Crime and Punishment: When surviving a sword fight could mean death

A rare find—first-hand analysis of a deadly bar fight, supported by expert testimony!

2024 Baltimore Arms & Armor Show:

The 68th Annual Show: March 16-17, 2024

Lines in the Sand: The ins and outs of 19th-century fencing spaces

—by J. Christoph Amberger (republished from a 2019 piece over at Duelingswords.wordpress.com)

What follows is a veritable smorgasbord of late 19th- and early 20th-century fencing images illustrating the development of early modern fencing’s combative spaces. You better pour yourself a stiff one.

Drills and bouts require an even surface for fencers to move on. Wooden floors covered with fine sand or saw dust were ideal. Less so, but still acceptable, were sanded or graveled walkways that would provide fencers and duelists with reasonably firm attachment to the ground. Footwork quickly created the danger of rolling an ankle—but when used as the background for a new-fangled photograph, sandy surfaces preserved an impression of actual movement for eternity…

Sons of the Muses vs. “Poodles” — A Nocturnal Assault between City Guards and Students in 1627

Yes, we’re still flensing 17th-century Albums Amicorum for fencing-related information. Someone’s got to do it!

The Dirty Half-Dozen

How a Livonian at Marburg took on six opponents at the same time until the rector broke up the fight…

Eberhard Werner Happel’s 1690 novel, Der Academische Roman, recounts the adventures of a group of stock characters representing the predominant tempers of contemporary students. There is the perma-horny lover boy, the drunkard, the pedantic leearned man of great ambition and meager purse. Obviously, the most likable one for our purposes is Klingenfeld, the swordsman of the group. A veteran of 58 scraps just at the four German universities he attended, not to mention several encounters during their journey, he also is a fountain of battle stories…

“The entire fencing school”—Johann Wolfgang Bieglein’s scholars in 1746

Reading through a cloying poem rewards us with a full list of Kreusslerian Scholars on the occasion of Bieglein’s wedding.

The Hidden Fabri—The State Church: The Kreussler Clan

Part 1: Why we know more about Wilhelm Kreussler’s sex life than about his fencing method…

How a Jena philologist accidentally invented the Kreussler origin story.

Fencing in 1594: Another Find from an Album Amicorum

Bad advice dealing with misbehaving cats—or instruction on how to deal with catty people? You decide…

Over the years, we have shown you hand-drawn and hand-painted images from students’ Friendship Albums. This one adds little to our understanding of late 1500’s fencing, but at least it documents the use of German schmeissen being used in the sense of “hitting”…

Accidental Demise:

Why you should pay attention when straightening a blade!

Fechtschul-Fatality, 1612:

What killed Wilhelm F.?

For Sunday, December 9, 1612, the honorable Augsburg City Council had approved a public Fechtschule. A considerable number of fencers assembled, brandished their weapons and joined in combat according to “fencers’ manner and custom.”

For one of them, it would be the last time he picked up a sword…