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My reply will be imperfect, as I am not very experienced in JSA, but the guards you probably saw are:

wakigamae : your tail-guard
jodan no kamae : sword held over head

Now the duel, if I remember correctly went something like the eventual victor assumed wakigamae . But when he made the cut ...

In response to your friend's question:

How about, because it doesn't pass the Occam's Razor test?

That is, on the one hand:

1. Expeditions went to Asia and brought back martial arts knowledge. Yet, there is nothing recorded about this, the weapons used in the west appear pretty much ...

I think that the Fabris manual is by far the best Rapier manual out there (qualifying that by admitting to having never read any of the Spanish manuals). None of the others (Alfieri, Capoferro, Giganti, et. al.) even come close to explaining things as clearly or completely--and Fabris' book two ...

Brian,

I read Italian fairly well (albeit, with a vocabulary heavily slanted towards fencing).

You can find a few pieces of Alfieri translated (all from book 2--the tactical techniques), but I don't know of any available translation of book 1 (the theory).

The only other translations of ...

That would work, although I think your risposte/counter-attack will have a better chance of success if you do it within the tempo of your opponent's attack. As he raises his blade offline for the cut, you thrust. Thus, his cut falls on your hilt (or on your forte, sliding to your hilt).

Some ...

The forte right near the hilt works, too (your opponent's blade will tend to slide toward your hilt). Note, that once you have your point on/in your opponent, your entire blade is forte, as it is supported at both ends--i.e. one end it is supported by your hand, the other by being in your opponent's ...

In a word, no to parrying with the second part of the rapier (at least according to Pallas Armata, Fabris, and all the other Italian maestri of Rapier).

However, there are certainly parries that you can make. Here are a few scenarios to give you an idea:

1. Your opponent attacks with a ...

Northwest Academy of Arms is run by M. Sean Hayes, so the video is either him and one of his students, or two of his students.

Steve

Swetnam has a section on the Staff. Although I've not looked at it (it's outside my area of study), I've heard good things about it from those who have.

Steve

Cobb's Traverse is taken from Silver's manuscript.

Steve

I think that Marcelli's 1686 manuscript has a section that can provide some advice on the use of this weapon. He details the use of a weapon he calls the "sciabla" that, by his description, sounds an awful lot like a falchion. However, this text is in Italian, and I don't know of any English ...

'Cavatione' is also spelled 'Cavazione.' The 'crude' explanation of what a cavatione is would be a disengage. However, it would be more accurate to think of it as a change of line (either from high to low and vis-versa or inside to outside and vis-versa). There are a few species of cavatione ...

I agree with Shane on this point, this is a failure of skill. In a bout, I feel that no one should ever win on a double hit--and if you're in a situation where you have just doubled, you should feel a sense of failure, not success.

There are, however different reasons for double hits ...

That's nice, but I wonder why none of the Italian masters advocate it. Apparently, Fabris and Capo Ferro didn't have your depth of experience when they devised their systems.

Steve


I find linear movment to be a cardinal sin no matter what martial art i'm doing. In general ifind that ...

Hmmm....Silver and his opinions about the rapier always opens a can of worms.

None of the Italian masters tell you not to use additional techniques (hand grabs, etc.), except that they note that the offhand is rather easy to deceive (so using the hand is good when done correctly, but "hunting ...