I've been studying Meyer's longsword on and off for about 2 years, and I've moved on to Liechtenauer's longsword (LL for short) recently. Meyer (active around 1560) was broadly in the same tradition as LL, in the sense that Meyer is known to have had a copy of the zettel and gloss, and he used broadly the same terminology, same guards with some variations (plus a bunch of extras), and many of the core techniques are straight from LL. Therefore, I'm not expecting LL to be massively different to Meyer's longsword, but I am expecting some differences.
In particular, Meyer's longsword seems to be representative of a more 'common' German longsword fencing, and so includes a wider repertoire of techniques, both basic and advanced. Furthermore, he does not really include thrusting in his longsword system (yes, yes, his rapier section does), and Meyer's approach to fighting seems to be based largely on the 'Meyer's square' (which is very cut-oriented). I have seen something in LL that is very similar to the Meyer's square, but it doesn't seem to dominate the approach to the fight.
Anyway, enough about Meyer. Who was Liechtenauer and what do we know about him?
We know very little about Johannes Liechtenauer. He was a fencing grandmaster who likely lived around 1350-1400 in present day Germany or Austria, although may have lived much later in the 1400s. He is said to have travelled around various countries to learn about fencing, and he wrote a Zettel (a poem, basically) that codified in cryptic language his fencing system, to be used as a mnemonic device for those already trained in this system. He likely didn't invent the fencing system but learned it from others, and it is likely an adaptation of existing common fencing practices at that time. He is known to have had several students. At some point, an anonymous author wrote a gloss to the Zettel (basically an explanation of what the poem meant) and there are several variations of this gloss. These are the Ringeck, Danzig and Lew (RDL) glosses. I'm not going to go into any more detail than that as you can read more here: Johannes Liechtenauer ~ Wiktenauer, the world's largest library of HEMA books and manuscripts ~☞ Insquequo omnes gratuiti fiant
For my study, I am using the translation of the Zettle and gloss by Stephen Cheney: Ringeck Danzig Lew: Long Sword: Amazon.co.uk: Cheney, Stephen: 9798649845441: Books
There is another gloss, thought to be written by Dobringer, found in the Pol Hausbuch MS3227a. This may actually be the earliest gloss (dating from 1389 at the earliest, but may also be much later in the 1400s). I will be using this a comparison or as supplementary material.
From the top of my head, the key differences between the Dobringer gloss and the RDL glosses are:
the RDL glosses all seem to be the same base text, with some additions and differences, whereas the Dobringer gloss is completely different.
Dobringer refers to the guard positions by different names. The Plough is called the Fool, the Vom Tag (high) guard is also called the Longpoint. This is a little strange, but my understanding is that common German fencing systems used a variety of names for the same guards, often sharing names but for different guards.
Dobringer refers to the basic strikes of the system as being (implied) Oberhaus and Unterhaus, whereas the RDL glosses do not seem to do this; instead, the basic strikes of the RDL system seem to be the five strikes (secret strikes).
In the RDL glosses, the Vier Versetzen (four displacements, sometimes meant the four parries) are four of the five secret strikes, and they are used more as 'counter wards' in the same vein as i.33, in that they are used to attack certain guards. In Dobringer, the Vier Versetzen are nothing more than the same Unterthau and Oberhau that end in the four hangers (which RDL would refer to as the Plough and Ox, but Dobringer might calls these the Fool and Ox), used to parry your opponent's strikes.
Dobringer makes great fanfare of the Vorschlag and Nachschlag - before strike and after strike. This term doesn't seem to be used in RDL, or at least not used as a concept (as I've only read a translation, I do not know if the terms are explicitly used or not).
Dobringer doesn't include glosses on large portions of the Zettel.
My goal is to try to understand LL at an intuitive level, and to internalise 'a' system in a way that I can understand and fence practically. I will use a mixture of English and German terms. I do not claim this series of posts to be completely historically or academically accurate. The sources have differences and it is impossible to stick to them all literally.
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