One of the things that Giovanni Dall’Agocchie’s Dell’Arte di Scrimia is best known for among today’s martial artists is his unaccompanied sword form. (This starts on 11recto – page 12 of William Jherek Swanger’s translation.)

What I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere is Dall’Agocchie’s sword and dagger (or sword and cloak) form. That’s probably because he doesn’t explicitly describe such a form. But I believe that it is strongly implied in the text. To prove that, we need to look at the order in which he talks about guards.

There are two main orderings of guards he uses, which I am going to call the “pedagogical order” and the “form order”. The pedagogical order is used throughout the book whenever Dall’Agocchie is walking through a list of actions. This includes discussions of defenses, provocations, and counters to provocations. All of these are described depending on your starting guard. First you get the defenses from coda lunga stretta, then the defenses from coda lunga alta, and so on.

The order in which the guards are worked through is always identical. When using this for unaccompanied sword, ignore the dagger position, and do not use the final guard (it is only used when you have an accompanying weapon):

sword in coda lunga stretta, dagger in cinghiale porta di ferro

sword in coda lunga alta, dagger in porta di ferro alta

sword in porta di ferro stretta, dagger in coda lunga alta

sword in cinghiale porta di ferro, dagger in guardia di testa

guardia d’alicorno with the right foot forward, dagger in cinghiale porta di ferro

guardia d’alicorno with the left foot forward, dagger in porta di ferro alta

The “form order” only appears twice in the book. When telling us “how to step in the guards” the order we get is:

Advancing: coda lunga stretta cinghiale porta di ferro porta di ferro stretta coda lunga alta guardia d’alicorno



Retreating: porta di ferro stretta coda lunga alta porta di ferro stretta cinghiale porta di ferro coda lunga stretta



Note that the retreating section is basically “unwinding” the forward section.

On 35recto (page 40 of Swanger’s translation) Dall’Agocchie tells us how to “step in guards” when we use the sword and dagger:

sword in coda lunga stretta, dagger in cinghiale porta di ferro alta

sword in cinghiale porta di ferro, dagger in guardia di testa

sword in porta di ferro (stretta implied), dagger in coda lunga alta

sword in coda lunga alta, dagger in porta di ferro alta

sword in guardia d’alicorno, dagger in cinghiale porta di ferro

Please note:

While Dall’Agocchie does not give us explicit directions about what cuts and thrusts we are using here (as he does in the unaccompanied form), he does make it clear that the sword is moving from guard to guard in this section (for example, “But when your sword falls into porta di ferro…”). He uses the same phrase as used to describe the unaccompanied form – this is “stepping in guards”. He mentions the guards in the same order as the Advancing half of the unaccompanied solo form. He ends by pointing out that this applies whether stepping forward or back. This is the only time other than the unaccompanied solo form when guards are presented in this order. This is the only time when accompanying arms are discussed and guardia d’alicorno is not discussed as two separate guards (one right foot forward, one left foot forward).

All of this adds up to my belief that Dall’Agocchie intended this as an accompanied solo form, to match the unaccompanied solo form presented earlier. I’ve never seen this mentioned in any of the Bolognese discussions online, but are any of you already practicing this form?