was about half an hour before the pools all finished up and the rankings to go on to the next round were announced. At the end of that time, over an hour after the blow, my head still hurt. When it comes to brain injury a second hit in the same place is orders of magnitude more dangerous than the first one. And the “champions pool” would have no easy fights in which I could be reasonably certain to prevent my opponent from catching me in the same place. If I had a student in that situation I would not let them continue, so I withdrew.
The organisers and my fellow fencers were all entirely understanding and supportive of my decision. And I should say here explicitly that there was no malice or bad sportsmanship involved in the situation. I should have recovered under cover, not just stopped dead.
I should also say that none of the three medal winners were in my pool, so it could be that I would have ranked less well if I’d had stronger opponents. I don’t want you to think that coming first in the qualifying pool means terribly much. Had I continued I probably had a 50% shot at a medal.
Fitness
At the end of my first bout on the first day I was breathing quite hard. This was odd, because the bout wasn’t that challenging or athletic. It could only be tournament pressure. This was excellent! It meant I had a chance to practice controlling my level of arousal. I cycled in some breathing exercises, and got my breathing and heart rate back down to reasonable levels, and had no fitness difficulties at all for the rest of the weekend.
I could feel my thighs and shoulders a little bit on Sunday morning, but nothing significant.
More critically, my recently-recovered knees were fine, and so were my back and neck. So it seems that my physical conditioning is working really well. Hurrah!
The only point of stiffness or soreness on the Monday morning after the whole weekend was over, was the front of my ankles. A completely weird place to feel a bit of fencing, so I’ll try to figure out what caused that.
I’m being extremely cautious about my head. No alcohol (which I’m off at the moment anyway), and I won’t engage in anything where I’m likely to be hit in the head for a good long while. A minor head trauma is like priming your immune system for anaphylaxis. You have to avoid the stimulus if you don’t want a severe response.
The Tournament Fencer
Quite a few of the fencers there were clearly in it for the tournament. For them, winning the tournament itself was the goal. Medals matter. This generates a fencing style that is like a cross between sports epee and a bit of kendo, with lots of jigging about at the edge of measure and a very fast tag with the sword.
You can tell the competitors because they ask questions about the rules (what exactly counts as stepping out of the ring? Does my foot have to touch the ground? The whole foot? What if it’s just my heel?). They also use their ‘video challenge’ right. In the finals, video challenges were allowed, one per fencer per bout. If the challenge was successful you can challenge again. This means that if you disagree with the judges, you can, in effect, argue with them.
To a tournament fencer, it really does matter who gets the points. It’s what they are there for. To lose a medal because the judge made a mistake would be intolerable.
I would die in a pit of fire before I ever issued a video challenge. If I failed to hit my opponent with such clarity and in such obvious control of their weapon that the blind, drunk, biased-against-me judge who has been bribed by the opposition,** still has to give it to me, then I don’t deserve the point. “Bad” judging (as in judging you disagree with) is part of the tournament challenge. The greater the challenge, the greater the learning opportunity.
It’s really useful to have people like that to fence against, because they are usually very good at hitting you, and in ways you may not expect because they look different to the canonical style. The hit is always right. If you fail to parry, that’s on you. Also, seeing how incentives affect behaviour allows you to learn to predict some of that behaviour. Another useful learning opportunity.
It’s illustrative of the difference that, while I think I won my first bout on Saturday 7-4, and I can work out some of my clean-pass scores, I don’t actually know what my scoring was in any of the bouts. I don’t think I looked at the scoreboard more than half a dozen times in the whole weekend. Because the points aren’t relevant to my aims.
This is not virtue. There is nothing wrong with being a tournament fencer, who needs to track their score because it matters. I’m just playing a different game.
Final thoughts
Firstly, thanks to Stephan, Anna, Martin, and the rest of the Schildwache Potsdam team. Especially those noble souls who gave up their weekend to judged and score. It’s a huge amount of work putting on a tournament like this, and you all made many young fencers very happy, and one old instructor too.
