I’m a big fan of Meyer’s work. I suppose I would have to be, given that I teach his dussack system. That being said, perhaps one of my greatest frustrations when working with his dagger material is that he opted not only to leave the work unfinished (and then promptly died shortly thereafter), but also to wait until near the very end to detail his precepts for fighting with the dagger. In some ways this makes sense, as the precepts are much like condensations of his already described material, but the basic nature of these precepts seem like something that should be covered earlier in the treatise. Despite that complaint, Meyer’s dagger system is still fascinating and wonderful, so I figured I’d write about it.

Here is Joachim Meyer’s first precept on fighting with the dagger:

“The First Precept

Note in the Onset, when you have grasped your dagger such that the blade extends from the little finger side of your hand, if you then hold your dagger in whatever guard you will, either below or above, on the right or left, then take heed that you always thrust at him firstly over his arm, whether it be from inside or outside; and with this thrusting over, you will force his arm down; then quickly thrust to the opening, or jab with the pommel. In this way when you thrust at him outside over his right arm, and force it downward, as I have also said before, then go to him quickly with your pommel over his arm up at his face; if he wards this off and goes up, then go through under his right arm as he is going up, and thrust inside at his face or chest.

Now if you thrust at him from inside over his right arm, then force it down toward you or your right side. Pull, then thrust through his face quickly from your left outside over his right before he has come back up with his arm. You shall also be diligent secondly to thrust at his hand and arm, either from below, across, or from above; then forcefully follow up with Cross Thrusts.”

Doesn’t that seem like something he should have said earlier than right near the end of the book? I thought so, too.

That being said, this precept is incredibly valuable, and it is worth reviewing. Notice that he doesn’t give you an attack right away, but advises you to control the opponent’s weapon before you begin your attack. This makes a lot of sense given the nature of dagger fighting of any kind; every slice or thrust is potentially life-threatening, and so getting that blade under control is a first priority. Looking at the stances Meyer uses, it becomes increasingly clear why control would be the first checkpoint to cross:

Look at Meyer’s positions of Oberhut (right) and Underhut (left). The points of those daggers are direct threats to the opponent, and it would be comparable to suicide to charge in with a direct attack if that is what’s standing in your way. Control should always be your first priority when working against such a thrust oriented, agile weapon.

As a minor note, one thing we noticed is that this precept works best against the Oberhut position, as Underhut is quite difficult to manage in the same way, and Kreutzhut is…well, it’s Kreutzhut, so I wouldn’t suggest this strategy, anyway.

While working with the first precept and controlling from the outside, my group noticed that using an offline passing step with the rear foot allowed us to adequately evade the point of the opponent’s dagger, while simultaneously gaining control of the weapon arm. We noticed that trying to go straight in with an increasing step almost invariably resulted in us getting stabbed in the face or chest, so we opted for an angular step, instead. This then allowed the off hand to come in and grasp if necessary, and it was familiar to us because of our previous work with Meyer’s Oberhut techniques (the first of which also uses the pommel in striking as well as the pulling away described in the precept). Some might find it curious that Meyer mentions striking with the pommel immediately afterward, but once the opponent’s arm is under control and pulled down, it’s quite easy to release upward and strike. One issue that became quite obvious is that once pressure is released on the opponent’s arm there is a high likelihood of a point being sunken into your ribs. This calls for explanation. What we found most helpful is to keep the off hand on the opponent’s weapon arm so that the pommel strike could be accomplished, but it is also worth noting that once pressure is released it is natural for a person to try and regain correct positioning before continuing the struggle…most of the time. This can be seen in our (quite outdated) video on Meyer’s Oberhut techniques:

Something else we noticed was that when coming from the inside, the forward step was just as suicidal. Instead we opted for an angular step toward the right with the lead foot to evade the point (provided the opponent was in Oberhut), and this allowed us to control the arm quite nicely. Pulling the opponent’s dagger arm toward our right side allowed for a similar thrusting follow up as we were able to do when controlling from the outside, and if our opponent protected their face with their off hand, we were quite able to stab at the arms or hand to bring that guard down and then make a ruin of their face.

Something we noticed quite quickly was that managing the weapon arm of the opponent lends itself to disarming techniques. This can sometimes happen if the opponent hooks their dagger against your arm if you go in from the outside, but many of these present themselves when you control when going from the inside, as can be seen here:

Admittedly, this video needs to be redone, as there are some issues with it that I want to fix, but it’s worth looking at.

One of our members is left hand dominant, so naturally we wondered how well the precept can work when being used by a left handed fencer. What we discovered was that the attacking (left-handed) fencer readily achieves throws from this position when coming in aggressively, demonstrated by the smaller fencer here:

Once again, these videos need to be redone and reworked, but they give an idea of some of the things we discovered when working with this precept.

Cheers.