These are the core elements of LL's system. To test myself, this was mostly written from memory, but I have referred to the Zettel and gloss to make sure everything of note at this stage is covered. Each element will have (at least) one post, in time.
(Sorry for the poor videos and photos. I had a 3 second timer and the ground was wet and slippery. Camera was positioned fairly low)
Guards
Four main guards of:
High ('day', point up or backwards)
Low ('fool', point down)
Ox (top left or top right, point forward)
Plough (bottom left or right, point forward, hands at the hip)
Additional guards:
Longpoint (also called the 'speaking window')
Barrier
Side (Nebenhut), or 'The sweeps'
Attacks
Basic
Basic cuts, not actually described but eluded to in Dobringer and elsewhere:
Oberhau (downwards cut, from top left, centre or top right).
Unterhau (upwards cuts with the true edge, from bottom left or bottom right, or more likely made directly from a high guard).
Sweep (a false edge cut made with extended arms from the bottom left up to the top right. Used as a parry or as a clearing attack).
In addition, there are the thrusts, which are made from Ox and Plough.
There are also slices, which are made by pressing the blade against the opponent's arms or neck and making a slicing motion.
Five basic attacks:
Fencing from the sweeps:
Secret strikes
These are one of the defining hallmarks of LL's system. These are:
Zornhau (wrath strike).
Krumphau (crooked strike).
Zwerchau (thwart/lateral strike).
Scheilhau (squinting strike).
Scheitelhau (parting strike).
In RDL they may in fact be the foundational strikes in the system and represent most of the ways you can attack from your right shoulder.
These serve two purposes:
As parries.
As attacks that can be used to 'break' guards:
Krumphau breaks Ox.
Zwerchau breaks high guard.
Scheilhau breaks plough (and potentially longpoint).
Scheitelhau breaks fool.
Defences
LL's system warns us not to use 'common parries', which are usually taken to mean 'blocking' parries and 'straight parries', both of which take the point offline. (It also seems to warn that allowing an opponent to parry a strike will 'trouble us greatly' suggesting these parries are not as useless as suggested, although this could just be an oddity of the translation...)
However the teaching of LL's system requires us to use common parries that we can then act against, and I'd argue LL's system is not complete without their usage, especially given the leverage that they provide. Therefore I will (controversially!) include common parries as a core element:
Basic blocks made with the point up or down, plus hanging guards on left and right, and the Kron (crown) guard.
Straight parrying made with a strike to the longpoint, point offline.
Preferred parries: depending on which Gloss you read, two sets of 'vier vertsetzen' (four displacements) are described:
Four secret strikes (excluding Zornhau), or
The four basic cuts that end in Plough or Ox on both sides.
There is also 'Absetzen', which are thrusting parries. Plough can be used to make an exchange of thrusts by thrusting as you wind from Plough on one side to Plough on the other. You can also wind up from Plough to Ox to make a high thrust. These actions are similar/the same to those in binding and winding below.
It could be argued that all parries in this system should, ideally, be 'counter attacks', or at least end with the point online with the opponent eventually; I say eventually, as this should not be considered a 'single time action' - indeed, 'time' or tempo as such does not exist in the German systems, so I wouldn't worry about single tempo vs. multi tempo actions.
The fighting philosophy
The fighting philosophy is based around 'the 5 words', which seem to have more implied meaning in German than in the English translations:
Vor (before)
Nach (after)
Weak
Strong
Indes (in the moment/instantly)
In addition, a lot of emphasis is placed on 'feeling' and working in the bind (the moment when your sword and your opponent's sword cross and meet, e.g. because your opponent has just parried your strike).
Although this is open to interpretation, in my mind the 5 words broadly describe an idealised fight, in order:
Vor = you attack your opponent.
Nach = your opponent defends your attack and you bind.
Weak = if your opponent is weak in the bind, then you act strongly.
Strong = if the opponent is strong in the bind, go weak and quickly work to disengage or get your point online.
Indes = using muscle memory and sound judgement, you 'in the moment' act to make your second attack.
The fighting philosophy places great emphasis on being the first person to attack ('seizing the vor') and therefore not allowing yourself to be attacked by your opponent.
The binds and winds
I will cover this in more detail in a post of its own, but here is the short version. Assuming I have attacked you or you have attacked me, and one of us has parried:
If we are in a bind and my sword is on my right and yours is on my left, if I push into your sword and get your sword well to my left, then I am 'strong' in the bind. Likewise, if you push my blade to my right then I am 'weak' in the bind.
