By John Clements, Director of the HACA

Though it should go without saying, many swords today are hardly made in the manner that they once were. The difference is not one of just using modern technology and machinery, nor even a matter of exact forging and tempering methods. No, it is a problem much deeper and far more profound than this.

During ages past where warriors relied on their swords almost daily and were near the top of the social pyramid, continual communication between warrior and sword-maker would ensure the best design for the job (if not the best quality individual sword). There was obviously constant feedback from those who created the weapons and those who used them, and whose lives therefore depended on them. This symbiosis between the two artists - warrior and craftsman - produced a sort of natural selection that for the most part could ensure a minimum expected quality in a given sword. If a sword-maker gave out or sold an inferior sword, the warrior might just come back to get even - provided he survived the weapon's failure.

Over hundreds of years, tens of thousands of young men used real swords for real life-and-death fighting. Their sword smiths came up with practical and beautiful styles and stuck with them while ever experimenting with newer ones.

These warriors knew what swords forms worked and why - and they also knew how to handle them. In a process of deadly natural selection they tried out and discarded those that were inferior and inadequate. They followed the fundamentals of what made a comfortable, balanced, and functionally sound blade or hilt. As a result, thousands of examples have survived for us in museums and private collections that represent effective designs for defeating a variety of different opponents and armors.

It has been said that once real swordsmen in either the West or the East ceased real sword combat and earnest practice, it is no surprise that sword-makers then ceased making real blades. The vital historical cycle of feedback from skilled users to skilled makers ended with the changing technology of war. Unfortunately, for sword enthusiasts and students now this is as true today as it was centuries ago when it first began to change.

Gone for the most part is the ancient relationship whereby skilled warrior swordsmen provided to sword-makers the crucial feedback on sword handling characteristics and performance. Today we instead have virtually the opposite of the old cycle. In a perverse reversal of the ancient pattern, when we now obtain swords it is often the sword-makers themselves who will tell customers what a sword should be able to do and how it should respond when doing it! Most often they even do this by just the act of writing a vague, inaccurate advertisement or description for their catalogs and brochures.

When their swords (those few that are capable) end up being used by performers of stage-combat and jousting shows, the claim is then made that they are "real" and "battle-tested". This is rarely the case. The limitations and artificial premises of staged fighting and theatrical combat routines with their special requirements are a far cry from really wielding a sword to cut or to kill or just to train realistically today. Swordsmanship is not about banging blades around endlessly edge-on-edge as is common practice in most movies, television shows, and theatrical performances (based upon theories of stage-combat).

There are currently available far more varieties of swords that are make-believe or historically fake than there are those that are replica of actual historical pieces. But, the more modern reproduction sword-makers become set in their ways of producing inferior weapons that sell to consumers who merely wear them with a costume or hang them on the wall, the harder it is to demand better products of them. After all, who is there with the authority to tell them? Who among them would listen anyway? They focus on the science and art of their craft (metallurgy, forging, and tempering... and marketing!) as opposed to whether or not a sword is truly functionally sound and battle ready. Western sword-makers today can label their work as "historical" or "historically accurate" based on their own subjective criteria.

When there are no real swordsman testing their blades in expert hands, then sword-makers have no one to turn to except to themselves. The sword-makers are therefore skeptical, reluctant, and even hostile to the opinion of those who would demand better quality and accuracy (after all, an auto-mechanic is not a professional racecar driver anymore than an aeronautical-engineer is a fighter pilot). Yet - no offense to the considerable talents of professional sword-smiths (heck, they can do things I have no clue about) - but spending 20 or 30 years in front of a forge and grinder making blades is not equivalent to years and years of intense training, sparring, drilling, and practice cutting using them.

Thus, O gentle student of the sword, let me now tell you that we have been mislead, misinformed and even outright deceived by those who do not seek to educate and share, but only to protect their limited opinions from the informed scrutiny of their peers. The more we study the works of the real historical European masters and the more we practice with real weapons (accurate replicas), the less important and the less satisfying pretend fantasy-playing becomes. What replaces it is a true martial-spirit that consists of an appreciation for the history and legitimacy of our Western martial heritage. This cannot but cause us to demand a sword of only the highest quality blade with the most accurate and sturdy hilt. Should it be any other way?

John Clements is the author of "Medieval Swordsmanship: Illustrated Methods and Techniques" (Paladin Press, November 1998, ISBN # 1-58160-004-6). He is the Director of the Houston Chapter of the HACA - The Historical Armed Combat Association at http://www.thehaca.com/ - an organization dedicated to the study of accurate historical swordsmanship.

BACK

[TOP]  [Back -1]  [About SFMO]  [Feedback to Editor]  [Discussion Forum]