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The art of feeling and taking your time
This post is inspired by this video by Adam Franti from the Lansing Longsword Guild: “Studies in Opportunity – II – Speed is a Noobtrap” (17:52) Adam makes some excellent observations that I think many historical fencers can benefit from. In my opinion, the most important takeaways are these: So many people (especially longsword fencers)…
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A Speculative Hypothesis: Applying Fabris to Longsword
One of the things that I really like about many late 16th / early 17th century fencing sources is that they spend a lot of time discussing how to approach your opponent as securely as possible and do so in a clear and methodical way. By contrast, the 15th century longsword sources I am familiar…
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Charles Besnard “The Free Master of Arms” Overview
This is intended to be a “too long; didn’t read” summary of Charles Besnard’s 1653 fencing treatise Le maistre d’arme liberal based on my reading of the English translation by Anne Chauvat and Rob Runacres available here. This summary necessarily involves interpretation on my part, but I’ve tried to strike a good balance between brevity…
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My Methodology
Inspiration This post was inspired by a blogpost by historian and historical fencing instructor Adam Franti about methodology in HEMA. I recommend reading it. Don’t worry: it isn’t very long. In that post, Adam argues that all HEMA practitioners have a methodology even if they are not consciously aware of it. “Every action we take…
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Snazzy Smallswords
In this post, I simply want to share a selection of smallswords I like! For now, it only includes smallswords from the Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s collection. I might expand this post to include examples from other museums in the future. What is a smallsword? Smallswords, also known as court swords, are a category of…
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Close viewing of “Stop Getting Stabbed”
These are my notes on a “close viewing” of the video “Stop Getting Stabbed!” (6:32) by “Woody’s Fencing Clips”. The video packs a lot of information into less than 7 minutes, which I outline for my own purposes here. Motivation: We want to control the opponent’s sword through blade engagement so that they cannot stab…
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Reblog: Do rules spoil fencing? | Verderben Regeln das Fechten?
English: I highly recommend this blogpost by Anton Kohutovič from March 2025: https://longsword.academy/en/refereeing/conventions/ Anton was ranked second in the world in mixed & men’s steel longsword on HEMA Rating in 2017 and has been influential on the contemporary longsword fencing scene. The article is very long, but very informative. It covers the following topics: If…
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Fabris Overview
This is intended to be a “too long; didn’t read” of my chapter-by-chapter summary of Fabris’s Book 1 here. This summary necessarily involves a bit of interpretation on my part, but I’ve tried to keep that minimal. I’m new to Fabris and am open to corrections and feedback! Can you give me the “TL;DR” for…
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Fabris Notes by Chapter
Who is Fabris? Salvator Fabris was an Italian fencing master who lived from 1544-1618. He wrote a fencing treatise called De lo Schermo, overo Scienza d’Arme (“On Defense, or the Science of Arms”). It was written in the 1590s, published in 1606, and is regarded as one of the most influential fencing treatises of all…
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Cool Links
This is a non-exhaustive archive of links to things that I think are interesting and relevant for historical fencing. I’ll add to this list over time as I find more cool things that I don’t want to forget.
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Blume des Kampfes 