Getty 45v
The grappling's last and largest plays, where the target stops being the man. [28] throws horse and rider together and [30] steals the rein; between them sits [29], a counter that only the Getty treats as a play of its own. [27] closes the stirrup family from 45r.
The counter of the play before is made ready here: if someone seizes you by the stirrup or by the foot, throw your arm about his neck — and this must be done at once. And in this way you will be able to unhorse him; if you do this, he will go to the ground without fail.
- He has seized you by the stirrup or by the foot ([Mounted 26]) and is lifting.
- Throw your arm about his neck — "and this must be done at once". To reach your stirrup he has had to lean down and across; his neck is therefore the nearest thing to you, and it is only there for a moment.
- Unhorse him with it. The man who came to lift you out of the saddle leaves his own.
The same answer as [Mounted 20] and, at [Mounted 29], the same answer again: on this folio Fiore's counter to almost anything is the arm around the neck. What a stirrup-grab and a rein-grab have in common is that both put a head within reach.
This is a technique (atto) of throwing a man to the ground together with his horse. The remedy for throwing a man to the ground with his whole horse is done in this way: when you encounter someone on horseback, ride to his right side; and throw your right arm over the neck of his horse, and seize his rein (brena) near the bit that sits in [the horse's] mouth, and wrench it upward by force; and make the chest of your horse drive into the middle of the croup (groppa) of his horse. And in this way he must go to the ground together with his horse.
- Ride to his right side — the section's standing approach ([Mounted 7], [Mounted 12], [Mounted 30]).
- Throw your right arm over the neck of his horse.
- Seize his rein close to the bit — at the mouth, where the leverage on the horse's head is greatest, and where his own hands on the reins have no purchase against you.
- Wrench it upward by force. The horse's head comes up and its forehand is checked.
- At the same time, drive the chest of your horse into the middle of his horse's croup — your mount is the second half of the technique. The head is stopped and the hindquarters are pushed: the animal is turned over across its own axis.
- Horse and man go down together.
- The verse gives the reason to prefer this play, and it is the section's sharpest tactical claim: "when a man is well armored, this is a fine hold (fina presa), because with weapons one can do him no harm." Against harness, stop attacking the man — take away the animal he is sitting on.
The logic of [Grappling 4] carried to its limit: when the weapons fail, the art underneath them does not. Here the "hold" has grown to include a second horse.
This is the counter of this play just before, which means to throw the companion to the ground with his whole horse. This is an easy thing to understand: when the scholar throws his arm over the neck of the horse to seize the rein, the player should at once throw his arm about the scholar's neck, and by force he will have to let go. It should be done according as you see depicted here.
- He is reaching for your rein to throw you and your horse ([Mounted 28]).
- The trigger is his reach, not his grip: "when the scholar throws his arm over the neck of the horse to seize the rein" — you answer the arm on its way, before the rein is taken.
- Throw your arm about his neck — the folio's universal answer, for the third time.
- By force he must let go. His arm is committed across your horse's neck and yours is around his; he cannot hold the rein and his seat at once.
- Fiore's own note on difficulty: "this is an easy thing to understand" — one of the few plays he calls easy.
This plate has no verse in any witness, and no separate existence outside the Getty — see the comparison.
only the Getty treats this counter as a separate play; the Pisani Dossi and Paris have no verse for it.
This is a play of taking the rein (brena) of the horse out of the companion's hand, in the way you see depicted here. The scholar, when he encounters another man on horseback, rides to his right side and throws his right arm over the neck of the horse, and seizes his rein near the other's left hand with his own hand reversed (cum la mane riversa), and pulls the rein off over the horse's head. And this play is safer armored than unarmored.
- Ride to his right side and throw your right arm over his horse's neck — the same entry as [Mounted 28], move for move.
- Seize the rein near his left hand, your own hand reversed (cum la mane riversa) — palm turned over, so that the pull runs forward along the rein rather than back against his grip.
- Pull the rein off over the horse's head. You do not fight him for it; you strip it off the animal entirely.
- He keeps his seat, his sword, and his horse — and has no steering. The verse finishes the thought: "at my pleasure I will lead you off into another land."
