Tactical Groupings
The Zettel states doctrine in compressed imperatives and trusts the living teacher for mechanics. The motifs below are the tactical claims the verse actually makes — and how the same claim recurs on foot, on horse, and in harness. Verse citations link into the section pages.
1. Vor and Nach — initiative as the first doctrine
The Zettel's own summary of itself: "Vor and Nach, these two things, are the single wellspring of all art."
Every phase of every art opens with the same demand: act first in a way that must be answered (Vor), or convert his first action into your tempo (Nach). The preface already sets the temperament — commit, "hit or let it go," no half-strikes. The three Zettel then give the doctrine one flagship apiece: the Zornhau-ort threat on foot, the Vorstich with the spear in harness, the Vorgriff in the grapple.
Initiative is the only doctrine the Zettel states three times in identical words. Everything else — hews, windings, grips — is presented as machinery for either keeping the Vor or weaponizing the Nach. Reading any single technique without asking "which half of initiative does this serve?" misreads it.
2. Indes and Fühlen — the bind as sensor
"Learn the feeling; the word Indes cuts sharply" — perception and action fused at blade-contact.
The system deliberately starves its own decision tree: the only sensory question ever asked in the bind is soft or hard. That binary is answerable through steel faster than the eye can answer anything, and each answer has pre-assigned continuations (soft → drive through/set on; hard → wind, double, mutate, or leave with Zucken). The Sprechfenster is this doctrine made into a position: a bind held in order to feel.
This is the Zettel's answer to feints and to speed alike: you cannot be deceived by what you do not look at. Where Fabris (two centuries later, thrust-centric) builds tactical certainty from misura and tempo observed at distance, Liechtenauer builds it from pressure observed in contact — two solutions to the same problem of acting on truth rather than appearance.
3. Schwech and Sterck — leverage, never strength
Weak and strong are properties of where blades cross, and the doctrine is to win the crossing, not the arm-wrestle.
[LS 1] (declared with Indes) · [LS 23] (the conclusion re-anchors the whole count of windings to it) · [LS 9], [LS 19], [LS 18] (the three answers to raw strength: break it, slice it, duck through it) · [D 3], [D 13] ("grasp the strong rightly"; "the shooting defeats him") · [F 8], [F 23] (the figures on gripping the strong).
Strength is treated as information (a hard bind tells you where he is committed) and as target (the buffalo's force is what the Schielhau breaks; "cut off the hard ones"; against the strength-grip in harness, the shooting point). The instruction "grip the strong with both hands" in the mounted figures is the one place strength is prescribed — and there it is your strong versus his weapon, i.e. leverage again.
The Zettel's social frame ([P 1]) is knightly, but its physics is egalitarian: every explicit match-up against the stronger man is resolved by geometry (short edge, slice, level-change, half-sword). This is the thread that makes the system one system across armor and horseback.
4. The four openings — target doctrine over blade doctrine
"Aim at the four openings, without doubt of how he acts."
[LS 5] (know them) · [LS 6] (break them: Duplieren/Mutieren) · [LS 12] ("set on at the four ends") · [LS 1] ("hew in close, whatever you will… to head, to body") · [LS 22] (the same promise-couplet as [LS 6]) · armored contraction: [D 3], [D 11], [F 12] (leather, gauntlet, under the eyes) · [D 12] ("in every teaching turn your point against the openings").
Fence at the man, not at the sword. The four quarters give the attacker a complete, feint-proof targeting menu ("without doubt of how he acts"); Duplieren and Mutieren guarantee that a bind on one quarter converts into a hit on another. In harness the same doctrine survives with a new map: the openings are wherever iron is not.
This is the offensive complement of §2: Fühlen frees you from watching his blade, the openings free you from watching his intentions. Together they define the Liechtenauer attacker: closing, target-fixed, reading by touch.
