To understand the Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) community, its weapon disciplines, organisational structure and gender, a HEMA census was conducted in 2021 for Germany and Austria and in 2019 for Germany. The 2021 census captures 3186 HEMA practitioners training in 124 locations in Germany and 801 practitioners training in 34 locations in Austria. It is the most comprehensive and detailed dataset of its kind to date. It shows that most HEMA groups are organised as an independent Verein or as part of an umbrella Verein.1 The pandemic had an average effect on the number of practitioners and primarily impacted commercial schools with a 20% reduction in membership. 20% (Germany) and 27.5% (Austria) of all practitioners are identified as female, while 0.75% (Germany) and 3.9% (Austria) of practitioners are identified as nonbinary. Longsword is the most popular weapon discipline, being trained at over 88% of locations in both countries. Runner-up disciplines trained at 40% to 44% of locations include Long Knife, Dagger, Sword & Buckler, Historical Wrestling (Germany), and Dagger, Sword & Buckler and Polearms (Austria). Two-handed swords saw the biggest increase in training locations during the pandemic. HEMA hotspots are in South Germany (Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg), where nearly 39% of all German practitioners train, and in Eastern Austria (Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland), where over 55% of all Austrian practitioners train.

This article presents recent research into military fencing in Switzerland, with a focus on manuals and regulation written to help instructors teach sabre fencing in Swiss officers’ schools. The publications discussed here, essentially sabre fencing manuals, can be grouped into a unique corpus based on the only official regulation for sabre fencing. They are interesting elements that can help scholars to understand not only the teaching and practice of fencing inside the infantry officers’ schools, but also the more technical aspects of an individual system: all publications in the corpus are part of the same system, although with minor variations. The system, called Contre-pointe (or Stichsäbel in some of the publications), is similar to others in France and elsewhere in Europe. Another central part of the system was its sportive aspect and use in military and civil competitions. Surprisingly, this meant that infantry officers were taught a type of fencing designed not solely for fighting on the battlefield and arguably more suited for the fencing room.

This book is drawn from a colloquium and is part of the collection "Itinera" of the Swiss Journal for History (Revue Suisse d'Histoire).It gathers the works of several authors from different horizons who share a common purpose: to prove that experimentation of technical combat gestures and their associated equipment can have a scientific method and become part of the academic field of research.The spectrum of the authors' profiles is broad: from academics researchers, historians (

The article discusses the “self-defense” techniques presented in fightbooks and treaties. The objective is to determine if these techniques take the reality of fight in account, to evaluate the difference between theory and practice in remaining safe during an aggression. In order to do so, this work uses crossed analysis, with remission letters (judicial sources) studied in the light of the knowledge contained in the fight-books. This study is based on the sorting out of weapons, wounds, and times of death found in remission letters (the data of real fight). In parallel, the theorization of fight in treaties will be taken in account.

The sabre was introduced to Spain and other Hispanic countries from abroad, leading to the establishment of a Spanish sabre school based on the principles of Destreza. Several types of fencing books can be found. There were books on sabre instruction for the army and navy with simple techniques but also more developed works designed both for officers’ fencing and duelling and or for civilian duelling, and later for sportive entertainment.There are a considerable number of extant treatises, mainly available in continental Spain but also in the Americas. Many of the authors were army or navy officers who were also teaching in military institutions. The evolution of sabre fencing is followed until the beginning of the twentieth century.

Following a long mercenary tradition, Switzerland had to build in the 19th century its own military tradition. In Cantons that have provided many officers and soldiers in the European Foreign Service, the French military influence remained strong. This article aims to analyze the development of sabre fencing in the canton of Fribourg (and its French influence) through the manuals of a former mercenary (Joseph Bonivini), a fencing master in the federal troops (Joseph Tinguely), and an officer who became later a gymnastics teacher (Léon Galley). These fencing manuals all address the recourse to fencing as physical training and gymnastic exercise, and not just as a combat system in a warlike context.

This article gives a brief overview on Greek sabre sources with a special focus on Philipp Müller’s and Nikolaos Pyrgos’ treatises. The article does not aim to give a complete list of treatises neither to analyze the any of the mentioned books in details – rather it aims to give an insight in those two books which might have had the most important impact on the development of the Greek sabre fencing in the 18th and 19th Centuries.

La Noble Science des Joueurs d’Espée (originally La Noble Science des Ioueurs Despee) is a fight book printed in 1538 by Willem Vorsterman, a local printer in Antwerp. Printed in several exemplars, the book is the French translation of a German fencing treatise written by Andre Paurnfeindt, which itself was first published in Vienna in 1516. The study of Vorsterman’s edition shows several errors were made in recreating Paurnfeindt’s work, including inversions of image and text, which have the potential to alter the transmission of the text’s martial knowledge. This raises the question of Vorsterman's commercial intentions when editing and printing this fight book, especially regarding the flourishing printing business in sixteenth-century Flanders. This paper aims to describe the differences in construction between Vorsterman and Pauernfeindt’s treatises in the context of both printing and martial cultures in Antwerp and the surrounding region.

Abstract The sixteenth-century Collectanea of the condottiero Pietro Monte contains some of the most thorough writings that exist pertaining to the use of staff weapons. A detailed study of how these weapons are categorised, contextualised, and used in Monte’s work can, due to their sometimes limited treatment in other fight books, allow for a comparative approach between Monte’s works and those of other fight book authors. Such a study allows for a more complete understanding of how Monte’s work fits in with the wider fight book genre, properly contextualising the Collectanea, and demonstrating to what extent this important but often overlooked text should be considered revolutionary or reflective of contemporary military and martial trends. In this article is discussed Monte’s approach to defining staff weapons, his contextualisation of staff weapons according to military and martial environments, and Monte’s teachings on the use of staff weapons.

Abstract The author presents a study of Bibliothèque National de France MS Latin 11269, a manuscript that he argues was associated with the court of Leonello d’Este and which represents an attempt to “fix” or “canonize” a vernacular work on a practical subject in erudite Latin poetry. The author reviews the life of Fiore dei Liberi and Leonello d’Este and discusses the author’s intentions in writing, how the manuscript shows clear signs of Estense associations, and examines the manuscript both in light of its codicological context and in light of humanist activity at the Estense court. He also presents the evidence for the book having been in the Estense library. Finally, he examines the place of the manuscript in the context of the later Italian tradition of fencing books. A complete concordance is presented in the appendix.