Cutting in Three's

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Published on April 8, 2025 12:00:22 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyHJz31fUp8

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"... if you want to fence safely with those weapons that are used in one hand, you should accustom yourself to always executing three cuts quickly, one after the other."


“As often as you cut through a slanted line from one side, immediately also cut across through the middle line from the other [side].” *


“These cuts in the Before involve a lot of practical skill in the art because you must readily consider that you can’t cut or thrust without exposing yourself by this action. They will then have positioned themselves in this counterposture so that, wherever you allow yourself to be noticed by a cut or become exposed, they will be able to penetrate to the closest of the openings. Therefore, if you want to cut or thrust toward them in the Before, you must set up the first cut more to provoke and bring them upward than to hit, so that, when they would cut at your opening which you have exposed with this cut, you are positioned to beat the same outward and to take it. And only then (after you have weakened them and exposed them) do you rush in to complete the third [cut] at the opening.”  


From Joachim Meyer's 1570 Fencing Book

Translations by Rebecca Garber


The middle (or vertical) cut can be an opener as well, at which point you would use a diagonal line to chain it instead:


“Further you shall note that when you cut one of the four cuts through the relevant line, whether above or middle, then you shall always strike back up the next line to displace. Thus in the Zufechten if I come in the Steer and strongly strike a Middle Cut in through his face, I at once cut from my left up through the lower line to parry against his hand.”


From Meyer's 1561 Treatise

Translation by Kevin Maurer

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