Battlefield Sword Fighting Vs Fencing: Hutton's "How to Fight an Uncivilised Enemy"!

European saber techniques to fight in Asia hi folks Matt Eaton here at scholar gladiatory the series of fencing clubs and the YouTube channel of course here and this is gonna feature a video that was made two years ago for the drain event and that is for the um Club drangelag in Vienna good friends of ours and they run an annual event check out the drain event it's absolutely fantastic and two years ago we couldn't physically get to it because of pandemic and everything else and so myself and my colleagues offered a class a lecture a lesson for the drain event to be given virtually and that has been sitting on their website ever since but since then I've been asked by a lot of people uh questions about that and also where to find it and I figured it's time to host it on here as well with a little bit of Entry blurb from me so first up this was filmed as I say two years ago and it is based on Alfred Hutton's The Swordsman appendix at the back titled very much a title of the time how to fight an uncivilized enemy and this is specifically advice for the British swordsman could be an infantry officer could be cavalrymen artillery officer whatever to fight against specifically an Afghan this is explained more in the video to come and where this comes from is essentially Alfred Hutton and his friend Cyril mathie who were both both military men they decided that the way that fencing and Military swordsmanship Saber fencing was taught at the time was too much focused on saber vs saber in the Sal essentially so in the fencing Hall and and they decided to start devising techniques that would be more useful to soldiers in the field whether they're in Afghanistan India Sudan China wherever so they were thinking about a combative kind of mindset a practical mindset for how people should actually fight and how they should prepare for real Combat this also coincidentally came at a perfect time because they had also been studying older fencing treatises like morozo and mayor and various others Alfieri so they'd been looking at Old medieval and Renaissance treatises and realizing those guys used to do lots of stuff that we don't do anymore but that could be really useful in war now so what follows is essentially the lessons from The Swordsman of 1897 the appendix how to fight an uncivilized Enemy by Captain Alfred Hutton demonstrated by myself and Pedro San Miguel from scholar gladiatoria and once again thanks to our friends at drainslag for hosting this for the last two years and making us film it in the first place anyway I hope you enjoy it and without any more Ado here we go hi there I'm Matt Easton of scholar gladiatoria and welcome to my class today for the drain event which is what we've termed Battlefield saber is taken from Alfred huttons The Swordsman the second edition from 1897. the second edition includes an appendix at the rear which is in safer circles become very well known this section was not included in the first edition and is inspired firstly by campaigns happening in the 1880s and 90s and secondly by Hutton's own research into older historical fencing sources this appendix focuses exclusively on how the British swordsman armed only with the sword or saber should tackle an Afridi swordsman armed with a sword or large knife together with a shield or buckler he compares the swordsmanship then present in Asia and in Afghanistan specifically with Elizabethan swordsmanship and he points out there's some parallels specifically in the fact that the Afridi swordsman doesn't lunge and recover as was convention in pretty much all European fencing by this time but instead uses passing footwork and he says this is more similar to the Renaissance styles of fencing as exhibited in George Silva's works they'd become convinced that to prepare soldiers for combat more fighting needed to be injected into fencing training so now let's move on to the techniques one thing that we should note and which is very relevant for the practice of these techniques is where the buckler or Shield is to some extent how large it is as well but whether it's held close to the body or held extended this is a point of conjecture based on Modern Indian martial arts and preserved Indian martial arts and based on period artwork showing Afghan and Indian Swordsmen the butler or Shield is usually held relatively close to the body it is not held out extended as we're used to seeing in European systems like Bolognese systems like morozo or indeed like 133 and additionally the form of cutting with the curb Asian swords is somewhat different to the form of cutting with the Sabers that we normally use so this type of enforced grip was done with a stiff wrist and the cut was generated from the elbow and from the shoulder and with the full body movement and the passing footwork so quite a different form of cutting so not saying that we represent this perfectly in our demonstrations here of course but just so that you're aware the form of using the sword are very very different in Afghanistan compared to European saber for the purposes of these techniques one person is armed with a shield and either a tower or polar in other words a curved sword or a chura also known as a kyberknife and the other is armed with a British regulation sword of some sort which must be sharpened on the false Edge for at least a few inches so grip number one is against someone who has charged at you and given a cut from their right hand side towards your left first Parry High pream Pass in with the left foot grip their wrist with your thumb down pulling their sword arm down and to the left next either Pummel them to the right hand side of their head or Draw back your right shoulder to prevent them countering and cut or thrust wherever there's an opening available either over or under their Shield or sword all right [Music] in group number two the opponent again charges at you with passing footwork giving you a cut from their right hand side downwards obliquely towards your left you this time parry and cart pass in with the left foot grip the wrist from underneath and force it upwards and to the left draw back the right shoulder to prevent a counter and cut or thrust wherever an opening is available either over or under the Shield or sword or very promptly deal him a strong blow on the right side of the head [Applause] foreign [Music] another option is to pass your sword over their left hand shoulder behind their neck and draw cup with the false Edge to the back of their neck these drawer Cuts with the full set which happens specifies are something which is quite particular to Hutton's system here and very very interesting and outside of the normal scope of what we find in British Military swordsmanship and a lot of people ask about false edges and we know that historically they were sharpened usually to make the thrust more effective but it's very very interesting that in this particular section Hutton being inspired by earlier sources has found a use to include things like the coup de Jane act to the back of the knee or hamstrings and also in this case to the back of the neck so it's a really fantastic example of where Hutton is looking outside of the scope of what's traditional in British Military swordsmanship and looking for new ways to use the existing military Sword without changing its design in grip number three the enemy now charges at you and gives a cut from their left hand side towards your right you in response Parry turse you pass in with the left foot so can come close enough to grab securely the first option is to force the arm upwards into the right hand side and attack Under The Shield or Force the arm down and to the right and