Story by Mila Mascenik
Photos courtesy of Andrew Eicher
The sound of clashing steel rings out, interrupting an otherwise peaceful evening at Marsh Creek Community Center in Raleigh. People adorned in protective gear swing swords, their feet shuffling quickly in the spacious pavilion as they brace for their partner’s next move. For an hour on most Monday evenings, they practice the centuries-old techniques of Historical European Martial Arts.
The center is one weekly meeting place for Triangle Sword Guild’s sword fighting classes. The nonprofit organization, based in Raleigh, reconstructs Historical European Martial Arts, HEMA, with a blend of scholarly research and martial training, according to its website.
“What we’re doing with HEMA is recreating lost arts, taking information that was written down hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years ago, depending on your time period of study, and relearning how to fight and put in context back to that type of thing,” Andrew Eicher, the club’s communications officer and co-instructor of its advanced beginner Napoleonic fencing class, said.
HEMA is an umbrella term for various fighting techniques that encompass hand-to-hand combat, such as wrestling, and weapon combat, including fencing, or a combination of both. It is a fairly new discipline, as most HEMA groups have existed for fewer than 15 years, according to Triangle Sword Guild’s website. Founded in 2009, Triangle Sword Guild is one of nine recognized HEMA clubs in North Carolina, some of which the organization has partnered with, such as Warriors of Ash in Asheville and Swordwind Historical Swordsmanship in Charlotte.
According to a 2023 essay, HEMA has experienced a “surge” in popularity following the pandemic, with HEMA practitioners reporting that their clubs and classes have doubled in size since then and continue to expand. Eicher said Triangle Sword Guild’s membership has experienced some “mildly exponential growth.” A few years ago, the club had approximately 50 to 60 members, compared to 153 as of March of this year.
While HEMA is situated in contemporary times, Eicher said the Triangle Sword Guild’s four core classes – medieval swordsmanship in the German-style Kunst des Fechtens (art of fighting), Fiore dei Liberi’s Armizare (the art of arms), Renaissance fencing and Napoleonic fencing – cover a long stretch of history. The classes, which primarily focus on weapon combat with some featuring hand-to-hand combat, are hosted across various public spaces in the Triangle, including Raleigh, Apex and Morrisville. Several study groups branch off from the core classes, Eicher said.
At the heart of Triangle Sword Guild’s teaching are historical manuals from the medieval and Renaissance periods written by fencing masters, such as the Zettel, a poem by Johannes Liechtenauer, and “Opera Nova” by Achille Marozzo. Eric Fazekas, instructor of the Napoleonic fencing class, said instructors read these texts to learn how fencing masters taught their students centuries ago, attempt to interpret them and relay the information to people in a modern context to allow for easier comprehension.
“Sometimes they have diagrams we can look at to help; sometimes it’s just reading text and doing our best to envision what that stance or attack or sequence looks like,” he said.
The first class, Kunst des Fechtens, or KdF, is a German longsword tradition based on Johannes Liechtenauer’s set of study, a 14th-century fencing master, Elissa Cannonwood, the president of Triangle Sword Guild, said. This tradition centers primarily on fighting with the longsword, a “double-edged straight-bladed sword designed to be worn and used primarily with two hands,” according to a blog post by Swordwind Historical Swordsmanship.
Cannonwood has practiced HEMA in North Carolina for approximately three to five years. A couple of statewide, national and global trends she has noticed in this period are that more clubs are exploring a greater variety of weapon systems in sword fighting, and more people are re-engaging with armor fighting.
Triangle Sword Guild’s Armizare class is the pipeline into proper armor fighting, Eicher said. Armizare is a martial art that originated in 15th-century Italy by a fencing master named Fiore Dei Liberi. The class starts with the dagger weapon and wrestling to get students accustomed to moving with armor, he said.
Progressing forward in history, the group’s Renaissance fencing class focuses on Bolognese Italian style swordsmanship through the middle of the Renaissance, Eicher said. The tradition derives its teachings from Achille Marrozo and other Italian fencing masters, emphasizing side-swords, which he said feature more hand protection on the handle of the sword known as the hilt.
Eicher said Napoleonic fencing, the last of the courses, homes in on techniques of the late 1600s until the Napoleonic Wars, which lasted from about 1800 to 1815. He said the class concentrates on British swords, such as the Scottish basket-hilted broadsword, recognizable for its distinct, basket-shaped hilt, and smallsword, a light sword intended for thrusting, a quick attack technique. During the Napoleonic era, the French smallsword was the “quintessential” dueling sword, he said, before the pistol took over.
Instructor Eric Fazekas (left) and student and instructor Jonathan Wood (right) practice sword fighting at an advanced Napoleonic fencing class. Photo courtesy of Andrew Eicher
Wayne Lee, professor of History at UNC-Chapel Hill, teaches military history and courses related to national security. He said that from the 1330s, the period when Europeans were thought to first encounter gunpowder, to 1730, the powder was not particularly speedy or reliable. This meant that people continued to use contact weapons on the battlefield, and it wasn’t until the 18th century that they dropped out, Lee said.
He said that sword fighting during the Napoleonic Wars was primarily dueling between individual aristocrats, who carried a sword indicating their social class and their willingness to use violence to defend their reputation or position in society.
“Every once in a while, somebody might have gotten within swinging distance on the battlefield of somebody with a sword on a Napoleonic battlefield, but it didn’t happen very often with the very large exception of cavalry charges,” Lee said.
