The Art of Fencing by Labat, the translation in 1734, by my understanding, is not a great small sword manual. To a non-French smallsword fencer there is little new insight to be gained, and the little good advice I found was such basic advice which is found in most treatises on swordsmanship.
The first strange thing he says on p. 20 is having strength is a fault. While being a body builder isn’t going to be useful, having a strong arm, shoulder, and legs will be of great benefit
to any fencer. Labat wants a more rear-favored guard. While a nit-pick, I find a neutral weighted guard to be more lively in the feet, though the rear-weighted guard has a long and respected history. Continuing on the guard, he recommends the sword be held in the mid-point of your two lines. While this is intuitive, you are not presenting a solid defense anywhere. The point of having an outside favored guard in to limit the angles of potential
attacks. Further, I believe the “middling guard” is far weaker to feints than a standard outside favored guard, because the defender reveals commitment to the parry sooner.
When discussing how to thrust, on p. 26, he describes a thrust-in-opposition, however in the rest of the text he does not describe plays as if you have maintained contact with the opposing steel. As soon as p. 35 the parried thrust sounds like it is without opposition.
Labat describes the difficulties in parrying 2ⁿᵈ, however his complaints are trivial. The
half-circle parry 2 is a good response to the low thrust, its reversal or a full circle 4 would deal with potential feints. So would off-line steps with the rear leg to void the area the attack is going. His next parry against second is to do a half-circle to the outside, hand in 4ᵗʰ, and
lifted to shoulder height, point down.This seems like an excellent invitation to lunge by fianconata. I’m not sure a parry with the debole like that would even stop the incoming thrust.
On p.47, Lahat explains how his parries are to be done. A so-called beating parry where the incoming steel is struck, and the riposte delivered free of presence. After the riposte, you are to return to the opposing blade in the parry. This maneuver is the main
way I see mal-parries leading to double touches. The counterargument is a mal-parry derives from not beating the blade with enough force to deviate the blade, it is far safer, and easier
to judge, to maintain presence throughout the riposte.
Labat discusses feints on p. 48, stating the straight feint or half-thrust (I saw no difference between the two) encourages the parry. I do not see how any amount of foot
stamping will sell a half-thrust on a feint. With proper distance control, the sudden stop of the arm and a foot-stomp just signals a second intention is coming. Further, you open yourself up to a counterattack with the half-thrust. Just do a disengage from a full arm extension
Labat discusses footwork on P. 49, and says the first thing I wholly agree with: failed attacks are often attributed to a fault in footwork. While I have no major objections with his footwork, he says something I find atrocious: “never give ground except to your inferior” (p.52). Distance is simply the best parry, and forcing your opponent to move gives you an opportunity to control the action.
The discussion on what to do when engaged begins upon p. 54. When engaged Labat
wants you to immediately disengage, never to allow the engagement. This simplistic tactic will lead to a countertime thrust. Further, why not lay a trap in the opponent’s trap? Labat seems to have an issue with the blades being in contact. If you know what your opponent’s moves can be, you can easily counter them. The places you can attack from an engagement are limited, that is a huge advantage to the defender.
Chapter 13 is his discussion on feints. The chapter is essentially a written out Synoptic table, with lists of it x then y statements. I’d like to draw attention to one play that repeats several times. The feint is given and the opponent parries with the weak of his sword. I believe this shows a fundamental flaw in Labat’s half-thrust feint. If the half-thrust only makes it far enough to be parried by the weak, you were out of distance, and the half-thrust gave your intention away. If you are at that range and are parried, you’ll need at minimum a gathering step lunge to arrive, which is not a good position to be in when you need to disengage as
well. Finally, if your opponent understands distance well enough, a parry wouldn’t have been given. Manipulation is a tool Labat consistently misses.
A side note here, Labat advocates for the double feint in a bout, which generally is only used for training. Again the recommendation comes on p. 86.
On p. 57, Labat says there must be as many appels as movements of the hand. As stated I’ve never seen this work, leads to telegraphing, and is bad for your knees.
Chapter 14 Labat discusses cut overs. His advice on adding a feint is good, for the
same reason you do so in the disengage. Personally, I see no benefit to the cut over, versus the movement of the disengage, but over the opposing steel.
On Chapter 15, I have little to say except the redoubled lunge is not a great technique and most fencers would do better recovering and renewing the attack, or recovering forward and lunging again.
On p. 68, Labat recommends a fencer who has over-committed to charge his opponent. The fleché and the flunge are both bad plays and I’ll cite Labat as to why. He warns of being tripped by your opponent. In this play, you are moving from one over-committed attack to another, and that will get you hit by an experienced fencer.
Labat’s discussion on “Passes” is contradictory at best. A pass is to engage, step forward with the left foot, seize the opposing guard, and deliver the thrust with a step with the right foot. He calls it dangerous, and shouldn’t be used. He spends 5 pages explaining different passes and then a line about how they used to be used but not anymore. I mostly don’t understand why he is explaining a technique that isn’t used and that is bad technique
(to Labat).
Chapter 17 is about “Volts” or inquartata like movements. Fitting he brings them up here as they are a counter to the pass and the fleché. In such a linear plane, offline steps are excellent tools. While Labat says parries are better, these movements are useful in their place. Further, his advice to half-sword to get out of this seems crazy to me. I’ve never seen or heard of a smallsworder half-swording ever.
