Istruzione sulla Scherma a Cavallo - Weiss - 1830&1837

[admin]

1830 - http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=rOwy ... &q&f=false

1837 - http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=vmim ... &q&f=false

Some lovely illustrations in this.

[Alex Kiermayer]

Wow, very interesting. Judging from the illustrations this is a copy of le Marchants method. Have you read into the text? (My Italian is limited to food and basic fencing actions)

[admin]

No I haven't had the chance to have a proper read so far, just scanning my eyes through it.

[Alex Kiermayer]

It seems that it at least has the same descriptions of cuts and the same divisions of movements.

[Dave Long]

The "Parte Terza" also has very similar text: 6 divisions* in line, 6 divisions at speed, attack and defence in line, attack and defense at speed.

Comparing to Le Marchant, we seem to have gained running at heads and lost the "sword arm protect" (in my opinion, a rather poor trade). Le Marchant also addresses (p75) the near side pursuit, which (perhaps due to skimming and very poor italian) I did not find in Weiss.

* I am not sure these are the same exercises: again, it may be poor italian, but Le Marchant gives some individual and 2 vs. 1 exercises while it appears to me that Weiss is always talking about a whole line performing an exercise.