I have something to confess - I have been having heretical thoughts about the text of Giganti, as translated by Tom Leoni. The following is the result of a couple of hours of research. I could be wrong, and if you have evidence that I am wrong, please show it to me and I would be happy to edit this entry. I do not want to mislead others.
Additionally, if the geometry and techniques resulting from this end up being ineffective, I will edit this entry to reflect such, so that others do not begin down an ineffective path.
First, links to the two plates I will be talking about:
Why Should I Even Care?
One thing which has always bothered me about Leoni's Giganti is how Leoni specifies that in the inside guard, your tip should be pointing toward your opponent's right shoulder. There are several reasons that this just does not feel like it works.
First off, it is impossible for you and your opponent to both be in this position. Sure, if you can force your opponent out of that position and take it for yourself, it's nice. But unless you are in an unsafe and impractical position which exposes both of you, then it is impossible for both you and your opponent to be on the inside line.
Second, the thrust is an unsafe action from the inside line. Giganti is concerned with safety above all things. He repeatedly chastises people who fight in a way that would cause what he calls a "double-hit". However, if you take your opponent's sword and then thrust from Leoni's Giganti guard, you create a line for your opponent to thrust at you. If your opponent is an inexperienced fencer, he might do exactly that. Or if he has a dagger that he intends to parry with, or any number of other, unpredictable factors.
Note that it is possible to perform a safe thrust from Leoni's Giganti guard, by pushing your hand toward your opponent's blade and then directing your sword to them. However it is slower, and from experience it ends up feeling more like a tempo-and-a-half action, rather than a single-tempo action.
Additionally, I have been recently thinking about alternate ways to adopt an inside guard. This does give me an agenda in this - I am working from necessity and looking to historical precedent for guidance. I will not go into my entire argument for this, but I feel it is good way to do things, due to the ambiguity of historical sources in many places.
What Does the Text Specify About the Plates?
Due to the above reasons, I decided to take a closer look at the actual text and words of the translation. In the actual text of Leoni's translation of Giganti's words on guards, it isn't specified which guard is inside and which one is outside. Is this actually true in the historical source?
Survey says nope, as far as I can tell. This makes sense, because Leoni's translations are beautiful, generally carrying the intent of the words faithfully. In the translation by Leoni, the order is not specified. It is true that the inside guard is mentioned first in the text, but that doesn't necessarily mean that figure 2 is the inside guard, and figure 3 is the outside guard.
How Does the Text Specify You Should Place Your Blade?
Since there was no direct reference to an image which I could find, I decided to dive into an attempted translation of the text. My Italian is nonexistent, but with the help of multiple dictionaries, I was able to figure out that the reference text I was using didn't explicitly rule out the idea that by saying that you should place your sword "over" theirs, it could mean that you should put it "between" you and their sword.
It's a bit of a stretch, but stay with me.
What Do the Images Themselves State?
For these images, the text specifies that one is on the inside line, and the other is on the outside line. Given that the earlier PDF I linked doesn't have very good images, we turn to a later translation of this book:
And the high-resolution images for these plates:
(indicated by Leoni as the fencer to the left taking the blade on the inside)
(indicated by Leoni as the fencer to the left taking the blade on the outside)
It is worth noting at this point that these are not the only reproductions and material that I looked at. These are just the highest-quality, and none of the other material contradicted this material. Indeed, in the versions of the plates used in Leoni's book, Figure 3 looks like they are on the inside, as I argue below.
I looked desperately at many different reproductions of these plates. In particular, I looked for indications of which sword was closer to us at the cross. This is the easiest piece to see aside from hand position, and even this is infuriatingly difficult to decode. Giganti does not help us, expecting us to figure out which fencer is in a better position by ourselves.
