Swash 2008

The second annual Symposium on the Western Arts of Swordsmanship through History kicked off on a bright and blustery Saturday morning at the Royal Armouries museum in Leeds. As usual there were plenty of sessions to choose from, and in some cases it was difficult to choose which one I wanted to do more.

This seems to have been a bit of a Fiore dei Liberi themed weekend for me, one way or another. The first lecture I picked looked at the historical context of Fiore with the hundred years war as a backdrop, warring Italian city states with their hired condottori mercenary companies, rival popes in Avignon and Rome and the first flowering of the renaissance period. A fascinating overview of a turbulent time.

After that I was ready to get stuck into one of the workshop sessions, so I plumped for Maestro MacDonald's session on Close Play Principles which was all about getting up close and personal in combat. This was based on the concept of the grounded tower from Fiore's famous diagram, where your defence rests upon preserving your balance by lowering your centre of gravity and knowing when to move and when to stand firm. Excellent sweaty fun and some very useful practical applications.

After lunch came the highlight of the weekend for me, and I suspect quite a few other people with a chance to see Bill Hobbs who has been responsible for some of the greatest fight sequences in cinema in the last forty years, including such notable films as Rob Roy, The Three Musketeers, The Duellists, Dangerous Liaisons and, er, Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter. We were treated to anecdotes and memories of Oliver Reed, and rare behind the scenes footage of John Malkovich and a very young Keanu Reeves rehearsing the final duel in Dangerous Liaisons. I have a sneaking suspicion that Professor Donnelly may have organised the whole event purely as an excuse to get to meet this remarkable and self effacing man.



The final session of the day for me was an examination of the conflict between George Silver with his Paradoxes of Defence and Saviolo's new fangled Italian fencing method with his preference to elegant thrusts as opposed to good old fashioned English downright cuts and blows. Coincidentally, two of the Armouries' interpreters covered the same ground in a performance piece the following day using the fight sequences from Romeo and Juliet to illustrate the differences between the two systems.

Saturday night was the usual fabulous drinks reception and meal in the War Gallery, followed by more drinks back at the hotel, with thanks to Tam for providing the wine and keeping my glass topped up until some ungodly hour of the night.







I staggered off to bed, slightly the worse for wear, but a reasonable nights' sleep, a hot shower and a good breakfast perked me up in time for the first session of Sunday morning which was an introduction to Fiore's dagger techniques. This turned out to have a lot in common with the yawari stick that I studied last year, with very similar blocks, disarms and other techniques.

The next two sessions gave me the chance to handle some original weapons from the renaissance and 18th century, including some wonderfully lethal small swords, a Spanish rapier, the ludicrously unwieldy heavy cavalry sword made famous by Sharpe and an original of the dagger that my Solingen main gauche is based on. Yum. There were also some treatises on display and I had a chance to see a copy of Silver's Paradoxes, William Hope's Backsword and a stunning copy of Thibault - the engraved plates were works of art.





All in all, it has been a fantastic weekend, although I am rather worn out now ...