Cut and Thrust

Published in 1863 when it was still quite handy to know how to slash an enemy with a saber or stick him with an épée, Hugo Rothstein’s Das Stoß und Hiebfechten mit Degen und Säbel is a must-have volume to round out every HEMA library. For a relatively brief manual it is packed with techniques described in minute detail along with illustrations which relay the author’s intent with astonishing clarity. From the hand parry to the battute, the forced thrust to the surprise neck slice, Rothstein’s manual is a recipe for forming the neophyte into an able killer on dueling ground or in battle - important stuff for a young officer in the era of the Prusso-Danish war when an infantry officer still carried a smallsword while his mounted counterpart thundered across the field with saber in hand.

This first English translation of Rothstein’s classic is now available to readers under the title of Cut and Thrust and it is a portal to Europe’s martial past. See what serious cold-weapons training was like during the period of the Crimean War and Poland’s glorious January uprising when an attempt was made to restore the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (I always rooted for them). You can get a sense of what it was like to be a young Prussian when that nation was on a giddy upswing toward the domination of central Europe culminating in the Prusso-Austrian War (1866). Then came the 1870s, when Prussia would crush France, its ancient rival, and Bismarck would weld the petty German Kingdoms into an Empire which would change the course of history.