Figure 2, even in this higher-quality version, is infuriating. It is hard to tell which blade is closer to the viewer at the cross. It might be the fencer on the left? Additionally, the shading seems to indicate that the fencer on the left has his hand tilted to his left, with respect to his arm. If the image is to be believed, we can see the start of his fingers, which would not be possible were he in quarta or between terza and quarta. This means he is between seconda or terza. As for the fencer on the right, there is nothing noteworthy about his stance.
This seems to indicate that these fencers are on the inside line, and that the fencer on the left is pressing on his opponent's sword with his false edge. This seems less than ideal for the fencer on the left, even though his sword is closer to being pointed at the other guy's face.
Figure 3, at this higher quality, becomes far clearer. The fencer on the left's sword is clearly closer to us at the cross. This means that the fencers are on the inside line. The fencer on the left is once again in seconda. It seems pretty clear that this is on the inside line. As well, the fencer on the right has his sword pointed more toward the fencer on the left's face. Lastly, from the quillon positioning of the fencer on the right, it seems like his tip is pointed more toward his opponent's left shoulder.
If both of these are on the inside, then Giganti has explicitly lied in his manual. I would prefer to imagine that Giganti is not lying, so I imagine that the one which looks more like the outside line is Figure 2, since the single line of the fencer on the right's sword drawn over the fencer on the left's sword makes it look as though the fencer on the right's sword might be closer to the viewer after all. This results in something interesting.
Context
Giganti cares very much about the idea of counter-guards. He mentions them in this section of the book, and in an earlier section states that "guards" aren't the appropriate thing to create, but that you should always work to create a counter-guard instead of a guard. If we take this into account (and ignore the fact that the models change between plates), and we assume that Figure 2 depicts the outside line, we get the following sequence:
In Figure 2, the fencer on the right (Dexter) assumes a completely generic guard in terza. The fencer on the left (Sinestro), being a knowledgeable and savvy fencer, assumes a counter-guard on the outside. Note that his tip is pointing at his opponent's head more than the reverse. This fact is hard to see at first, but because Dexter is taller than Sinestro, it is true.
In this plate, we should model ourselves after Sinestro.
In Figure 3, Dexter sees Sinestro's counter-guard. Dexter, also being a savvy fencer, adopts a counter-guard on the inside line. Presumably there was a disengage somewhere in here. Note that Sinestro has not changed his guard in any major fashion. Dexter now firmly points toward his opponent's head, and, assuming that Dexter's wrist is bent and pointing his tip at Sinestro's left shoulder, this forms a ramp which would push Sinestro's tip off-line if Sinestro tries to thrust directly in. We can tell from Dexter's body posture that he expects to be on the inside line, whereas Sinestro still expects to be on the outside line.
In this plate, we should model ourselves after Dexter.
Further Context
One last interesting note - the postures specified by me here, in which the inside guard points over your opponent's left shoulder and the outside guard points over your opponent's right shoulder, force your opponent to make the largest disengage possible if they want to disengage.
I have also gone through several plates separately and this alternate inside-line posture seems to make quite a bit of sense.
It seems safer against double-kills, which is a deep concern of Giganti's. It also seems generally easier to execute the actions specified by Giganti in this guard. And lastly, it allows for a neutral position between two fencers in an inside guard, so that they can wrestle over the center line and force each other to disengage. As well, my intuition tells me that Giganti fought with far heavier swords than later period masters. This position would allow you to pivot around your blade's center of balance, which would allow for much more agile movements than otherwise.
Closing Remarks
Obviously, this means nothing without testing. I have done separate geometry about this alternate guard, and will be bringing this new paradigm to practice on Thursday. There, it will face a number of opponents. I will need to bring it multiple practices in order to confirm or deny its efficacy. After all, this is why we imitate the period masters - they are theoretically the most effective fencers of a bygone age.
I hope this has been educational, or at least entertaining, to all who read this.
All references for this entry with the exception of Tom Leoni's excellent book were found on the Wiktenauer page on Nicoletto Giganti's book, Scola, overo teatro.
Tom Leoni's excellent book is a fantastic resource which I still suggest you get. It is available at this link.