- The condition: "this play is safer armored than unarmored" — reaching across a man's bridle hand puts your arm in front of him, and only harness makes that affordable.
The section's last play, and it kills no one. The final answer to a mounted enemy is to take away the horse's head — capture rather than slaughter, which is what a duel with a rich prisoner in it looks like.
Glossological analysis
- atto ([28]) — a technique/act; Fiore's word for the horse-throw is neither zogho (play) nor presa (hold) but atto, and in the same breath he calls it a rimedio (remedy). The vocabulary wobbles precisely where the action is largest.
- brena ([28], [30]) — the rein. The section's most consequential piece of tack: seized near the bit it throws the horse ([28]); pulled over the head it steals the horse ([30]).
- morso ([28]) — the bit, "that sits in [the horse's] mouth". Fiore locates the grip by the bit because that is where the rein commands the head.
- groppa ([28]) — the croup, the hindquarters. The target for your own horse's chest — the one plate where a horse is used as a battering ram. The Morgan adds "or the flanks", and the Paris says clune (haunch).
- fina presa (PD, [28]) — a "fine hold": fina = fine/excellent, and presa is the grappling section's governing term ([Grappling 1], "holds with advantage"). The verse thereby files the horse-throw as grappling, not horsemanship.
- cum la mane riversa ([30]) — with the hand reversed/turned over. Riverso here describes the hand's rotation, not a blow from the left ([Mounted 13]) nor a cut ([Mounted 22]) — the same root doing a third job in one section.
- discavalcare ([27]) — to unhorse (lit. "un-cavalry" him). The section has a dedicated verb for the outcome nearly every play is aiming at.
- a mia posta (PD, [30]) — "at my pleasure, as I please". Not posta the guard: the identical word, unrelated sense, in a section that uses posta for guards on every other page.
- in altra contrada (PD, [30]) — into another land/district. The verse's closing image for the stolen horse: not a kill, but an abduction.
Manuscript comparison
- [29] exists as a play only in the Getty. The Morgan carries the same counter appended to the end of its [28], not as a separate plate; the Pisani Dossi and Paris have no verse for it at all (the Pisani Dossi's 31 plays are the whole section minus this one). Our numbering follows the Getty in giving it a number. (Flagged in Mounted Fencing translation.) It is the section's one true structural divergence: three witnesses treat the horse-throw and its counter as one unit, and the Getty splits them.
- The Morgan's counter cites a figure the Getty does not. Where the Getty says simply "throw your arm about the scholar's neck", the Morgan says to do it "in the manner of the fourth player who stands before me" — an internal cross-reference to the arm-about-the-neck plate earlier on its page. The Morgan is here the better-indexed copy.
- The Morgan is fuller on the horse-throw itself. Its [28] adds two mechanics the Getty omits: "turning the horse's head upward; and he should spur his own, so that his horse strikes with its chest into the croup or into the flanks". The spurs — the one moment in the section where the rider's legs are mentioned — are Morgan-only. Its scribe also slips here, writing cacavallo [!] for cavallo.
- The Paris gives [28] six lines and outdoes everyone. It adds the snorting chest (fremitando), the "ringing reins" (resonantia frena), and the fall "headlong, crown-first" into muddy ground — and then, alone among the verse, keeps the armored-man argument in full ("This hold indeed avails best against an armored man"). On the section's most important tactical claim, the Latin and the Pisani Dossi agree, and the two prose copies never make it at all.
- The Getty's prose is rhymed here too. [27]: "…lo poraii discavalcare da cavallo / S'tu fa questo ello andera in terra senza fallo"; and the Morgan matches (descavalcare / fallo). By this folio the pattern is unmistakable — see Manuscript comparison §6.
- Illustrations. [27] pairs the Pisani Dossi (33b-b) with the Getty (45v-a); [28], [29], and [30] are all the Getty's (45v-b…d). The Getty supplies its own figures for the entire horse-grappling run.
- Coverage. [27] and [28] are in all four witnesses; [30] is in Getty, Morgan, and Pisani Dossi; [29] only in the Getty as a play.