This week at Crossing Fight School, we will be going over the very last of the plays from Paurenfeyndt’s Longsword, which involve a number of grappling and somewhat unique Schwertnehmen (sword-taking) techniques. After some thorough and lengthy research, I feel we have at last decoded these plays and now have them properly sorted out. This took numerous people several hours over many weeks to break all this apart, and there was no shortage of pitfalls along the way. Variations in the French and German and even a key transcription error made this difficult, but I think it’s all ready to actually be taught at this point.

As always, the utility of this material will vary according to your fencing style and your goals, but the principles at work in these plays are sound and instructive, so they are certainly relevant. Even if you’re not intending to use them as prescribed, they will prove to have value, and should be rather enjoyable to work through.

See you all on Sunday.