If we are in a bind and my sword is on my left and yours is on my right, if I push into your sword and get it off to my right then I am 'strong' in the bind. Likewise, if you push my blade to my left then I am 'weak' in the bind.
Weak and strong also refers to whether I have the strong of my blade on the weak of yours (and so I can easily push your blade offline), or vice versa.
If I am strong in the bind, I can either be 'soft' if my blade is central with point online (meaning you could push my blade into the weak side), or I can be 'hard' if my sword is well off centre and point offline (meaning you will struggle to go strong). There is a little more to it than that, such as whether I am exerting any pressure (hard) or not (soft) on your sword.
When we are in a bind and both in the position of longpoint, we are both 'soft' in the bind. I go 'hard' by pushing my hilt out to the side into the 'Hanging' position of Plough, and I can also take further control of my opponent's sword and go 'hard' by moving into a position of Ox. This gets their point offline. If my opponent is 'hard' they push my point offline using the same method, and I can then use the Plough and Ox positions on the other side to get my tip back online, even though I am now 'weak'. Therefore I use the hangings from both sides, regardless of whether I am strong/weak/hard/soft. As I do this, I use careful positioning of my cross guard to maintain control on the opponent's weapon.
From one of these Ox or Plough positions I can 'wind' my point online at my opponent and perform a thrust, or a slice or cut if I am too close to thrust.
Winds:
Now for some maths:
There are four 'Hanging' positions (Ox, Plough, on both left and right). This makes 4 positions I can use.
I can use these positions whether I am strong or weak on that side, and this corresponds to whether I have bound the left or the right of my opponent's sword. This means there are 8 possible binds.
Each bind can wind into a thrust, a cut, or a slice, depending on how close we are to the opponent. While all these motions are broadly the same, this means there are 24 winds possible. (I suggest you think of them as 8 winds with variations of each depending on how close you are to the opponent.)
Handwork
From the bind, the 24 winds are not the only things you can do. There are additional techniques that are usually called 'handworks'. These cover special winds, techniques where you leave the bind, where you slice the arms, press down on the hands of the opponent, and grappling moves.
These are listed here:
Duplication/doubling: When your opponent has an overbind on you and so you are weak in the bind and your sword is on the outside, you wind your cross guard onto your opponent's weak (of the blade) and point your blade at the opponent and thrust, or more commonly cut from the opposite side. It is often used to make a secondary attack if your opponent has just parried your first attack.
Mutation: If you are strong in the bind on Ox and your opponent goes into Ox, you wind the short or long edge (short for on the left, long for on the right) of your blade over to the outside of their blade, with your point somewhat pointing at the ground, and your use your body weight to 'push' their blade down with your cross guard, where you thrust them into a lower opening, such as the stomach or leg. (At least, this is my current understanding of this technique).
Disengage (change through): disengage your point under theirs from one side of the blade to the other.
Retraction (pulling off): disengage your blade over the top of theirs and come down the other side with a strike to the head or hands.
Failing: where you make an attack to one side and see you opponent is going to parry it, so before it connects you stop and attack from the other side. Similar to a feint.
Run through: Essentially coming to your opponent and performing grappling, usually when you have both acted strong in the bind and have moved your arms above your head. For simplicity, I'd also place pommel strikes and similar techniques into this category.
Slice off: slicing actions made to the hands or arms. Can also refer to a Sweep (see 'Attacks').
Hand press: the action of turning a slice to the hands from below into a slice from above, taking control of the hands/arms in the process. Often a way to 'parry' the opponent if they have gone high for a strike, such as a Zwerchau.
Other stuff
This covers other concepts considered important for inclusion in LL's Zettel:
Chasing (or the pursuit): basically, attacking your opponent as they prepare to attack, miss their strike, or retreat from your strike.
Overrun: the concept that you will outreach an opponent with a high attack compared to their low attack. Important for how Scheitelhau beats the fool's guard, except that it doesn't work very well in a modern HEMA context.
That's more or less it!
I think that is broadly it. it doesn't look too daunting when you order it like this, however there are quite a few other techniques covered in the gloss, particularly in the sections on the secret strikes. It is quite a large system to learn fully (especially compared to something like 18th Century sabre, which is easy to learn, if hard to master).
You may be interested in the podcast "fencing by the book,” which does detailed exploratory work on the LL zettle and glosses. The episodes are broken down by topic so it's a fun way of comparing your interpretation to other theories. Nice work!