In part 1 of Gaining the opponent’s blade, I talked about what the gain is and started describing how to do it. In part 2, I continued with some advice on how to accomplish a good gain by looking at what it means to be “in presence,” I introduced the three types of gain as laid out in the Vienna Anonymous, and then I condensed all that into four instructions, or admonitions.
Today we’ll wrap up with a discussion of the ‘whys’ behind the gain. Why should we do it? What’s the tactical use of gaining the opponent’s blade?1
***All of the quotes from the Vienna Anonymous manuscript in this issue are from Tom Leoni’s translation.
***All of the quotes from Ridolfo Capoferro’s book in this issue are from the Swanger-Wilson translation.
The why
In every sword alone play in Capoferro’s book, one of the fencers is gaining the blade of the other. Normally the one gaining wins the exchange, unless Capoferro is instructing what to do when you are gained yourself. Giganti advises that you always observe your opponent’s guard, then form a counterguard that will bind the opponent’s blade. Fabris and the author of the Vienna Anonymous (VA) wrote that gaining/finding the opponent’s blade is the first part of victory. The VA adds, “[f]or this reason you need to learn to do it very well - more than with any other technique.”2
Clearly there is some benefit there, yeah? So what is it?
The author of the Vienna Anonymous described three reasons to gain the opponent’s sword:
1. To enter more safely into the misura larga so that you can proceed to attack the opponent more safely; 2. When you gain and simultaneously shut his sword out of line, to stay safe and also to force the opponent to make a tempo in which you can strike him; 3. To uncover the opponent.3
I’m going to break those concepts down into more granular ideas, and add a little to them.
Six things gaining the opponent’s sword does for your fight
Gaining the opponent’s blade has several purposes - some of which I’ve hinted at or mentioned earlier. Many of these are closely interrelated, but I’ll describe six of the things I find most useful about employing the gain, so you can think of ways to work them into your fencing.
1) You control the line of attack and their sword
When you successfully gain you are controlling the line of engagement and the potential for your blade to physically dominate their blade is high - if even for a brief moment. All of fencing tactics are geared to giving you that brief moment of control and foreknowledge. Using the gain well allows you to achieve that moment and use it to your advantage.
2) You constrain their blade and their actions
You also are constraining their blade and their actions, if they have the experience or wisdom to understand what’s happening.4 Your control of the line is keeping them from the direct action they were setting up to achieve. It’s effectively locked them out of what they wanted to do. You are upsetting their plan and, hopefully, flummoxing5 them, making them have to enact a new plan.
3) You create a safe space
Recall the first of the VA’s reasons for gaining:
To enter more safely into the misura larga6 so that you can proceed to attack the opponent more safely
When you have successfully gained, you’ve shut your opponent out of the line they were on, creating a safe space for yourself for a brief time while they react to your constraint. From this safe space, you can gain more advantage, or even outright attack, depending on the circumstances and your opponent’s actions.
This is a point that many whom I watch in rapier fencing matches need to internalize better. I see fencers step forward into their opponent’s range without gaining the blade or otherwise controlling the space between them and their opponent. They are fully exposed and relying on their twitch reactions to save them. Or they are simply unaware that they are in their opponent’s attack range. Whatever reason they do it, it ends generally the same way - the opponent has a clear and unimpeded line to the target, and if that opponent is quicker or has some more understanding of technique, they have the strong advantage.
By covering the opponent’s blade and closing off that full exposure, you don’t have to rely as much on your processing and reaction speed. You have forced them to either attack into a protected area, where you need only turn the wrist to parry their lunge, or they have to make a movement to get back to where they can freely attack - a movement that you should be expecting and prepared for.
4) You reduce their options
As I said earlier, these concepts overlap. Constraining the opponent’s actions is generally the same thing as limiting their options. But there’s an important enough nuance that it deserves its own section.
The act of pointing my sword at you, my opponent, and extending it a little categorizes your options into four possibilities. It effectively collects all your possible actions into four broad options. I am making you have to choose to attack on the left side or right side of my blade, and above it or below it. So you can aim to hit me in the upper left, upper right, lower left, or lower right.
Gaining your blade, then, allows me to take away one of those four possibilities (or easily hit you if you try to attack there anyway), and allows me to focus attention on the ones remaining that are most likely. This should have the effect of reducing my own cognitive load, while possibly increasing yours by making you be the one that has to readjust and maybe even panic.
