Axe in Armor
The poleaxe in harness: beats, visor-work, the strong lower lock, the disarm — and the notorious powder-filled axe with its recipe.
Folios
Folio summary — Axe in Armor
| Getty folio | Plates | Content | Getty images | Verse witnesses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 35v | [1]–[4] | Four guards | — | PD 27a · Paris 8v–9r |
| 36r | [5], [6] | Long Tail and Window | [5], [6] | — |
| 36v | [7]–[10] | The beat, and three plays from it | [8] | PD 27b · Paris 9r–9v (none at [8]) |
| 37r | [11]–[14] | Lock, disarm, the visor as handle | [13], [14] | PD 27b–28a · Paris 10r (through [12] only) |
| 37v | [15]–[17] | Rope; the powder axe; the recipe | [16] | PD 36a — illustration only |
Five Getty folios, 17 plates, 17 illustrations. Six of the figures are the Getty's, ten the Pisani Dossi's, one the Paris's. Morgan has no axe at all.
The shape of the section is a narrowing. It opens with the guards of every other weapon — Serpentine, True Cross, Woman's Guard, Boar's Tooth, Long Tail, Window — and appoints no Remedy Master of its own: [Axe 2] simply cites the armored sword's first scholar ([SwordArmor 9]) and says the axe does that, with that method and that pass. It then stakes everything on one condition, [Axe 7]: beat his axe to the ground and the plays are yours — with a proviso about a counter that no plate in the section ever shows. What follows the beat is not axe-work but the armored grammar the sword section already built: the visor lifted ([Axe 10]), the strong lower lock ([Axe 11]), the disarm ([Axe 12]), the throw ([Axe 14]) — and the last of the plays hands the fight to grappling outright. Then the section stops being a fencing manual at all: a rope, a perforated axe full of caustic powder, and a recipe with quantities. The witnesses fall away in step with it. The Morgan never had the section; the Paris and the Pisani Dossi both run out of text at [12]; the last three plates survive in the Pisani Dossi only as pictures, filed thirty folios away. What the verse family preserves is the boast and the image; what only the prose preserves is the method — and, here, the chemistry.