“Reality” in Historical European Martial Arts

It is a common conceit among practitioners of Historical European Martial Arts that the arts in which we train are for “the real deal”, whatever that may mean to the speaker at that particular time.  For some that means that whatever art they train, whether it be Armizare or the ubiquitous Kunst des Fechtens (KdF) or another system, is a “war art” for use on the battlefield. For others, a real system is one oriented towards combat “in the street”, whatever that means, especially given that a great deal of material and other cultural study goes into street violence and violence patterns in a society: cultural study one cannot gain from the study of fencing treatises and fechtbucher alone. Still others claim that a frank encounter with sharps, a duel, is the real thing. One thing that proponents of these contexts for their art hold in common is a disdain for so-called “sport fencing.” We are taken back to the early days of HEMA where everything possible was done to differentiate its practice from “car antennas and white clothes” and also from the SCA and LARP groups. What we were doing was “real.” The problem is, it is difficult to discern what “real” even means in the context of a martial art, even a modern one. Let me explain.

If one frequents the internet martial arts community long enough ( the general martial arts community not just the HEMA one) or likes to frequent martial arts fraud debunking website Bullshido, one will often chance upon great rancor towards the practice of so-called “sport arts.”

“Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is for sport fighting. My American Kempojutsukaratefu Chun trains to never go to the ground in case of multiple attackers, or weapons, or lava infused with bubonic plague on the ground.”

“Boxing only has punches and too many rules, my Freestyle Krav-Combato trains me to only use fingertip strikes to the groin.”

Setting aside skepticism that someone who can’t punch someone in the face who is resisting them will almost certainly never get off an eye poke against a resisting opponent, we see a disdain for competitive arts with sporting elements such as sparring in favor of an approach favoring a sort of fantasy of lethality. Yet, is lethality the reality of violence? Is lethality the reality should really be the title of my lecture on this topic, but let’s answer the question in context of our extant fencing sources.

Situations we today perceive as being involved in street violence, such as techniques for readying one’s weapon from the sheathed position, fighting multiple opponents, and ensuring our opponent cannot deploy their weapon agains are largely (but not entirely) absent from the KdF corpus, particularly the works of Ringeck and Pseudo-PvD, with the Ms.3227a manuscript at least giving some admonition about fighting while outnumbered:

If you are beset with four
or six impertinent peasants
Place in front whichever foot you want
and with the gate make a barrier
And put the point on the ground /
now hear what you should do
See to it that they stay
all in front of your face
And no one comes behind you
Now hear what you should do
Whatever they strike or thrust
against you, weak them with absetzten
Strongly upwards from the ground /
so you will put them to shame
And you should move against them with the Pfobenzagel /
no no one will stay in front of you
Strike defensively from below with parries /
with changing strikes quickly strike them
And with the Krauthacke
you can well annoy them
But I warn you especially /
do not stand to face them as they come for you
If you don’t intend to be a lost man /
never you should stop
If someone reaches you first /
he is at the end of the line
And against him you should step /
to your left side
And strike him a blow /
he can not defend
And if they come again /
against you as before
Pick out the one at the end of the line /
so you will not fail
You strike down one after another /
but do not hurry too much
Strike them in this manner, one after another,
and you will succeed without danger
However as you have already heard /
as it has appeared in the preface
It is difficult to fight for so long /
four or six usually defeat you
That’s why I will advise you /
if you also wish to follow my teaching
So that you jump or run
straight to the one at the end,
before the others turn
against you as before
so you may learn and consider /
if you wish to get away from him
without any damage
So leap instantly from him as I say
Because it is no shame
to flee before four or six or more
Now if you begin /
to run and jump from him
Throw your sword across /
well behind over your head
And run as fast as you can /
Now the one who chases you fastest
And as soon as you think is he is near you /
leap sideways out of the way
So he will follow you quickly
and will be in great hurry
So he can not hold against you
Thus you strike him down as you wish.

Source: http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Other_Masters_(14th_Century)

In KdF, in fact largely the discussion is on single combat, in and out of armor, and on horseback. Even the context of unarmored longsword should give us pause. After all, were these teachings for war, as such, they would seem largely superfluous as on the battlefield we would be clad in harness. The war part of the art would therefore be the armored and mounted glosses. Yes, KdF has thrusts to the face and other lethal techniques in its unarmored repertoire, but in the longsword section they appear to be limited to single combat, where both combatants are ready, with weapons drawn, aware of each other, and willing to kill each other. Is this a dueling system? A pedagogical methodology to prepare one for the war fencing in armor? Is it a “real system” if it doesn’t appear oriented towards a street ecounter at least on its face?

In later sources, such as the Kolner Fechtbuch we see thrusting largely disappear in favor of combinations which mesh well with the form of sport fencing popular in Germany at the time in Fechtschulen, where combatants were allowed a certain number of “go’s” and the goal was to achieve the highest bleeding wound from the head. Fencing for fun, even in a violent society would still be vastly more common than fencing in earnest in the same way that soldier in a modern military puts vastly more rounds into a stationary target than an actual person. Given that this was a game, or play, and yet was seen also as a way to prepare for war, is this a “real system” or a “sport system?” Is the US Army soldier doing marksmanship training or simunition OPFOR training doing “real training” or “sport training?”

Given the above, it seems that the “sport vs real” debate is in fact a form of category mistake when applied to martial arts. The practitioners of these arts seemed more than fine with play for preparation and at times, see Kolner, are optimized to play the game as well as prepare one martially.

In Domingo Godinho’s text, for both comparison and contrast, we see techniques such as stopping an opponent from drawing his weapon while readying our own, fighting multiple opponents with two swords or with sand concealed in our pockets, deception made before a fight even begins. Here, in text, we see a system which is suited for street violence in the manner of modern so-called Reality (see how intrusive this concept is?) Based Self Defense. Yet he also in his text includes advice on how to vary techniques if one is employing blunts rather than sharps in a practice bout and how to conduct oneself at a fencing academy in a sporting bout. His text seems to indicate that both were valuable enough to write on.

Given this, it is important to perhaps look at our systems, their approach to training, and realize that our forebears in these arts saw the value of sportive approaches and varying approaches to violence. While sources often indicate when something is for earnest play or for play within the fencing school (see the Bolognese distinction between abbatimenti and assalti and Ms.3227a considering wide sweeping blows acceptable in friendly bouting but not in earnest combat) what was lacking was thinking of a SYSTEM as a reality system or a sportive one.

Ultimately, the lesson we should gain from this is to look at our systems as a whole, both sportive and otherwise, and practice accordingly. Test our systems not through what is “real” but through the various situations the authors of these systems saw as “real” : the street, the judicial duel, the friendly bout to show off and win money, among others, and therefore appreciate the system as holistic method to address a varied and vibrant martial situation of the day. Little could be more real than that.