No question about it: Back in the 1880s, the can-can was Gay Paree’s most famous export article — second only to syphilis. There was enough sex appeal in a chorus line of chicks kicking high in bloomers and black stockings not only to turn the Short Toulouse-Lautrec into the Great Toulouse-Lautrec, to get top-tier composers like Jacques Offenbach into the game, but ultimately to inspire the trans-Atlantic Ziegfeld Follies and the Rockettes.

On Plate 12, one of more than 200 highly detailed illustrations in the manuscript, Talhoffer includes one single kicking technique, in his instructions for the langes Schwert, the two-handed long or great sword (Fig. 1).

He advises in his southwestern Middle High German: "Mit dem fryen ortt Inlouffen /und Tretten in den buch."

The 19th-century Viennese fencing master Gustav Hergsell, who edited, translated, and published the manuscript in 1887, renders this into modern German as "Mit dem freien Ort (Stoß) vortreten und in den Bauch treten" ("Step forward with the free point (thrust) and kick into the belly").

In 20A col 2.1, he advises: "Lo dito del magistro denançi de quello nonn è questione, Che lo zogho che luy à dito io lo faço cum rasone." The master on the left (whose "sayings cannot be opposed" as his fight is correct) releases his left hand, grabs the opponent’s blade in the middle, and pulls it to the left. As his opponent is pulled toward him, the master further unbalances him by either kicking the knee with his instep or ‘stepping’ on it. At the same time, the cutting edge of the master’s sword threatens the neck and shoulder of his opponent.

In 20B col 2.1, Fiore is quite straight-forward: "Quando io me incroso cum uno e uegno al streto, Entro li chogiuni el fiero com lo pe drito": From a cross at posta breva, he uses a kick into the groin with his leading foot to make the opponent "lose his vigor."

These "old ancient teachings" are probably best reflected in the manuals of Albrecht Dürer (1512) and the earlier (Ambraser Codex) of Talhoffer, which originated in the 1440s (Fig. 2).

Dürer’s pair 21 (Fig. 3) shows a high push kick to gain distance, whereas pairs 53 and 54 (Figure 4) are knee and foot strikes into the "coddes."

The German nobleman Fabian von Auerswald uses two strikes with the lower leg in his Ringerkunst (1539) in close-quarter takedown techniques: Figure 5 illustrates Auerswald (right) trying to break his opponent’s balance: "If he stands with legs locked, I kick with my right leg against his left knee sling. But if he stands well balanced, it won’t work."

The kicks depicted in Talhoffer, Dürer, and Petter belong to the antagonistic tradition, i.e., combat wrestling that would be applied in fights to the death, in ordeals, battlefield, or self-defense scenarios in which the opponent is perceived as a serious threat to your health and life (and as such must be disposed of quickly.)

But in sword fighting, the length of the blade doubles the reach of the arm. At this distance, the reach of your leg will be less than that of your sword. In fact, kicks (especially high kicks) are a liability for the simple reason that you may get your leg cut off (or at least painfully bruised).

In all my research, I’ve only encountered one illustration that allows itself to be interpreted as a kick: There’s one pair of fighters in Thibault’s 1630 Academie de l´Espee, on Tabula I, way, way down in the right hand corner of the oversized folio, that has frequently been adduced as illustrating a kick with the trailing leg into the opponent’s solar plexus, in synch with a finger jab of the left hand into the opponent’s face (Fig. 9).

But what has recently been interpreted as a jeet kune do-style kick-and-jab combination, is really a push or thrust kick that is not aimed at its percussive impact on the opponent. It is rather intended to expand fighting distance from corps-a-corps back into the wide measure — a measure that would allow the rapier point to be used as it was intended to. John M. Greer’s wonderful 1998 translation of Thibault, titled Academy of the Sword — A Renaissance Manual of Hermetic Swordsmanship (Seattle, 1998), makes this abundantly clear:

Nonetheless it sometimes happens that one enters into narrow straits, where all long lines are useless and harmful, because the distances are all shorter than the blade extended with the arm in a straight line (so that one is constrained to bend the arm, or even move it backwards, in order to use the point). At these close quarters our sword length does not cause to be sufficiently convenient or manageable; for it is easier to shorten one’s line at these short ranges than it is to elongate it at a long range. (…)

The [figure] marked with the letter G shows how it may be shortened if the enemy should come running up in order to get past the point. For by putting the foot against his body, and holding the hilt steady on the right hip, the point, which would otherwise pass over his shoulder because of the length of the sword, will come exactly against his chest. The same shortening of the line can be done in another way, by putting the hand against the enemy’s chest in place of the foot, and again holding the hilt of the sword on the right hip.

Apart from savate, the kick is widely considered taboo, or at least dishonest, in the armed and unarmed European fighting traditions. Which provides both a challenge and an opportunity to the martial artist who should find himself in the position of pitching the skills in the Asian traditions against a practitioner of the European schools. If you’re lucky enough to find one...

You can read excerpts from Mr. Amberger's best-selling book, The Secret History of the Sword: Adventures in Ancient Martial Arts, by clicking here. You can also purchase the book directly through amazon.com..