[HN Gopher] The largest library of historical European martial a...
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The largest library of historical European martial arts books and
manuscripts
Author : Tomte
Score : 97 points
Date : 2021-02-23 10:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (wiktenauer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (wiktenauer.com)
| motohagiography wrote:
| Notable that they don't include horsemanship in western martial
| arts, given it was the deciding factor in military conflict for
| thousands of years. There is a significant gap in writing on it
| between Xenophon's horsemanship and cavalry general treatises,
| and the 14th C. king Dom Duarte's book on horsemanship, which
| includes a chapter on wrestling. I suspect early books on
| horsemanship are rare because it was a military secret on par
| with cryptography (which, oddly, I do both). From what I've been
| able to tell, the next major (public) work wasn't until the 15th
| C. with Antoine de Pluvinel's "education of the king." It may be
| useful for the people who maintain that library to include this
| facet of physical culture as well.
|
| A couple years ago I discovered a great blog on this history
| which can be found at http://worksofchivalry.com/ Maybe they need
| to connect?
| baxuz wrote:
| A number of treatises cover mounted fencing, including the
| "core" Liechtenauer's verses and Fiore:
|
| https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Category:Mounted_Fencing
|
| A classic one is from Von Danzig:
| https://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Pseudo-Peter_von_Danzig#Mounted_...
|
| People have been researching this since the early 2010s:
| https://youtu.be/AYxZcZE0Yyk (HEMAC Dijon 2013)
| motohagiography wrote:
| Duarte's book of horsemanship is estimated to have been
| written before 1438. It's also about horsemanship itself, and
| interestingly, an early philosophical self-help book.
|
| What was not true?
|
| Edit: ah, so their mounted fencing category includes Duarte's
| book, and other horsemanship books outside the cannon.
| baxuz wrote:
| > Notable that they don't include horsemanship in western
| martial arts.
|
| My bad, you're right - I didn't catch the context of the
| whole post:
|
| > There is a significant gap in writing on it between
| Xenophon's horsemanship and cavalry general treatises, and
| the 14th C. king Dom Duarte's book on horsemanship
|
| That being said, the earliest European work that can be
| called a martial treatise is the MS I.33 from 1320, so it
| kinda matches.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Thanks! This might be a new avenue to explore from a
| horsemanship study perspective. There is a lot missing
| from the narrative arc that essentially goes from
| Xenophon to a 'dark age' where practices were brutal, and
| then de Pluvinel brought both kindness and geometry to
| the discipline in France after learning, but defecting,
| from the harsher methods he learned in Italy from
| Pignatelli. This arc also ignores Duarte and probably a
| bunch of others. I"m interested as a practitioner, but
| also from a philosophical perspective, as I suspect
| equestrianism underpins the foundations of what became
| ethics.
|
| Can't say how much is accurate or true, but that's
| history for you.
| eternalban wrote:
| This could very well be a legacy of Rome. Rome apparently
| wasn't big on cavalry.
|
| Second possibility is that it was not so much about military
| secrets, but rather social class, as horsemanship was a
| generally required skill for nobility and these skills were
| taught as part of a "gentleman's" education. This was up until
| the time that European nobility began the intermarriage process
| with new moneyed classes, the related economic phenomena of
| companies such as East India, and the related military matters
| of colonizing (something new for Europe) far flung lands. Those
| changes to social order and military requirements likely gave
| us the impetus for "commoners" on horses; i.e. scaling the
| officer class ranks beyond aristocracy. Your Dom Duarte's
| timeline fits well with that speculation.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Rome wasn't as big on cavalry as later European armies
| because the stirrup had not yet been invented at the time.
| The stirrup appeared only in the late first millennium
| BC/early first millennium AD in Asia, and incidentally was a
| big part of why the nomadic steppe societies of Asia were
| able to conquer their way so far into the west during the Age
| of Migrations.
| owyn wrote:
| Maybe in the later empire? The Romans might not have had
| their own cavalry but they used mercenaries heavily [1]. From
| what I remember of the Roman history podcast, many of
| Caesar's battles were won entirely by judicious use of
| cavalry.
|
| [1] https://www.warhistoryonline.com/featured/caesars-elite-
| germ...
