Musings on Dall'Agocchie, part 1

Over the past several months, I've spent a lot of time reading, re-reading, interpreting and re-interpreting Giovanni Dall'Agocchie's 1572 treatise, and I've come to some very interesting conclusions, enlightening even. Despite the fact that Dall'Agocchie spends roughly 50 pages on describing the play of the unaccompanied sword, the actions he describes - as either the attacker or the defender - add up to a dozen at most. The thing I find most interesting is that the defenses are almost identical to the provocations he mentions, and a majority of the actions at the half sword are contained in the provocation section as well. In other words, his system is a very tight, endlessly looping circle, like any other system, I suppose.

The seven most important actions Dall'Agocchie describes are as follows:

1) Single time counter thrust: a change to either guardia d'entrare or guardia di faccia, followed by a thrust to the nearest target, which is usually the chest or the face.

2) Deflection with the false edge: a parry made with either a falso dritto (coda lunga) or a falso manco (porta di ferro), followed by either cut or thrust, depending on the side.

3) Deflection with the true edge: a parry made with either a mandritto sgualimbro (coda lunga) or a riverso sgualimbro (porta di ferro), followed by either thrust or cut.

4) Yielding parry: a parry made in guardia di testa (on both sides), followed immediately by a cut, or a thrust on the dritto side.

5) Leg void: against any attack to the leg, the lead leg is voided together with a thrust to the face.

6) Body void/feinted parry: the defender makes as if to parry in one of the high guards, but stops short, and immediately counterattacks.

7) Body void with attack to hand: the defender passes back during a thrust, and throws a blow to the exposed hand/arm of the attacker.

In the next post, I'll talk a little bit more about the footwork involved with all of these defenses, as it varies subtly for each one (single vs. two vs. half).