If you like a lotta chocloate on yer biscuit...
Some of you may have received emails about various bits of fencing history for your era with mysterious comments made by me about "research" and "hypothesis". So what was I on about? Truncheons, that's what.
It actually started with a couple of things- noting that the Jiujitsuffragettes used light Indian Clubs to assault Police Officers with as well as receiving a couple of reproduction Belaying Pins in a trade and wondering how both would/could be used in earnest.
So I started to look at various stick defence sources through history and found that, typically, there were more refernces than you would think , and all are less than thorough. The usual tantalising mix that leads ot much conjecture.
The earliest are in Fiore dei Liberi's Flos Duellatorum treatises - where he shows how to defend with two sticks ( throw one hard at your opponent, follow it up and beat the aggressor with the other) as well as the bastoncello ( lit: "short stick" -about 12" long) which is used in the manner of his dagger plays, as well as showing a two techniques from a seated position, which is rare in itself.
Then we have to zoom to the VicWardian era for anything specific, other than Swetnam's idea of whittling a root into a club, tying your whittling knife to the hilt to make a buttspike and standing ready for attack. Allanson-Wynne recomends a few techniques for "shillelagh", which he defines as a stick around 24" long, as well as a few hints and tips of use of a truncheon in the home- this is done in his typically direct manner as he assumes one has disturbed a burglar who has his back turned to you while he rifles through your wife's jewellery box. The main tip to be to hit the sides of the head and not the crown for maximum effect. Likely because the cheeks will be more easily crushed and elsewhere he assumes all opponents to be wearing hats which give protection against downward blows even when not deliberately stuffed with rags for defence.
Hutton gives a very technical, though brief at two pages of "Cold Steel", account of his experiements with truncheon. These seem to be in line with his ideas and ethics of Public Service ( he originally reviewed old texts to develop fight systems for soldiers and later went on to develop Jiujitsu-based techniques for Psychiatric hospitals- he was never seemingly overly concerned too much about the everyday chap defending himself in the street) and rather than being a civilian system seems to be, though this is unstated, his idea of how Police Officers should be trained to use their tipstaves on Roughs.
It is, however, a neat precis of his ideas of how to attack (a short, "bonking" action from the wrist rather than a full arm or elbow blow to avoid stophits to the arm) and where to attack ( basically large muscle groups and the bony bits of the body). The idea that it is to be used for detention, rather than outright destruction, is in his warnings of where not to hit- simply put, the areas of the body that could lead to serious injury or death such as the jaw, the throat and the pit of the stomach. He also describes a neat trainer for the truncheon- a leather sack filled with horsehair and with a dowel for the spine. It is noticeable that his parries are minimal, aiming rather to stop hit an opponent on the wrist due to the short nature of his truncheon, again indicating that this is a Police orinted technique where they have the upperhand of carrying a weapon, or wil be agsint a short knife against which parries are of little use or effect when compared to blows to the wrist.
De Berenger is a useful person to mention at this point as he sems to give the strongest clue as to the lack of truncheon material. He likens the truncheon to the knife- an unGentlemanly weapon not fit to be carried by an Englishman who ought to use his fists ( curious from a man who is ready to shoot his adversary from a concealed carry position, but consistent with the idea of Mercy that a Gent. should display- after all De Berenger does display this mercy by loading one barrell with shot rather than ball in case the aggressor is running away rather than moving in!). This is a very common theme among self defence texts of the era, mostly as a subtext, and explains the lack of such in civilian defence texts.
Fortunately the French are not so concerned with such subtleties- Andre going so far as to state in his book on armed self defence that his aim is to learn how to use the enemy's weapons against them. To this end they cover use of the knife ( borrowing heavily from Spanish knife play to create a simplified form of such) and truncheons/weighted sticks/Life Preservers (canne matraque).
The attacks are simple and fairly obvious/intuitive, the familiar "bonking" action from a withdrawn hand held by the thigh- the stated reason for their cursory coverage being that they are actually pretty ineffective tools and you are better off with a walking stick, a knife or, even better, a revolver if you do choose to be armed.
Moving on and we get more into the 40s and 50s where Military Combatives, vastly influenced by the JiuJitsu of the Edwardian era whether knowingly or not, and take on the stick and truncheon for self defence. The American sources are the most thorough since they combine the English source's right to defend oneself with the French lack of qualms about weapon use- though the sources are still biased towards training professionals such as the Police and Armed Forces, which then trickle down through publication into civilian training. The major advantage of these is that we have photographs and even film footage that shows how the techniques were taught and applied- as well as indicating how effective they actually are.
So- the result is that I have an idea of how clubs were used and thus, a pretty solid core of how to study and teach their use. The counterargument is, of course, that one cannot apply `1950s club use to 1650s club use which, to be honest, is true. However there are enough similarities, continuities and crossovers over a large enough sample to indicate a high probablity of similar use, along with an educated yet intuitive feel for a weapon as advocated by such folk who recreate conjectural systems such as Col Dwight Mcelmore, that, as long as one does not tout the system as "Pirate cudgel" or "Barton- Wright's stick" but as"This may be how a C17th mariner used a cudgel" or "This may be how a Suffragette used a club" then I am happy enough.