Chapter 19 is full of written out plays that you can find my translations of in table form in appendix 2. Overall the plays here are fine and in line with the rest of the text. I am irritated that play 6 of each section has so many options where 1-5 were so straight forward. My complaint here is more on presentation style. On play 6 of the 2nd group, his advice boils down to counter-attacking into a counterattack, which generally leads to doubles. He also includes the enemy parrying with the debole which I have already explained the problems therein. Amusingly, he tells you to volt after just telling you not to.
One thing I will pick on is on p. 82 he says “if your opponent disengage without design”. No fencer should ever do anything without a plan or design. To build a play with that in mind is foolish at best.
At last, we come to the high and low guards. These two guards are discussed in Chapter 21 as part of his discussion on other guards. The generally used high guard, high 2nd or the guard of St. George, has the hand at eye height and in 1st, point downward. Labat has the hand in 2nd, point up, inviting to the low lines. The arm is straight from the shoulder and
point is raised from the wrist. I worked through all 8 plays and found only one was probable.
Play one you are instructed to engage the opposing blade, and by the plate it is at
the mezzo. Labat wants you then to half-thrust feign below to draw the parry and then thrust above. The first issue I have (which applies to this guard generally) in moving to the engagement opens you up for an attack in time. Another question I have is when are you meant to move into this guard?
Further, say you do engage the adversary, the follow on play does not fit. The appropriate play is to disengage and thrust below from the adversary, why then would
he wait until engaged and you to feint? That play is the 5th play, even though it is the most
likely to happen. As I’ve said before the half-thrust is just an invitation to counter-time. A half-thrust should never draw a parry.
Option 2 states if the opponent takes counter-time on the half-thrust, you are to parry and riposte, either with sword or hand. This one is insanely difficult to pull off in the distance Labat wants you at. The counter-time lands about when the fencer realizes it is coming. Further with
the hand behind you, parries are difficult to land. A guard like Rosaroll should be used if you
intend to parry with your off-hand (i.e. hand open at chest height) Remember, Labat is telling you to leave the high guard engagement in order to do this half thrust, ergo there are two tempi where the counter-attack can arrive 1: when you move to half-thrust under, and 2: when you half thrust. This again plays into the opponent’s strength. Ignoring the two ripostes,he tells you to volt. We tried this many times and could not get it to work. Add to that Labat hates volts so why recommend it here?
Play 3 is an exchange of hand parries and not overly interesting beyond what I have said about hand parries.
We also could not get play 4 to work either as the volt protected us well.
Play 5 was the only one we could consistently get to work, however we mostly did it by counter disengaging and an expulsion which Labat does not cover.
The problem with play 6 is the time it takes to make the parry from a feint. He still wants you to feint below the arm as the counter is coming, parry, and riposte. I don’t think it is possible.
I don’t understand what he wants you to do in play 7, we ignored it.
Play 8 isn’t so much a play as advice, and every time one of us would draw to the forte, the opposing point would drop off.
After reading and playing this section I have my doubts if Labat ever faced someone using a high guard in his life. The guard is unprotective and can’t really be faught from. Worse, his responses are terrible. Our biggest question when playing this out was: when do you move into this guard? If you move in engagement range, you will be counter attacked; if outside, you lose initiative and control. Labat never addresses why or how to use this guard. While in many texts this isn’t explained, plays are shown from the guard allowing the reader to intuit the use. Labat only shows how to “defeat” the guard. I feel the best way to defeat a guard is to understand it.
I believe Labat sinks all of chapter 21 in his opening lines of said chapter:
“we ought not to look upon any thing
as good that does not procure us
some advantage”
Having played his high guard I can find no advantage, nor does Labat tell us of one. Ergo, I assume he did not know of one, and could not even conceive one, nor show why an opponent would use said guard, even if he disagreed. As he didn’t I will:
Labat’s high guard is a malformed guard of an invitation of 3rd, though it exposes too much and relies on the opponent playing your game to be effective. It is the exact opposite of a low or null-blade guard, though those guards are faster to react and defend based on the movement of the blade and the formation of the body. It does not limit the adversary into a disadvantageous attack or defend well. It appears to be a guard created to allow Labat to fill pages.
I will not repeat myself on a critique of the plays against the low guard as they are similar to those above. However, of the two, the low guard is intuitively better, and you can get into it without immediately being hit by a counterattack.
At the end of this horrible chapter, he addresses plays against the two handed grip. The offhand is placed on the forte of the blade. I’m not sure why someone would do this and Labat doesn’t say either.
Chapter 24 in his defense of the appel. There is still no reason to do it. He compounds the bad advice with a defense of the double feint with no greater success.
The rest of the text is not of much note. Other masters before and after have said the same things but better. Even his Chapter “Against several erroneous Opinions” lacks any controversial stances for those who fence.
I’m not sure of an audience I would recommend this book to. There is just so much wrong from a fundamental stand point. If you are an experienced fencer and need to read, a free book is hard to beat, but Bazancourt’s text is also on Protect Gutenberg and is infinitely better. I enjoyed it more than “Fencing and the Master”.
Post Script:
I have thought of who this text might be good for while driving home; a modern Olympic foilist or epeeist. There will be enough familiar techniques for the modern fencer to understand without too much of a language barrier. Unlike picking up an Italian text from the same time period, this text uses a lot of the same language and movements. If you, or someone you know, is a sport fencer looking to dip his or her toes into historical fencing, this might not be the worst gateway drug.
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