How to defeat the spear? (and other polearms)

[James Brazas]

Very true.

So how did Silver and Swetnam differ on sword-and-dagger vs. quarterstaff?

I haven't read any of Swetnam's material yet, so I'm curious.

[Stacy Clifford]

The short version of it is this. Swetnam recommends for the sword & dagger man to defend against the staff with the castle guard (crossing the weapons to make an X), using it to move underneath blows and to knock thrusts down. Silver says that if your guard is high enough to protect your head from the staff, your body is too vulnerable to a thrust, and if your guard is low enough to stop the thrust, a blow from the staff will beat down both your guard and your head.

Swetnam:

Loe in this manner you may defend either blow or thrust of the Staffe, yet I must needes confesse, there is great oddes in the Staffe, if the Staffe-man bee verie skilfull, but otherwise the Rapier and Dagger hath the oddes being furnished with skill.

Silver:

And here is to be noted, that if he fight well, the staffe-man neuer striketh but at the head, and thrusteth presently vnder at the body: and if a blow be first made, a thrust followeth; & if a thrust be first made, a blow followeth; and in doing of any of them, the one breedeth the other: so that howsoeuer anie of these sixe weapons (Sword and Buckler, Sword & Target, two hand sword, single Sword, Sword and Dagger, or Rapier and Poiniard) shall carie his ward strongly to defend the first, he shall be too farre in space to defend the second, whether it be blow or thrust.

[James Brazas]

Interesting. Thank you.

Of course, I don't really see those two things as being at odds. To me, it sounds like Swetnam is trying to give one method to use sword-and-dagger to defeat the quarterstaff whereas Silver is giving the pro-quarterstaff side.

If memory serves, the "quarterstaff" they're talking about is 6 to 8 feet long with a steel spike on one or both ends. So they're basically talking about sword vs. spear here. Am I right?

[Stacy Clifford]

Both of them define the "short staff" (Silver's term) as being around 8 feet long, and both do make reference to spikes on the ends, though it's debatable whether that's really equivalent to a full spear or not. I agree they could both be right, but it does seem that the swordsman requires more skill to defeat the staff than the staff man requires to defeat the sword.

[James Brazas]

True.

I imagine there's a bit of a difference between a steel spike and a proper spearhead. But they still seem to be closer to spears than the modern concept of the quarterstaff - or the short staff taught in Paulus Hector Mair's manual. (Mair's short staff being 6 feet or less and having no spikes. In fact, some of the illustrations seem to show Mair's short staff as being around 5 feet.)

And I agree. Against the spear-like staff of Silver/Swetnam, the staff would have an advantage against the sword.

That's actually the reason why I started this thread. I knew that, using a sword, I would probably be at a disadvantage vs. polearms. So I wanted to gain whatever insight I could about defeating them. To me, a good test of skill is being able to successfully win a fight even when at a disadvantage.

As a side question, what would be a good manual to use for learning pole-arms like the staff, spear, or pollaxe?

We haven't really done much in our group with polearms, but we're looking at going through Mair's staff and pollaxe material later this year.

[Stacy Clifford]

Silver and Swetnam are the best place to start for staff fundamentals. Joachim Meyer covers quarterstaff, halberd and pike all in one good chapter. Le Jeu de la Hache is the classic on polaxe:

http://www.thearma.org/spotlight/lejeudelahache.htm

Having tried Mair's short staff recently, I have to say it's an outlier in terms of style. Mair has a lot of cross-body strikes against the opposite foot that you just don't see much of in other staff manuals. It can work, but it violates other masters' rules (written or unwritten) and feels awkward once you've gotten used to other styles. There's also no real explanation or theory given for why he's doing it that way. I wouldn't recommend Mair's staff for beginners, but rather do it later to compare/contrast with what other masters were teaching.

[James Brazas]

OK.

So you would suggest Silver or Swetnam for a good quarterstaff introduction and Le Jeu de la Hache for a pollaxe introduction? Got it.

