The Art of Longsword Fighting
The Art of Longsword Fighting
Teaching the Foundations of Sigmund Ringecks Style
Benjamin J. Smith
Photographs by Play of Light Photography
Illustrations by Peter Smith
First published in Great Britain in 2021 by
Frontline Books
An imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
Yorkshire Philadelphia
Copyright Benjamin J. Smith 2021
ISBN 978 1 52676 898 8
ePUB ISBN 978 1 52676 899 5
Mobi ISBN 978 1 52676 900 8
The right of Benjamin J. Smith to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Disclaimer
I have written this book for competent teachers to use to improve their teaching. If you are not a competent teacher do not undertake to teach this material. You do so at your own risk, and I disclaim all responsibility for your actions and cannot be held liable for any mishaps or accidents that may occur.
About the Author
I began training in historical European martial arts (HEMA) in 2000 when I was seventeen while going to college. I joined the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (ARMA) and spent most of the next eight years applying that organizations method. I left the ARMA in 2008 around the end of my MA program to pursue my own approach. In graduate school I worked with a small circle of friends, and during that time I also trained in, and was approved to instruct a Dao style by Robert Jay Arnold of the Xinzhu Bagua Association, part of the Taiwanese Martial Arts Alliance and the Tian Wu Dao, which teaches a branch of Gao-style Baguazhang.
I joined the Historical European Martial Arts Alliance in 2009 and began working seriously on my interpretations of Sigmund Ringecks longsword teachings. I taught it to my friends, and at WSUs summer camp program Cougar Quest for four years starting in 2009 and ending in 2012. The kids received it very well all four years, often rating it as one of the best workshops offered at Cougar Quest. It was a pleasure working with WSUs staff, and I hope such offerings will become commonplace in years to come. In 2014 I came to Boise and founded my current group the Hilt and Cross, and I have been happily teaching here since then.
Acknowledgements
I want to offer my thanks to my family, and particularly to my wife Erin, who has supported me in this project for so long. I also wish to thank all my current and former students. I found their ideas, input, and feedback invaluable and many of the things I share in these volumes come from them. Thank you to Randall Boudwin, Emily Boudwin, Phillip Rhoemer, Catherine Rhoemer, Michail Fragkias, Casey Goldsmith, Cora Goldsmith, and Bill England, who have all been especially supportive of me and my work here at the Hilt and Cross, and who were willing to spend so many hours letting me use them as test subjects for many of the experiments that made this book possible. I also wish to thank Andrew Ulrich, Ben Weaver, and Kris Skelton, with whom I worked in Pullman. Thank you to Jacob Norwood, Stewart Fiel, Mike Chidester, and Robert Hyatt with whom I began my HEMA journey. I also wish to offer special thanks to my father and mother, Kent and Diane Smith, whose sound advice made this project manageable, and whose support made it possible. I would also like to, thank my brother for providing the illustrations. Ialso wish to thank the good people of Frontline Press, and Pen & Sword Books, who welcomed my submission. In particular, I wish to thank John Grehan, who proved instrumental in giving me this opportunity, and Lisa Hooson, Susan Last, and Martin Mace, who patiently helped me polish the project.
Introduction
I wrote this book as a tool for instructors and serious students to guide the way they teach Ringecks style of the Liechtenauer tradition through its introduction and the Zornhau section, where the foundation of your students style will be laid. I hope it will help people understand not only how to do the techniques, but how to teach them effectively, and why they should be taught in the order and manner I present here. Perhaps most importantly, I hope that this book will help people understand Ringecks fighting style and pedagogy as a complete entity, and the theory and goals behind the way it was taught, so that they can faithfully emulate Ringeck as far as can be known.
I believe that the way this art is learned and practiced matters just as much as the correctness of the physical execution of the techniques. It shapes the psyche of the practitioner, and their ability to understand the context of the techniques, which in turn affects the effectiveness of the techniques in application, the speed of their progress, and the depth of learning achieved by the student.
I have studied historical sword styles from several different cultures academically for twenty years, and I have practiced three for just as long. In my studies I observed that the evidence of ancient training methods shows remarkably broad consistencies despite separation in distance, time, and culture. I also observed that modern martial arts styles, and the books on modern and early modern martial arts, which I define here as roughly from around 1600 on, took on very different forms than the books written by Renaissance and medieval martial artists who likely made more use of these skills in warfare, dueling, and self-defense. More importantly, I observed that this happened in many different places within the same time frame. I believe that the evidence from the manuals of these periods reflects profound differences in their methods of teaching. On the assumption that these distinctions were significant, and the result of important differences in context, rather than progress in teaching methods, I decided it would be worth my time to try to recreate as much of the thinking and pedagogy as I could. I derived it as strictly as possible from the evidence in the primary source material.
