This is the first part in my Fencing from first principles (FFFP) series, where I explore a general topic in depth to truly understand it.
Terminology
A quick note on terminology. The language of fencing in modern English is derived from French. I will happily use terms like parry (defence), and riposte (an attack following a parry), however these terms weren't used in medieval or renaissance Germany and elsewhere. That's ok, as they had their own terminology that made sense to them. For me, a parry is any defence made with the sword (and potentially with the body), whether it be a block, a beat, or a bind, and this is what makes sense to me.
To save this post being too long, the below sums up my early experiences of parrying (using a longsword).
Do you suffer from these problems?
Ahh! Stop hitting me! How do I parry???
I can parry certain blows, but only when I'm in a certain guard (e.g. right vom tag vs. right vom tag.).
I'm not confident I can parry an incoming blow from the guard I am in and so am constantly switching guards to mirror my opponent.
When attempting to parry, often our blades just sail past each other without touching (particularly if one of us starts in a low guard).
When parrying, I think more about my starting guard, and not where my blade needs to be at the point of impact.
When I started fencing longsword, parrying was not intuitive to me at all. In fact, I'd argue that parrying is not intuitive to the human brain (at least not to my human brain). Fencing essentially involves people swinging 'sticks' at each other from various angles. To parry (block, defend etc.) against these we need to position our own 'stick' in such a way that it intercepts the incoming stick at the correct angle (there are other factors at play such as leverage, i.e. strong and weak, which we will ignore for now).
Fencing happens far too quickly for our brains to calculate these correct angles in real time. We therefore learn 'cheats' and 'shortcuts' that make it easier and quicker for our brains to place our stick (OK, sword) in the right place at the right time.
Box of safety
Firstly, imagine that the below figure is you. You you are surrounded by a 'box' that only just encompasses you (the red lines). This is your 'box of safety'.
8 cutting directions
When we attack our opponent, we can cut at our opponent in 8 general directions: directly down, directly up, from the left or right, or diagonally down or diagonally up. When our opponent cuts at us, their cuts follow the exact same lines. All of these lines intersect our box of safety.
In order to successfully parry a cut (let's ignore thrusts for now), you need to stop the tip of the opponent's sword from entering your box of safety.
Forming a cross
A sword is a long but thin object. It has significant length, but insignificant thickness. This means that two swords cannot interact via their thickness, only by their lengths. Therefore, for two swords to interact, their blades must cross.
Demonstrate this to yourself by pointing your index fingers at each other. Now try to use one finger to prevent the other one from moving side to side. This is tricky to do if your fingers are pointing at each other, but if you point both fingers diagonally upward, now they form a 'true cross' and block each other's paths.
When a cut is incoming, from our perspective the opponent's blade is travelling in up to three directions: x (side to side), y (up and down), and z (towards us). Their blade is also at a certain angle, depending on which direction they are cutting from.
We need to cross their blade to stop their sword from moving in one or more of these directions - i.e. we need to stop the downwards motion (y), the sideways motion (x) or the motion towards us (z).
However, our brains are simply too slow to calculate in real time where our sword needs to be and at what angle to cross their sword. We therefore cheat by making pre-calculations ahead of time (i.e we train!).
How is their blade moving, and at what angle?
Firstly, we can largely ignore the z direction. Suffice to say, from our perspective, as the tip of their sword travels along the x or y direction, the tip also gets closer to us (moves along the z direction), and by the time their tip has entered our box of safety, we have been hit. Therefore, we only need to worry about preventing their tip reaching our box of safety, which makes this a purely 2-dimensional (x and y) problem. Easy!
But what about the angle of their blade? Well, we already know it! Look at the image below. If our opponent has made a cut at us down from our top left (cutting direction 1), is the opponent's blade going to be aligned with the red sword or the green sword?
Of course, the answer is their blade will be aligned with the green sword. As the tip of their sword travels from top left to bottom right, their blade is always aligned to the direction of their cut. This means that, when our opponent begins their cut, we already know what angle their sword will be in because it will be identical to the direction they are cutting. We also therefore know how to position our blade to block their cut!
This is really cool because it simplifies things for us massively. Instead of needing to know where the opponent's cut is starting, how it is travelling in x, y and z space, and what angle their blade is at, we only need to know one thing: where does their cut start from? If we know this, we can be reasonably sure of the path their blade will take and can now apply a pre-learnt parry.