Would Silver or Swetnam be a better idea? Or does it matter?

Even though it's getting off topic, this might be a good opportunity for me to get a second opinion on our curriculum.

We're using Liechtenauer/Ringeck as our intro to Longsword
Johannes Leckuchner as our intro to Messer
I.33 as our intro to Sword-and-Buckler
Di Grassi as our intro to the Military Rappier/Sidesword

Does that sound right? Or should we use Silver or a Bolognese master instead of Di Grassi?

[Stacy Clifford]

Swetnam is a little bit easier to start with on staff than Silver, but they overlap a lot and I recommend studying them both. Don't overlook Dobringer in your longsword intro. Ringeck does help out with understanding certain parts of Dobringer, since they both are on Liechtenauer's method. Di Grassi is an excellent choice, but keep in mind that for such a short manual, there are a lot of important subtleties that are easy to miss the first time you study it. You will reevaluate your understanding of it more than once, trust me. Everything else looks pretty good.

[James Brazas]

OK, thanks!

I talked with our group and it looks like we'll be using Swetnam and Le Jeu instead of Mair for our staff and pollaxe introductions.

Does anyone know of anywhere else where the masters specifically mention tactics or techniques to use against disimilar weapons? (Especially sword vs. polearms?)

I think that would be very good to know since most manuals only teach like weapons against each other (i.e. they show longsword vs. longsword, staff vs. staff, and so forth).

[LafayetteCCurtis]

Does anyone know of anywhere else where the masters specifically mention tactics or techniques to use against disimilar weapons? (Especially sword vs. polearms?)

I think that would be very good to know since most manuals only teach like weapons against each other (i.e. they show longsword vs. longsword, staff vs. staff, and so forth).

Advice on facing dissimilar weapons wasn't commonly written down in the manuals, and we can only speculate why. Personally I think it's because a great deal of the tips and tricks were taught through direct instruction to students who were already similar with similar/symmetrical (like vs. like) weapon interactions. In some cases it may even have formed part of the "secret teachings" passed only by means of direct transmission and deliberately kept out of the written record, as was (and still is) the case in some Eastern martial art schools. Note that the rumour of "secret thrusts" taught by various fencing masters in the rapier, smallsword, and classical fencing eras clearly show that such secrecy might not have been wholly alien to the European martial mindset.


As for Silver's hierarchy of weapons, remember that it's just the opinion of one master, no matter how much we respect him and try to recreate his teachings faithfully. Other contemporary masters--perhaps even ones from the same tradition--could have held very different opinions on which weapons were better in which situations.

[Stacy Clifford]

There are a number of single plates on dissimilar weapons scattered throughout various manuals; Mair has more than most, as I recall, but in just about all of them it's basically a quick one-off "here's a good technique against..." kind of thing, rather than any systematic method of fighting against that weapon. In some cases it might have simply been an advertising teaser for the master's next employer. Silver's discussions of different weapons against each other are more extensive than anything else I've seen, especially for staff (how to fight not just one swordsman, but two!). Swetnam comes in second, though I'm pretty certain he had at least read Silver and taken a few notes, based on certain similarities of coverage. The rest are more like Salvator Fabris, who has one page on sword vs. polearm at the very end of the book. You just have to hunt the pages down, cobble them together from various manuals and see what you can make of them in aggregate. Doing so will certainly give you a better appreciation for Silver's unique approach.

[James Brazas]

Lafayette Curtis:

That makes sense. I imagine there's probably a lot that they never wrote down. With as secretive as the early German masters were and the "secret thrusts" from later eras you mentioned, I can see how there could be a lot deliberately left out of the manuals.

It's very sensible, too. By the Renaissance, literacy was becoming much more widespread, so you didn't want to write down all of your secrets into a book that almost anyone could read - even a fencer from a rival fencing school, or worse, a warrior from an enemy nation.

