Osprey - General Military - Knight - The Warrior and ... - Brego-weard

causes for challenging an opponent to a duel — murder, treason, heresy, urging disloyally
to one's lord, betrayal, falsehood, and the use ol a maiden or lady - before going to lay
out the procedure for bringing the complaint and setting up the fight itself. One of the
first plates depicts two combatants in full armour sitting within a fenced arena with their
banners and their attendants, separated by screens. They would look very much like
boxers except for the armour and the coffin each has brought.
Talhoffer's teaching was not strictly tor nobles. His school, set up in Zurich around
1450, almost certainly had burghers and other non-knightly (but by no means low
class) adherents as well as nobles, men equally protective of their honour and status
and willing to fight for it. His Fecbtbuch also includes other forms of duel, fought with
a variety of weapons, armoured and unarmoured, mounted and dismounted. Perhaps
the most bizarre is a series of plates dealing with the fight between a man and a woman,
the former standing waist-deep in a pit whilst the woman stands above him armed
with a rock in a sock, or rather wrapped in a veil! The man aims to tip the woman into
the pit whilst the woman tries to drag him out. As with all of these judicial combats
the victor was reckoned to be in the right, their victory having been granted by God
in recognition of the justice of their cause.
Not all of the texts left to us are as specific about their aims as Talhoffer's, but it is
still the case that these masters appear to have been employed to provide quite specific
combat training for the one-to-one duel. There is no indication that they taught
broader concepts necessary for the battlefield, and the focus of most of the texts is on
dismounted combat with the longsword.
TACTICS AND TRAINING -}=>•
A knight trains at the pell.
He uses a stave rather than
a sword, but is wearing full
armour, perhaps in order
to condition himself to its
weight. (The Art Archive)
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