Peasant Flail Combat 2

A sample of Peasant Flail Combat from Paulus Hector Mair and Hans Talhoffer.

ATTENTION: This is a work through of technique, not a polished finish piece. There is still lots to learn and discover from the surviving manuals about fighting with a Flail.

CORRECTIONS: - In Flail Two, the Fighters starting guards are reversed. - In the Talhoffer play, Blue's legs are switched.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• peasant
• flail
• weapons
• medieval
• morning
• star
• mace
• martial
• arts
• dreshflegel

[SandDevilJack]

Sorry about the nearly identical double post previously. The second was an attempt to edit for clarity. I just watched again, and I now see that the written instructions do say to push the opponent's weapon up and to the left. My bad.

This is great work you are doing, and your demonstrators are definitely very skilled. Looking forward to more. Thanks again.

[Djemps]

@SandDevilJack Hey, no problem. I appreciate your interest! I should clarify that all of the text in this video is my own attempt at paraphrasing and simplifying the material found in Mair. There are some very confusing passages in the Flail material. Some of it is probably due to our unfamiliarity with Mair's method of conveying his intentions, and some of it might be due to our ignorance in how real Flails would function in combat.

[Djemps]

@SandDevilJack The section that you highlighted is hard because it tells us to intercept his strike that is coming in from the right, and then take it around to the left. (I should probably go look at the text to see what it says exactly, before stating anything here)... But stopping the strike with a hard hanging guard and then popping it up and over has lended the best results so far. The encouraging thing is that there is a lot of room for study and experimentation in this area of HEMA!

[TDH1198]

This is really great. I never knew Talhoffer had stuff on flails.

[Djemps]

@TDH1198 Shhhh! It's a secret! .. :-P .. To my knowledge, 78 A 15 is the only Talhoffer manuscript with Flail material. There are actually two pages, but the second page is even more confusing than this one and we have not yet found any interpretations that we are happy with.

[purebaldfury]

@Djemps Any luck with Talhoffer #2? I'm still scratching my head over it.

[Djemps]

@purebaldfury I'm actually more confused about the odd stance of the spear man in the image. I still feel that the flail man has simply flipped his weapon to receive a spear thrust, passed the tip of the spear and has placed the staff against his opponent's collar for a throw. But why the poor stance with the spear?

[SandDevilJack]

You're absolutely right about "a lot of room". :)  That's one of the best parts of this area of study, though. It looks like you are getting much more "right" than "wrong", based on how everything flows--most of what you are doing makes sense on an intuitive level and is very economically and cleanly executed. Really that one play was all that stuck out, so all in all a real testament to your interpretative skills.

As an aside, I also like the gag reel stuff you sometimes put at the end.

[SandDevilJack]

These are great videos! It's nice to see people experimenting with flails. I would like to make a suggestion re: Two Binds/ Third Play: instead of pushing the opponent's weapon and then striking, I would instead stay in the hanging guard, step with the left--probably obliquely--and then rotate flail clockwise over head. This is the normal line of attack from Hanging Guard with longsword or sword and buckler. I'd be interested to know if that works with flails or if they tangle. Thanks!

[SandDevilJack]

These are great videos! It's nice to see people experimenting with flails. I would like to make a suggestion regarding the Third Play: instead of pushing the opponent's weapon and then striking, I would instead stay in the hanging guard, step with the left--probably obliquely--and then rotate flail clockwise over head. This is the normal line of attack from Hanging Guard with longsword or sword and buckler. I'd be interested to know if that works with flails or if they tangle. Thanks!

[SamGCampbell]

Where do you get your sources (originals and translations) from if I may ask?