The Art of Sword Combat: A 1568 German Treatise on Swordmanship

I bought this book for a nephew who loves Medieval anything but after looking through it, really wanted it for myself. Beautiful drawings in color. An absolute must for any sword enthusiast! (I didn’t keep it 😇)

I slay dragons now..

Beautiful book

I'm sure the translation is accurate so my complaint is probably with the original German sword master who was obviously not an author by trade. There is some good information in this book, but the organization is horrible unless you are already familiar with all the terminology and various guards and strikes. Even that information is in the book, but it comes after the instructional text, so if you are still learning, like me, you end up flipping back and forth between the glossary at the end and the text. And the pictures are beautifully drawn but not nearly as instructional as you would find in a more modern text -- if there were more modern texts. This could be a good resource book if someone wanted to develop their own classes for teaching this style of swordcraft.

This is a good primary source for studying the ancient martial arts. Unlike the 1570 this book does not have a section dedicated to dagger, or pole arms. And his presentation and organization of the material is different than in his later work. But he tells the reader what is most important about fencing in the beginning of the book, after that he expands upon it with examples of how to do things. Also unlike the 1570 there are color pictures and they seem more painterly than the woodcuts. There is much less action happening the the pictures but they are still a useful example of movement with the weapon, also its good as a reference between the two sources as many of the same postures and movements are pictured in both works. I recommend purchasing and studying both sources and to read the entire source for clarity. There is also a glossary in this book.

Muy bueno para arrancar con HEMA, obviamente el se 1570 es una versión mas completa con más ilustraciones pero este es un muy buen libro

Excellent read! Although I would loved it more if I didn't have to flip trough the book to find the images that were talked about in the text. Including them after the section of the text connected to them would be great! Still a must buy for all HEMA enthusiasts.

This can be viewed as a "rough draft" of Joachim Meyer's work that would be published later on in 1570. This includes watercolor images of the various movements, but his "The Art of Combat" is far more complete and detailed I think. This would make an excellent addition to any HEMA library, but one might want to invest in "The Art of Combat" first.

Al igual que el resto de sus tratados editados un excelente trabajo por parte de Forgeng, los tratados históricos de esgrima mejor reeditados y traducidos corren de su mano.

For those with an interest in Historical European Martial Arts. This book covers the fencing tradition of Meyer, one of the pre-eminent sword masters of 16th Century Germany.

überhaupt alles, jamer schade nicht auf deutsch übersetzt

Just perfect! Coloured pictures ad really good descriptions and traslations.

The quality of print is super nice, and have nothing but good things to say about the quality. The text is easy to read, and the illustrations are high quality and on a nice gloss paper. The difference of texture of the pages make it really easy to pop over to the illustrations from anywhere in the book. Keep in mind this is a previous manuscript from Meyer, and his 1570 is still the definitive version. This book works extremely well as a supplement for the 1570, but should not be taken as a replacement.