It actually started with a couple of things- noting that the Jiujitsuffragettes used light Indian Clubs to assault Police Officers with as well as receiving a couple of reproduction Belaying Pins in a trade and wondering how both would/could be used in earnest.
So I started to look at various stick defence sources through history and found that, typically, there were more refernces than you would think , and all are less than thorough. The usual tantalising mix that leads ot much conjecture.
The earliest are in Fiore dei Liberi's Flos Duellatorum treatises - where he shows how to defend with two sticks ( throw one hard at your opponent, follow it up and beat the aggressor with the other) as well as the bastoncello ( lit: "short stick" -about 12" long) which is used in the manner of his dagger plays, as well as showing a two techniques from a seated position, which is rare in itself.
Then we have to zoom to the VicWardian era for anything specific, other than Swetnam's idea of whittling a root into a club, tying your whittling knife to the hilt to make a buttspike and standing ready for attack. Allanson-Wynne recomends a few techniques for "shillelagh", which he defines as a stick around 24" long, as well as a few hints and tips of use of a truncheon in the home- this is done in his typically direct manner as he assumes one has disturbed a burglar who has his back turned to you while he rifles through your wife's jewellery box. The main tip to be to hit the sides of the head and not the crown for maximum effect. Likely because the cheeks will be more easily crushed and elsewhere he assumes all opponents to be wearing hats which give protection against downward blows even when not deliberately stuffed with rags for defence.
Hutton gives a very technical, though brief at two pages of "Cold Steel", account of his experiements with truncheon. These seem to be in line with his ideas and ethics of Public Service ( he originally reviewed old texts to develop fight systems for soldiers and later went on to develop Jiujitsu-based techniques for Psychiatric hospitals- he was never seemingly overly concerned too much about the everyday chap defending himself in the street) and rather than being a civilian system seems to be, though this is unstated, his idea of how Police Officers should be trained to use their tipstaves on Roughs.
It is, however, a neat precis of his ideas of how to attack (a short, "bonking" action from the wrist rather than a full arm or elbow blow to avoid stophits to the arm) and where to attack ( basically large muscle groups and the bony bits of the body). The idea that it is to be used for detention, rather than outright destruction, is in his warnings of where not to hit- simply put, the areas of the body that could lead to serious injury or death such as the jaw, the throat and the pit of the stomach. He also describes a neat trainer for the truncheon- a leather sack filled with horsehair and with a dowel for the spine. It is noticeable that his parries are minimal, aiming rather to stop hit an opponent on the wrist due to the short nature of his truncheon, again indicating that this is a Police orinted technique where they have the upperhand of carrying a weapon, or wil be agsint a short knife against which parries are of little use or effect when compared to blows to the wrist.
De Berenger is a useful person to mention at this point as he sems to give the strongest clue as to the lack of truncheon material. He likens the truncheon to the knife- an unGentlemanly weapon not fit to be carried by an Englishman who ought to use his fists ( curious from a man who is ready to shoot his adversary from a concealed carry position, but consistent with the idea of Mercy that a Gent. should display- after all De Berenger does display this mercy by loading one barrell with shot rather than ball in case the aggressor is running away rather than moving in!). This is a very common theme among self defence texts of the era, mostly as a subtext, and explains the lack of such in civilian defence texts.
Fortunately the French are not so concerned with such subtleties- Andre going so far as to state in his book on armed self defence that his aim is to learn how to use the enemy's weapons against them. To this end they cover use of the knife ( borrowing heavily from Spanish knife play to create a simplified form of such) and truncheons/weighted sticks/Life Preservers (canne matraque).
The attacks are simple and fairly obvious/intuitive, the familiar "bonking" action from a withdrawn hand held by the thigh- the stated reason for their cursory coverage being that they are actually pretty ineffective tools and you are better off with a walking stick, a knife or, even better, a revolver if you do choose to be armed.
Moving on and we get more into the 40s and 50s where Military Combatives, vastly influenced by the JiuJitsu of the Edwardian era whether knowingly or not, and take on the stick and truncheon for self defence. The American sources are the most thorough since they combine the English source's right to defend oneself with the French lack of qualms about weapon use- though the sources are still biased towards training professionals such as the Police and Armed Forces, which then trickle down through publication into civilian training. The major advantage of these is that we have photographs and even film footage that shows how the techniques were taught and applied- as well as indicating how effective they actually are.
So- the result is that I have an idea of how clubs were used and thus, a pretty solid core of how to study and teach their use. The counterargument is, of course, that one cannot apply `1950s club use to 1650s club use which, to be honest, is true. However there are enough similarities, continuities and crossovers over a large enough sample to indicate a high probablity of similar use, along with an educated yet intuitive feel for a weapon as advocated by such folk who recreate conjectural systems such as Col Dwight Mcelmore, that, as long as one does not tout the system as "Pirate cudgel" or "Barton- Wright's stick" but as"This may be how a C17th mariner used a cudgel" or "This may be how a Suffragette used a club" then I am happy enough.