The Five Words: Warfare as Fencing on a Grand Scale

A recording of a lecture presented at WMAW in September, 2024, by Adam Franti of the Lansing Longsword Guild.
The Five Words are the core philosophy of German fencing in the text tradition of Johannes Liechtenauer, a grandfather-luminary of German language fencing culture in the 15th and 16th centuries. In this lecture I make the case that all fencing actions can be understood as expressions of certain interactions between the ideas embodied by the Five Words, and that, additionally, all of warfare can be similarly understood by abstracting the Five Words.
This is just the first attempt to explore that idea. It's not perfect, and I didn't explore every idea that I wanted to - I didn't even mention Operational Tempo, which was the final piece that clicked into place that let me explore this idea fully - but I think it's a decent first start. Please feel highly encouraged to ask questions.
And as always, if you'd like me to speak at your club or event, don't hesitate to get in touch through our email address on this channel.
I've drawn from a huge number of historical works for this lecture, but some of the more prominent are:
On War, Carl von Clausewitz
Charles Oman, The Art of War in the Middle Ages and A History of the Art of War in the 16th Century
Hans Delbruck, Warfare in Antiquity, Medieval Warfare, and The Dawn of Modern Warfare
Andy Simpson, Directing Operations: British Corps Command on the Western Front 1914-1918
Numerous others for specific details. If you have a question or would like the source for any specific claim, please reach out.

[@ICAdventurersClub]

Wonderful presentation!! Thanks for sharing!!

[@codexintegrum]

Very good presentation, clear analogies, well spoken. I disagree on a couple of minor points, but overall I like the gist of it.