Schwert & Buckler | Wiegand von Marburg

By the way, the spruce is probably history soon. Don't worry, I won't cut it down. But we will soon have our home in the Marstahl building. Hello and welcome to a new Ligand video. As you can see, in a completely different place than usual. I wanted to make an action video today. That means, today it should be a bit about fighting. And what is better than our training home? And this training home is this wonderful castle. First mention, 1280. We are standing here in front of the Marstahl building. And the lower part is probably from the founding phase. Just come in and take a look at the vault. Come on, come on. This is the basement of the Marstahl building. I know it's a bit old, but that's just because it's a real hall. And in here, maybe 700 years ago, sword fighting was already practiced. And we can do that nowadays. And today it will be about fighting with sword and buckler. Especially after the exercises that were shown in the Tower Fight Book 1.33. We just want to show you how to practice it in here. The manuscript 1.33 is called that because it was stored in the Tower of London under this inventory number. I think it is now housed in the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds. But it is originally not an English, but a German fencing book. Probably the first or at least the first known textbook on fencing at all. Probably created around the year 1300. And possibly in the Würzburg area. That means not so far away from us or from the castle we are showing here. What I have here corresponds to the fashion around 1400. That means it is reasonably contemporary. Although the Tower Fight Book, the 1.33 Tower Fight Book, is probably from the beginning of the 14th century. We also have a one-handed sword and a fist shield next to the buckler. I would also advise you to wear gloves, at least if you protect your right hand reasonably. You don't necessarily need to protect the left hand, we have the shield for that. So, I'm actually already sufficiently equipped with that. If you want to wear more, you can of course wear more. And if you don't want to have any armor at all, you can also, for example, fight with larp weapons. That's not such a bad alternative. So, the foam weapons that are used at larp events can of course also be used wonderfully, if it should get a little more intense and you don't have to worry about helmets and steel gloves. Thankfully, as I explained in the Würzburg area, to participate a little. It is a little better equipped, as you can see, with steel gloves and armor for legs and chains. But as I said, that's actually not bad at all. The idea with buckler fencing is simply that I stretch the shield away from me to shorten the angle. If I were to do that with a goalkeeper, if he goes out of the goal to run up to the striker, if I have the shield here, then he can choose where he wants to hit me. So, I might just try to get here, but it might be a find. If I have the shield in front of me, I have a completely different angle. In addition, I practically move my back, my glutes, backwards, so that I can pull my legs away and thus give the opponent as little attack area as possible. And now it's just so that the attacker could still push off with this shield. Make a little hit, please. Now it could happen that he still hits me somehow, because it's a fairly small shield. And the idea is now simply to take the sword for support. That is, as soon as such a hit comes, I still have the sword with me. And there are now the most diverse possibilities in 1.33. There is always talk of hat and displacement, that is, we always have an attack and a defense position. And there are the most different hats, for example, from the shoulder, for example, the first hat, also known as a sewing hat, which is used from the hip, for example, from the other shoulder, and so on. And the counterpart is the displacement, that is, it is actually the position that the other person takes, for example, the half-shield-called displacement, or vice versa, the crook, which drops the blade down. And so I can attack and defend with the most diverse positions. So let's go, for example, from a simple situation. I have the hat from the shoulder and he has the half-shield. In that case I've already got him. Oh, very important, if you practice with steel, keep the distances. Don't knock into each other, because that would probably cause bad injuries. Not without reason, the themes in 1.33 are called play. So do yourself a favor, keep the distances, do the whole thing slowly and playfully at first. So, before I say anything more about the technique, let's show a little bit of free fight first. I said there should be a little more action. And as I said, you really need good protective equipment, at least gloves like these here. Or otherwise, maybe with thick leather-protected gloves. And a helmet with face protection, I would definitely recommend. It should also be thick enough that even if a hit comes from above, the helmet is not directly embedded. But okay, I've already said that in earlier videos on the subject of bustos. Before you practice the whole thing at speed, you should try it slowly first. Of course, you can orient yourself on these so-called pieces in 1.33, or on any other of the many, many fencing books that were published in the following period. For example, by Peter von Danzig, or by Talhofer, or by Joachim Mayer, and many, many more. They all have their systems and they almost always have buckler fencing with them. Because it was very popular and has lasted for centuries. As a war and also as a civil fighting technique. So, that may have given you a little impression of what we are training. I'll give you an impression of the castle later. That means we will definitely do a castle tour, where I'll show you what's left of it and what else you can use. And, as I said, how we train. At the moment, unfortunately, no more is possible due to the Corona measures. It's already difficult enough. We can't train with the whole group at the moment, unfortunately. But I hope that will be possible again soon. And then, of course, I'll be happy to show you. Next time, I promised, it will be about the subject of Haithabu. What that was and whether you can still visit it, you can see in the next video. Thank you for watching and see you next time. Bye!