attack over the shield in some cases these things will just happen in the course of the fight and you won't necessarily have the ability to manipulate the arm exactly where you want it you'll find it's either a bit higher or a bit lower or the person moves their Shield a bit higher and lower but basically I think what happens showing us here is that you can either attack above or below whichever is most convenient [Music] oh now we have a very famous technique which is found in a series of small sword treatises and a Rapier as well I believe but the one that I'm most familiar with is Dominico Angelo who does this and in this case the opponent attempts to either drop their Shield or use their Shield as a kind of battering ram or a bludgeoning instrument and they attempt to pass in after your terse parry and hit you in your right hand side probably your head and in response you move the right shoulder back you move your sword behind your back you present your point at their chest or stomach and run them through in grip thought they attempt to cut low on your inside leg that is cutting from their right hand side towards the left hand side of your lead leg firstly you could Parry sep team you now grab their wrist from above and force their arm to the left hand side opening up the center line and you can either cut or thrust wherever you see an opening as you see fit your other option is to Parry low preme have informed the Garment guard in low cream you then grab the wrist from above Hopkin gives the option to from there Pummel to the chin although of course there are other repost options available to you as well foreign the other attacking option given by Hutton is a cut to the outside of the leg in this case you carry low second half makes an interesting observation here saying that in this particular position there aren't many grips that are advisable and so he advises to Simply repost with a cutter of thrust as you see fit to any opening so you parallelosacond and immediately ripost foreign [Music] we are equipped in a way that's roughly uh in line with what's described in Hutton's appendix and in this case the Afridi swordsman is armed with a shield or buckler of indeterminate size we've chosen something that's a bit like a large buckler commonly called in India martial arts a Dal because that's what we had available for training purposes but the originals variant size they can be really quite large dials like this example here all the way down to small 30 centimeter bucklers in reality what the Afridi could be armed with could be um a tolwa or a polar or a chura otherwise known as achara pronounced differently in different regions now the longer sword this is an example of a Afghan Polo and the polar is defined by having these dropped down equivalence and a hemispherical hollow pommel a very comfortable grip to hold but quite confined grip and forces you pretty much to have the sword in a hammer fist grip you can't grip it in the way that you grip a European saber usually and these do have various types of blades but they're all relatively consistently curved most of them are curved and they're relatively broad compared to certainly compared to officers savers of the time they're also not particularly long they rarely exceed 30 31 inches or around 83 centimeters so they are curved um chopping swords with a pointer balance usually relatively far out from the hand another version of this which people are more familiar with is the Indian talwa which really only majorly differs from The Polar in that it has a flat or almost flat disc pommel but you grip it in much the same way most people find the pull wire grip slightly more comfortable but they're used in very much similar way this is just the Indian version and these were to be found being used in Afghanistan as well and so in fact Hutton talks about the tall were rather than the pool well but you could find either of them they are both essentially the longer sword available to people in Afghanistan at this time and the other very common type of Sword again mentioned by Hatton is the chura or Chara commonly known as the kyber knife which is a t section blade related to the ottoman yatagan almost certainly and it has no real handguard to speak of it doesn't really have a pommel it's perhaps a little bit similar to Medieval lung Messer in some ways and in other ways not it's more like a yet again really but as you will see it is straighter and it is shorter now despite the fact that it's pointier it is not a thrusting weapon and in fact period sources explicitly state that these words were used for chopping and hacking so to conclude by 1897 due to various factors studying historical fencing sources but also the realization of the day that training needed to be a little bit more inclusive and broader Hutton and Matthew were great exponents of probably what we'd later call combatives and this was something obviously that button right as well um pioneered but I think that Hutton and Matthew don't get enough um credit for for what they were doing and really this is the end I suppose of the era at the end of the 19th century is the end of the era when swordsmanship was still being seen as a serious military practice and so in a way we never got to see this developed further and they didn't have a huge number of sources available to them as we've seen they drew mainly on George Silva but I have to say from a personal point of view having practiced these techniques but also being someone who's over the course of more than 20 years practiced other medieval and Renaissance systems I do think that some of these techniques could be refined and improved and in some cases I think there are better options um that we could now draw upon but which they weren't necessarily aware of and weren't particularly trained in we have to bear in mind that whilst um Matthew were very practiced Swordsmen they were very practiced within the systems of their day and they were relatively new to the earlier historical systems but I think that they should be credited for what they did achieve and that was recognizing that for Battlefield saber techniques you needed to include a little bit more wide repertoire than is just covered in the fencing cell of their day and I should also point out that of course this isn't supposed to be relied on in isolation it's supposed to be used in conjunction with what you've learned in the rest of that system and so you're supposed to have learned foil you're supposed to have learned conventional saber and then on top of that you're supposed to learn the grips and closes the grappling the wrestling in addition to that core fundamental saber method so I hope this has been enjoyable and useful feel free to practice it techniques I'd look forward to feedback on this as well and I'd also be interested to know if there are other systems from other parts of the world are there French or Russian or Italian systems that use anything similar to this there are grips uh and closes there are grips and closes shown in anti-bayonet parts of cyber manuals um and I know that there's at least one French manual that shows the use of the Scabbard as a parrying device it's very very interesting so there were other people in other parts of the world at this period at this time looking at other ways of creating more fully rounded um and uh sort of competent fighting systems using the weapons of the day thanks for watching we've got extra videos on patreon please give our Facebook a like And subscribe if you haven't already cheers folks

Channel: scholagladiatoria

Views: 60,304

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Id: KpBLUj1uTgo

Length: 17min 25sec (1045 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 28 2023