One
cold evening, sometime between the years 1595 and 1598, a half dozen men of
fashion entered an inn at Wells, Somersetshire. Their guest of honor was a
handsome Italian, a certain Vincentio Saviolo of Padua, who kept a fashionable
establishment in London, teaching dance, ballistics, and the new- fangled art of
the rapier to London courtiers and their fashion- conscious entourage.The
conversation, naturally, soon turned to fencing. And as the wine and beer
flowed, the talk grew louder. The Italian, carried along by the enthusiasm of
his prosperous claque, was overheard stating that in all his years in England
(and he had arrived in 1590) "there was not yet one Englishman who could once
touch him at the single rapier, or rapier and dagger."
To
the Elizabethan ear, this was strong stuff indeed. It implied that
English-trained fencers -- both amateurs and professionals -- were so inadequate
they could not even score a lucky hit against the man.
Naturally,
the local team was alerted by a Piqued Englishman.
Less
than a half hour later, a tall man entered the inn and, cap in hand, approached
the gentlemen. This was Bartholomew Bramble, Wells' own accredited Maister of
Defence. And his deference was not at all out of place, since after all, he was
a "man of his hands" and the group he was approaching consisted of bonified
nobles.
Now
imagine their consternation when this fellow not only approached but dared to
speak to them: If Maestro Vincentio would please to take a quart of wine with
him.
Inch-for-inch
the patrician, Vincentio leaned back: "Why should you give me a quart if wine?"
"Why,
sir, because I hear you are a famous man at your weapon."
And
the Piqued Englishman chimed in: "Maestro Vincentio, I pray to bid him welcome.
He is a man of your profession."
"My
profession?" Vincentio twirled his goatee. "What is my profession?"
"Well,
he is a master of the Noble Science of Defence."
"Why,"
said Maister Vincentio, "God make him a good man."
But
Bartholomew Bramble was not to be shrugged off. Not after that One Touch
business he was not! So again he pressed his quart of wine on the Italian.
Annoyed,
Vincentio looked up: "I have no need of your wine."
"Sir,
I have a school of defence in town, will it please you to go thither?"
"Thy
school? What shall I do at thy school?"
"Play
with me," said the Maister, "at the rapier and dagger, if it please you."
"Play
with thee? If I play with you, I will hit thee 1, 2, 3, 4 thrusts in the eye
together." And Vincentio demonstratively shifted the gilded hilt of his rapier
into plain sight.
"Then,
if you can do so, it is the better for you and the worse for me. But surely, I
can hardly believe that you can hit me. But once again, I heartily pray you,
good sir, that you will go to my school and play with me."
"Play
with thee?" Vincentio had had it. "By God," he spat,
That
did it for Bramble. The Italian's "scorn" had not yet reverberated through the
room when his large fist hit Vincentio squarely in the jaw that he fell over,
flipped, and landed with his legs against a buttery hatch. Vincentio, his rapier
dragging on the floor, sprang to his feet: His right on his dagger, his left
index finger pointing at the Maister, he hissed: "I will cause you to lie in
jail for this, one, two, three years."
Bramble,
weaponless and facing the heavily armed Italian, grabbed a half-full jack of
beer, and with gusto emptied it in his face: "And well, since you will drink no
wine, will you pledge me in beer? I drink to all the cowardly knaves in England,
and I drink thee to be the veriest coward of them all."
They
left it at that. Saviolo's friends probably pulled him back.
Saviolo,
however (who had nothing to gain and everything to lose putting his skills to
the test against a native master) had an opportunity to prove that he indeed was
the ultimate Machiavellian.
Accidentally
running into Bramble the next morning, he plays nice-nice, takes Bramble over to
a mercer, buys him some silk buttons: "You remember how you misused me
yesterday. You were to blame, me be an excellent man. Me teach you how to thrust
two foote further than any Englishman."Vincentio's last boast has been interpreted as one of the earliest allusions to the lunge proper. Yet this attack is missing from the repertoire he presents in his book: Vincentio's attacks are predominantly made on the pass, the point being carried to (and into) the target with a forward step.
But
as Gaugler* points out, Viggiani (1575) had already mentioned the large step
with the right foot. And Marozzo (1536) included punta lunga, an extension of
the arm combined with an additiona; movement of the right foot after the
execution of the pass.