Defining the space between us and then taking away an option usually means you have to take more and sometimes larger movements while I can take smaller ones, relatively speaking, to maintain the advantage. This is the essence of Capoferro’s plates 7 and 16 (and of course others), and it’s the essence of how the VA wants us to fight. Really, I think it’s the essence of the northern Italian system.
5) You force an action
Here we look at the second reason the VA gave for gaining the blade:
When you gain and simultaneously shut his sword out of line, to stay safe and also to force the opponent to make a tempo in which you can strike him;
When you skillfully control the line and have stymied their initial plan, you are funneling them in a certain direction or toward a certain action that you’re ideally prepared for.
When you gain, the end result can be (and usually is) to force an action from them - one that ideally you’re expecting. At the least your opponent has to move in a way that isn’t an immediate threat to you.7 This hands you an ideal tempo to use to gain more advantage, or to strike if you’re prepared for it and at the appropriate distance.
In any game involving an opponent, you have an advantage when you can anticipate what your opponent will do. Gaining their blade is a tool that can help you do exactly that.
6) You uncover the opponent
And here’s the VA’s third reason to gain the opponent’s blade:
To uncover the opponent.
When your opponent moves to get away from the line you now have control of, or to get around your sword, they necessarily uncover another target.8 You should be aware of and ready for that opening, even if just to gain more advantage.9 Again, that movement you provoked is what you should have been expecting.
A note on Finding vs Gaining
There is some debate on whether finding the blade means the same thing as gaining it.10 Here’s where I come down on this debate:
For me, finding is the act of attempting to gain or attempting an action on the blade in general. Once a blade is gained, that means to me that it’s been successfully found.
For instance, if I move into measure without having first gained my opponent’s blade, and then try to do so, that is a movement - a tempo - that my opponent can use against me. That is a find (not yet a gain) which is being used poorly.
You can, however, use that find as a tactic to provoke the opponent into moving if you plan it that way and Have A Plan. And that, to me, is why I think it’s important to see them as separate - you can make use of the concept of finding the blade independent of the gain.
So ‘to find’ is the action that leads to a gain, but it’s not synonymous. When you are seeking to control the sword, you are finding it. When you have the sword controlled/gained, you have found it.
This division is supported by the Vienna Anonymous treatise.11 The VA uses the word for ‘finding’ to describe the act of bringing your sword to your opponent’s in order to perform an action on the blade - whether gaining, parrying, beating, pushing away, etc.12 But they clearly define what the gain is and how to go about it.13
FINAL THOUGHT
Alright. Now you have read more about the concept of the gain than you ever thought you’d see in print!
I’ll leave you with one final thought for this final installment, though I won’t get into detail here. Maybe consider it a puzzle for you advanced fencers, though it shouldn’t be a difficult one.
Just like I believe finding and gaining aren’t the same thing (though one leads to the other), gaining the blade and the stringere are not necessarily the same either, though the stringere of the sword in rapier play14 includes a gain of the blade.
I’ll detail my thoughts on the stringere in an upcoming post, as mentioned, so for now, I’ll just set that to simmer in your brains.
I hope this helps!
Next up:
Northern Italian Postures, Part 6: The postures of the Vienna Anonymous manuscript (Paid subscribers)
The lunge and its mechanics - part 1 (All subscribers)
Leoni, Tom. 2019. Vienna Anonymous on Fencing: A Rapier Masterclass from the 17th Century. Lulu.com. Page 14.
Ibid. Pages 14-15.
If they don’t have the experience to know that they are being constrained, then they’ll often just attack into your gain. In which case you should have set it up well enough that they are attacking to their detriment.
Flummox: verb - to perplex (someone) greatly; bewilder.
The misura larga is effectively the farthest away you can be from an opponent, but still be in danger of a lunging attack, and/or still be a threat to them. It’s also called “wide measure.”
I feel it’s important to note that we’ve just described a stringere of the sword. But I’ll publish a separate series on the stringere.
Swanger, Jerek, and William Wilson. 2009. Great Representation of the Art and Use of Fencing by Ridolofo Capoferro. Edited by Roger Kay. Of Stringering the Sword, Page 38. (“The sword is stringered for the purpose of coming to measure, or to uncover the adversary from outside and from inside, high and low…”)
Leoni, Vienna Anonymous, Page 16. (“This will make for a long tempo that will give you ample opportunity to strike him or to gain some advantage over him.”)
Ibid. Glossary.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. See pages 14-22.
Important distinction! A hint, here, about the stringere question.
The color quadrant photo is excellent and really shows what you're discussing. Thank you!
This helped a lot! I have the feeling I'm going to be referring back to this series on gaining for a long time to come.