Medieval Sword Fighting: Historical European Martial Arts

Picture a darkened training hall in fifteenth-century Germany. Two men circle each other, longswords gleaming in torchlight. What happens next isn't the wild hacking you've seen in movies—it's precise, geometric, almost mathematical. These fighters are executing techniques passed down through generations, movements as codified and refined as any Asian martial art.

For centuries, we assumed this knowledge was lost. European sword fighting was dismissed as crude, unsophisticated—just strong men bashing away at each other. Then scholars started actually reading the manuscripts. What they found stunned them: complete fighting systems with named techniques, tactical principles, and philosophical frameworks every bit as complex as kung fu or kenjutsu.

Today, practitioners of Historical European Martial Arts are piecing together these forgotten combat sciences from treatises written by master swordsmen who staked their lives and reputations on these methods. Two traditions dominate the longsword world. From Germany comes the mysterious lineage of Johannes Liechtenauer, whose teachings were encoded in cryptic verse to protect them from outsiders. From Italy emerges Fiore dei Liberi, a veteran of countless duels who illustrated his deadly knowledge in stunning illuminated manuscripts.

These weren't theorists. They were killers teaching killers. And we're only now understanding what they knew.

Now let's travel to fourteenth century Germany, where a shadowy figure named Johannes Liechtenauer created something extraordinary—a complete fighting system encoded in cryptic verse called the Zettel. And here's what makes this fascinating: Liechtenauer deliberately made his teachings nearly impossible to understand. The verses are riddled with invented terminology, compressed phrases, and obscure metaphors. Why? Because sword fighting was a trade secret. Masters charged substantial fees for their instruction, and if you could simply read a manuscript and learn everything, who would pay for lessons?

The Zettel reads almost like a secret code. Take the concept of Vor and Nach—literally "before" and "after." This isn't just about who attacks first. It's about seizing the initiative, about controlling the tempo of the fight the way a chess grandmaster controls the board several moves ahead. When you have the Vor, you're dictating terms. Your opponent is reacting to you, always half a beat behind. Lose it, and you're scrambling to recover, fighting on their terms until you can steal that initiative back.

Then there are the five master cuts—Zorn, Krump, Twer, Schielhau, and Scheitelhau. Each one isn't just a way to strike. They're simultaneously attacks and defenses, designed to threaten your opponent while closing the line against their blade. The Zornhau, the wrath cut, doesn't just crash down in anger. It deflects an incoming blow while driving your point toward their face in one fluid motion.

Perhaps the most sophisticated concept is fighting from the bind—that moment when both swords have crossed and you're close enough to feel your opponent's pressure through the steel. Here, Liechtenauer's students learned to read intention through blade contact, responding with techniques called Winden, the windings, that could trap, lever, or redirect an enemy's sword.

Fortunately, later masters decoded these mysteries. Sigmund Ringeck wrote extensive glosses explaining each verse. Hans Talhoffer created illustrated fight books showing the techniques in action. Without their work, Liechtenauer's genius might have remained locked in those impenetrable verses forever.

While the Germans were developing their cryptic verse traditions in the north, a very different approach was taking shape in the courts and battlefields of Italy. Fiore dei Liberi was not your typical medieval master. This was a man who claimed to have fought five duels to the death without the protection of armor, winning each one. He wandered across the Italian peninsula for decades, serving lords from Pisa to Milan, training knights in the deadly arts of combat.

Around 1409, after a lifetime of practical experience, Fiore finally committed his knowledge to parchment in what he called the Fior di Battaglia—the Flower of Battle. And here's what makes this treatise remarkable: it's comprehensive in a way that almost nothing else from the period attempts to be. Fiore doesn't just teach you the longsword. He starts with wrestling, moves through dagger work, includes single-handed swords, polearms, and even mounted combat. Everything connects. Every technique builds on what came before.

The heart of Fiore's system lies in what he calls "plays"—sequential movements that flow from one position into another like moves on a chessboard. You enter in one guard, your opponent responds, and suddenly you're three moves deep into a choreographed sequence of destruction. His guards, or posta, have evocative names: the Woman's Guard, the Iron Gate, the Window Guard. Each one sets up specific offensive and defensive options.

Now, here's where Italian technique diverges sharply from the German tradition. Where Liechtenauer's students often emphasized powerful cutting attacks, Fiore shows a pronounced love for the thrust. The point of the sword becomes a constant threat, always seeking gaps in armor, always pressuring the centerline. Italian fencing would carry this preference forward for centuries.

Fiore himself was quite frank about his methods. He trained men who then shared his secrets without permission, and it clearly bothered him. His treatise was partly an attempt to preserve authentic technique against what he saw as dangerous dilution by lesser masters.

Now here's where things get really interesting, and frankly, where most Hollywood depictions fall apart completely. When two knights faced each other in full plate armor, everything we've discussed so far essentially went out the window. Those beautiful cuts and sweeping strikes? Utterly useless against properly fitted steel. A longsword edge simply cannot cut through plate armor—the physics don't work. So what did skilled fighters actually do?

They developed an entirely separate combat system that looks almost nothing like unarmored fencing. Half-swording became the dominant technique—gripping your own blade with your gauntleted left hand while holding the hilt normally. This transforms the longsword into a short, incredibly precise thrusting weapon. You're now hunting for gaps: the armpits, the inside of the elbow, the visor slits, the groin, behind the knee. Millimeters matter.

Even more striking is the murder stroke, or Mordhau in German. You flip the sword entirely, gripping the blade with both hands and swinging the crossguard and pommel like a warhammer. That steel crossguard concentrating force into a small point? It can dent helmets, break bones through plate, or hook an opponent's leg to throw them down.

And that brings us to wrestling—absolutely central to armored combat. Both Fiore and the German masters dedicated extensive material to throws, joint locks, and dagger work while encased in steel. Judicial duels in armor were brutal, intimate affairs. Two men circling, clinching, trying to wrestle each other to the ground where a specialized armor-piercing dagger called a rondel could find its mark.

Here's the myth that needs to die: armored knights were not slow, lumbering tanks. A well-fitted suit of plate distributed weight across the entire body. Tests with reproduction armor show trained fighters can sprint, do cartwheels, mount horses unassisted. These were elite athletes in sophisticated protective equipment, executing complex grappling techniques while carrying weapons. The real science of armored combat was far more athletic and technically demanding than any movie has ever shown us.

So here we are in the twenty-first century, and something remarkable is happening. These fighting systems that lay dormant in museum archives for centuries are coming back to life. The Historical European Martial Arts movement—HEMA—has exploded over the past two decades, with thousands of practitioners worldwide picking up steel longswords and actually testing what Liechtenauer and Fiore were teaching.

The process is fascinating. Scholars pore over manuscripts, debating translations and interpreting illustrations. Then practitioners take those interpretations into the training hall and actually try them against resisting opponents. Does this technique work? Does it flow into the next one as the master described? It's a constant feedback loop between academic research and physical experimentation.

HEMA tournaments now draw competitors from dozens of countries, with organizations like HEMAC and the HEMA Alliance coordinating international events. Fighters wear protective gear that would have baffled medieval swordsmen—fencing masks, padded jackets, steel gauntlets—but the techniques they're using would be instantly recognizable to a student of Fiore's school.

What strikes me most about this revival is what it reveals about our ancestors. These weren't primitive people swinging metal clubs. They developed sophisticated, efficient systems for armed combat that rival any martial art practiced today. Every technique answers a problem. Every movement has purpose.

If this has sparked your curiosity, I'd encourage you to look up a HEMA club near you. These arts aren't just history anymore. They're alive again, and they're waiting to be learned.