I recently wrote an article about tempo: Using tempo/timing to fence better (hema101.com). This article is a continuation of that. I have written about the 5 Words of the Leichtenauer tradition on multiple occasions:
My thinking on the subject continues to evolve and, like many before me, I now find the Italian concept of 'tempo' has given me a tool by which I can understand the 5 Words in a way that is useful, even though it may not be historical...
Overview of the 5 Words
In German historical fencing, the 5 Words (Vor, Nach, Weak, Strong, Indes) are supposed to be the instruction set that tells us how we should fight, what tactics to use, and when to use techniques. However, I have not encountered a satisfactory explanation of how to use the 5 Words in the original texts. This forces me to interpret the 5 Words in a way that makes sense to me personally so I can find some use for them, otherwise why bother using them?
From my understanding of the sources, the 5 Words are basically the following:
Vor (before) is when you attack your opponent sooner than they attack you.
Nach (after) is when you defend against or counter your opponent's attacks.
Weak refers to the foible of the blade, but also to being soft in the bind.
Strong refers to the forte of the blade, but also being strong in the bind.
Indes (instantly) is the most controversial as I don't believe there is a satisfactory explanation for it's meaning in the sources. In modern German it means 'meanwhile', or 'however'. I believe its true meaning is something like ‘in that moment’ and often means an action taken in the bind. It probably means an action taken while the opponent is making an action but not at exactly the same time, i.e. the actions are offset. This is similar to the concept of 'acting in tempo'. Meyer also attaches a judgement element to Indes, so that you watch your opponent and know when to act (when to attack, when to defend). Again, this suggests an element of ‘time keeping’, you know what tempo your opponent is in, and whether they are in the Vor or Nach.
If we take these words by themselves, we get an instruction set that tells us to try to gain the Vor by attacking first, which forces the opponent into the Nach. If they defend, one will be weak in the bind and the other will be strong. Both fighters now work indes (i.e. in the tempo of the opponent) to try and land a hit by performing an action from the bind. I won't go into detail on how to do this as I have covered it in other blog posts.
Tempo
Some people will not be happy that I have introduced the concept of tempo into the 5 Words, as tempo is not a word that existed in German fencing. Except as I've suggested above, Indes likely fills that role.
Tempo essentially tells us that fencing is turn-based: fencer A takes an action (a step, changes guard, makes a strike), and fencer B reacts and takes their own action. Fencer A reacts to that, and so on. Importantly, these ‘turns’ are not being played sequentially like in a game of chess, but more or less at the same time; or more accurately, action B happens after action A has started but before it has finished. In other words, these actions happen 'Indes'.
Vor and Nach
For each pair of ‘turns’ (let's call them moves), one fencer will move first and the other will move second (but at broadly the same time as I've mentioned above). The person who moves first in theory has a timing advantage as they act first, but the person who moves second has seen what move the first fencer has made and so can always move to counter that move. This gives the second fencer an advantage, whereas the first fencer has no foresight of what the second fencer will do, making every move a bit of a gamble.
Imagine a fencing match where fencer A always moved first, fencer B moved in response to this, there was a small pause, followed by fencer A moving again and fencer B following. It would look like this:
We could say that the first to move is in the Vor and the second to move is in the Nach. However, I'm not sure this is strictly correct. If the move of the first fencer presents no threat, the second to move can counter this move with a threat (an overbind, get the point online, make an attack). This means the second fencer would be in the Vor, and the first fencer now needs to counter this threat in their next move by acting in the Nach.
To nullify that advantage, the first to move should try and act in the Vor. The Vor is not about being the first to move, it is about providing a threat during your move. This could be an attack, but it could be a provocation. An attack would be trying to hit the person, a provocation could be a feint (pretending to hit the person), or if out of distance it could be striking ‘near to’ the head of body and ending with the point online (just as the Liechtenauer glosses suggest). This forces the second fencer's move to be in the Nach: instead of merely providing a threat, they need to at least counter the first fencer's threat, and ideally provide a threat of their own. This is something that the first fencer can now predict - they have gained some foresight over what the opponent is likely to do.
(This also shows that one can only be in the Vor if one is close enough to offer a threat.)
Strong and weak
When an opponent is in the Vor, whether this is because they have made an attack or have presented an imminent threat, the person in the Nach has to act to counter that threat, and this may be done by binding the other person's sword. This bind could be a parry, a beat, gaining an overbind or underbind, etc. This is a simplification as it takes two to tango: the person in Vor may have initiated the bind as well.
Regardless, the result of this bind will always be the following:
One fencer is now weak/soft in the bind.
One fencer is now strong/hard in the bind.
It is possible that neither are strong in the bind and that the bind is neutral.
Indes
I said that tempo can help us understand Indes better. Tempo is a word that doesn't explicitly exist in German fencing, but since tempo is a universal feature of fencing it obviously did exist even if it was called something different. To me, Indes clearly means acting 'at the right time', and we know from other sources that the right time to act is when your opponent is busy acting. Therefore, Indes roughly equals tempo.
There is a good demonstration of this in the below video at the 0.27 second mark where three examples of a bind action are given. These happen at slightly different times, only one of which I would consider to be 'Indes'.
If I am weak in the bind, while my opponent is busy pushing strongly in the bind (not before, not when they have finished, but during!) I go soft, e.g by disengaging under or over their blade. The action is done ‘in the moment’, it is done ‘in tempo’; or in other words, Indes!
Indes = judgement
I said that Meyer assigned a judgment element to Indes. Let's look at this.
Following the binding action described above, at this point I have two options: I either attack my opponent, or I rebind their blade with an overbind, and only then try to attack them. Which is the correct course of action?
This is where the idea of tempo length becomes useful. In Italian fencing, tempos can be large or small. Let's simplify this by saying a tempo can either be full (1) or half (0.5). An attack is 1 tempo. A parry is half a tempo as it only goes half-way towards the opponent. A riposte can be half a tempo if it is direct and my sword only needs to travel a short distance, or it could be one tempo if it involves my sword going a long way around the opponent's blade.
If I parry my opponent's strike, it might take them half a tempo to retract their sword, and then one tempo to attack again = 1.5 tempos. If I parry and make a direct riposte (0.5 tempo) I have hit them before they start their second attack. However, if my riposte goes the long way around, by the time my sword hits them their attack is already half-way towards me, resulting in a double hit. Don't take these numbers as gospel! This is just to illustrate that actions take time - perhaps more time than we have to perform them safely.
Going back to my two options above: when I act Indes, do I attack them or do I rebind? The correct option is based on how much distance I/my sword needs to travel in order to hit them vs. how much distance they need to travel to hit me, and also considering what my opponent is doing, how far we are apart, etc. As a rule of thumb, I could say that if my sword has to travel a long way I should always seek to re-bind in a strong position. If my sword only has a short way to travel I can risk striking them directly.
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