May your New Year 2012 be healthy and fulfilling.
May your friends and family prosper… your city thrive… your enemies suffer misfortune.
May your sword be bright… you glass always full… your larder never empty.
May your skills improve and your eye sharpen. May your hand be steady and your blade be sharp. And may the gods smile upon your endeavors! Continue reading
The old Hammerterz Forum approach to filling quarterly issues with rare and novel accounts of historical swordplay can be compared to a drag net:
We’d read hundreds of books we suspected of containing worthwhile material, often coming up with a pertinent sentence or a paragraph for every 300 pages perused. Some snippets were academic and boring, others boring and academic, but all seemed catalytical to the progress of research. There also were some that were downright entertaining.
Among the material we mined was this story of a young Highland Scot making a nuisance of himself in Elizabethan London… Continue reading
We’re reprehensibly behind in our reading—and in the writing of reviews. And we apologize for the unhappy circumstance that Christopher Holzman’s recent Art of the Dueling Sabre may have eluded your Christmas list due to our negligence.
That’s why we hasten to make amends… Continue reading
Posted in 20th Century, Epee, fencing, Saber
Tagged art of the dueling sabre, del frate, italian school, radaelli, saber fencing Holzman
FencingClassics bids a fond farewell to an old mentor, friend, and adviser:
On December 10, 2011, one of the great fencing masters, scholars, and authors of the 20th century, Maestro William M. Gaugler, died of cancer in Sunnyvale, California.
We appreciate what you’ve done for us… Continue reading
“Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me.” —Psalm 23
They may’ve been taking scripture a tad too literally. But we bet Friar Tuck and Bishop Odo would’ve been proud of the cassocked cudgelers who put the vir back into Virtue to practice the Christian “Platinum Rule”: “Und willst Du nicht mein Bruder sein, so schlag ich Dir den Schädel ein.”
And what better place for the spiritual Fechtschule than the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem!
We may consider getting religion yet in our old age! Read on…
Posted in Images, quarterstaff
Tagged church of the nativity, fighting monks, stick fighting
“Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.”
Posted in 18th Century, smallsword, Uncategorized
Tagged amberger, george washington, washington's sword, words to live by
Among the mountains of scrap metal that have changed hands via eBay in the past couple of years, fencing épées pre-dating the 1920’s were few and far between. Even more rare were dueling épées—true épées, that is, made for the very specific purpose of a French-style duel with thrusting weapons. We’ve picked 8 dueling épées from the Amberger Collection to check out a couple of details… Continue reading
Posted in 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, Epee, Images
Tagged amberger collection, collecting swords, degen, dueling epee, duelldegen, Epee, pariser, weapons
Readers of The Lazarus Smile will no doubt remember that it was F.C. Christmann, Professor of the Art of Fencing and Member of Several Academies, who started the whole darn mess by handing Ernst Moritz Arndt a stack of classical manuscript scraps. But unlike the Byzantine cascade of events that find their preliminary end in the Sherpur Cantonment Cemetary in Kabul, his self-defence advice is straightforward… Continue reading
Posted in 19th Century, fencing, Saber, singlestick
Tagged Baron de Marbot, Brigadier Gerard, Christmann, deutsche selbstverteidigung, Flashman, hiebfechten, lazarus smile, mainz income, Saber, säbel
Now available: A complete Secret Archives Press novelette.
FencingClassics editor J. Christoph Amberger
Fencing Classics: The Art and Artifacts of Fencing and Dueling
The Secret History of the Sword 