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| I wouldn't describe late Rome as "not big" on cavalry.
| Certainly they were not cavalry dominant, but they had their
| share of cavalry units. See the cataphracts in the Eastern
| Empire. In the West, there's the famous/infamous "mobile
| cavalry reserve" that Gallienius setup.
|
| I think it's very much worth considering preservation bias.
| For example looking at wikitaneur as a whole (so mostly one
| on one, on foot combat), there's basically no material from
| before the 1400s.
| 99_00 wrote:
| On the wiktenauer.com I seem scattered references to
| 'vaulting'. Is that a horsemanship skill?
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I chose a page more or less at random and ended up in the knife
| fight section [1]. Some of the techniques listed there are
| techniques I had seen before in self-defense courses.
|
| Which leads me to the same question I had at that moment: how
| reliable are these techniques in a real-life setting? We know
| that Andre Lignitzer was a great sword master, but how often did
| he face attackers trying to stab him in the face?
|
| The fact that the same techniques keep showing up in different
| martial arts gives me hope that they must be at least good.
| Still, it would be great to have first person accounts of how
| these techniques fare in real life. As this guy [2] points out, a
| real-life knife fight is probably not as easy as one thinks.
|
| [1] https://www.wiktenauer.com/wiki/Andre_Lignitzer#Dagger
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E61jnJe_1SI
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| > Which leads me to the same question I had at that moment: how
| reliable are these techniques in a real-life setting? We know
| that Andre Lignitzer was a great sword master, but how often
| did he face attackers trying to stab him in the face?
|
| Martial arts is about raising the probability of your opponent
| dying before you. So if two people had knives, the person
| trained with knife fighting would more than likely be better
| off than the person who didn't have raining.
|
| ... but what's also been taught in different schools of Kung
| Fu, is if they have a knife and you don't have anything - run!
| hef19898 wrote:
| The main difference beween back then and todays is the fact
| that basically everyone back then carried at least a long
| dagger. Whch chnages the dynamic of a fight, if I'm the only
| one with a knife I don't have to worry about getting hurt. If
| the other guy has a pointy, cutty weapon as well that's not the
| case.
|
| If a technique shows up in various treaties from multiple
| countries, and cultures, it is quite likely legit in its
| context. Also funny how similar, equal even, HEMA wrestling and
| Japanese Jiu-Jitsu is. Not surprising, both thing are a
| solution to the problem going close with someone with a bladed
| weapon.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Any one person isn't going to have all that many people attempt
| to stab them with a knife. At best you might get someone who
| has talked to a number of people who were trained in some
| technique and have been in knife fights.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| Does one think that a knife fight in real life would be easy?
| Anyone with even a basic level of martial arts training knows
| that if a knife comes out, someone is getting cut. I would say
| that _most_ people instinctually know that if someone pulls a
| knife, this is a situation they want out of.
|
| But to answer your question, many martial artists train with
| weapons. It's fairly easy to use a dummy knife to simulate real
| combat without harming anyone. And many fighters throughout
| history would have trained with weapons to simulate real
| combat. I cannot speak for these knife techniques in particular
| because that was never my specialty, but there are plenty of
| legitimate techniques out there. In terms of what they are
| teaching in self defense classes, I find that a very mixed bag.
| Some focus strictly on tricks that seem cool to the untrained,
| but are hard to pull off in real life without a great deal of
| practice, while some instructors take a more realistic approach
| (be aware, have a plan, use a minimum of physical technique to
| extricate yourself as quickly as possible)
| jlangemeier wrote:
| This exactly; most of my martial arts training has included
| the caveat of "try and de-escalate" as a form of neutralizing
| the weapon/target, including just talking with them, there
| are a myriad of ways to talk someone down from stabby-stabby
| or shooty-shooty unless they are intent on that purpose alone
| (and you're pretty screwed at that point without a lot of
| training), so verbal de-escalation techniques are almost more
| important than a disarm technique, which should be an
| absolute last resort.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Anyone with even a basic level of martial arts training
| knows that if a knife comes out, someone is getting cut."