Secondly, thanks to all my opponents over the weekend. I hope you enjoyed fencing me as much as I enjoyed fencing you. I do wish I’d kept a record of everyone I fenced, but I failed to. If you recall our bouts, feel free to remind me either in the comments or by email.
Thanks also to Malleus Martialis for sending me a delicious sidesword at very short notice. I only signed up for the tournament in mid-December, then realised my old sidesword was not fit for modern competition use. So I contacted Eleonora at Malleus, and a shiny new sword was waiting for me when I got there.
One interesting quirk of the way the tournament was constructed was that fencers in each pool had to find their own opponents, and keep doing so until you’d fenced everyone in your pool. This means that your first interaction with your opponents is face to face, unmasked, and arranging a match together. I didn’t notice it at the time, but chatting with Stephan afterwards it was clear that this contributed something to the feeling of the event. We weren’t fencing against anonymous numbers. We were fencing our colleagues, peers, and friends.
Overall, I’m delighted by the results. I went there to play my game: to use the tournament environment to measure and develop my historical fencing skills against motivated and resistant opponents. Most particularly, to not get sucked in to the competitive fencing mindset, where scoring touches according to the rules is the only consideration.
There was one pass in the whole weekend where I decided to play tournament. In one of my rapier bouts it seemed that the only thing the judges could see was incidental arm touches. Bending my sword on my opponent’s chest was literally invisible. So in the last pass I flicked my point under my opponent’s guard from the edge of measure. Sure enough, point to me. Ugh.
So I stopped that and went back to embodying the Art of Arms as best I know how.
Notes
*The organisers have asked me to mention that “we allow steel gloves only under circumstances where we, as organisers, can be absolutely sure that they are of proper quality, well maintained, free of burrs and sharp edges, and without loose rivets.”
** For example, Leonard Eckstein Opdycke’s translation of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, Book 1, paragraph 21: “ “Moreover I deem it very important to know how to wrestle, for it is a great help in the use of all kinds of weapons on foot. Then, both for his own sake and for that of his friends, he must understand the quarrels and differences that may arise, and must be quick to seize an advantage, always showing courage and prudence in all things.
Nor should he be too ready to fight except when honour demands it; for besides the great danger that the uncertainty of fate entails, he who rushes into such affairs recklessly and without urgent cause, merits the severest censure even though he be successful.
But when he finds himself so far engaged that he cannot withdraw without reproach, he ought to be most deliberate, both in the preliminaries to the duel and in the duel itself, and always show readiness and daring. Nor must he act like some, who fritter the affair away in disputes and controversies, and who, having the choice of weapons, select those that neither cut nor pierce, and arm themselves as if they were expecting a cannonade; and thinking it enough not to be defeated, stand ever on the defensive and retreat,— showing therein their utter cowardice. And thus they make themselves a laughing-stock for boys, like those two men of Ancona who fought at Perugia not long since, and made everyone laugh who saw them.”
“And who were they?” asked my lord Gaspar Pallavicino.
“Two cousins,” replied messer Cesare.
Then the Count said:
“In their fighting they were as like as two brothers;”
[40] Of two playing together, he who strikes in response is more praiseworthy than the one who strikes the first blow, because he reveals himself sooner to become enraged than to lose vigour after the received hit.
[41] It is not licit after the received blow to make more than one response stepping forward with a crossing step; the reason being that one must do well with all of one’s wit, since with that one can recover honour.
[42] The blow to the head, considering the excellence of that member, counts for three; and the blow to the foot is taken for two, having regard for the difficulty of making it so low.
[43] A valorous player is he who redoubles his blows.
****Just to be clear, the judges were of varying levels of experience and skill, but were all wearing any necessary eyewear, sober, honest, and unbiased to the point of spending endless amounts of time discussing what exactly happened because they really, really, wanted to be fair. And the only way to get skilled, experienced, judges is to give less-skilled, less-experienced judges the opportunity to practice. I have no complaints, and much respect for their time and effort.
