Fencing with Sabers

Zifir · 29th November 2006, 03:14 PM

Hi,
The interest in swordplay with military weapons in general can sometimes be a childish fantasy of fencing enthusiasts. If you visit the fencing forums, you would come across many topics and pages of speculations on encounters of different type of swords. But I think such curiosity has a firm basis beyond a fantastic side. In Eastern European battlefields it would not be an impossible situation that someone with kilij or yatagan faced with someone with rapier or small sword. I agree that warfare in early modern age required team work and formations but still until the early nineteenth century battles were fought in very close quarters, thus close encounters with swords must have been possible.

The question comes to my mind is that what were the possible results of such encounters. I do not mean necessarily who won or who had the superior techniques, but the possible results of such experiences in knowledge basis. For example did Ottomans develop some methods on how to deal with someone using rapier, or Austrians vice versa? If we consider that these people had been dealing with each other in warfare since the sixteenth century, unlike Indian-English encounters which only took place in the late eighteenth century, it is possible to speculate there must have been interesting results of such interaction.

In that sense, my interest in a fencing manual on West Asian swords (whether it be for a kilij or a yatagan) has such concerns. But I agree that until the existence of such material is proven, it does not exist.

29th November 2006, 03:14 PM	#31
Zifir Member Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Istanbul Posts: 228	Hi, The interest in swordplay with military weapons in general can sometimes be a childish fantasy of fencing enthusiasts. If you visit the fencing forums, you would come across many topics and pages of speculations on encounters of different type of swords. But I think such curiosity has a firm basis beyond a fantastic side. In Eastern European battlefields it would not be an impossible situation that someone with kilij or yatagan faced with someone with rapier or small sword. I agree that warfare in early modern age required team work and formations but still until the early nineteenth century battles were fought in very close quarters, thus close encounters with swords must have been possible. The question comes to my mind is that what were the possible results of such encounters. I do not mean necessarily who won or who had the superior techniques, but the possible results of such experiences in knowledge basis. For example did Ottomans develop some methods on how to deal with someone using rapier, or Austrians vice versa? If we consider that these people had been dealing with each other in warfare since the sixteenth century, unlike Indian-English encounters which only took place in the late eighteenth century, it is possible to speculate there must have been interesting results of such interaction. In that sense, my interest in a fencing manual on West Asian swords (whether it be for a kilij or a yatagan) has such concerns. But I agree that until the existence of such material is proven, it does not exist.