Demystifying Fabris’s Book II – Single Sword

No material in all of fencing is talked about in such hushed tones as Fabris’s book II. “Oooooh, that’s a book II guard” “You’ve gotta spend years studying book I before you’ll even begin to be ready for book II” “I just do book I, book II is scary”. I’m here to tell you that book II is far more approachable than you might think and to break it down for you into something that’s easily digestible. 

Before starting on this I kept looking for someone else’s breakdown, but couldn’t find one written down anywhere. I’ve seen people discussing this or that rule, but I’ve yet to run across an entire overview. I’d taken a few glances at the material myself, but Fabris doesn’t really do us any favors by using the word “rule” and then instead of it being a sentence or two, he goes on and on with multiple pages of theory followed by a bunch of strange looking case studies. When I’m in the middle of a fight, I just don’t have that much brain space. If someone is trying to stab me in the face, I can keep one, maybe two thoughts in my head at the same time and that’s it. I just don’t have time to be trying to remember what someone wrote on in the seventh paragraph of page 221 and how it differs from the fourth paragraph on page 220. I need to hit someone without eating it in the process. Hopefully this guide will help you do just that. With that, let’s begin.

Rule #1 – Go!

And I don’t mean the boardgame. 

Rule #1 is the foundation for all of book II. The idea here is that, while keeping your arm extended, go straight at your opponent without letting them touch your blade until the very end. As Fabris tells us, “The closer you keep your sword to the opponent’s the better, but without making any blade contact. Then, keeping your arm still, run along the edge of the opponent’s blade without ever leaving it until you reach his body. Eventually, your hilt should end up where your sword-point was when it started”.[1] That’s a lot of fancy words, but hopefully it gets the point across.[2] If not, that’s fine, I’m here to explain the whole thing to you without making you just read the chapter for yourself. 

In essence, there are six pieces that make up rule #1. Train all of them at slower speeds, but in essence they all break down into “Go forward, go around”.

1. Put your sword on top of their sword.

This is the core of every period system. Gain mechanical advantage over their blade, then proceed forwards. You see it in Destreza, KDF, the Bolognese masters, etc. You don’t need blade contact to make this work, but it’s still something you need in place in case your opponent decides to push back. If they present you with an angled guard you’ll need to approach from one side or another as opposed to straight on, but still make sure your blade crosses over their’s.

2. Don’t give ground.

Fabris is not for the feint of heart. If you try doing any of the stuff from book II and don’t commit to it 100%, you are going to eat their sword with your face. Go forward and do not flinch in the face of danger. If you get into measure and then decide to stop believing in yourself, none of this is going to work.

3. Stay close to their blade.

The straightest line to your opponent’s body is following their sword from it’s tip all the way back.[3] As well, the trick to having the world’s smallest disengages is to do them a hair’s breadth from your opponent’s blade. This doesn’t leave you with a lot of margin for error, but it will shave incredibly valuable time off of the clock.

4. Yield/disengage as needed.

Fabris doesn’t really like blade contact. So, whenever your opponent moves to parry don’t wait for them to get their blade on yours, instead move out of the way right before that blade contact would have happened. Touch neurons fire WAY faster than sight neurons because “Ow, that’s hot!” is a much more immediate concern than “Hey, that tiger is running straight at me”. If you wait for your opponent’s parry to contact your blade, now they know where you are and you have to figure out how to respond. If instead they go to parry and now you’re not there, they suddenly have to play catch up while you’re already on your next move getting ready to strike.[t 3] So pull out your yields, your disengages, and all your other turns of the blade as needed.

5. If you lose the advantage, step back and reset.

Fabris tells us, “If you stop every time your opponent withdraws and makes a mutation, he can keep frustrating your designs by doing so every time he wants. This is why you should never stop as long as you proceed correctly. But should you lose your advantage, then it would be wise to stop and recover until you can regain it.”[4] There are two major mistakes people make when doing Fabris. Either they don’t commit enough, or they commit way too much. We’ve talked about the first one already. With the second, while Fabris does in fact want us to ideally run straight through our opponents, he also doesn’t want us to blindly run forwards.[5] This could be your opponent gaining a strong enough advantage over your blade, or it could be that they successfully stepped back and broke measure. In either case, charging blindly forward is just going to give your opponent a free shot right between your eyes.

In short, gain the advantage, keep going[t 4]  forwards, and keep your blade free.

Rule #2 – Crabris

Everything does in fact evolve into crab.

This rule looks the weirdest and when I read it on the page I went, “There’s no way that could work!” Next day at practice, though, I found that this one worked better for me than any of the others. Funny how that keeps happening. In general, the idea here is to remove the option for them to be able to find your blade, forcing them to commit to your singular opening. As a note, this one requires a decent amount of lower back flexibility. You don’t need to be able to do a backbend or anything, but you are going to have to twist and turn a lot. If that’s something your body doesn’t let you do, that’s alright, there are five other options you can go with.

[t 5] 

1. Sword up and forwards.

This guard is gonna feel strange, but just trust me. The logic here is that there’s really only one place your opponent can go, your high inside line.[6] The outside is covered by your sword and your torso is withdrawn enough that threatening the low lines on the first move isn’t going to work.

2. Don’t extend the arm.

Remember when I said that Fabris requires absolute commitment? This is one of those times. You’re going to want to fling your arm forwards, but if you do it’s going to break form and the whole concept behind rule #2 is going to fall apart.[7] So just keep your hilt up and back.[8] You shouldn’t have zero give in your arm, but it’s not going to extend all the way forwards like you’re used to.