|
| I think that is a bit overdramatic. I would say, most of the
| time when a knifes come, nothing happens, except for exchange
| of bad words. (seen that)
|
| And a professional would not show his knife. The great
| advantage and danger of a knife is, that it is a hidden
| weapon. Revealed (and used) only in the right moment, if
| necessary - as a surprise.
|
| And self-defense against a knife. Well, the basics are
| actually quite easy - if you see a enemy with a knife - grab
| a stick. Or a chair. Or a rock. Keep distance.
|
| Only if you are really superior trained and you face against
| a drunken idiot for example, about to do something stupid
| against someone else - then you should consider doing some of
| your special moves to disarm.
|
| But talking them out of it, should be prefered.
| stinkytaco wrote:
| > I think that is a bit overdramatic. I would say, most of
| the time when a knifes come, nothing happens, except for
| exchange of bad words. (seen that)
|
| I guess I should have used the words "attacked with a
| knife". My point is that movie combat where an armed
| attacker is quickly disarmed and detained is quite rare. If
| a weapon gets involved in combat, someone's getting hurt.
| Even if you grab a chair, etc. it's still likely one of you
| are getting hurt, even if you win.
|
| Which brings us back around to the core point that I think
| we agree on: don't get involved in a knife fight, or really
| any fight if it can be avoided.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Yeah, I actually know what you meant and it was maybe a
| bit pedantic from me. So, to take that further:
|
| "if in a close combat situation a knive gets drawn, it is
| very likely that someone will get cut"
|
| would have been the wordy formal correct version ;)
| jlangemeier wrote:
| Haven't been in any knife fights recently; but have done
| practice with "live weapons" and the base of the techniques are
| fairly solid.
|
| How likely are you to use them in an actual confrontation
| though? Probably not likely, you would have to be put in a
| situation where other forms of neutralizing the situation are
| not possible (this includes running the fuck away); and at that
| point, primary importance is having a very limited set of
| general techniques that can be applied in multiple situation
| with the weapon so that through practice and training it's more
| of an autonomic function of your body (you don't want the lag
| of having to 'think' about which technique to use); secondary
| importance is experience with these situations - i.e. one of
| the marital arts groups I worked with would have us go to, and
| shoot at, a firing range so that we were used to the sounds
| that a gun would make at close range so that we were used to it
| in the unenviable case of being in that situation.
|
| Generally, disarm techniques are going to be extremely similar,
| but with any sharp object it's going to be - expect to get cut,
| deflect with non-vital parts of your body (such as the outsides
| of your arms, not the supple insides of your wrists), and
| neutralize the weapon as quickly and safely as possible. Some
| martial arts systems even have scarf techniques for doing
| disarms with soft objects from a distance (it's super cool
| seeing someone do a gun disarm with a cloth/scarf).
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "(it's super cool seeing someone do a gun disarm with a
| cloth/scarf). "
|
| Don't try that in real life, though. And definitely not
| against a person who know what he's doing. Unless you really
| have no choice and are about to be beheaded by Taliban or
| alike.
|
| And to the technics from the Book, well, from first glance
| they seem to work. But the description seems very static.
| "when the enemy does this, you do this - and then this and
| then this".
|
| Well, doing so is a good practice to get a feel for what is
| possible - but never try to do that exactly in a real combat.
| Because a real situation is always more complex. Nobody is
| ever moving like in a book. There are variations. In speed,
| in position and in a fraction of a second the enemy knive can
| move another way. There are obstacles around you (that can
| also be weapons to throw or just distract). There are often
| other people around who complicate or ease things. There is
| the sun that can blind the oponent, or you, etc. etc.
| baxuz wrote:
| I wish Wiktenauer was around back in 2009.
|
| All we had were a few early transcriptions, some pretty bad
| English translations of a few more popular works and that's it.
|
| To get the good stuff you had to talk to people on international
| seminars and internet forums and do your own transcriptions and
| dig out library scans.