5. Provocation and deception — the manufactured tempo
Feler, Verkehrer, Zucken, the shown-Krump, the Sprechfenster strike, the Taschenhau: the Zettel's feints are all bind-anchored.
[LS 8] (Feler simple and twofold; Verkehrer) · [LS 17] (Zucken, iterable, "in all meetings") · [LS 7] ("krump not, short-hew — show the Durchwechsel with it") · [LS 9] (Schielhau's averted gaze) · [LS 22] ("strike him so that he staggers; whoever draws off before you…") · [D 3] (the long chase "that sorely vexes"; the Taschenhau as bait-target) · [D 9] ("if he wards, twitch: that defeats him").
Every deception in the Zettel is offered from a real threat: the Feler is a genuine hew until it isn't; Zucken leaves a bind the enemy believed in; the shown Krump is a committed line that changes through. Provocation likewise: the held long chase and the cheerful Sprechfenster both invite him to move first — and his first move is pre-answered. There are no empty flourishes; a feint with no threat behind it would surrender the Vor, and §1 forbids that.
It explains the absence of a feint chapter: deception is not a technique class but a modality of every technique. It also explains "if you frighten easily, never learn any fencing" ([LS 1]) — the system assumes an enemy who reacts, and a fencer who doesn't.
6. The Krieg — winding as the decision space
When the first exchange doesn't end it, the fight moves to the bind, and the bind is a searchable tree, not a stalemate.
[LS 4] (Krieg named; "not hasty"; "what it aims above, below it is shamed"; the three wounders in all windings) · [LS 21] (the two hangings as entries) · [LS 23] (8 windings × 3 wounders = 24, "count them singly") · [LS 7] (the edel krieg against the presser) · [LS 6] (Duplieren/Mutieren as the bind's converters) · Gotha's own rubric "This is the Krieg" after [LS 4].
The conclusion's arithmetic is a tactical claim: from any bind there are exactly eight covered re-aimings, each carrying hew, thrust, and cut — so the man who knows the tree can always continue, and the man who forces it blindly ("hasty") is punished on the opposite quarter. The Krieg is entered from the hangings and navigated by soft/hard (§2).
The count (8/24) is the Zettel's one piece of explicit theory, and it is combinatorial, not athletic. It is also the strongest internal evidence that the poem indexes a complete oral system: nobody versifies a 24-leaf decision tree they cannot teach.
7. Answering his tempo — Nachreisen, Überlaufen, Absetzen
The exploitation suite of the Nach: three pre-built answers to the three things an attacker can be.
[LS 13] (Nachreisen — he prepares or misses: strike into the gap; the old cut against his repair) · [LS 14] (Überlaufen — he goes low: out-reach him above) · [LS 15] (Absetzen — he thrusts: one-time wind, "your point hits and his breaks") · [LS 12] (if you are the one displaced: wrench off, or set on) · [D 13] ("follow all meetings, if you would fool the strong").
Each answer trades his committed tempo for a hit without a separate parry: Nachreisen occupies the time his sword is elsewhere; Überlaufen wins by length while his blade is below; Absetzen defends and wounds in the same wind. The trio makes "he attacked first" a resource rather than an emergency — the Nach of §1 given hands.
Note what is missing: a block-then-riposte doctrine. [LS 12] explicitly warns off passive parrying and immediately supplies recovery tools for when it happens anyway. The system's defense is counter-offense; Fabris will make the same argument against large separate parries, from a different geometry.
8. Closing the distance — Durchlaufen and the wrestling continuum
The sword-fight and the grapple are one fight; distance decides which tools are live.
[LS 18] (Durchlaufen against the strong crowder) · [LS 8] (Verkehrer → elbow → "spring into his balance") · [LS 20] (Hendtrucken jailing the arms) · [D 10] (leg-spring and Rigel) · [D 12] (forbidden wrestlings for the earnest duel) · [D 8] (mounted wrestling from riding alongside; capture "without a rope") · [F 15], [F 25], [F 28] (sheep-grip, unnamed grip, over-grip).