3. Rotate and lean the upper body.

As we saw in the last couple of plates, the action here is going to come from your lower back as opposed to your wrist like in a normal fight. You don’t need to get your torso to be parallel to the ground like you see in the plates, but you are going to need to twist side to side.

4. Only disengage if they move to find.

The Italian tradition has scores of examples of attacks by disengagement where your opening move is to attack around instead of fighting over the more immediate line. This is not one of those times. If they find, you can move to disengage, but you’re not going to want to open with any sort of disengage yourself. If at all possible, you’re going to want to use a volta stabile (turning the blade in to fourth or second) as much as possible and avoid having to perform any disengages yourself.

In short, become crab, twist and turn.

Rule #3 – Too Cool for School

Rule #3 is essentially the same as rule #1, the only real difference is in how you start. With rule #1 you start in guard and then proceed forwards. With rule #3, walk up nonchalantly until you’re at the very edge of measure. Only then do you form your guard and proceed in. What this does is prevent your opponent from getting a good read on how you like to fight until it’s too late.[9] It also means that you’re not wasting precious energy sitting in a very taxing guard before the real fight starts. As a note, Fabris tells us that each rule works better than the last and that they get increasingly hard to do. I view them more as different options with certain ones making more sense to different people than others.

Rule #4 – Step Offline

This one made the most sense to me on paper, but was the hardest for me personally to execute. At its essence, instead of feinting by moving your sword to one side or the other and then coming back to the original line, here you are just doing it with your feet. Let’s dive into this a bit further.

1. “Give him the impression of deliberately running onto his sword – this way, he will want to keep his sword in the center line in order to strike you ……….. however, the moment your foot enters the measure, you move off line to the side that seems most appropriate.”[10] I can’t really put this part any better myself, so I’m just going to leave this quote here.

2. He then proceeds to tell us, “If you enter the measure with your right foot, you will move off line to the right side; if it is with your left foot, you will move to the left. In this manner, one of your feet will end up on the straight line, the other off line – and your body will bend in the direction of the foot that goes off line.”[11] Once you get your opponent to bite, you now return to the center line and strike. This has a lot of parallels with the earlier Anonimo Bolognese who teaches us, “when you run across a fencer that fights in the narrow play, then you will act as though you plan to fence in the wide play, and then astutely strike him from the narrow play; and so too, if you find a fencer that fences from the wide play, you should act as though you intend to fence in the narrow play, but actually strike him with an attack from the wide play.”[12]

3. Lastly, he reminds us to keep our blade right next to theirs. This again we get from rule #1, but the fact that he puts in so many reminders tells me what mistakes his students kept making time after time.

Rule #5 – Bent Arm Quarta

I will never forgive Fabris for making rule #5 to be the one that uses fourth.

This rule, like #2, is another one where the focus is primarily on the shape you’re making. The difference here is that you get to really use your disengages and also look less like a crustacean.

1. Start off in fourth with your elbow bent.

2. Now instead of having your tip fight their tip, instead you just point your tip right at their guard from whatever line you’re approaching.[13]

3. If they go low, turn your blade to third and keep your tip pointed at their hand.[14]

Rule #6 – Folding Lines

The gist here is, “You are to start with an extended arm. But as you proceed forward with your body, you should progressively withdraw your sword hand, so that your sword-point remains in the same place as when you first stepped in”[15]. This one is really hard for your opponent to read because you aren’t giving them most of the usual cues we see in a fight. Instead of striking with your arm, you’re instead getting all the way in and then striking with the torso. For a little bit more detail, this breaks down into:

1. Start extended.

2. Bend your elbow in as you advance. By keeping your blade engagement close to the tip, this will make it easier for you to perform a contracavazione (counter disengage) if they try and disengage around your blade first. It also removes a lot of the visuals they’re used to cuing off from, making it harder for them to react in time.

3. Only strike after you’re past their tip.

4. It’s your torso moving forward that causes you to strike, not your arm extending.

Try these all out and comment with which ones make the most and the least sense for you. Fabris also gives us a bunch of case studies for each of these, but don’t let those limit you as they were never intended to be the only use cases for these rules. Get excited for part II where I cover his rules for proceeding with the sword and dagger.

Just a quick reminder that I’ll be teaching a longsword workshop talking about tempo at Indes-Cember on December 7th in Urbana, IL. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/indes-cember-tickets-1005931697787

[1]Fabris, page 166.

[2]Always intend your puns, coward.

[3]This part only really works for presented guards. That said, Fabris gives us plenty of advice on how to counter low guards.

[4]Fabris, page 167.

[5] Please don’t actually sprint forwards. Just take lots of really small, really fast steps.

[6]Fabris, page 178

[7]Fabris, page 178.

[8]We see an exception to this on plate 123, but my fighter brain is too dumb to remember edge cases when I’m in the middle of it. Like I said, this is intended as a handy guide, it’s a deep analysis of each and every permutation Fabris provides us with.

[9]Fabris, page 186.

[10]Fabris, page 194.

[11]Fabris, page 194.

[12] Anonimo Bolognese, pages 69-70.

[13]Fabris, page 209.

[14]This is also just a really good general approach against low guard fighters.

[15]Fabris, page 220.