For Fazekas’s beginner Napoleonic fencing class, students receive steel or foam swords, and no protective gear is required initially because students don’t cut at each other, only the air. However, for his main class, students need several items of gear, like a mask, pants and a jacket that are puncture-resistant and a gorget to protect the throat.
A student can expect to spend between $1,200 and $1,500 for a full sparring tournament-level kit, Eicher said. These customizable kits offer a plethora of gear options; however, he noted that classes at Triangle Sword Guild are structured so that beginners don’t need equipment for at least the first month or two.
Cannonwood said the “sheer availability” of HEMA materials, such as quality swords and gear, has allowed more people to participate in HEMA and has made it significantly safer.
Jack Kessler has been a student in the beginner Napoleonic fencing course since January.
After moving from Raleigh to Wilmington, he looked for a physical activity where we could meet new people and have fun. He initially researched hiking but didn’t come across many opportunities. Kessler’s only experience in martial arts before HEMA was taekwondo in middle school.
He said his favorite part of learning a new physical skill is the sense of personal growth.
“I was in a master’s program for about two years,” said Kessler, who earned his graduate degree in history at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. “That was a lot of intellectual work and not much physical work, so it feels good to actually, like, test my body and get out there and see myself improve.”
Fazekas said the community aspect is the best part of Triangle Sword Guild because of the opportunities to build one another up and discuss approaches to fencing.
“I mean, we’re swinging swords at each other and have swords swung at us,” he said. “It’s terrifying a little bit, right, especially at the beginning, but everyone knows that – everyone has that same kind of natural instincts, and we bond together because no one wants to hurt each other.”
He also speaks to the “greatness” of the HEMA community generally, specifically when his opponent taught in a different fencing style and defeated him during a tournament but gave him tips and shared the ideas behind his style.
Unlike modernized fencing, which has a standardized set of rules overseen by the International Fencing Federation, and other martial arts such as boxing, HEMA does not have a standardized rule set. This is evident in the variation of tournament structures.
Triangle Sword Guild’s annual tournament, Raleigh Open, typically takes place at the beginning of August in Raleigh at XL Soccer World. The tournament has 90 seconds of continuous fencing, meaning that fencers fence for 90 seconds straight, though they cannot see their score from the judge, which differs from other tournaments. Eicher said scoring is done this way to protect the judges and prevent fencers from “gaming” their scores. The only times the tournament director calls a halt is when there is an equipment issue or someone gets carded. North Carolina’s other main HEMA tournament, Queen’s Gambit, is in Charlotte.
Unlike the Raleigh Open, fencers competing in the Queen’s Gambit tournament can view their score while they’re fighting, and the fight is stopped after each exchange.
Some misconceptions arise about sword fighting in HEMA due to pop culture representations. For example, Eicher noted that there are techniques that appear “flashy” on camera but wouldn’t be particularly feasible in a real, historically accurate situation. He cites much of the swordplay in “The Witcher” game and TV series as an example, where characters may spin to produce a large, powerful cut – a type of sword attack – or fight multiple people simultaneously.
Additionally, Cannonwood said that some people might believe HEMA is a “boys’ club,” yet she said one of her top priorities as president of Triangle Sword Guild is ensuring inclusivity, whether for an individual’s gender, sexuality or background. Another misconception she hears is that HEMA is only European-centered, though this isn’t always the case.
“We work with some really great folks who are recreating African martial arts, and we’ve got an individual in our club who’s looking into things that were happening in India and Persia,” she said.
To Cannonwood, HEMA’s role in the broader martial arts community is uncertain, as there is ample room for interpretation over the next several years. She said many people love the fact that HEMA doesn’t have a governing body and the freedom they have as a result to practice the art form as they see fit.
“I think most HEMAists are happy doing their jujitsu on Tuesday and doing HEMA on Saturdays, and that’s all right,” she said.
One of Cannonwood’s hopes for Triangle Sword Guild is for the club to further its relationships with others in the state and for instructors to travel between different clubs and exchange their knowledge more often. She also said the organization is trying to work on getting the class schedules consistent so there is a predictable open enrollment period for beginners.
She said she would love for HEMA to do more educational demonstrations at Renaissance fairs and similar events. Triangle Sword Guild has put on demonstrations at libraries in North Carolina, including Durham County Public Library and Glenwood Branch Library in Greensboro. For the last two years, a cohort of students from the club’s Napoleonic program has attended the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games – an annual event celebrating Scottish ancestry – and will return in July to host a sword camp for children and fighting demonstrations.
Over the next several years, Cannonwood said, Triangle Sword Guild is looking to purchase a facility to hold its club meetings. The hope, she said, is for the facility to be in a centralized location and ideally have padded floors for safety and storage space for weapons that the club doesn’t use regularly. The club has also been collecting historical fight books, both originals and copies, and Cannonwood said she’d love a place to store them and for the community to borrow them.
Before the Raleigh Open, the Triangle Sword Guild’s next major event is the Carolina Campaign during the weekend of May 2 in Moncure, North Carolina. The event will focus on fencing from the long 18th century with various sword types, like saber, which boasts a curved blade and is known for its cutting power, and broadsword, characterized by a double-edged blade, taught by instructors from across the East Coast.
Cannonwood’s message to people interested in HEMA is to “give it a go.”
“If anybody has ever thought of trying to do HEMA, if anybody was ever that child who picked up a stick and swung it around pretending to be sword fighting, if you ever wanted to be a knight or a musketeer, I would absolutely recommend finding your local HEMA club,” Cannonwood said.
