Stance and Rapier

This is mostly musings for Italian/French and things other than Spanish Rapier. The Spanish are just special that way. 

While there are a number of excellent fencers floating around, there does seem to be two prevailing incorrect stances for rapier. First a very closed upright stance with feet shoulder width apart and weight evenly (or nearly evenly) distributed. While this stance is very stable, you tend to sacrifice both reach and explosiveness while maintaining this. Essentially, in order to extend or respond, you have to first shift your weight to your back foot, and then shift forward again. This process is slow, and so in order to expedite the lunge, the person will attempt to minimise the weight shifting, causing the lunge to be short.

The second position is a wider stance, but with weight either over the front foot or attempting to evenly distribute the weight. This causes the person to lean in his torso to try and make reach, which causes him to lift the rear foot off the ground. Basically they're extending in all the wrong places.

In the manuals, back legs tend to be crouched, bent at the knee with the hip open. The stances can vary from very closed to quite wide. Even in a more closed stance the knee is bent, and the weight is to the back.

The crouched leg/open hip stance can be surprisingly difficult to achieve, but it allows weight to be loaded onto the back leg. This has several purposes. One of the main advantages is that keeping the leg flexed, with muscles tense but not locked, and the hip open gives you a very responsive stance. Essentially, your muscles are coiled like a spring.

Another advantage comes from the weight shift itself. By shifting the weight to the back, it also allows the front foot to respond quicker. Without weight, the front foot is free to pivot, pass or preform other footwork. Lunging is also expedited, since the front foot is free, and the weight is already located where it will shift forward easily.

rocking on the left, lunging on the right, stabbing middle left

Interestingly, rocking is actually easier as well, and is usually a small quick motion with the weight back.

 The more I work with fencing, and rapier especially, it seems that instead of a balanced neutral stance, you want the most unbalanced stance that you can manage without falling over and that you can still recover out of. Unless of course you're in the middle of a lunge, and are falling forward. This being said, maintaining a dynamic and fluid stance is important, as is constant shifting of weight. Immediately before engagement, and when recovering from a lunge weight should probably be over the rear foot, leading to a back/forward/back weight distribution. At the same time, movements should be smooth and economical, and no larger than needed.

The cost of fencing lessons.

Finally a document to satisfy my inner time traveler.

Reading about historical fencing is fun. Hitting things with swords is fun. But how much would it cost to get fencing lessons from Filippo Dardi?

A guy named Brian Stokes apparently has found a document dated from 1443 in which the city of Bologna is giving Dardi permission to open a school. Link. All around it's a very interesting document since it outlines business expectations, reasonable course timelines among other things. For one thing, it appears that Dardi is being given a grant of 200 lire per year to subsidize his lessons. Dardi agrees, although he does say that he will only accept 20 students per class.

Of interest to fellow time travelers there is a complete list outlining duration of courses and cost. Gaurenwolf has helpfully worked out the approximate cost of classes based on the price of silver. The result is surprisingly reasonable. For example, for the long sword the cost works out to $1887.60 for a 5 month course, or around $17 for a 2 hour lesson. At 2 hours a day, 5 days a week that's over 130 hours of instruction.

One thing that immediately jumped out to me was how expensive dagger was, with a two month course costing 6 lire, only 4 lire short of a 5 month long sword class. The reasoning behind the pricing isn't directly explored in the text. I have to wonder if this is demand based, or prehaps difficulty based.

While the dagger isn't mentioned, the two handed sword, the buckler, and 'other plays' are seen as 'useful to the young men of Bologna, for their own defence and for that of the public sphere.' I would like to investigate as to what the 'public sphere' is in this case. I'm not familiar enough with non-judicial or judicial dueling at this time to be able to say if these skills were being used in dueling, or if it was more likely that this was being used martially. Whatever the use, it was important enough to warrant Bologna subsidizing the class.