A common trait of a bad fencer, especially in the SCA where cuts aren’t allowed, is the high parry. This is where one drives both swords up high such that short of breaking measure there is no viable recourse other than unseemly grappling.

Or so I thought. L’Ange has corrected that misconception by teaching a thrust from Secunda that begins with just such a high parry. Well not exactly, because the “bad” parry has you drive the guards up really high. For L’Ange’s version, you don’t need to go quite so high because you are instructed to bend the knee and duck the head.

As soon as the attack misses and your opponent begins to recover, drop the point and thrust as per illustration 10.

In practice we find that we are more likely to aim the the belly with a downwards sloping thrust, but the theory is still the same: learn to thrust in Prima and High Secunda and you’ll have a significant advantage over the common fencer.

Summary

This wraps up chapter 8. Consistently L’Ange has been showing us parries that I’ve found to be far easier to achieve than the single-time counter thrust, at the expense of requiring a separate action for the riposte.

An interesting experiment would be to see how long one could use just the parries. Imagine you are playing the town guard trying to subdue the drunk son of an important official.