We have a problem with studying period sources such as George Silver's Brief Instructions and Manuscript I.33. That problem is one of lethality.

The old fencing masters were teaching their techniques in a time when fighting and killing was a normal and expected part of life. The techniques they taught were designed specifically to disable or kill your opponent with a minimum of risk to yourself.

But we don't want to kill people. We want to recreate the weapon techniques as closely as possible while still remaining completely safe. So some techniques, such as thrusts to the face, are prohibited for us. We do not wear fencing masks or face mesh, we do not armour the throat, and all of our normal techniques are designed specifically to avoid these vulnerable areas of the body.

So how do we reconcile these very deadly killing techniques with our principle of safe reenactment?

Take an example from MS I.33 - "falling under the sword". If the priest is in Underarm guard and the scholar is in Half-Shield, the recommended technique is for the priest to "fall under the sword" - ie, to extend his sword into Longpoint and threaten the scholar's face. This forces the scholar to react to the threat and opens him up to a tread-through or change of sword. If the scholar does not react, it is a simple matter for the priest to pass forward and drive the point of his sword into the scholar's face.

We consider that to be unacceptable on safety grounds. Now, this is a pretty fundamental part of the I.33 style - it is repeated several times throughout the manual. To omit it would be to omit a core technique.

Claiming that the technique is safe anyway because it is performed out of range ignores the fact that I.33 is a very dynamic style. If the priest fails to fall under the sword, the reaction from the scholar is to step forward with his own thrust to the face. If the scholar is already moving forward when the priest moves into Longpoint, then collision between sword and face is almost unavoidable.

A second example is from George Silver's English broadsword style. If the agent is in Open Fight and the patient is in True Guardant, then when the agent attacks, the patient parries the agent's sword horizontally, ending in something like Di Grassi's Broad Ward with his point at the agent's face.

So how do we deal with this?

I don't feel that there are any perfect answers. Without these techniques (and I've picked only two out of many) the style of swordsmanship is very much changed. Sometimes it feels as though the only way to reconcile this is to either transform the club into a Western Martial Arts club, reproduce the techniques exactly, wear facial armour and spar with wooden wasters or padded contact weapons; or to fall back on the re-enactment aspect and completely ignore the teachings of the masters. We don't want to do either of those things, because we like our club, and the way we do things, and we want to be able to study the old fechbuchs and manuals and allow those styles to influence our work.

It could be said that we can separate the training and the free-fighting aspects of what we do. We can study the techniques as they are supposed to be used, using slow movements and stopping short of actually causing damage; and when we free-fight we can refrain from using those techniques that have the potential to cause damage. But this does not really work. The main danger is that a fighter may forget to control the dangerous techniques and use one in free-fight. It would be a perfectly normal, instinctive reaction for someone who has studied the techniques properly, but it presents an unacceptable safety risk and cannot be allowed.

So should we simply not study and practice these techniques? No, of course not. The key is to modify the techniques slightly so that they can still be used, but the risk of serious injury is eliminated.

A thrust to the face or throat can usually be redirected to the chest. A rising blow to the side of the head (nucken) can be reversed to become a downward blow to the top of the head. Grapples and joint locks can be stopped just before the moment of dashing your opponent to the ground. However, there are still a few problems with this.

Substituting one kind of strike for another sometimes modifies the technique so that it actually no longer works. For example, a sword thrust to the face can be "simulated" by changing it to a vertical blow to the head. This has its own problems though. A thrust to the face is fast and direct, and it travels in a straight line. By changing this to a blow to the head, we are changing the direction and the distance the sword travels. This seriously affects the technique, and may make it unusable.

Take "falling under the sword" in I.33 again. One option is for the priest to lower the point of the sword so that it threatens the scholar's chest instead of his head. This puts the point directly into the scholar's buckler, and from this position it is not nearly as effective as a technique. It makes the technique rather pointless in fact, since it really serves no good purpose unless it is making a direct threat to the Scholar.

The second is for the priest to raise the point so that it is above the scholar's head, threatening a downward blow (what Hand and Wagner call "High Longpoint" in their book). This is a little better, but it is still not ideal. A downward blow to the helmet from High Longpoint will often not be taken as a good headshot, since there would be insufficient force to penetrate. Unless a "gentleman's agreement" is made beforehand to consider this kind of tap to be equivalent to a face thrust, there is not really any threat there at all. Bringing the sword back to allow for a decent head blow changes the position from Longpoint to Vom Tag, and this is different in every possible way.

Where the Silver technique is concerned, the patient can sometimes change from a high face thrust to a somewhat lower chest thrust (imbroccata). However, lowering the point to the agent's chest means that the patient's sword does not deflect that of the agent in the same way. Changing a thrust to the face into a cut to the arm also affects the way the patient's sword intercepts that of the agent, and in fact frequently means that the attack is not intercepted at all.

So does this mean that the techniques cannot be used at all? In the case of I.33 especially, prohibiting falling under the sword effectively castrates the style. There's really not much point doing it if you can't fall under the sword.

This is a difficult issue, and not one that came up in the Fellowship before we started studying the old masters. But now that we do study historical swordsmanship, it is something that we very much need to deal with.