As
far as illustration go, Meyer's Gruendtliche Beschreibung of 1570 (Figs 2 and 3)
shows something very closely resembling the lunge being executed at a stationary
target with a rapier,as well as during a bout at swords.
So
what can we make of Vincentio's conciliatory offer to let Bart Bramble in on his
botte segreta? Is it really Bramble's ticket into a new world of sophistication
and innovation? Or did the lunge already belong in the Maisters' combative
repertoire? After all, Bramble felt fit enough to offer Saviolo a chance to play
at the Italian's very own weapons of choice...
To
get a better feeling for the role of the complex attack of the lunge in
16th-century fencing, we'd need to find out what its functions were.
In
an antagonistic combative scenario, the tactical forte of the lunge is the
surprise element it adds to working with distance.
This
advantage of the unsuspected strike from distance, however, probably played only
a minor role in the native combative culture of Elizabethan England.
An
experienced antagonist would be able to take advantage of the linear commitment
of the attack, either by removing target area (via a volte), or by taking
advantage of the wonderful stability of his True Guardant Ward. (The latter
would have provided the opportunity for a powerful and lightning-fast
counter-attack against the wrist or lower arm of the lunging attacker.)
In
the English system of the Noble Art, the True and False Times provided a simple
but accurate grid of classifying offensive and defensive actions according to
comparative speed. The lunge, by virtue of the body parts involved in its proper
execution, involved the True Times of the hand, the body, and the feet: To reach
the opponent, the arm has to be straightened, and the entire body weight has to
be accelerated from a standstill to the speed necessary for penetration.
By
definition, it could be defeated by the action of the hand (a stop cut), the
time of the hand and body (maybe a parry and a leaning back of the upper body),
and the time of the hand, body, and foot (a volte). As such, it would not have
played a major role in the Masters' offensive repertoire. A
number of minor modern writers have called the lunge a means of extending the
fencer's reach. This might be true for the foil. But if you consider True Reach
as the distance between the utmost extremity of your offensive (vulgo, the
point) and the nearest potential target for a counter-attack of the opposing
blade (the wrist or lower arm), you can't but admit that, given weapons of equal
length, the lunge does nothing to increase True Reach: No matter if lunge or
straight thrust, an epee, saber, or rapier point becomes dangerous only after
passing the opposing guard, at which moment the opposing point poses the same
threat to your own lower arm that your point poses to his.
With
weapons used with one hand only, an extension of True Reach is difficult to
obtain indeed. Sir William Hope angrily prohibited his students from gripping
the pommel of their
The
German Joachim Meyer's sections on staff, pike, and halberd are some of the most
erudite instructions in the usage of these weapons of the period. Staff weapons,
due to their considerable weight, are typically managed using two hands. This in
fact reduces their True Reach to the two thirds of their total length that
projects out from the leading hand. Meyer, however, in one of his plates
entitled "Fechten mit der Helleparten" ("Fencing with the Halbert") depicts two
fencers engaged in one-handed defensive and offensive actions with the staff.
(fig. 4) Note that the fencer to the upper left has achieved the final extension
of the lunge, adding at least three feet to his True reach by grasping the staff
at the butt end with is right hand. The only way to escape this enormously
extended reach is for the right-hand fencer to escape to the rear with what
could have been a backward lunge, also grasps his weapon at the butt end,
This,
of course, puts enormous strain on the right arm of the lunging fighter. And
unless the actual speed of the lunge was considerable enough to stay the point
in the process, point control was as good as impossible. This was probably not
an action that would have been performed with any kind of frequency in practice
bouts.
But
its picographic ripresentation in a source that predates Vincentino Saviolo's
teaching by twenty years could lead us to assume that his offer to stout-hearted
Bart Bramble, "to teach him how to thrust twoo foote farther the anie
Englishman..." may not have been all that later authors have come to accept.
In
which case, the above anecdote of Vincentio's trip to Wells, Somersetshire,
leaves us with probably the most important guideline of how to establish and
maintain a reputation of undefeated fencing prowess: Don't engage in
challenges that could be bad for you. *
Gaugler, William. (1998). The History of Fencing: Foundations of
Modern European Swordplay. Bangor, ME Laureate Press, p28.