Longsword - Fiore's Basic Rules

In the past few months of studying shinkage, and teaching Fiore, I've come across two basic theories of teaching swordsmanship.  One is to teach the movements - say, the individual plays of Fiore, or the basic movements of a form.  The other is to teach the underlying principles of the form, the movements, et cetera.  Neither of these is inherently better than the other.  Knowing the principles is useless if the basics aren't solid; knowing the basics alone isn't enough to make a competent swordsman - or for that matter any other trade or craft, from astrophysics to zither playing.

For a craft like swordsmanship where words generally aren't enough in the first place, principles should be few in number, easy to remember, and subject to infinite variation in the details.  This is one area where Fiore succeeds and Thibaut, for instance, utterly fails.  Thibaut's Destreza manual gets into obsessive detail about small matters; Fiore's tries to illustrate general points.

Unfortunately, we cannot ask Fiore directly, or even his students, what those first principles are.  We can guess from his four virtues, from his words, and from what the manuals show, but we cannot know, despite thirty years' worth of diligent research by a number of folks who have made reconstructing Fiore their profession.

Here, then, is my attempt at taking what I know of Fiore, and what I know of other schools, and writing those principles up.

1. Don't commit until you have to.

This is easily the most general of the rules - it covers everything from issuing a challenge to a slight weight shift.  In general, though, every decision represents a commitment.  Up until the sword is in motion, and in most cases up until it crosses a critical threshold, the commitment isn't total, but once the commitment is made, it is much harder to un-make.  An example of this from Fiore's plays is his discussion of the "peasant's blow," where the unskilled swordsman hacks with the sword like he is splitting firewood, and thus leaves himself exposed.

2. Move in the shadow of your sword.

I freely admit that this is a shinkage-ism, not a Fiore-ism, but Fiore expresses the same concept both directly, when he talks about making a cover, and indirectly, by the way the plays are illustrated.  "In the shadow of your sword" is simply too catchy not to use.  The basic concept is that as you move, and if your sword is moving you are moving, and vice versa, your own attack should deny your opponent a clear line of attack to your body.  Fiore's covers are meant to deny lines of attack, rather than relying on a parry which might or might not pick up the attack.  As a side note, this same principle is common in strategy games, whether it's chess or go.

3. Control the fight.  If you can't control the fight, make the fight uncontrollable.

As a corollary to #2, all of the zogho largo and sword in one hand plays rely on getting control of the opponent's weapon.  The same is true of the dagger, baton, and grappling plays, but I primarily write about swords.  For instance, the crossing at the middle involves stepping outside, applying pressure to the blade, and maintaining that pressure while either cutting or thrusting at a lethal target.  The goal is to position yourself in such a way that you have and maintain control of where your opponent is able to act.  Sometimes, this is not possible, and your opponent is able to act more or less freely while you lose options.  Fiore's solution to this problem is, in the moment, to make the situation more chaotic.  This is the zogho stretto transition.  At this range, the goal is to overwhelm the opponent's ability to process decisions and take openings that otherwise would not be even remotely feasible - pulling your opponent in by their sword arm and throwing them is a high-risk move, only taken when the opponent is unable to process information and respond effectively.  That is the basis of all zogho stretto plays... and, because I like to refer to commonalities, it's the basis of shinkage's mutodori plays as well.  Because I also like to draw larger scale parallels, this is the basis for Chamberlain's bayonet charge down Little Round Top - when your options run low, add chaos and see if your opponent can handle it.

4. Plan to fight, but don't fight to plan.

The entire purpose of Fiore's Flower of Battle is to illustrate a series of decision points, and options that will usually work from each of those decision points.  The master illustrates the immediate issue; the scholars illustrate potential movements from that point, and the counter or remedy masters illustrate how to respond to that.  Part of this illustration is that there is no "master technique," no sovereign remedy, but that everything has a counter.  Some of Fiore's plays even directly address that the strike will not land, and you need to be able to accommodate that.  Thus, Fiore addresses, both directly and indirectly, the decision tree and the fact that sometimes branches just fall off of the tree and you have to improvise.  Every sword instructor I have met or studied responds to this in one of two ways: develop more branches to the tree (looking at you, Thibaut), or drill until you are confident enough in your response that you can vary the response to the circumstances.  Everything I see in Fiore says that he would agree with Yagyu Munenori - study the forms, but try to master to them to the point you no longer need the forms.  When the form doesn't do what you need it to, break it and improvise.

5. Lie shamelessly.

This one seems obvious to anyone who has been fighting for any length of time.  Sun Tzu put it best and simplest: all warfare is based on deception.  In Fiore's specific case, once in contact, the relationship of sword and target rarely changes - the feet move to one side, away from the opponent's blade, the sword stays in its position, and almost simultaneously the sword moves.  The result is that, ideally, the opponent never knows that the sword is moving.  The best concrete example is probably the crossing at points - the movement offline and sideways required is pretty minimal, the blade pressure is meant to convey to the opponent that they have won the bind, and then suddenly the sword is on the inside of the opponent's blade and riding inward to thrust at the face or throat.  This deception is key to the plays working effectively; the primary reason that the counter or remedy works is because the deception was insufficient, either because the target knows it's deception or because of clumsy execution.

6. Fight to end the fight, and until the fight ends.

The entire point of Fiore's system, as laid out in the prefatory material, is to teach a lethal form of sword fighting, with intent to kill on both sides.  This is borne out by his descriptions of fighting in padded jackets and sharps, and the danger of that contact - it is a big deal that he has fought five unarmored duels and won every single one.  This is also different from the German blossfechten in that Fiore indicates that these are not first-blood duels.  All of Fiore's grappling plays, dagger plays, and sword plays are predicated on the idea that you want to end the fight as quickly and decisively as possible; plays don't deliberately set up other plays.  The counter and remedy masters are there for when that play doesn't work, or to escape from that same situation, but Fiore is not a big believer in elaborate choreography.  Every move, every step, every strike should be with ending the fight in mind.  If that strike did not work, you strike again, from the shadow of your sword, and if that doesn't work, keep fighting.  Do not stop to admire your cleverness, do not step back and go "I got you," fight until the fight is done, because failing to do so, in Fiore's conditions, will result in your own death, defeat, or ransom.  Because I like parallels, the Japanese version is "in the moment of victory, tighten your helmet ties."

These are, obviously, open to interpretation, and are one person's interpretation of the basic principles of combat shown in the various manuscripts of Fiore.  They're colored by my own experiences and observation, but I think they form a working framework for understanding how the man himself viewed sword fighting.