|
| A huge shout out to Dierk Hagedorn from Hammaborg for providing
| the one of the first quality Early > Modern German translations
| for some of Liechtenauer's works.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Manuscripts and treatises like the ones here are what
| practitioners are using to try to resurrect the historical
| European martial arts. There are even folks reviving armored
| combat forms and techniques.
|
| Which for those who don't know, are as effective, varied, and
| storied as the currently-more-famous Asian martial arts.
|
| But unlike the Asian martial arts they were forgotten and died
| out sometime into the age of firearms in the 16th - 17th century
| (although several sword-fighting forms survived to the 20th
| century).
| decafninja wrote:
| I'm wondering if it could be argued that true Asian martial
| arts have also been forgotten. A few exceptions aside, a lot of
| what exists today is closer to dancing than combat.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Curious about the downvotes on this - I know I recapitulated
| the summary on the main page of the Wiki, but I thought I added
| some context.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| I find it weird how little we know about our own martial arts.
| For example the last official US Army sword manual was
| published in 1913 and was written by George S. Patton. He even
| designed the sword to be used with the manual.
| stryan wrote:
| Eastern martial arts were often tied to
| religious/philosophical practices. For example, many Chinese
| martial arts are from an evolution of Taoist "physical
| alchemy" and massage practices. It's a lot easier to forget a
| martial art when it's no longer useful in war and has nothing
| else going for it.
| baxuz wrote:
| A lot of early German books included alchemy: https://wikte
| nauer.com/wiki/Pol_Hausbuch_(MS_3227a)/11r_-_12...
| stryan wrote:
| Interesting! I'll have to look more into that.
|
| Chinese internal alchemy is a bit different though; it's
| more like the martial art is the alchemical process
| itself, with the practitioners body being the
| reagent/substance. This looks more like alchemy being
| used in creating weapons.
| madhadron wrote:
| It's because the weaponry used changed. A modern US
| infantryman is the inheritor of a continuous development in
| western martial arts. The weaponry and context changed and so
| did the skills. Bayonets are still taught as part of
| combatives as far as I know, but the days of fire a volley
| followed by a bayonet charge are long gone. A soldier I know
| told me that knives and pistols are tools you use to steal a
| rifle from someone.
| aksss wrote:
| > pistols are tools...to steal a rifle
|
| I believe that is often credited to Col. Jeff Cooper, or at
| least for popularizing it.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Still, in close quarters I rather have a pistol than a
| rifle.
| josefx wrote:
| WWII had trench warfare, sharpened entrenching tools beat
| anything too long to effectively wield in a trench.
| madhadron wrote:
| Yes, and the entrenching tool is still in the hand to
| hand manuals.
| sillyquiet wrote:
| Something like a sword fighting technique that needs to be
| trained often, starting early in life, would not take much to
| die out - probably less than a generation of disuse.
|
| And its funny you mention Patton's manual, WWI was probably
| _the_ last time a sword was considered a practical fighting
| weapon except in rare circumstances. Even the bayonet started
| a gradual decline then.
| jaegerpicker wrote:
| Interestingly enough, melee weapons are still often used in
| modern warfare. While not swords but machete's,
| axes/tomahawks, and a large variety of knifes are still
| used. I mean your are 100% correct they aren't the main
| weapon of nearly anyone, they are still super effective in
| close quarters. In fact within 21 feet or so they are
| typically considered MORE effective than firearms unless
| you already have the weapon drawn, aimed, and ready to
| fire.
| mkehrt wrote:
| But arts that were sports remained, the same as in East Asia.
| We still have boxing, wrestling, fencing and others.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Sports like olympic fencing are very far removed from their
| martial origins.
| jdfellow wrote:
| I've trained in HEMA, in the German Kunst des Fechtens tradition
| for about 3 years (this past year, not much). Wiktenaur is my
| primary resource for sources. It's a brilliant website. They've
| also published a 3-part side-by-side compilation of the major
| Liechtenauer treatises which I use regularly, and I believe an
| updated 5-part compilation is in the works.
|
| I was pleasantly surprised to see this link up on HN.
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