Regarding Silver, the reason why I place stock in his hierarchy/ranking is that it's one of very few statements we have from the masters about what weapons were useful against what other weapons. And I generally trust the masters far more than I trust my own personal experimentation.

And of course, you're right. Silver was very opinionated and clearly disagreed with many other masters of his era (especially Italian and Spanish rapier enthusiasts). But at least Silver is honest about his biases and the reasoning behind his ranking the sword above the rapier (better for war, capable of cutting and thrusting, more nimble at close quarters, etc.)

Stacy Clifford:

Thanks!

So Mair covers disimilar weapons briefly? That's good to hear! I actually have Mair's manual...I can't believe I missed that. I guess it's because it's such a huge tome. Then there's the fact that I haven't systematically gone through Mair yet, though I certainly want to. Even if it's just one technique per disimilar weapon matching, that's still very useful to know.

I'll have to put Silver on my list of manuals to go through if he covers dissimilar weapons so well. How many disimilar weapon pairs does he go through?

So Fabris covers spear vs. sword? Great! Sadly, Fabris' manual isn't on Wiktenauer, but I'll see if I can hunt it down someday. What sort of sword does he use against the spear?

All:

If there are any other masters who discussed fighting with dissimilar weapons (like sword vs. spear), I would be very interested to learn about that.

I'd also be happy to hear anyone else's opinions regarding weapon hierarchies/rankings or tactics to use with one sort of weapons against another.

I have been able to glean a few insights from our sparring sessions in our group, but we've only done swords so far - and even then, only medieval and early renaissance manuals. So we have yet to cover sidesword, rapier, or any polearms.

[Stacy Clifford]

There are several versions of Mair's manuals, and they're not all the same, so if you don't find anything in one, hunt through the others. He still doesn't have a lot, but just due to sheer volume he still has more than most.

My focus in Silver has mainly been on quarterstaff, so offhand I don't know how many dissimilar weapons he addresses. The main thing is he was more inclined to talk about the subject than just about anybody else.

Fabris is a rapier manual that's been published by Chivalry Bookshelf. The very last page of the manual shows a rapier vs. a spear. Other manuals have isolated plates like that, I just can't name them all without hunting through them. I happen to have a copy of Fabris and remembered it was there. I think Talhoffer (one version, at least) has a few too, though I'll have to look again later to verify that.

[Vincent Le Chevalier]

Fabris' bit on the polearm vs. sword is really more a tease than anything else. He is showing a posture but does not give details on how to use it. He just says that if you are a good student you will figure it out eventually

Easily the most widespread sort of dissimilar weapons fighting described is unarmed vs. dagger. I believe that it is because this is the most relevant self-defence scenario. What you are running into here, and in the sword vs. rapier thread as well, is the overall lack of battlefield instructions in the sources. Duelling, whether judicial, sporting or impromptu, always implies more or less equal weapons, so that what is judged is the valour of the man. And of course using similar weapons is also pedagogically quite efficient, in order to explore the full potential of the weapon.

There is a XVIIIth century work which explores battlefield situations a bit more. Interestingly it's smallsword vs. something else, not using what we'd think a more "military" blade
Traité des armes, by Girard (first vs. espadon (a military sword), then flail, then polearms)

Regards,

[LafayetteCCurtis]

Thrusting sword (smallsword, spadroon, or epee) vs. something else was a fairly popular topic in the 18th and 19th centuries, since there was a very natural realisation that ungentlemanly ruffians weren't going to accost their victims with smallswords or epees too, and as such there was a fairly large market of paranoid gentlemen wishing to know how to defend themselves against foes wielding clubs, axes, hangers, broadswords, or whatever else the imagination might supply. The paradigm of using fencing manuals as advertisements for particular schools/masters was probably even stronger in this era than in any previous centuries, so adding these dissimilar combinations could have been an easy way to increase the advertised school/master's "cool factor."