The static parry
There are multiple ways to parry a cut. The static parry is the foundational parry, in my opinion, as all other parries rely on it. It is not the only way to parry, and is often not the optimal way to parry. I will explore other types of parry in future posts.
The static parry, to put it simply, is when you place the blade of your sword in the way of the blade of theirs so that your blade 'blocks' their blade from completing the cut. Think back to the finger example above.
The goal is to 'catch' the weak of their blade on the strong of yours.
Finding these static parry positions is super easy. We simply take the cutting line and we draw a line of our own at a 90 degree angle relative to it. Example below:
Well, that was easy, and hopefully it makes sense. If I hold my sword in a sort of hanging-parry above my head, my blade will block a cut from the top left. Here is an example from my i.33 Sword and buckler series:
Alternatively, I could hold my blade upright and parry it like this:
Here is an example from Alfred Hutton (Cold Steel, 1889), parrying the same sort of cut but from the right:
Now let's fill in the static parries for all the other cutting directions (I've ignored the cut straight from below as it is not easily parried with a static block, and to keep the diagram clean I've only included one version of the parry with blade up or down):
I said above that we needed to draw our static parry line at a 90 degree angle to the direction of the cut, but this isn't true. Yes, at a 90 degree angle a static parry will block the cut and prevent the opponent's blade from slipping, but slipping is OK so long as it is slipping in a direction that we want. Therefore, a 45 degree angle relative to the cut direction is fine, and opens up more parrying possibilities:
This might look a little messy, and it shows at least 14 parrying positions, which is a lot to remember. However, all we have done is drawn two shapes: a diamond (to parry diagonal cuts), and a square (to parry any cut).
If you want to simplify it even further, if you put these two shapes together you've basically turned your box of safety into a house of safety:
This means that in order to (static) parry an incoming cut, we don't need remember 14+ different parry positions, we simply need to think about three things:
What direction is the opponent's cut coming from?
What position am I currently in?
What is the fastest way I can move my sword into a position that completes my 'house of safety' (or square or diamond)? (Sometimes this will be with the blade pointed up, sometimes with it pointed down).
Point 3 suggests something very important: in order to parry a cut, the guard/position we start in is not so important. The position we end up in, and whether/how that completes the shape, is what is important.
Using this concept in practice
To use this concept in practice is quite simple:
Firstly, you need to practice holding different guard/parry positions (these will vary weapon to weapon, system to system). Learn which part of the the shape/house they complete. For example, does this position complete the diagonal roof, or does it form the upstairs wall, etc.? Learn the overall shape the parries form, rather than trying to remember which specific parry parries which specific cut.
Secondly, practice moving from parry to parry, or moving into the parrying positions from various other guards. Learn which parries you can form quickly, and which ones more slowly. Does it make a difference how quickly you can get into the position with blade pointing up or with it hanging-down?
Thirdly, practice parrying cuts. To do this, your training partner needs to launch cuts from different directions. You need to see which direction this is coming from and 'form your house'. Do this slowly at first and with a predictable cutting pattern (e.g. clockwise), then get your your partner to randomise the cuts and speed up.
Now, in a sparring situation, you may find that accounting for 8 cutting directions is too difficult. You can simplify this by learning just four parrying positions: top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right. This is because, out of the 8 cutting directions, the cut straight down and the cut straight up are exceptions, rarely used, and can be dealt with in other ways. The other 6 cuts all start from the left or right and can be parried with a straight up or straight down blade. This means we can often fall back on just four static parries: two with the sword pointing up, and two with the sword pointing down. We raise or lower these parries as needed to defend against lower or higher aimed cuts. As we get better and better, we can incorporate more types of parry into our repertoire.
In some fencing systems, you can even ignore the lower parries, and parry low cuts by stepping backwards (moving your legs out of the way).
Historical examples
As far as I am aware, this concept first appears around 1905 in Winn and Wolley 'Broad-sword and Single-stick' (1905), but it may appear earlier in the 19th century:
Conclusion
This post is not meant to be a complete guide to parrying, however in my opinion it is foundational to understanding all other types of parrying.
In future posts I plan to explore other types of parrying, including 'straight parrying', counter-cutting, and parrying thrusts, etc.