Every art in the Zettel ends, if unresolved, in grips: unarmored at the run-through, armored at the leg-locks, mounted at the saddle-throws. The transitions are always pressure-triggered — he strengthens, you enter (never the reverse). And the grip hierarchy obeys §1: the fore-grip decides, the named counter exists for every named throw, and the "unnamed grip" stays deliberately secret.
The wrestling is not an appendix; it is the floor under the fencing. The verses assume a fifteenth-century fight-culture (judicial duel, harness, ransom-capture) where losing the sword-phase did not end the fight — so no phase is taught as final.
9. The chase — mounted pursuit geometry
Jagen: the mounted duel is a fight over which side the fight happens on.
[D 5] (chase; if forced left, hunt the sword and wrestle) · [D 6] (being chased: halt, turn, arm-catch) · [D 2] ("grip his right — so you catch him without fencing") · [F 3], [F 19], [F 20], [F 24], [F 26] (the chase figures) · 3227a's extra couplets in [D 2] (choosing the side before contact; the girth check; the escape-turns).
On horseback, position substitutes for guard: his right (weapon) side is the only profitable approach, so the whole phase is maneuver for it — and the defense is likewise positional (turn about so his chase overshoots into your catch). The recurring motto "you catch him without fencing" states the ideal: win the geometry so completely that no exchange happens.
It is the same doctrine as §4 transposed: attack where he isn't (his bridle-hand side is to the horseman what the opening is to the swordsman). And 3227a's longer text shows the doctrine's practical substrate — girth, bridle-grip, side-choice — that the later abridgements pruned to pure tactics.
10. The duel's phase structure — escalation with a budget
The Kampffechten rows are ordered as a resource ladder: spear → sword → half-sword point → wrestling → ground.
[D 9] (dismount; two stances; Vorstich; Zucken against the ward; close on the flier) · [D 11] (sword drawn against spear — the asymmetric middle case) · [D 13] (both swords drawn — the symmetric endgame; strengthen, Schütten, follow all meetings; eyes and fore-foot as standing targets) · [D 10], [D 12] (the wrestling floors) · [P 1] (the program: "then with the shortened sword for the duel").
Each phase is entered by the failure of the previous weapon, and each entry verse tells you what to do about the transition itself (if he wards the fore-thrust, twitch; if he draws to flee, close and catch; if both draw, strengthen and feel). Nothing is wasted on winning a phase twice: once the point is planted or the grip is taken, the verse moves on.
This is fencing under fifteenth-century judicial-duel constraints: fixed weapons, harness, mortal stakes, and law standing behind the outcome ([D 12]'s forbidden wrestlings are forbidden elsewhere — permitted here). The Zettel's economy of escalation is the tactical mirror of that legal-social frame — the user's "document of the 15th century" is most visible exactly here.
11. Economy and directness — the polemical thread
"Hew in close, whatever you will"; "flee the common"; "do not wait for pommel-blows."
[LS 1] (close hewing beats changers; scorn for hew-chasers) · [LS 11] (four guards alone) · [LS 12] (against parry-fencing) · [LS 9] (the buffalo mocked by name) · [D 3] ("knife — do not wait for pommel-blows") · [P 1] (against the "frivolous fencing-masters who hold their art cheap") · [P 2] ("all art has length and measure").
The Zettel is openly polemical: it names rival habits (guard-collecting, parry-waiting, buffalo strength, percussive flash) and prices them. Its own offer is always the shorter path — the nearest opening, the single-time counter, the four positions that suffice. Even its secrecy ([P 1]) is framed as protecting that economy from dilution.
The polemic dates the text and explains its shape: this is a master differentiating his teaching inside a crowded fourteenth-to-fifteenth-century market of Fechtmeister. The same competitive frame later produced the gloss literature — and the sixteenth-century colophons ([LS 24]) that canonize "Master Liechtenauer's art" as the art.